I have no budget to speak of so advertising campaigns are out of the question though I’ve investigated a few options. I am hoping that some of the people who visited the site on the back of the Seagroatt story liked what they saw and will keep coming back. Otherwise my main marketing techniques, for now, are limited to social networking sites. It’s tricky thing for bloggers, methinks and I’d love to hear about your experiences. Most of the successful blogs are infused with the bloggers personality, which means they tend to be one-arm bandtis — not corporations. The catch-22 is that if you’re small, so is your budget. Eventually the horizontal traffic will mean that your rating with news aggreators like Amatomu will rise and that will keep you there at the top. Think of 2Oceans.Vibe, for instance. He’s been around a few years. But I do also think there is a new era of blogging upon us in SA. There are quite a few news and writing porfessionals (for example, the guys at Hayibo) like me  entering the fray and we are far too impatient to sit around and wait for a couple of years. Horizontal, I think not.

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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