While perusing the blog sidebar of my fearless leader—Evil Spock—I noticed a link to a blog value calculator. Created by Dane Carlson a couple years ago, the calculator will look up a blog URL and apply some fancy math to the Technorati stats to produce an estimated dollar value for that site.
The math is based on an October 2005 analysis by Tristan Louis following the AOL purchase of Weblogs, Inc for some $25-40 million. The conservative estimate was that each link was worth $564.64. Dane used that figure and the Technorati API to publish an applet to figure out the dollar amount all those links are worth to a given blog.
The figures could be a little out of date. Yahoo! recently purchased Wretch.cc, a popular Taiwanese web site, for about $21 million to gain a stronger foothold in the Asian market through those 2.8 million members. Google followed a 2005 expenditure of $130.5 million on about 30 Web 2.0 companies with a big $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube last fall. Since the value of a link grows with the size and activity on a network, it is reasonable to think the half-grand pricetag is a bit low.
The calculator is also dependent on Technorati’s statistics and way of keeping track of blog popularity. BlogSchmog isn’t going to set any traffic records or merit inquiries from Google acquisitions any time soon, but it is interesting that the same digital space is valued so differently depending on how it is referenced. BlogSchmog.net is the main domain configuration for this site, and thanks to WordPress configuration settings, all local roads lead to that domain. The domain used when publicizing or broadcasting the site, however, has typically been BlogSchmog.com. There’s a ten grand difference in the price for this blog, depending on the reference path.
Enter a blog URL below to estimate its monetary value.
Carlson’s own effort, Business Opportunities Weblog, benefits from this free service, of course, by attracting attention to the other content in the site. The blog value calculator is a wonderful example of how releasing software into the wilds for free is a sound business investment as well as a philanthropic gesture. People will undoubtedly have some fun getting to know their blog a little better, and people who never before heard of Dane Carlson might be inclined to return as sticky readers.