How much money is there in the “Mac news” game?
My good friend Michael Johnston over at iPhoneAlley turned me on to a website that has me contemplating quitting my day job. CyberWyre is a site that can estimate the approximate value of your website by analyzing a number of factors – such as traffic levels and sources of potential income– and then spits out the approximate market value your site may be worth.
Well, needless to say, when I saw that Macenstein is now valued at $117,105, I nearly spilled my Doritos reaching for the phone to book my flight to Aruba.
Somewhat baffled by the apparent discrepancy between my site’s claimed net worth and the actual amount of income generated, I decided to check out some of the other notable Mac-related sites out there to see what their net worth was. Looks like I picked the right business!
Thinksecret.com ($ 1,110,799),
Macrumors.com ( $2,135,202),
Appleinsider.com, ($2,289,543).
WOW.
However, perhaps the granddaddy of all Mac sites is the Unoffical Apple Weblog (TUAW), with an approximate value of $23,534,026. It seems that reporting on Apple can potentially generate more money than Apple itself! (Hopefully this news doesn’t start contributors to those sites demanding raises, if not company jets).
Now, I was prepared to write the site off as complete BS (I mean, Google is good, but $3.3 trillion?), but I tried typing in another 10 or so sites I own (all of them basically worthless), and all of them returned the more reasonable $58 result that sites with no juice seem to, so obviously the site is using SOME sort of algorithm, however flawed.
But I think I’ll just go with the assumption that CyberWyre is dead-on accurate, and Macenstein is worth over $100k. It makes me feel better about wasting my free time on this site. And while I would hate to sell it, if any would-be investors are reading, I am willing to sell you Macenstein for the low low introductory price of $70,000, a savings of nearly 40% off the retail price! Act now, as supplies are limited!
So, how off do you think CyberWyre is? What about your site? Leave us your site’s value in the comments below. (Note: You can get slightly different values depending on how you enter your address. For instance, adding the “www” to the front of Macenstein.com got me an extra $2000!).
-The Doc
[UPDATE]: Well, it looks like we might have crashed ol’ CyberWyre at the moment. Seems to be throwing code errors. Such is the power of Digg.
🙂
LOL!
the point is i think, that no one cares about sub 5 million pages, from an investor point of view. so a 100k website is really worth nothing in reality, isn´t it?
anyway. just keep on posting and go for the 1 million status 🙂
Hmm, definitely flawed, apparently my journal (http://duemoko.livejournal.com) is worth a staggering $13,099,171 and I could earn nearly $14000 dollars of advertising with text ads.
“the granddaddy of all Mac sites is the Unoffical Apple Weblog (TUAW)…” Ummm….not even close. There are dozens of sites that have been around longer than TUAW.
Hey Shawn,
Yes, I didn’t mean “granddaddy” in the sense of age, I meant granddaddy in the sense of “monstrous net worth”.
It seemed to be the Mac-only site with the largest perceived net worth I could find.
-The Doc
Then you are using “granddaddy” the wrong way. 🙂
And if TUAW is the largest you can find, you’e not trying hard enough. Run Macworld.com through your little web site evaluator. 🙂
One of my sites ( http://jokes.hellacool.co.uk/, a jokes site ) is worth $846 according to CyberWyre, which is roughly what I make from ads per year. No-one is going to buy the site, but it is worth that to me just to keep the vhost!
Shawn,
Not to argue the point, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Even OS X’s built-in dictionary defines “granddaddy” as
“• ( the granddaddy of) used to denote a person or thing that is considered to be the best, largest, or most notable of a particular kind : that young fellow is going to have the granddaddy of all headaches.”
Age has nothing to do with the term, really.
And yes, I saw Macworld, but they mainly just regurgitate press releases (no disrespect to their original content, but most of it occurs on sites they purchased). I like the more thoughtful posts on the other blog sites, and feel Macenstein’s vibe is more akin to that of blogs like TUAW than to real “news” sites which simply report facts.
Facts are not important here.
Except for the fact I used “grandaddy” correctly, of course.
🙂
-the Doc
Thanks for the news item a few weeks ago. Looks like it had an effect:
Earnings Report for web.mac.com/simon_elliott/iWeb/simon_elliott@mac.com/Software.html
Your site is valued at: $1,179,141
It may even be under valued, based on the buyer. A network of web sites can be leveraged to create greater value for the individual sites (synergy, anyone?). As an example, a Macworld could probably make good use of Macenstein to add a ground-level info network site. Another example is c|net, which runs the gamut from reputable Journal-based sites to the MS shills at Crave.
Venture capitalists base their decision on how much they can sell it for in a couple of years. Even KKR sold off most of Philip Morris and Kraft after a few years. By selling off the assets they made more money than they would get from a phenomenal cash cow. In other words, there is no sentiment in finance, so they’ll sell it right out from under you
(Mr. Jobs? Meet Mr. Sculley)
And don’t forget that the book value includes being able to write off the purchase over 10 or 20 years, and to include the goodwill as an asset on their books. So, much like an Annuity or a winning Lotto ticket that are worth a fortune – but paid over 20 years, the Net Present Value – or what Macenstein is worth at a liquidation sale – is probably closer to $10K to $20K than $120K.
Hope that doesn’t burst your bubble.
“Facts are not important here.”
Apparently.
I think it must be broken at the moment, as it’s valuing http://www.bbc.co.uk at $188!
Whoo-hoo! A whooping $58! Where’s the venture capitalists when you need them?
http://www.macnewbtube.wordpress.com $58! IPO coming soon! =P
This tool is useless at best. It values http://www.google.com at $194. I’ll take three please.
It is definitely broken, http://www.youtube.com is valued $167…
yeah right, and Ebay is worth $181… something s very wrong 🙂
Not sure about the figures. I manage the domain of a brand new, non-profit org (http://www.createthailand.com) whose site values in the $70 range.
But then I look at Flickr and it’s site says a mere $127.
Does that mean we’re about to catch up with the pros? :-]
Well the BBC is worth $181… good job they don’t take advertising anyway!
I checked out my site http://www.eleganttechnology.co.uk which was valued at $85. Thats about twice what I have earned from adsense clicks.
Mmmmm, If only I could generate some more clicks.
Hey,
if you can scrape up 194 Bucks you could buy google.com!
At least thats what Cyberwire sais it is worth…
Just a bunch of random numbers if you ask me.
I tried http://www.apple.com and got back $181!!! I think something is amiss!
Websites must have a depreciation value like cars… like a Rock. after being disappointed by my site only being $150, I then checked Digg.com, and it was only valued at $200. Macenstein is now $120. Can we still get that 40% off deal ;-).
Wow. Looks like Shawn is just upset his Mac site is only worth $1700.
🙂
shouldn’t it be “MacDaddy”?
;P
OneStep,
I’ll consider it. It still sounds like a good deal.
and Tom, yes, you’re right. I totally missed a perfect pun opportunity, and am kicking myself.
-The Doc
Lol, nice man Nice
Hey,
I took a look at the site and had it do a valuation for my site, http://www.va-va-voom.net. It gives it a value of $99. This is quite funny due to the fact that the site makes about $10,000 per month. Very, Very flawed. It’s basing the valueation only on links and engines that it finds on the internet. Most of my customers come directly to the site vs from linking on the internet.
Jason
It appears that there are some broken PHP scripts on that page, so the values returned are probably wrong. 🙂
My mac news site is worth $58 – I only put it up a few days ago.
http://www.dnscoop.com/
MUUUUUUCH better site to check your sites value!
Big Dave,
You’re probably right.
On dnscoop Macenstein is down to a more reasonable $14,000.
Although I will definitely be quoting CyberWyre’s figures at any high school reunions or family functions I go to.
-the Doc
LOL, one of my sites, nutMac.com is valued at $85… I think I’ll keep my day job!
The site is worthless. It says that one of my domains is worth $126. I make that in a day on advertising with that site.
re: the odd valuations
Since it uses Google info it’s probably skewed to sites that are willing to pay for their rankings.
As for the BBC, there’s no value in a website that doesn’t take advertising. And the Yahoo!s and Googles likely have monster security on their top URLs to keep others from snooping in to their info. That’s why they get a 0 from Alexa; there’s no information available to analyze.
Im signing a deal to sell my site today for over 25k yet they say the site is worth 58 bucks…
I’ve got 7$?!?
For a site with essentially no traffic (but a measurable increase during the academic year) I still get a wide range of values:
CyberWyre – $112
dnscoop.com – $1,300
leapfish.com – $15,708
The correct value should be near zero or maybe ‘Sentimental Only’.
It says playboy.com is worth $147!
I have a distinct feeling that “I can has cheezburger” is worth more than the indicated $99. Good day folks!
I think it’s broken.
Mac360 is worth about $112, but Apple is worth only $181. I’d like to be worth 2/3 of Apple’s worth.
hey check this out my hi5 page is worth $47,568,436 hahaha
http://www.rodin002.hi5.com check the picture:
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2935/88666315jq6.png
im about to sell the domain and move to the bahamas
Anyone want it???its cheap…