VentureBeat - Latest Comments in Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Ed Delia — Wed, 03 May 2006 08:22:35 -0000

There's got to be more to it. Otherwise . . . well, he did OK with MySpace.

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Jon — Wed, 03 May 2006 06:45:25 -0000

Lots of people do this (w/o $120MM I might add); the search engines usually consider them spammers, and block the sites when they find them. The prospects for this venture look severely limited if Yahoo!, Google and MSN kick these pages out of their search engines. When I was at Yahoo! we took a very dim view of a site that posted no unique content and just tried to use duplicate content (RSS news feeds, etc.) as an excuse to show ads (and no special treatment if they were Yahoo!'s Overture ads).

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

leec — Wed, 03 May 2006 06:27:33 -0000

Sounds like the Seinfeld of Web 2.0 - a website about nothing.

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Common Sense — Tue, 02 May 2006 13:55:32 -0000

Makes perfect sense if you understand that the parked domain business is 10% of Google's business. AdSense in parked domains is Googles quiet cash cow. Yahoo does the same type of feeds.

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Matt Marshall — Tue, 02 May 2006 13:15:48 -0000

I'm at a loss too. Especially when there are other companies out there already doing similar things.

Advertising bubble in full stretch?

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Dharmesh Shah — Tue, 02 May 2006 12:58:39 -0000

I'm not exactly I understand why this business model takes $120 million of capital, but I may be missing something.

Call me simple minded, but I just don't get where the value is.

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Blowhard — Tue, 02 May 2006 11:36:41 -0000

That is a great strategy, as long as step one is:
Rewind clock back to 1996

Re: Demand Media raises $120 million for a bunch of shell Websites

Terry Whalen — Tue, 02 May 2006 06:19:26 -0000

It's certainly feasible that this strategy could work. Using AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network, a web site owner can typically generate $.01 to $.03 in advertising revenue for each user page visit. So, to generate $150k/yr would require 7.5 million page views per year, or 20,500 page views per day. If the avg visitor views 5 pages or so, then this would require 4,000 visitors per day, which is not all that much traffic.