Nick Denton says that Gawker Media’s revenues were 45% higher in the first two quarters of 2009 than they were in the same period last year; he also tells me that pageviews are up 40% June-on-June. Judging by his chart, profits (revenues less expenses) hit an all-time high this quarter, which explains why he’s started hiring again. (He passed, however, on hiring Bonnie Fuller.)
The cuts at the end of last year — you can see them in the declining expenses — not only made the remaining Gawker employees more productive, but also took out of the network the blogs which were the most difficult to sell to advertisers: Consumerist, Wonkette, and Valleywag. The only hard-to-sell site now is Fleshbot, which accounts for less than 7% of Gawker Media’s pageviews. (Gizmodo, the easiest sell, is also the most popular site, with about a quarter of Denton’s pageviews.)
Gawker’s now a lean money-making machine, which is well positioned to survive any further plunges in the online advertising market. The “I’m not in this to get rich” Denton of 2003 is a fully-fledged mogul now. And now he’s beginning to show impressive earnings growth, can the sale of a significant stake be far away? Or even the first blog IPO?
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I think we’re a ways off from a blog IPO - there’s still too many people asking if you can make money blogging.
A sell off could very well be in the works though, and that’s a good thing for the industry as a whole. Gawker has shown the old guard media what direction media needs to be going, and how to make money doing it - though it’s probably a lot less money for now.
It is debatable though - there may not be less money there, just less money for one organization. Less consolidation, more niche content.
- Posted by Cory HuffI’m sorry, but until we see a single real number (even just top line figure), this is all PR bullshit.
- Posted by MichaelIf Gawker Media doesn’t do something to fix their recent but continuously wretched server slowdown soon, these alleged figures are going to plummet. People are not going to put up with page-load waits similar to what we had to go through back in the 14400 modem days.
- Posted by E