The Big Lead Gets the Last Laugh

Since when is media criticism a "niche"?

 

Done with finals?

 

I work for a company that has acquired a number of websites over the years...not blogs, but some community-related sites and niche sports sites and things of that nature.

Mostly, they get paid a lump sum up front, then we hire on the owner to "manage" that site on a year-by-year contract. The lump sum depends largely on established traffic and basically what our company feels it's capable of going forward.

And yes, Google Analytics make it hard to cook the books when trying to sell your site. Those numbers are probably legit.

 

web analytics is its own industry -- there are better programs than Google Analytics that display a lot more "drill down" information. Hits are defined by analytic geeks as "How Idiots Track Sites."

Far more value in what your user engagement is than just page views.

 

So then what's your niche?

 

I can make toads dance.

 

Echo this, and returning to my post on the first page: What does seven figures mean? If they dropped a $1 million check in his bank account, more power to him. If they gave him $100,000 and a 10-year contract that guarantees him $100,000 a year as long as he wants to log the 15-hour days, well, that's a success story in its own right but something completely different. That's a common trick in Internet land, just as Donovan McNabb's contract with the Eagles didn't really end up paying him $98 million.

People are talking about how savvy the buyers are. I'm having trouble seeing how good businessmen, while in the process of acquiring many businesses, would publicly announce a purchase price that seems exorbitant. It would seem to do nothing for them but drive up the price in future negotiations.

 

I know sites like Pro Football Talk and Hoopshype have been sold recently in the seven-figure range. I'm sure there are some others. The WSJ did a story on HoopsHype about a year ago.

I've seen The Big Lead mentioned on Kimmel's show, Carolla's podcast and CNN in the last month or so. That place gets a ton of traffic.

 

I'm not sure what happened to his quantcast -- may have nerfed it when he started trying to sell the site -- but it ceased tracking real numbers in January. Before that he had steady months of 170k monthly uniques (this is a quantcast estimate of the number of actual people that attempts to account for users who use multiple PCs) and a spike to 250k in January when it went dead. He's still getting ranked and is currently around 280k uniques.

http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-73?r=7207#7207

The pageview number is pretty realistic then, since it's about 10 pages a month for the average viewer. My site averages over 20, though it's got a message board to boost those numbers.

 

Good for Jason, Always a nice guy to me, always had his mind set on doing his style of writing and he got paid. Always happy for people who can blaze their own trail to fortune.