I don’t mean to go looking to pick fights with people, but when those with power/influence prove they deserve none, someone must call them out. Considering our society exemplifies mediocrity and laziness, the task falls upon me to take those guilty of such American sins to task…
So when I read inaccurate lists like this one written by notorious-lacking-in-solid-research Doug McIntyre, my blood boils over, I email the author for comment (receive none) and then write this post.
Doug, I know you used to be CEO of a failing penny stock–aka one of the most sketchy positions around–but after you embarrassed yourself to anybody knowledgeable in finance with your list of the 25 best financial blogs, you’ve now gone and embarrassed yourself in front of the entire blogosphere with this pathetic list.
I wonder, can you really be this dumb or is it an act? I’m guessing this is an act, right? Joaquin Phoenix-style. Maybe to get links to your original article? (Which by the way is a list of blogs without any links to them…so I will not link either, as a tribute to the McIntyrian-school-of-how-not-to-blog!)
Before I pick apart this list, I gotta say that my blog makes more money than #22-25, (not to mention all the money-losing blogs that are absolutely worthless in bear/real markets like this) which Doug, lacking research abilities (no wonder he used to work on Wall Street!) has to guess their revenue/income, even though I detail my revenue/income in posts like THESE.
Alright…the article says:
1. “It is extremely difficult to put accurate financial values on blogs. Almost all of them are private companies.”
Maybe read blog posts like THIS! That’s right, I get buyout offers so often, I decided to to do post about it, but for some reason Doug prefers guessing games. Given Doug’s guessing standard 6x multiple, my blog, based on 2008 revenue, is worth a bit more than $2 million, placing me between 15-20 on this horrifically incomplete list. Of course, my numbers have been doubling and tripling eery few months…
2. Featuring friends is one of Doug’s favorite past times, but don’t exclude those with far more qualifications (ex. in response to my ripping on his poorly researched financial blog list, Doug ignored all 10 of my points and instead wrote “It is always nice to see a sore loser Tim. I see that Compete shows you with 39,000 visitors a month. Not a very popular property”…even though my 39k figure–which itself is low–beats nearly half his financial blogs list! Especially when some blogs on that list aren’t even ranked by any sites because their traffic is so low (but he had to include his friends!).
3. To determine value, 24/7 Wall St. looked at unique visitor and pageviews information from several public sources including Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, and comScore. These services are often criticized for estimating website traffic too low and we have taken that into account to the extent possible. We also looked at audience measurements provided by the blogs themselves when it seemed credible. Our estimated CPMs for ads are based on the current display and text ad environment, the quality of ads at each blog, and the number of ads that it runs on the average pages. The CPM value assigned to each blog is based on all of the ads it runs on its typical pages. To determine margins, 24/7 looked at headcount when available, and estimated costs of operating and maintaining websites. More complex content platforms where assigned higher monthly costs. Current audience growth rates were taken into account. A site which has traffic doubling year-over-year was given a higher multiple than one which is losing traffic. Because not all blogs make money, multiples of revenue and operating income were used to assess value.
Again Doug, I post my blog income monthly, as do many others such as John Chow who regularly makes $4,000 in one day (he’s not part of some big group that would make you exclude the blog) (shoot…I linked to another blog in my log post, shame on me, I fail the McIntyrian-school-for-how-not-to-blog…I promise I can do better!)
4. “This year’s list does not include blogs which are part of larger companies because the traffic of these properties is almost never broken out.”
Then why is Gawker listed as #1? It’s a group of blogs owned by a larger company! Like a typical penny stock CEO, Doug might not mean to contradict himself, he’s just not smart enough to avoid it.
5. SeekingAlpha…Revenue is probably running about $2.2 million a year. Based on the number of editors and writers that the company has and looking at the cost of it publishing platform, SeekingAlpha probably cost about $3.5 million to run. It is a potentially valuable property for one of the large financial sites. Seeking Alpha is worth about five times revenue or $11 million.
Uhhhhh a money losing finance blog full of amateur investors who have no loyalty whatsoever in the worst bear market in decades? This thing is probly worth $1 million or so on a good day, not $11 million. Little revenue/no real income businesses are what caused the depression of 2009-2012, time to grow up and build real businesses. You hear me king-of-hype-but-never-profits Kevin Rose?
6. VentureBeat revenue is probably not more than $200,000 a year. Its costs are high, so it probably does not breakeven. But, it is a special case because it is the leader in a portion of the market that would make the site valuable to a large media company. Five times revenue give the business a value of $1 million
Laughable Doug, truly laughable. Have you totally lost your mind by putting a blog with a paltry $200k in yearly revenue on this list? Do you not understand there are DOZENS, PROBLY HUNDREDS of blogs that do $200k+ in income each year..Dealbreaker, Michelle Malkin, ProBlogger, John Chow, Yaro, Shoemoney–tons and tons of obvious blogs, if you’d only do a bit of research before posting.
7. Last but not least–Alley Insider– At a $12 CPM per pages, the company does about $450,000 per year. With a relatively large staff The Business Sheet loses money. The company does not much value without editor-in-chief and lead writer Henry Blodget. At five times revenue, the company is worth $2.25 million.
I love AI–and Blodget is about as necessary as a benign tumor–but again, a blog that loses $500k/year, all because the owners are too arrogant to ever put out any basic products explaining all the noise to which they contribute–kinda like THESE INSTRUCTIONAL DVDs.–is not worth much/anything.
In short, McIntyre didn’t do the research, probly having one of his interns go around the web trying to aggregate something he should be doing himself.
If he did hammer out this list himself, he should be ashamed and curl up in a little ball. Whether he wrote this joke of a blog post or not, Doug McIntyre has just secured the titled “world’s most incompetent blogger”.
Posted in Blogging, idiots, Incompetence