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Last updated on August 10th, 2017 at 12:47 pm
Latest financial news from Webdiary:
Income in 2006 to the end of March was $13541.86, of which donations were $8066, and ads were the remaining $5745.86 (the odd dollars and cents come from Google Adsense, from which we continue to get an income of around $175 per month at present).
Expenditure in 2006 to the end of March was $11,904.21.
And the latest traffic figures:
The audited SiteCensus analyses show that between 500 and 1500 people visit the site on each weekday, and between 300 and 500 on each weekend day … In total there were 10,300 unique visitors to the site in March.
These spectacular idiots, who would presume to lecture the government on economic policies, have spent eleven grand running a blog that so far this year has lured a daily audience of between 300 and 1500 people. Extrapolate those numbers: they’ll blow $47,616 over 2006 for a profit of just $6548, writing for nobody. Doesn’t look like founder Margo Kingston is ever going to see much return on her $42,000 loan. Speaking of Margo, Webdiary has an update on her recent comeback speech:
She found that a difficult experience, which did her health no good, and has cancelled all other public engagements.
- Now hang on a second. Fair cop regarding that speech she gave at WOMADelaide. Imagine being in the same tent as all those bongo banging alternative Gaia-loving types…no doubt the pot smoke’s so thick in the air that 10 minutes exposure is the equivalent of smoking how many packets of Winnie Reds?Posted by James Waterton on 2006 04 03 at 12:18 PM • permalink
- It would do your health no good.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 04 03 at 12:19 PM • permalink
- Hmmm.
And how many of those visitors were from this blog looking to see what kind of idiotic nonsense Webdiary was up to?
Posted by memomachine on 2006 04 03 at 12:20 PM • permalink
- Geez! Over six grand in profits writing for nobody? Hell, I’ll do that! With Paco’s Patented Random Essay Generator (several models available, including the MoDo Signature Line of Prolix Snarkware, and the Chomsky Logic Chipper), I can pick up a few thousand without thinking at all (instead of writing comments here and making nothing – also without thinking at all).
- Those figures are absolutely hilarious. My personal blog, which I treat in an absolutely whimiscal and casual manner, updating if and when I feel like it with whatever tripe I fancy at the time, has many more visitors than that. Less comments, though, I admit. This site, of course, has three or more orders of magnitude above that, and yet sure didn’t cost anywhere near $12k!
I am just amazed at these clowns. How can any group of people who make such an astonishing, expensive balls-up of running what is essentially nothing more than a moderated weblog even THINK that they should have a say in the policies of a COUNTRY?
It’s just laughable .. there’s nothing more you can say, really.
- Hmmm.
I wonder who they contract for the bold tags now.
Now that’s the franchise to have.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 04 03 at 02:03 PM • permalink
- Why don’t they just pop the blog onto Blogspot and put up a Paypal button and Adsense?
Overhead = $0, income = Whatever gullible fools donate + ad clicks.
Posted by Major John on 2006 04 03 at 04:09 PM • permalink
- I could see a future for webdiary, if it wasn’t for the turgid crap that they publish on it. The financial statements and Margo updates are the best part – I wonder if they could publish them more often?
Also, they do not seem to understand anything about blogs or the internet
However, once they get past these things, who knows, a Fairfax takeover is not out of the question.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 04 03 at 05:34 PM • permalink
- #3, exactly what I’ve been saying. A month long Webreary boycott needs to be organised for all TBers. Watch that ten thousand per month figure plunge to three or four thousand, or less.
To turn that sort of money off so few visitors is not a spectacular failure, it’s actually a spectacular success.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 04 03 at 06:10 PM • permalink
- To pull $175 per month from Adsense off 10,000 uniques means the regulars have well and truly got the message about clicking those ads every single time they visit.
Alexa traffic rank? 1,190,000.
Flying Fish Micro Brewing? 1,140,000
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 04 03 at 06:16 PM • permalink
- Isn’t Margo the star of Comeback Mountain? Or am I confusing her with Robert Fisk in Master and Commander?Posted by andycanuck on 2006 04 03 at 07:27 PM • permalink
- Boys, put aside your prejudices for just a moment and have a think about those numbers. Over $50 000 a year in revenue, almost $10 000 a year in profit and all off a traffic base of less than 500 unique hits a day. Those numbers a freaking awesome. I would wager that there is not another similar site on the net doing those kinds of numbers.
The key to making riches on the net is monetizing traffic. How much does each unique hit make you or cost you? In webdiary’s case they are generating about 330 unique hits a day, for a total revenue of $150 or $0.45 per unique hit. Google doesn’t do that kind of per hit revenue. Webdiary is generating enough income to cover server costs, tech support, overheads and employ a full time staff and still make a profit. Keep in mind also that the independent site has only been running for a few months. I’d say WD has pretty bright future. Cheers.
- I agree CB – credit where it is due.
Advertisers are tired of critical and demanding audiences.The genius of webdiary is that they have cornered the fuckwit demographic.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 04 03 at 10:48 PM • permalink
- #24:
The point of all the snarking is, I dare say, that if they didn’t have nearly $12,000 of inexplicable expenses running a freakin’ group blog (which most other people are capable of doing for well under $1,000 per year), their quarter profits would have been eight times as much as they were. Not to mention the more than $40,000 they burned through last year without having any kind of meaningful revenues to offset it.
At any rate, I’m admittedly not much of a regular WD reader, but in about half a dozen visits so far this year, I honestly don’t recall ever seeing any ad on their site that looked like it might be paying $400 per week. In other words, I wonder who’s been throwing that kind of ad money at them. (What are the odds it’s taxpayer money by some Margo-friendly “non-profit” organization?)
Of course, speaking of throwing money at them, there’s the 106 people (not sure if this count is for March or the whole quarter) donating more than 8000 bucks to them, without which they’d have been more than $6000 in the red. Well, I guess it’s better than them spending it on drugs or something. Somehow I’m not so sure that donation trend is going to keep up, though, but I do have a habit of underestimating people’s foolishness.
Their visitor stats also continue to baffle…10,300 unique visitors resulted in only 28,406 visits across an entire month? Given the fairly active comment sections, that would indicate that their unique visitor total includes (at best) a couple hundred repeat visitors and around 10,000 people who visit once or twice and never again (for that month, anyway). The fact that that relatively miniscule number of repeat visitors is apparently indiscriminately throwing money at WD only makes them successful insofar as, say, Scientology is successful.
Appropriately enough, one of the ads that Google served up for my visit to WD just now reads “Find out what Nostradamus says about the years 2006 – 2012.” Sounds about as likely to be correct and useful as what can be read at WD, too.
- PS: An alternative interpretation of their visitor stats would be that the unique visitor count is heavily skewed by dynamic IP addresses such that many of those 10,300 “unique” visitors are really just a few hundred regular visitors using a different IP address each day, and that there isn’t actually much if any non-regular readership to speak of. That would certainly explain the odd relationship between unique visitors and visits, but also make it all the more baffling that somebody would buy ads worth $400 a week on average just to reach the same 300 or so people every day.
- Whoa!! For just a second, I thought that said Margox had cancelled ‘all pubic engagements’ and I thought, “Wow!! Margox has pubic engagements? With *WHO* for God’s sake?” Then I realized it said PUBLIC engagements. Boy, I gotta go wash my mind out with Lysol.Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 04 03 at 11:19 PM • permalink
- To those who visit WD: your courage is greatly admired. I’ve been there twice, did a proper job ie read the comments as well as the original post, but no way will I ever do it again.
Like sandpaper on the brain. I salute you.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 04 04 at 12:59 AM • permalink
- #24 : Profit? In any meaningful sense, there will be no profit! This is not a business model to be copied, simply because the whole shebang relies upon the highly unlikely scenario of one person sinking $42000 of their own money into the venture without demanding any ownership over the enterprise. All Margok has to show for her $42000 spent are a few brave but unrealistic pledges to pay her back at some stage.
Now, onto the extrapolated profit figures – even though WD appears to have been successful in attracting a couple of sponsors, the majority of revenue still comes from reader donations. And what’s the bet that the vast bulk of reader donations flooded in immediately after Margok’s retirement from Webdiary which took place at the end of December and start of January? I would wager that there is no way they can maintain the kind of donation stream they’ve posted in this quarter – unless they can persuade Margok to rejoin and then quit, rejoin and then quit, rejoin and then quit…I’m sure the Webdiary bunnies will keep on opening their hearts and wallets at each Margok departure. Maybe they can be convinced to cough up when she rejoins, too! Now that’s genius.
As for the advertising income, I see they have a large banner ad for some superannuation company. When was that spot taken? I haven’t seen an ad like that on WD before – thus I’m surmising that most of the advertising revenue has come from the placement of this large, quite professional-looking ad. Thus, the probable figure paid by the superannuation company seems a lot to pay for prime spot on a site with such low traffic volume. So it’s worth pondering how long has the client reserved this spot for. Will the next quarter see similar advertising revenue – there is only so much space on a webpage for large banner ads, remember. Also, banner advertising isn’t that effective unless there is high traffic volume. Considering that Webdiary’s traffic is actually pretty low, what are the chances that this client will stick around when their contract is over? Being realistic, it’s quite possible that all these questions yield unfortunate answers for Webdiary.
Sorry to smash those rose tinted glasses, CBaker, but WD’s short-medium term future is still far from assured.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 04 04 at 01:19 AM • permalink
- Those traffic numbers are lower than my personal blog. WTF?Posted by timworstall on 2006 04 04 at 04:38 AM • permalink
- Magrok will have to start slaving over a hot Apple on the weekends,boosting the numbers by one a day..
Abc has responded to our enthusiasm for the bridge whisperer (prize winning lady artiste) by dredging together a ragged new spectacular called Beware Live Art. In the scintillating and sparkling promo,a giggly,menopausal nutter posts a pillow stuffed with goo in a red pillar box.
Well that’ll learn em…
- 10300 readers for the month? I had at least six or seven times that many in a single month when I was blogging thanks to an Instalanche and a link from Tim. I think it cost me ten bucks a month in out-of-pocket expenses. Hell, half of Webdiary’s readership is probably directed to the site by Tim’s links to laugh at something written there.Posted by Randal Robinson on 2006 04 04 at 12:25 PM • permalink
- #37, exactly, why it’s not necessarily bad to encourage other blogosphere business with traffic (even if that business makes you angry, sleepy, bored or…just bored), the TBers are definitely making up a chunk of that traffic.
So, a boycott. Just one month, just to see what happens. Someone from here gets nominated to visit and report back what they see, saving the rest time, eye strain, tolerance strain, etc. Watch that traffic plunge!
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 04 04 at 06:07 PM • permalink
- Is Tim still involved with those sociopathic Pajama Men? Cause if he is, that’s a waste of 3.5 million if there ever was one.Posted by gustov_deleft on 2006 04 04 at 09:01 PM • permalink
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