November 23, 2004
A Price On My Blog
I got an interesting note in my email box last night, and I just had to share it with everyone:
I don't know if you are interested in selling you site, but we are looking to purchase a variety of sites (and I assumed you are the person I should contact regarding this).
If you would be interesting in selling your site, let me know how much would you charge.
I wonder if this means they have to cease trading shares in Off Wing over at BlogShares (and check out my killer P/E ratio!).
I told them to make me an offer, and I'm still waiting to hear back. Unfortunately, I don't have the sort of corporate budget that would allow me to hire Lazard, Solomon or CS First Boston (which was my first choice) to evaluate their offer.
I know many of my readers are accountants or lawyers, so I put the question to you: Just how would I go about valuing Off Wing if I really did want to sell?
Leave your answer in the comments thread, or send me an email.
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Tracked on December 21, 2004 11:28 PM
Sell out!
Haha. Just kidding... So, they'd just be paying you to keep doing what you're doing? Or what?
If you sell your site and then stop blogging, I wouldn't pay too much for that...
Posted by:
at November 23, 2004 12:22 PM
If you sell out, I can hear the smarmy corporate blog owners now: "How can get those eyeballs glued to this page? Needs more Shockwave games"; "Verdana is good for the 35-57 males; we need Times New Roman to get hit the 18-35s"; "We can sell much more ads when you blog at night";"A blog cap is essenital so that we don't overspend on over paid bloggers" et al. I am not ready for that...and can you see 3-5 years down the road? Imagne this Wayne and Garth dream sequence...
We are going to get is more "reality-based" blogging; a bunch of people in pajamas competing in a house with "realistic" blogging challenges like "word per minute tests" and "most comments per day per entry" until they finally get down to the "blog-off" winner.
Just keep it real, dude.
ps- I have no idea what keep it real means.
Posted by:
at November 23, 2004 12:57 PM
I got the same email a couple weeks ago. I replied and told the guy to make me an offer. He said that he's valuing sights at approximately twice their annual revenue. I told him that I'd never considered selling, and that any offer would have to be significant for me to even mull it over. Never heard back.
Posted by:
at November 23, 2004 01:42 PM
The ENTIRE value of a blog is the freedom of expression of the individual writing it. Until you can ascertain the rules & regulations under which you would (presumably) continue to write, then there is nothing to discuss.
Oh BTW, what are they offering to do for you in this "partnership"? IT services (i.e., web maintenance)? Advertising procurement? Boosting your 'hit' probability in Google searches?
Posted by:
at November 23, 2004 04:24 PM
Simple...Net present value. Forecast the future cash flows the site will generate over, say, 10 years. Assume year 10 goes on in perpetuity. Discount back each year at your weighted average cost of capital.
Man, do I have to do everything around here?
Posted by:
at November 23, 2004 07:50 PM
That's funny. I got the exact same email, probably the same time you did. I responded, told him to get back to me via phone. Also still waiting.
The really funny thing: After checking on them, and finding out their stated mission statement, I thought about forwarding the email to you. But I decided to follow through first to see if there was anything at all to it. Didn't want to give the impression I was validating something shady.
I used to work in investment banking, and the firm's focus included media (including media that, valuation-wise, would be comparable to blog properties). Shoot me an email if you're interested in what I gleaned from a call to them regarding this. (Maybe we could form a negotiating bloc!)
Posted by:
at November 24, 2004 06:30 PM
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