If this were 1999, I’d go public.
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October 22, 2005
WB: The New Economy
Comments
Well b, it looks like I’m not going to be able to afford to post here from now on. With all my money going to heat my home, buy gas for work, etc, I can’t afford shit. Maybe I need a site. As billmon says, go public.
Speaking of the stock market, since Bushie has been in office the market can’t do shit. A balanced federal budget always help the market.
Posted by: jdp | Oct 22 2005 20:07 utc | 2
Sounds like a WAG re income from running ads. And I bet it doesn’t take into account the loss of readership due to said ads. I leave sites that have flashing or nasty stuff. (Of course, with Firefox and Adblock… heh-heh)
Actually the smart money here is with whoever thought up the idea of selling ad space on a web page and then creating eyeballs for the ads with a tacky “how much is my blog worth?” applet, calculated according to an essentially arbitrary and meaningless formula (to be precise, $564.54 for each inbound website, as reported by Technorati).
Tech bubbles come and go but that kind of chutzpah always commands respect in the world of business. Donald Trump would be approve.
Posted by: Lexington | Oct 22 2005 20:31 utc | 4
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen softly dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the doormouse said:
“Feed your Head
Feed your Head!”
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 22 2005 20:39 utc | 5
Well, dailykos is worth a cool $5.7 million and atrios is good for $2.1 million. Slashdot is worth nil, but on the other hand boingboing is worth a stonking $9.4 million! Finally, SE is worth a paltry $110 thousand, but somethingawful is worth $1.9 million, and yet b3ta is worthless.
I have not the foggiest how this calculation is done. I’m sure it’s completely bogus. Can anybody beat $9.4 million?
Posted by: Araneidae | Oct 22 2005 20:56 utc | 7
I refuse to do it, but will someone put a value on Little Green Footballs.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 22 2005 21:02 utc | 8
Blogs are the perfect bussiness because they have no employees or perhaps a few. While the revenue might be thin that doesn’t mean a thing.
The perfect thing to do now is for blogs to start incorporating and issuing stock. When the stock begins trading it allows for the possibility of others becomming rich if the stock rises. Well actually it allows others to become rich trading the stock, up or down doesn’t matter. The simple process of inflating the asset creates wealth.
Sure if the stock crashes some lose, The beauty part of blogs is since they have almost zero cost and will raise plenty of cash in the IPO they should have no debt and thus cannot go bankrupt. If BillmonInc goes to ten cents and languishes for months or years you can be sure someone will start accumulatiing it so that it appears on some screens which look for movers and it will have a nice rally. Again making some pepole rich if they are smart enough to distribute the stock as it rises.
Billmon himself should do nicely because he should retain half the new stock for himself. After a decent interval, which is determined by law, he can start to unload it. He can also give himself stock options. Creating stocks out of thin air he can sell into the market when it is strong.
He can build a 50,000 square foot mansion and employ a lot of people. That’s good for the economy. The economy will grow.
What’s not to like?
Posted by: rapier | Oct 22 2005 21:22 utc | 10
Hate to burst your bubble, but it’s been reevaluated at $0.00
If its any consolation, that is also the alleged worth of the site claiming it can determine worth.
Posted by: erichwwk | Oct 22 2005 21:32 utc | 11
Who is to say what it is worth till you try to capitalize it?
FNM is without a balance sheet dating back five years and has less than 1% of the capital to cover its potential liabilities. It is still listed on the NYSE while in flagrant violation of rules stating it’s books must be in order. It’s not bankrupt only because nobody wants to say it is. It’s ‘worth’ hundreds of billions.
EBAY has made less money during it’s history than many CEO made last decade. It’s ‘worth’ hundreds of billions.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 22 2005 23:23 utc | 12
And if Billmon did have ‘internal audit controls’, what would he be worth then?
Perhaps $94.6 million or, at the very least, 5.6 billion Krispy Kreme?
if its any consolation, the site doing the valuating, by its own lights, aint worth the pixels its printed on:
http://tinyurl.com/b6owo
.
Posted by: bianco | Oct 23 2005 1:39 utc | 15
He came to that value after reading “Will the Grinch Steal Fitzmas?”
What an outstanding post!
Thanks for the outstanding work!
Posted by: JR | Oct 23 2005 3:02 utc | 17
“if its any consolation, the site doing the valuating, by its own lights, aint worth the pixels its printed on:”
Funny you should mention that because most of the money in the world is just bits in computers and pixels on screens. So too are most financial assets like Treasury Bonds like the ones Bush mocked when he went to the site keeping track of Social Securities books and had his picture taken with a printout.
A bit strangely Bush’s reported assets are mostly in Treasury Securities. Neither the press or the Democrats or anyone else challenged Bush to show off his Treasury Bonds. Which might be a bit off topic but it’s a good story which the lazy press missed, big time since Treaury Bonds as a piece of fancy paper are not issued anymore. THey are nomially called book entries but there are not even any books. I’s just bits.
Money has always been an abstraction. Gold’s ‘value’ is an abstraction. Paper currency is a more complex abatraction. Stocks and bonds are an even more elaborate abstraction.
However all those play only a secondary role in the setting and measurement of ‘value’ and ‘wealth’. For today financial flows are dominated by the most abstract form of money of all, derivatives.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 23 2005 4:20 utc | 18
This was a clever idea for earning that cool million. Seems to be working, too.
milliondollarhomepage.com
Posted by: Noisette | Oct 23 2005 16:36 utc | 20
Noisette–
Ahhhhh….
I see that McLuhan had it wrong because, as your link demonstates, ‘The Media is The Money’.
(sans those pesky internal audit controls, of course)
But since it’s 2005 you can just tell them about your million-dollar asset and, with no documentation, take out $100M in loans
Posted by: psh | Oct 24 2005 2:13 utc | 22
What are we worth as commmentors? $50 a comment? That is if it is particularly astute and incisive.
Since the blog–minus the scintillating comments–are worth a cool million, we should easily be able to hire someone for $100,000 or so, to take Billmon’s part in posting, and pocket the difference as cash flow profits. And if they do better than Billmon–which should be easy given the monetary incentives–well, then we just kill them off faster and make more money.
Blogs are worth a lot just most people don’t know how to make money with them. I paide that poor college student a the million dollar homepage $400 for a pixel ad and it was worth every penny.
Posted by: The Nirvana Poster | Oct 24 2005 17:33 utc | 24