So what’s your website or blog worth? What the suckers with the money are prepared to pay, you might think. Well, maybe not. I’ve found a fascinating real time estimator of website values based on mathematical algorhythms called Stimator that chomps info from your websites (i.e. referrals from various sources)  and mixes it up with other economic stuff  I don’t pretend to understand. What’s so much fun about it is that in under a minute it  gives you a_ value — in US dollars nog al.

A half  hour of noodling around with South african URLs on Stimator’s calculator produced these results — and some  are mighty surprising. Of the big four news websites — IOL, News24, the Mail & Guardian and The Times — IOL came tops and the M&G second but News24 and The Times were beaten by the Daily Dispatch’s website (in East London). Here are the estimations done on 24 March:

1. IOL: $532 887

2. M&G: $312 877

3. Dispatch: $253 641

4. News24: $206 369

5. The Times: $187 485

To compare the Dispatch to another two fine South African newspaper which keep their websites separate from their parent companies such as News24 and The Times, Business Day was valued at $48 842 and The Witness in Maritzburg at $30 675. MoneyWeb, which is only online and  on radio, came in at $66 140.

Of the big SA aggregators, Amatomu wins hands down. Here are the stats:

1. Amatomu: $323 604

2. Muti: $8 970

3. Afrigator: $6027

A dip into South Africa’s blogs showed The Hub, which covers all things cycling and is the top blog on Amatomu , was valued at a rather small  $1 981. The number two blog on Amatomu, Mark Keohane’s rugby blog, was valued much higher — at  $20 478. This may have something to do with the fact that Keohane’s blog has been around for quite a long time.

Another blog that has been around for quite a while, 2OceansVibe, which is Cape Tonian Seth Rotherham’s offbeat take on living in the Mother City, was valued at $13 293. Pretty good for a one-man operation.

Hayibo, a spoof news site that is run by novelist and journalist Tom Eaton and has been going for one year is valued at  $7 458. Zoopy, South Africa’s answer to YouTube, came in at $23 245.

Yours truly was well pleased. Grub Street, was valued at $136, which is not bad for a pip squeak who’s only been going for three weeks (and it’s certainly far more than I put in — about $136 more).

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