3 ms·

Any one know if Pownce was profitable? They've had ads from the very beginning and there are pro accounts, it would be interesting to know how effective these r

by danw 18y ago

Any one know if Pownce was profitable? They've had ads from the very beginning and there are pro accounts, it would be interesting to know how effective these revenue streams were.

thomasswift 18y ago
I'd be interested in a general sale price.
diego 18y ago
Judging from their traffic, any revenues must have been negligible. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pownce.com http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pownce.com
- Jem 18y ago
  Alexa has never been a good measure of traffic. My blog has a much higher Alexa rank than pownce but has half the unique hits (based on numbers given above). I skewed my rank myself using the SearchStatus plugin for Firefox.
  - axod 18y ago
    Quantcast is better often, but there isn't enough data on pownce to show up anything on quantcast. That's generally a bad sign.
webwright 18y ago
Almost certainly not. 200k uniques per month (from Compete.com). Call it 3 page views per person (average). 600k page views. They charge $3/CPM for ads (that's $3/1000 views). Say they average showing 2 ads on every page view (I doubt they have that much paid inventory, but pretend they do). That's $6 earned for every 1000 page views, or $3600 per month. Double or triple any of the numbers in the formula and I still think you aren't in the ballpark. These are pure wag #s, of course. On the cost side, say that 1 fully loaded dev on starvation wages in the Valley costs $10k/mo (taxes, benefits, costs on top of an $80k/yr salary). Hard to tell with their about page, but it looks like they have 3ish FTEs. Add in office (dunno), servers (?), contract folks (legal, accounting, etc), and I bet you have a burn rate of $30k-70k/mo. If they are getting paid market rate, on the high side of that.
- jamiequint 18y ago
  What are you calculating as dev costs? I've found that good healthcare + FICA + SECA + 401k costs about 15%-20% overhead on salary, not anywhere near 50%. ($120k/$80k = 1.5) In any case, I agree with the general analysis.
  - webwright 18y ago
    Yaw I was rolling in stuff like phone costs, parking costs, etc. Really, you ought to include every single expense associated with that employee for a proper analysis, but yaw-- it's probably a touch heavy.
- petercooper 18y ago
  The male median income in Santa Clara County is $56,240. 42% above median is "starvation wages"? Even the median income in Palo Alto is only about $90k.
  - webwright 18y ago
    Yaw, that was hyperbole-- starvation wages for a dev (i.e. way below market value) was what I meant. Generally you calculate a FTE at 1.5 - 2.5x their salary in terms of fully loaded cost (taxes, benefits, minimal overhead). In this cast, I was thinking $80. Do you think that team (or any funded startup team) earns less in San Francisco?

by danw 18y ago

Any one know if Pownce was profitable? They've had ads from the very beginning and there are pro accounts, it would be interesting to know how effective these revenue streams were.

thomasswift 18y ago

I'd be interested in a general sale price.

diego 18y ago

Judging from their traffic, any revenues must have been negligible. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pownce.com http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pownce.com

Jem 18y ago
Alexa has never been a good measure of traffic. My blog has a much higher Alexa rank than pownce but has half the unique hits (based on numbers given above). I skewed my rank myself using the SearchStatus plugin for Firefox.
- axod 18y ago
  Quantcast is better often, but there isn't enough data on pownce to show up anything on quantcast. That's generally a bad sign.

webwright 18y ago

Almost certainly not. 200k uniques per month (from Compete.com). Call it 3 page views per person (average). 600k page views. They charge $3/CPM for ads (that's $3/1000 views). Say they average showing 2 ads on every page view (I doubt they have that much paid inventory, but pretend they do). That's $6 earned for every 1000 page views, or $3600 per month. Double or triple any of the numbers in the formula and I still think you aren't in the ballpark. These are pure wag #s, of course. On the cost side, say that 1 fully loaded dev on starvation wages in the Valley costs $10k/mo (taxes, benefits, costs on top of an $80k/yr salary). Hard to tell with their about page, but it looks like they have 3ish FTEs. Add in office (dunno), servers (?), contract folks (legal, accounting, etc), and I bet you have a burn rate of $30k-70k/mo. If they are getting paid market rate, on the high side of that.

jamiequint 18y ago
What are you calculating as dev costs? I've found that good healthcare + FICA + SECA + 401k costs about 15%-20% overhead on salary, not anywhere near 50%. ($120k/$80k = 1.5) In any case, I agree with the general analysis.
- webwright 18y ago
  Yaw I was rolling in stuff like phone costs, parking costs, etc. Really, you ought to include every single expense associated with that employee for a proper analysis, but yaw-- it's probably a touch heavy.
petercooper 18y ago
The male median income in Santa Clara County is $56,240. 42% above median is "starvation wages"? Even the median income in Palo Alto is only about $90k.
- webwright 18y ago
  Yaw, that was hyperbole-- starvation wages for a dev (i.e. way below market value) was what I meant. Generally you calculate a FTE at 1.5 - 2.5x their salary in terms of fully loaded cost (taxes, benefits, minimal overhead). In this cast, I was thinking $80. Do you think that team (or any funded startup team) earns less in San Francisco?