NONE: Re: A money-making web site (was: Cost/Audience Comparisons)
Re: A money-making web site (was: Cost/Audience Comparisons)
erik kraft (erik_at_ensuing.com)
Sun, 21 Jul 96 22:48:49 -0700
In Online Advertising List / Volume 1,Issue #36, July 21, 1996,
On Fri, 19 Jul 1996, petrova <petrova_at_loop.com> wrote:
[snip]
> There are some businesses that are making a great
>deal of money off the web, and there are some who are not.
This was the topic of a major debate here at work. Please, please read all
of this before deciding to flame me. This topic will probably scare or upset
a lot of people. It is certainly not pleasant for webmasters.
I have not been able to find a single web site that is making money. Sure
there are a lot of programmers, consultants, script writers, artists, web
designers, et al that are making money faster than they can stuff it in their
jeans. But I haven't been able to find a serious web site that even breaks
even with advertising or direct consumer charges.
There may be a few sites that are making money if you consider those
pre-selling goods such as a car maker or airline company. Even this is a
debatable topic. Most of these are nothing more then web-brochures for the
company that offer lower advertising costs than traditional methods. There
may be a few sites that are run by a couple of guys in their spare time
selling stuff. But that is basically a hobby. They are mostly advertising
their own products or services.
I seriously doubt that any, *any* professional site is making money. Almost
everyone seems to be trying to capture mindshare for some later event which
will let them make money, a lot of money.
Here are some hard details:
* Yahoo, probably the best known site on the web made 0.1 million on paper
last year. Realistically, they are burning through that IPO cash very
quickly.
* Wired, one of the best sites is losing money at the rate of 1.3
million/year.
* CNN, a very nice site with a TV advertising tie-in isn't making money.
Now, with that in mind, how many companies that are running money losing
sites think that they are doing something wrong? How many think that they are
the only ones losing money? How much longer will the people at these
companies be allowed to run a losing department? How much longer will
companies throw money at the web? How much longer will HTML-aware slackers
glean their high consulting fees?
Down deep, I really hope I am wrong. If you have first-hand knowledge of a
web site that is making money, please write to me. I would really appreciate
actual numbers including: site name, company name, rough income, rough pre-tax
profit, number of employees, method of income, how long the site has been
running, how long the site has been profitable.
Thanks.
---
erik kraft
erik_at_ensuing.com [ NeXTMail and MIME okay ]
