Archive
Internet Earnings
Below is a chart of the current (October 2008) average benchmarks for websites who contribute to Bizak. Numbers are averages for Visitors, Revenues, Revenues per Visitor (RPV), Costs, Earnings, Earnings per Visitor (RPV) and Valuation. Bizak is categorized into industry, website type and revenue source. The chart below lists the averages for website type and revenue source.
The Political Web: Barack Obama vs. John McCain
To date Barack Obama has raised a whopping $296 million for his presidential campaign. Much of Obama’s fundraising success is due in large part to a fantastic website, a dominate internet presence and the viral marketing efforts of his supporters via blogs, links, content and of course YouTube.
For John McCain his fundraising efforts are 143% lower than Obama’s at $122 million. McCain’s web presence comes in a distant second (comared to Obama) in every category.
Below are a number of web analytics which compare the candidates’ online saturation. When it comes to web analytics Barack Obama crushes John McCain in every category.
Google Results (Winner: Barack Obama)
When performing a search for Barack Obama on Google you’ll find 54,900,000 pages that at least mention the presidential candidate. The same search for John McCain brings up 37,600,000 pages. Impressive for Barack since he was relatively unknown before 2004 whereas John McCain has been a senator since 1987 and ran for president in 2000
YouTube Videos (Winner: Barack Obama)
This election is the first presidential election of the YouTube generation and to date there are 130,000 videos about (or talk about/mention) Barack Obama whereas just 39,400 YouTube videos focus on John McCain. Of course there is no way to tell if these videos are for or against a particular candidate but one thing is certain and that is more people are talking, writing, blogging, and recording Barack Obama.
Site Lookup – Google (Winner: Barack Obama)
A site lookup determines the number of pages indexed for a particular website on a search engine such as Google. Doing a site lookup (on Google) for BarackObama.com we see that Barack has 889,000 pages indexed. Compare that to JohnMcCain.com and we see that Obama has far more online content – McCain has 30,400 pages. Generally speaking the more pages a website has the more search traffic that website will receive. If optimized (called SEO) then more pages means more opportunities to be found online. If internet visitors are going to your site then you can craft your message exactly the way you want – not the way your competitor wants it.
BarackObama.com is a terrific website built in Web 2.0 fashion with social networking tools embedded into it. As we know BarackObama.com has raised a significant amount of money from small donations via the website. My guess is that the 889,000 pages indexed and the Web 2.0 features of BarackObama.com have a lot to do with Barack’s financial success.
InLinks – Yahoo (Winner: Barack Obama)
Inlinks (or inbound links) are the number of outside links pointing to your website. Inlinks are very important in determining a website’s search engine placement and therefore search traffic. Google’s original algorithium relied heavily on the quality of inbound links and based on this created the PageRank. PageRank (which had more pull a few years ago) measures the quality of a website in the range of 0 to 10. Both BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com have a PageRank of 7.
In the case of Barack Obama and John McCain you can infer the popularity of a particular candidate by the number of websites linking to it – in essence it can be seen as a recommendation. With that BarackObama.com has 60,801 links pointing to it and JohnMcCain.com has 21,905.
Both stats are from Yahoo which is more reliable than Google in determining inlinks.
Google Blog Search (Winner: Barack Obama)
Blogs have become a tremendous political force. Both candidates maintain a blog (Obama, McCain) but more importantly millions of Americans have a blog and now a voice. Bloggers have more influence than ever and some are arguable as influential as The Washington Post and The New York Times. With every election a new form of media has emerged forcing a candidate to adapt. In 2004 blogs showed their influence for the first time and this year video is a the new major player – now we have video and blogs!
So, one more way to measure the online success of a potential candidate is the number of blog posts about a particular candidate. In essence it measures what people are talking about, what people are thinking about and who they’re voting for. Once again Barack Obama has a commanding online presence over John McCain with 7,367,910 posts about him and only 4,242,637 blog posts about John McCain.
Keyword Searches (Winner: Barack Obama)
According to Wordtracker, the keyword “Barack Obama” is searched for 7,682 times per day. “John McCain” sees 4,392 daily searches. This means when people go to Google (and search for a candidate) they are searching for Barack Obama 75% more than John McCain. These numbers only include both candidates’ full name – there are hundreds of variations that people are also searching for. For instance, if you do a search for just the candidates last name then Obama is searched for 9,643 times/day and McCain 1,122 times per day.
People Count (Winner: Barack Obama)
According to Compete.com, BarackObama.com received 1,568,981 visitors in May 2008 compared to JohnMcCain.com which received 424,214 visitors. Both candidates (Barack 3 million and McCain 1 million) saw a huge spike in traffic in February 2008 thanks to Super Tuesday.
BarackObama.com
This data goes back to January, but I couldn’t write a piece about website earnings without computing the business valuation of a website’s earnings. In January Barack Obama raised $32 million, of which $28 million came from online donations. According to Techcrunch, over 250,000 individuals made donations of which 90% of those were under $100.
According to the Compete.com graph (above) BarackObama.com received around 3 million visitors in January 2008. Like I value a websites’ worth on this blog and on Bizak.com, I will attempt to do the same with BarackObama.com. Entering these numbers into the Bizak Business Valuation Calculator (and assuming no costs) you get a whopping $9.33 earnings per visitor (EPV). This means on average Barack Obama earns $9.33 for every person who visits his website. Internet powerhouses like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, & Myspace wish they had a $9.33 EPV. If BarackObama.com was an internet site making $30 million/month then they would have a valuation of $1.344 Billion!!
Summary
When it comes to internet marketing Barack Obama is far ahead of John McCain. Unfortunately, I can’t compare The Political Web for Bush vs. Kerry in 2004 so it remains to be seen if a dominate web presence converts into the presidency. What we do know is George Bush had only 35 electoral votes and 3,012,166 popular votes more than John Kerry in 2004. Both candidates had roughly the same amount of funds – at this time in 2004 John Kerry had accumulated $186.2 million. At the time this was 5x more than any previous democrat had raised. That was of course before Barack Obama who so far (with 4 full months remaining) has raised $296 million compared to John McCain’s $122 million. This equates to a 143% difference in funds. In 2004 George Bush had only 13% ($41 million) more dollars than Kerry, but only captured 2% more of the popular vote.
Comparative Analysis on Bizak.com
After many long months Bizak is almost ready to launch. We just finished our comparative analysis page (click image below for screen shot) and we will be opening up our tools for startups shortly. After a few weeks of data aggregation we’ll be opening up the site to investors and professionals.
Benchmarking Web 2.0
Well, after many months of development (and 2 months behind schedule) Bizak is soon set to release. The screen shot above gives you an idea of what Bizak looks like. The text below gives you an idea on what it will accomplish. To receive an invitation to our launch please click the link below:
Request an Invitation to Bizak’s Launch
Entrepreneurs use Bizak to calculate the profitability of their business according to website analytics and key performance indicators. With visitors, revenues and costs data, Bizak automatically computes revenues per visitor (RPV), costs per visitor (CPV), earnings (profit/loss), earnings per visitor (EPV) and valuation (The Bizak Estimate.) Each one of these calculations can then be compared to other startups and industry benchmarks. With these calculations entrepreneurs are then invited to join Bizak’s elite network of investors and business professionals who are eager to invest in your profitability.
Investors use Bizak to discover new investment opportunities. From the calculation of comparative benchmarks investors can evaluate the earnings potential of startups in comparison to their competitors and industry. The Bizak Estimate gives investors an approximate valuation of internet startups based on revenues, traffic and EPV. This valuation can then be compared to other startups and the industry mean. Investors can also quickly calculate high and low valuations from a range of revenue multipliers.
Professionals use Bizak’s comparative traffic analysis to discover new advertising and business opportunities. With Bizak professionals can target business partners according to industry, application type and revenue source. Startups can then be sorted and compared according to traffic, revenues, RPV, costs, CPV, EPV, earnings and the Bizak Estimate. Click on a specific company and it will provide you with their business summary, contact information, and monthly results.
BostonTweet on Foursquare
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Tom O'Keefe 