Friday, November 18, 2005

How Big Is Yours?

We would all love to see our coworkers paycheck, or know what the new neighbor paid for his house, or even take a quick glance while in the gym shower to make sure our lovers aren’t lying when they tell us its perfectly average. Maybe the last one is just me. Regardless, our curiosity and need to compare with others has led to many things including vulgar metaphors (NSFW).

This little piece of self promotion is making the circuit as a meme. I have even seen it in people’s sidebars as a permanent feature. The appeal is obvious. We get to see how big our blog is against everybody else’s. Naturally I couldn’t resist the tempatation.


My blog is worth $27,955,818,547.90.
How much is your blog worth?



Oops, I must have that number swapped with the value of my Microsoft stock portfolio. I went to the link to Tristan Louis's research and read all the fine print. Basically the dollar value the website gives your blog is the tongue in cheek extrapolation of the value of a particularly idiotic internet deal involving AOL (is there any other kind?) where they paid a lot of money to get a few big name blogs under their corporate umbrella. Yahoo is also out there gobbling up popular blogs.

Anyways, here’s where the little demon on our shoulder becomes too loud to ignore. The site works for anyone’s blog, not just yours. Who can’t resist going down their blogroll and checking out who you’ve got beat. Or who inexplicably is “worth” way more than you. Here are the results from some blogs I visit on a regular basis.

trusty getto: $15,807.12
Dad Gone Mad: $112,343.46
Michele: $363,567.76
Achenblog: $1,253,278.80
Wonkette: $2,482,846,12
Me (for real): $20,887.98

Don't quit your day job, trusty. I pick on trusty because he is a good sport and his blog is very typical of the private blogger that is read by friends and family and random strangers that stumble onto the site. The dirty secret is that the “value” is based on your Technorati score which in turn is based largely on the number of incoming links you have. Linkwhores and commercial sites are going to do way better than the average blogger.

The take away message is to blog because you want to, not because of some arbitrary useless number. In the words of Bucky Katt, which would also apply to bloggers, “No one gets paid for being a poemer.” I blog for the challenge and the internal reward of organizing and expressing my opinions. If people appreciate my work, so much the better, but some silly webscript can’t measure the value of that.

Now that I have made my sanctimonious rationalization, what ARE you worth?

Technorati tag:, , , ,

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Not very much unfortunately, but it goes up weekly, as does my traffic. So I might be worth more the next time I check.

Michele sent me.

Anonymous said...

Mine is worth a big fat zero.
Sigh.
I guess my readership of around 35 people isn't worth a plug nickel!

trusty getto said...

To answer your initial question, pretty small, which may explain my current, ahem, situation, if you know what I mean ;^)

Last time I checked, my blog was only worth something north of $12K! That means it's going up, but I'm not sure quite why.

I would be more inclined to associate worth with the number of visitors or mix the links with actual hits were I to "value" a blog. Links don't guarantee visits, but they do increase the likelihood of them.

I started tracking my visitors recently. I put a counter up on October 21 (after the local Repubs found me) to see what the lurking situation was, and when I checked today, I had 1610 visitors, which is an average of 57.5 per day, which was way, way more than I thought I had visiting.

If one was to value a blog, would it be visitors or links that would be more important?

yellojkt said...

This is a topic for a whole 'nuther rant, but advertisers want to see unique visitors, not links. Nearly sixty a day is quite respectable. I only hit that level when I deliberately pander to the fans of frumpy women.

ribbiticus said...

wow! didn't know your blog was priceless - lol! mine isn't even worth sharing when stacked up against all those sites' numbers...:)

here via michele today.

trusty getto said...

Man, I clicked on the link hoping for a nice surprise, but all I saw was myself !!! ;^)

Your Mother said...

At least I've gone up in price. From 12k to 16k now. Must be the nekkid boobs at Lu's.

Anonymous said...

I'm not worth a damn thing. Of course, I don't have the Technorati tags either. So go figure.

Shirley said...

On my previous blog, I had that thing posted. It listed my blog worth at around $62,000.

Then someone who knows me (not a blogger) saw it and thought I actually made that kind of money on my blog. He thought I was rolling in cash. He told everyone I knew that I'd made a fortune on the internet.

That was part of the reason I had to abandon my old blog, and I sure won't put that thing on my current one.

Thumper said...

Eh, first time I did that I was worth $36K, now it's $48K, tomorrow it might be -$200.

Not that I'd SELL my blog for 48K, 'cause we all know it's invaluable ;)

Unknown said...

$2,258.16. I think I'm okay with that. It's better than nothing.

Bonvallet said...

$5,700. Somewhere around there. I think it's gone down from the time I checked it from Michele's blog. I thought that time it was $7,000 plus. I demand a recount.

JoeC said...

wowow, i was abt to say... where in mother liberty did ya site worth THAT much? hehehe, hmm... so, you need to link to Technorati for a value huh? no wonder mine's worth an empty taco shell. geez. I think I dun really wanna turn my site to the next yahoo or google, i like mine peace and quite, juz too much white noise anyway. Guess i havta be content with my taco shell then.

Cheers!