What top bloggers make

gothamist.com

Launched: January, 2003
Revenue: Monthly average of $50,000 to $60,000 over the past 12 months

Gothamist, with estimated monthly revenues of $250,000, evolved from two friends writing about New York City to a full-time news operation and a network of local blogs across 14 cities on four continents. Publisher and co-founder Jake Dobkin, who owns the company with co-founder and editor Jen Chung, sells ads direct to maximize revenue. They’re on the verge of hiring a full-time ad sales director to complement their team of five full-time editors in five cities, part-time associate editors, and paid contributors. Together they generate 20 to 25 posts daily on their most popular sites, and draw 7 million page views a month. Advertisers like the demographics: young, educated, and often wealthy readers. A real draw for the city-based sites is the ability to target online ads geographically: “It’s a benefit that some of the other independent publishers or blog networks can’t offer,” Dobkin says.

See More Bloggers http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/07/0714_bloggers/index_01.htm

Yahoo buys Right Media

 Mike Walrath, 32, founded Right Media Inc. in 2003 as a New York-area consulting firm for buyers and sellers of internet advertisements. It wasn’t long, though, before he created an online network where buyers and sellers could come together in a real-time internet ad auction. The concept caught on, and in 2005, VC firms started funding the company. After two rounds of venture financing, Right Media sold to Yahoo this spring for about $720 million. “We see this as the next logical step,” Walrath says. “We don’t talk about this as an outcome or an exit.”

For the VC funds that nurture companies such as Right Media, however, acquisitions are typically an exit. Even with IPOs showing a small resurgence this year, M&A remains by far the most common exit strategy for venture-backed companies. “Even during the dotcom boom, more VCs were exiting through M&A than through IPOs,” says Kurt Roth of Intercap Merchant Partners, a merchant banking firm. “That’s always been true.”

What has changed are the sectors likely to find M&A suitors and, by extension, VC funding. Historically, software has vacuumed up the largest share of VC dollars, but it was toppled early this year by life sciences. Sectors likely to be attractive in the coming years are medical device makers, media and entertainment (internet-related and downloading companies), green energy, and telecommunications (alternative communication networks). 

See http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2007/august/181646.html