We’re in the process of bringing advertising to Moblog UK. Just simple Google AdSense ads for the moment, but it’s a turning point for a site started as a hobby. It’s becoming a business. I got involved in the Moblog Technology side of things, which seeks to find applications for the underlying mobile content capture technology. However, since talking to Technokitten and others we’re now re-evaluating the value of the site, of the community. Having just got into web dev as the dotcom crash arrived, I wasn’t hugely taken by a advertising-lead business plan. But look at the average acquisition price per monthly unique visitor from some of the big deals, some old, some bang up to date (data from Business 2.0):

• Broadcast.com $710
• Excite $394
• Lycos $385
• GeoCities $187
• MarketWatch $80
• BlueMountain.com $71
• About.com $58
• Ask Jeeves $44
• MySpace $36
• AltaVista $26
• About.com $22
• iWon $18
• Weblogs Inc. $10
• Launch Media $6.60
• BlueMountain.com $3.23
• Lycos $2.57
• MP3.com $1.84
• Excite $0.73
• DrKoop.com $0.47

The average is $38, by that kind of logic, Moblog is worth $4.1m! The newer deals price the average punter at a significantly lower level, but even a $1 user value is a very interesting proposition. Our plan is to increase return visitors by a factor of ten this year and to create revenue with advertising on the site and by maintaining the proportion of those people that want to become subscribers. If we can do that in 2006, we might have a good 2007 as well.

We’ve been lucky enough recently to find ourselves someone who’s been successful in a dotcom business and who has taken a shine to our plight. I hesitate to use the word mentor as it’s still early days, but she’s helping us to focus on planning and delivering. These are two things which need to be regarded with the utmost respect, it’s easy to pledge, hard to do. We’ve made a lot of plans in the last few years, and I hope we’ll have a 2006 of Getting Things Done.