AOL Buying Weblogs Inc Blog Network
AOL is buying Weblogs Inc, the blog media network behind such sites as Engadget, AutoBlog and Luxist. PaidContent.org broke the news story last night as it learned that Weblogs Inc, which reportedly earns over $2 million per year in advertising revenue, has been shopping itself around to Yahoo, MSN, and NewsCorp before settling with AOL on an aquisition deal.
The good news behind the acquisition is that AOL does not plan to integrate Weblogs Inc. into the AOL Network, keeping them running as a separate entity… probably with AOL Advertising.com ads working as filler and then occasional links to AOL Search and portal services. How much is Weblogs Inc being bought out for? PaidContent reports:
One estimate I heard today was roughly $20 million as an earn-out — to get it all, Weblogs Inc. would have to meet certain goals. But I’ve also heard talk of Flickr-like numbers, which would make it closer to $30-35 million range. Certainly to Weblogs’ execs advantage to have people thinking towards the higher end. Weblogs Inc. revenues are running at $1 million-plus annually from Google AdSense alone, according to numbers jubilantly released by Calacanis on his own blog; during a panel last week he said the company was bringing in $2 million a year. With that in mind, either of those numbers would be a generous multiple.
