This list of the supposed 25 most valuable blogs aint worth a dime.
1. I know the actual numbers for a few of these properties, they are very different.
2. The list is note even close to complete – where are Treehugger, Popsugar etc. etc.
3. Alexa rank is largely irrelevant for these sites.
4. The multiple of CPM naively assumes all ad inventory is sold, this is never the case.
5. A five minute search will get you traffic numbers that are wildly different (remember the traffic numbers don’t tend to be secret because thats what publishers have to reveal to get advertisers). Drudge report under 10M page views per month? Absolutely clueless. This is out by a colossal factor of 50! Gawker actually publishes the live traffic stats through a third party and these are tracked in the same way as Quantcast so of course they are the same.
6. The operating margins are out by 30 – 40% for the properties I know.
In short, this list is put together by someone who does not know what a blog is, what the top blogs are, how they sell ads or what it costs to run them. In terms of making an effort to find out what he does not know, he has traffic stats that are less than 2% accurate for some, when the actual figures are published on the web by multiple verifiable sources and searchable within 10 seconds. If this were a high school project, it would be embarrassing.
Nice to see that our sites at Curations would come in the top 15 and our operating margins are higher than any here – even if they are wildly out.