Bill Rempel, a.k.a. NO DooDahs!

Nice rant from TechCrunch about bloggers raising money.

Recent post on a possible Seeking Alpha acquisition. This particular dude’s speculation was that the price would be around 4x revenues, roughly the same as TSCM is valued. I might think SA would command a higher multiple, since TSCM pays at least some of their content providers, which would in theory shrink their margins relative to SA, who merely pays their editors.

Here’s what TSCM’s most recent (2006!) annual report says about paying their non-employee content providers:

Cost of services.

Cost of services expense includes compensation and benefits for the Company’s editorial, technology and ratings analyst staffs, as well as fees paid to non-employee content providers, expenses for contract programmers and developers, communication lines and other technology costs.

The increase in cost of services expense during the period was primarily the result of higher compensation and related costs (including an increase in the average headcount, higher incentive compensation related to improved operating performance and non-cash compensation related to the expensing of awards under the Company’s stock incentive plan), combined with higher revenue sharing costs resulting from increased subscription revenue, increased fees paid to non-employee content providers, and increases in costs associated with data, hosting, computer maintenance and consulting.

I’d bet TSCM would love to get their hands on all that content, provided for free. Think of all the money they’ve pissed away by providing revenue-sharing, fees to non-employee content providers, and incentives! Anybody thinking that writing for free on SA would “get them noticed” for a paying job at TSCM might not think so, if TSCM bought SA. “Then she told me a story about free milk and a cow … “

And just how much of the value provided – for free – from those “content providers” at SA would be recompensed if SA were bought out? Yeah, that’s what I thought … hope you enjoyed the “soapbox” they gave you, whilst you were contributing to the market value of the company! Actually, if you re-read (or at least READ, as I’m certain at least one linker to the article didn’t) Seeking Alpha, Again, you’ll see that I explicitly state that SA might be a good deal for service-sellers who have very high monetization rates from few contacts; I also explicitly state that if a writer doesn’t mind creating value for someone else, and having all their recompense be in the form of a “soapbox,” then that’s their gig. It’s just not mine.

Here’s one from the same dude, written about a year ago, on Seeking Alpha as “web 3.0.”

Here’s a good quote:

Seeking Alpha’s business model, however, also includes licensing its content to other portals. Yahoo’s Financial Blogs service, for example, is powered by Seeking Alpha. It’s a deal that was seminal in getting the company its funding from Benchmark, Israel.

That licensing deal, and others like it, should properly be considered as part of their revenue in any valuation deal. I had forgotten to include it.

Here’s another recent article on Adify. You might recognize them as the engine behind the “Forbes’ Blogging Network” that some bloggers, like my bud over at StockWeb, have signed up with. It’s a 60/40 split, guess who gets 60%? And don’t think for a minute that Forbes’ people won’t place the best ads with Forbes’ first, and let the bloggers get (very) sloppy seconds.

I have YET to see somebody in the “Forbes’ Blogging Network” whose Forbes-served ads weren’t just “Psst – Bloggers, Join our Network!” I wonder how much those pay per click? …