Top 2 Most Popular Game Blogs on the Web
August 26, 2008 By Schwabe 1 comment
The most popular game blog on the web is Kotaku.
So what does that mean in business terms? How much is Kotaku worth?
Based on the Technorati top 100 blogs list Kotaku sits #18 among all blogs on the web. And at number 843 overall of all websites on the web according to Alexa.
Kotaku's exact revenue earnings are unknown. Yet we can get a close idea based on estimated revenue of another popular blog that has similar rankings...
We'll compare it to LifeHacker. This blog has an estimated revenue of about $700k per year according to Jason Calacanis. Jason's valuation of LifeHacker is relatively accurate given his background experience. He and his partner Brian Alvey created a blog empire of their own which sold to AOL for $25 million back in 2005.
The estimate is based on LifeHacker's $5 - $12 RPM (revenue per thousand pages). With 7 thousand pages LifeHacker should be doing about $35k to $84k each month in revenue - or about $700k per year.
Rated the #7 most popular blog by Technorati and #346 most popular website on the web by Alexa, LifeHacker has about double the popularity of Kotaku.
| Blog | Technorati Blog Rank | Monthly Visitors Est. | Annual Revenue Est. |
| Lifehacker | #6 | 1.3 million | $700k |
| Kotaku | #18 | 0.7 million | $350k |
Lifehacker has an estimated 185% more web traffic and about a 3x better ranking on Technorati. We'll simplify this to say Lifehacker is about double the popularity and thus revenue of Kotaku.
So Kotaku makes a predicted $350,000 per year in advertising revenue. Typically a website on the low end will sell for at least 1x it's estimated annual revenue. Yet we know Kotaku would sell for a lot more than just $350k given it's history, brand image, and long term potential. This is the web's most popular blog after all. So a more realistic sale value would be about $2 million (5x annual revenue plus premium).
Gawker Media
Interestingly enough, LifeHacker and Kotaku are both owned by the same company: Gawker Media. Of it's network of 10 major blogs: LifeHacker, Kotaku, and Gizmodo make up for the bulk of Gawker Media's estimated $2 million per year advertising revenue.
Weblogs Inc
In the battle of the blog empires, Weblogs Inc may have higher ground on Gawker Media with it's network of about 50 major blogs including Engadget, TV Squad, Autoblog, and Joystiq...
Alongside Kotaku, Joystiq ranks in as the web's second most popular game blog and #44 overall most popular blog in the world according to Technorati.
| Blog | Technorati Blog Rank | Monthly Visitors Est. | Annual Revenue Est. |
| Lifehacker | #6 | 1.3 million | $700k |
| Kotaku | #18 | 0.7 million | $350k |
| Joystiq | #44 | 0.4 million | $175k |
With just over half the estimated traffic of Kotaku and just less than half the performance ranking we can make a crude estimate that Joystiq's annual revenue is about $175k. Five times it's annual revenue plus a premium would make Joystiq worth about $1 million on the marketplace.
Nintega is a not the web's third most popular game blog. Yet that is the primary objective. Created by none other than the founder of Nerd Business, I have stated the bold prediction that:
"Nintega will be the web's 3rd most popular video game blog by mid 2011."
Creating a unique intellectual property and developing it to a million dollar brand is certainly an ambitious goal. Yet there is a careful, systematic strategy at work to make it happen. Keep reading Nerd Business to find out the method to my madness.
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