The day where blogs are treated like real estate has arrived! Click here to find out how much your blog is 'worth' monetarily.
We all knew it had to come to this eventually, as blogging is now so mainstream that connections to money, power, and perhaps fame are inevitably made. However, when I showed it to my old-school banker buddy Teddy, he unequivocally stated that he would not loan anyone a dime with a blog as collateral. Call my man Ted very conservative, but he always has a knack for determining when people are overreaching.
Now to my real point: the site referenced at the beginning of this piece uses the Technorati API and something called the 'link-to-dollar' ratio. As a metric, that makes this one immediately suspect because Technorati, while a great resource, has had some problems of late with computing rankings and other calculations of "authority" - they keep changing all the time, for starters. It is difficult to use such metrics when the definition of them changes too often.
Which can make derived metrics, and the assumptions and conclusions we arrive at from them, equally suspect. Another example is Google Trends. Fine tool (thus far). Great concept. But not ready for prime time yet. A fairly-well-known Web 2.0 pundit (who shall go nameless) used it about a year ago to justify how Web 2.0 was taking over the internet and computing by looking at search trends on various Web 2.0-related acronyms and buzzwords. Issue #1: He was basing his assertions on what people searched for on Google, not what they actually had or did. Issue #2: Google Trends is not yet sophisticated enough to discern the difference between something like SOAP, the acronym, and soap as in detergent and cleaning agents. I ran his Google Trends analysis as he had it and with things like "soap, detergent" and a number of name brands of soaps/detergent. Guess what? Same results as his Web 2.0 version. Why is that not surprising? So, we have a context problem with the data and parameterization. That didn't stop this guy from making some very bold assertions from his 'work.'
In our business, we have things like "pick-your-nines" uptime and other calculations that while useful on the surface, mean little if erroneously computed or derived - including agreement on how such measures are arrived at. Relevance also plays a role here in addition to correctness.
While I've found the monetization calculations of blogs suspect at this point, they do have some value as entertainment, amusement, and for daydreaming purposes. Herewith are the 'monetary' values of this blog, some selections from my blogroll, and others:
This Blog: $20,323.44 Chris Petrilli: $24,839.76 Nick Carr: $989,292.60
Nick Malik: $4516.32 Sandy Kemsley: $47,421.36 Todd Biske: $80,164.38
Tim Johnson: $41,775.96 Stowe Boyd: $287,915.40 James McGovern: $9032.64
David Maister: $18,629.82 Seth Godin: $4.04 million Techcrunch: $9.63 million
Looks like we have some A-listers with multi-million-dollar blogs, and a couple that blog frequently who couldn't use it as collateral for a used car. Anything wrong with this picture, folks?
Apply such skepticism liberally and consistently until satisfied with the measurement and process, not just the results.
UPDATE: Per Sandy's comment, removing the 'default.aspx' from Nick Malik's URL moves his blog's 'value' from $4516.32 to $23,146.14. Adding the 'ea' Typepad filename to mine lowers my 'value' to $13,548.96 from $20,323.44. Adding a '/' to James McGovern's URL changes his value from $9032.64 to $110,649.84. Looks like the guy propagating this has a lot of work to do....
UPDATE #2: The values shown in the original list above were calculated by giving the tool the URL as it appears in the referenced links. In every case presented above, manipulating the URL as described in the first update changes the value - up or down - depending on the weather, it appears. A pity it won't work on my NCAA basketball tournament brackets...:)
