Internet. Business. Ideas…Tom O’Keefe

Last evening, in addition to infoMedMD, we at TOKiBiz also launched the industry benchmarks for Bizak.com. 

If you’re already registered with Bizak just login and you’ll see a nice new navigation bar for you.  If you haven’t registered with Bizak you can do see via the website worth page.

For additional information and definitions about the benchmarks please click on the image below.  For a full size screenshot please see full size screenshot.

Benchmarks

After 6 months of planning and development infoMedMD went live this evening.  InfoMedMD is an intelligent healthcare application which through a series of questions (infoMeds) provides you with personalized medical information specific to you and your symptoms.

To start, either browse the medical symptoms or take the screening test which will give you the most relevant information according to your age and sex.

Many thanks to Paul Yeaton of Fortunate13 for the design and Steve Callan for making the application work!

I don’t normally comment on tech gadgets but I have to thank Apple for releasing Apple Remote.  As you know the new iPhone 3G is being released on July 11th and with that comes a new application store and the iPhone 2.0 software update.  With the iPhone 2.0 update, old and new iPhone owners can now have better management over their contacts, mail and the ability to download applications from the app store.

With Apple Remote you can now use your iPhone as a remote control for iTunes.  If you only listen to iTunes in front of your computer then this probably doesn’t excite you.  However, if you have a number of speakers connected remotely via AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule you can now control the music throughout your entire house with your iPhone.

How much is my idea worth?  For startups seeking seed financing your initial business valuation is essential and very difficult to answer.  For those not seeking financing then your initial valuation can wait until analytics and revenues determine it for you.  For most ideas the initial value doesn’t necessarily come from the idea itself but the team behind that idea.  Many of us have similar ideas but the real value comes in how that idea is executed.  The more experience the team has the more likely they’ll have a successful execution - even if the idea isn’t earth shattering.  For many ideas aren’t earth shattering, however the most successful ones provide a simple solution to a common problem.

With all that said many startups still need to create a valuation for angel investors.  In order to determine how much equity to sacrifice you need the valuation.  If you’re valued at $100,000 then an investment of $10,000 will cost you 10% in equity.

Most of the essential parameters (revenues & traffic) for determining valuation are unknown when a business is just an idea.  It’s because of these unknowns that Bizak was launched to give entrepreneurs a better understanding of the industry they’re looking to enter.  Bizak does this by giving you the average, high and low for visitors, costs, CPV, revenues, RPV, earnings, EPV and business valuation.  All of these parameters can then be sorted according to industry, business type, revenue source and any combination of the three.  

For example, if you’re an entrepreneur looking to launch an e-commerce site the Bizak benchmark’s will tell you that e-commerce sites have average monthly traffic of 131,204 visitors, with earnings of $18,066.67, an EPV of $5.27 and an average valuation of $2.2 Million.  Of course this is an average so there are some that do much better then the benchmarks and others who do a lot worse.  Where do you fit in?  

Another potential way to value your business is to stick with what you know.  You have absolutely no clue what your revenues or traffic will be.  You can guess, and a lot of business plans are guesses, but the truth is until you launch you have no idea if people will respond to it or not.  What you do know is what your first year costs will be.  You know how much your application will cost to build, how much you want to spend on marketing and you know (in most cases) how much your servers will cost.  Add those costs together and you now have a total for first year costs.  Use the Bizak Calculator to estimate how much traffic it will take to break even with an EPV of X amount.  If you anticipate being profitable the first year then you need revenues to be greater than your costs.  So, say you’re first year costs will be $500,000.  In order to break even you need revenues of $500,000 which gives you a $1.5 million valuation.  

Of course the higher your costs doesn’t mean the more revenues you’ll generate but you need to start somewhere.  However, if you get 10 experts in a room it’s likely that none of them will come up with the same valuation.  In the end what it all comes down to, after all the speculation and fancy charts, is what you’re willing to give up and for how much.  If you don’t think the terms are fair then chances are they’re not.

Paul Yeaton is a freelance designer who specializes in small business and startup marketing, who can be found at his online home, fortunate13.

I thought I would start this article off by giving you the answer.  The answer is a resounding YES to both.  Both of these aspects are of equal importance. You need to always remember, that your website is a stand-alone marketing device that represents you or your business. And, if you want to push one of the aspects over the other, you will find that you are losing customers on your site, and not gaining or retaining them. Let’s outline the considerations beginning with function.

The function of a website would be anything from the way a website works, to the speed with which it loads, to accessibility for the visually impaired, to its effectiveness of delivering the promised product or service.  So, let’s start by looking at functionality.

A website needs to be available and consistently functioning. Functionality of a website is just that: it functions. I don’t know about you, but, going to a website where I get error 404 messages or long wait times between clicking and receiving the query results give me the urge to move on to another website.  Losing customers has never been easier with the web. A person’s attention span is incredibly reduced when it comes to the web. You need to make an impact with the functionality of your website immediately to draw the user in. The functionality of your site is extremely important way to engage the user and keep them there….therefore selling your product and looking like a pro at what you do.  This builds a level of confidence with the consumer of your product.

Functionality is also about what the visitor is looking for from a website. Is the function of the site to sell books, give information, provide social networks etc…? Think about the core function of your site. Does it work in a manner in which the user will be able to easily navigate and get their desired results? Or does it only make sense to you? Think of a potential user of your website, and how they will view it before going ahead and creating an online application only to find that it is unusable due to confusion and frustration on the user’s end.

So, apparently now, you think that functionality takes the cake, and all one needs to do to have a strong online presence is to have a website that works and is easy to use. Be careful: you do not want to find out the hard way that having a website that works great, but is esthetically weak has been driving customers away.
Think of it in these terms: No matter how well they were engineered, if Porsches looked like 1988 Ford Escorts, Porsche would not get $50k for their vehicles.

Form needs to communicate your brand, product, or service clearly and immediately. The esthetic look of your website is just as important as the way it works. This is your name that is being broadcast to the world, and the thought put into the design of the site previous to going live is extremely important. The design is what shows the personality of who you are as a company and the relevance of your product or service.

Form needs to take into account the type of customer that would visit the site or that you’re trying to reach. You need to know who you are marketing your online product or service to, and gear the design towards them. You will find that content styled to the demographic that would find your product or service appealing is much more effective than trying to please everyone.  How you might ask? You need to know your customer. Learn what their average age is, their gender, their location, their interests, etc. Your design needs to speak to them.

Form needs to be clean, meaning matching the functionality of the site so that users can find what they are looking for. Form includes images, fonts, and colors that keep the “brand” or feel of the company intact. For example, the Apple site markets to the young and innovative, creative demographic. Apple’s online presence does nothing less than strengthen their brand, which is built around simplicity, innovation and ease of use. Their website is clean, and easy to navigate and keeps the customer engaged.

All of this is really about something called “usability”. Usability is the cross-breeding of form and function. Function works on its own yes, and a well-designed site works on its own too. But, the two need to work together for an effective user experience and to close the deal. No one is going to spend their hard earned money on a product or service that they feel cannot be trusted. Trust comes from both form and function. Would you drop down your credit card information on a site that looks like it was designed by a 6 year old or a site that frustrated you with its difficult navigation or slow loading time? Take the time and money to make both form and function work for you, and you will find you have a website that delivers your product or service to a happy customer, visually communicates your brand message clearly, and builds repeat user and word of mouth marketing.

Paul Yeaton is a freelance designer who specializes in small business and startup marketing, who can be found at his online home, fortunate13.

Mass High Tech has another article about the burgeoning Health 2.0 industry and Boston/Cambridge’s central role in it.  As I previously wrote in Health 2.0 Boston has a number of leading Health 2.0 applications, including the soon to be launched infoMedMD.  

The MHT article, in cooperation with iCrossing, provides some interesting statistics on online search habits when it concerns our health.  When it comes to researching our health the internet is the most popular medium with 59% of people utilizing online resources, however primary care physicians are the most trusted source for health information.  

Of those utilizing the internet for their health information, 63% are woman, 54% are men, 66% are aged 18-34, 56% are over 55 and 54% are 35 to 54.  Of those that did use the internet for their healthcare information needs, 75% of them are searching for a specific ailment or medical symptom and 41% use the web for self diagnosis - likely many of those in the 18-34 age group.  66% of the survey’s respondents start with Google for their healthcare research, the rest go directly to portals like WebMD. (Source:  MHT & iCrossing)

Today, CBS completed its acquisition of CNET networks for $1.8 Billion.  The acquisition includes CNET.com, Download.com and CNET Reviews.  According to Compete.com, these three destinations receive approximately 18 million monthly visitors.  Trailing twelve month revenues for CNET is $408.24 Million. Entering these simple calculations (before costs) into the Bizak Calculator we get an EPV of $1.89 and a business valuation of $1.632 Billion.  CNET was purchased for a 45% premium to its stock price but only 10% more than my revenue valuation.  

Compare that to LinkedIn’s $1 Billion Valuation (Bizak Estimate = $399,999,984), Facebook’s $15 Billion Valuation (Bizak Estimate = $1,373,999,976), and YouTube’s $1.65 Billion acquisition (Bizak Estimate = $360 Million).

Obviously the new web applications are being valued at a significant premium to their revenue valuations.  CNET, on the other hand, is a member of the original web (founded in 1992) and received a valuation in line with their revenues.  However, back in the 1990s many internet companies also received speculative valuations based on a huge premium to their revenues - if they had revenues.  Once a company has matured with proven revenues their valuation is more inline with industry standards - it’s the quest to find the next big thing that creates these premium (and speculative) valuations.      

InfoMedMD is set to launch in the next couple of weeks.  InfomedMD is an intelligent healthcare application which through a series of questions provides you with personalized medical information specific to you and your symptoms.  We expect to launch the service with approximately 30 infoMeds - another 30 infoMeds will be released sporadically during the weeks following.

To be notified of our launch please register at infoMedMD.com

Below is a screen shot of infoMedMD.com from Medical Questions.

Below is a screenshot of the Lasik Surgery infoMed.

When infoMedMD launches we expect to have the following infoMeds available:

• Alcholoism
• Allergies & Hay Fever
• Bad Breath
• Blepharitis
• Botox - Is it For Me?
• Cataract
• Chlymydia
• Cholesterol Screening
• Cigar Smoking - How Bad is It?
• Cold Sores
• Colon Cancer Screening
• Contact Lens Irritation
• Diabetes Screening
• Dog Bite
• Dry Eye
• Erectile Dysfunction
• Eye Diseases
• Eye Problem Screening
• Eye Vitamins
• Gardasil
• Genital Herpes
• Headaches - Do I Have a Serious Problem?
• Health Maintenance
• Hypertension Screening
• Lasik
• Prostate Cancer Screening
• Screening Tests
• Shingles Prevention
• Testosterone Supplements
• Vasectomy

These infoMeds will be released during the weeks following:

• Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Screening
• Autism
• Breast Cancer Screening
• Cigarette Smoking - How Bad is It?
• Decreased Near Vision
• Dental Screening
• Diabetes
• Dieting (Weight Loss)
• Double Vision
• Enlarged Pupil
• Eye Itchiness
• Eyelid Twitching
• Floaters/Flashers
• Glasses to Contacts
• Glaucoma
• Hand Problems
• Heart Disease Screening
• Lung Cancer Prognosis
• Macular Degeneration
• Osteoporosis Screening
• Ovarian Cancer Screening
• Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) Screening
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases
• Skin Cancer Screening
• Stroke Risks

With all the negative press about Yahoo recently, including the exodus of 115 executives since January 2007, it’s easy to forget about the incredible history of one of the first internet companies.

Founded in 1994, Yahoo began as a basic web directory and eventually evolved into an internet giant.  On April 12, 1996 Yahoo went public with a intra day market cap high of $1 billion.  (See Internet IPOs for more).

With the capital from their IPO Yahoo was now able to expend via both in house development and outside acquisitions.  During the internet boom Yahoo made one of the biggest dot.com purchases ever with the $5.7 billion acquisition of Broadcast.com in July 1999. Broadcast.com was an online audio service created by Mark Cuban to stream live audio coverage of his favorite sporting events. Yahoo’s purchase of Broadcast.com made Cuban an internet legend, a billionaire and a future owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. At the time of the purchase Broadcast.com was a publicly traded company (BCST) who saw its stock rise over $7 to $125 after the announcement.

Yahoo’s first acquisition was for Net Controls in September 1997 for $1.4 million. Yahoo acquired ViaWeb, a developer of web commerce tools, for $49 million in stock in June 1998. In October 1998 Yahoo began its quest for free email service with the purchase of Four11 (Four11 offered a free email service via a product called RocketMail) for $92 million in stock. Today Yahoo Mail is one of the largest drivers of traffic to the Yahoo network. Yahoo announced its acquisition of Geocities in January 1999 for $3.6 billion.

Yahoo jumped into the marketing world with the purchase of Yoyodyne in October 1998 for $29.6 million in stock. Yoyodyne allowed Yahoo to collect user data and act as an intermediary between its users and commerce clients. Yahoo purchased its popular Launch music site with its acquisition of Launch Media in June 2001 for $12 million. In December 2001 Yahoo purchased the online job search company HotJobs for approximately $436 million. Inktomi was purchased in December 2002 for $235 million followed by Overture in July 2003 for $1.63 billion. In April 2004 Yahoo purchased Kelkoo, a European comparison shopping site, for $579 million.

Below is a partial list of Yahoo’s acquisitions which have helped shape this diverse portal.

Yahoo! Acquisitions History:

• September 1997 - Yahoo acquires Net Controls for $1.4 Million
• October 1997 - Yahoo purchases Four11 for $92 Million
• March 1998 - Yahoo purchases Classic Games
• June 1998 - Yahoo picks up ViaWeb for $49 Million
• July 1998 - Yahoo acquires WebCal
• December 1998 - Yahoo acquires Yoyodyne for $29.6 Million
• December 1998 - Yahoo acquires Sportacy
• January 1999 - Yahoo acquires Hyperparellel for $8 Million
• February 1999 - Yahoo acquires Log-Me-On for $10 Million
• May 1999 - Yahoo purchases GeoCities for $3.6 Billion
• May 1999 - Yahoo purchases Encompass for $130 Million
• June 1999 - Yahoo acquires Online Anywhere for $80 Million
• July 1999 - Yahoo purchases Broadcast.com for $5.7 Billion
• November 1999 - Yahoo acquires MyQuest
• March 2000 - Yahoo acquires Arthas.com
• August 2000 - Yahoo acquires eGroups for $432 Million
• November 2000 - Yahoo purchases Kimo for $145 Million
• April 2001 - Yahoo acquires Sold.com for $30 Million
• June 2001 - Yahoo acquires Launch Media for $12 Media
• January 2002 - Yahoo acquires Hotjobs for $436 Million
• December 2002 - Yahoo acquires Inktomi for $235 Million
• February 2003 - Yahoo acquires Alltheweb for $100 Million
• October 2003 - Yahoo acquires Overture for $1.63 Billion
• January 2004 - Yahoo acquires 3721
• April 2004 - Yahoo acquires Kelkoo for $579 Million
• July 2004 - Yahoo buys Oddpost
• September 2004 - Yahoo picks up MusicMatch for $160 Million
• October 2004 - Yahoo buys Stata Labs (email search software)
• August 2004 - Yahoo picks up Farechase (online travel)
• March 2005 - Yahoo acquires Ludicorp Research (Flickr) for $40 Million
• March 2005 - Yahoo buys Stadeon (multiplayer video games)
• June 2005 - Yahoo acquires Dialpad
• June 2005 - Yahoo buys Blo.gs
• July 2005 - Yahoo acquires Konfabulator (Pixoria)
• August 2005 - Yahoo buys a 40% stake in Alibaba (Chinese eCommerce) for $1 Billion
• October 2005 - Yahoo picks up Upcoming.org
• October 2005 - Yahoo acquires WhereOnEarth
• December 2005 - Yahoo buys del.icio.us
• October 2006 - Yahoo acquires AdInterax (rich media advertising)
• November 2006 - Yahoo acquires Bix
• April 2007 - Yahoo buys Right Media (online advertising) for $680 million
• June 2007 - Yahoo purchases Rivals.com (college sports)
• September 2007 - Yahoo buys Zimbra (next generation messaging) for $350 million
• September 2007 - Yahoo acquires BlueLithium (global ad network) for $300 million
• February 2008 - Yahoo purchases Maven Networks (online video) for $160 million
• April 2008 - Yahoo acquires IndexTools (web analytics software for marketing)

For additional internet M&As visit Internet Acquisitions and Biggest Internet Mergers & Acquisitions

Thanks to the Boston Globe and Boston.com for featuring this blog (Wednesday) on their home page and for the listing on their Boston Blogs/Computers & Technology page.

Even with the proliferation of Health 2.0, 80% of medical practices still keep paper records.  Smaller medical practices cite costs as the main reason for not going digital and I imagine most startups find the task to daunting to tackle.

Instead of digitizing all the manila folders many Health 2.0 startups are opting to tackle issues like medical symptoms, patient-doctor connections and health care information instead.  Emerging a couple years behind Web 2.0, Health 2.0 is integrating the best features of Web 2.0 to help us connect with our health.  Consumers can now participate with their health care like never before.  To no surprise many of these Health 2.0 applications are based in Boston, Massachusetts.  With some of the top doctors in the country, mixing with leading technical minds, health technology fits perfectly in Boston.

Some of those Boston Health 2.0 sites include:

• infoMedMD - online medical symptoms and medical practice services (Brookline)
• American Well - connecting consumers & physicians (Boston)
• PatientsLikeMe - patients helping patients (Cambridge)
• Sermo - physicians for physicians (Cambridge)
• Praxeon - evidence based medicine (Cambridge)
• myDailyApple - health news & search
• DoubleCheckMD - prescription side effects (Cambridge)
• PatientKeeper - mobile patient software (Newton)
• Pri-Med - online education (Boston)
• Wellogic - (Cambridge)

As I noted in the Political Web, Barack Obama has successfully penetrated the web to increase support and funding for his campaign.  Back in 2004 blogs were influential, however social networks like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube were not.  Actually, Facebook and YouTube didn’t even exist back then.  With over 150 million combined monthly visitors these three sites are becoming a powerful political tool and Obama is doing a better job utilizing them.

However, what I find most interesting is that even with the massive influence of the web on this election none of the candidates are spending a lot of money online.  Since the campaign began in February 2007, $238 million has been spent on television ads but only $4 million online.  Why the huge disparity?

With the internet everyone has a voice, and a video camera.  If a candidate can inspire the people to do the advertising for him (it was him/her) then there is no reason to spend money online.  As any internet startup knows, viral marketing is the most beneficial and desired form of advertising money can’t buy.  Obama definitely has online viral marketing working to his advantage.  If the average person was able to influence television and broadcast videos for free I would imagine presidential candidates would only be spending money on political buttons.

Every couple of weeks it seems like I hear of a new location based social networking and Geo-Tagging service.  Last week I recommended brightkite and this week there appears to be a new twitter like location based service called nrme.

Nrme is a messaging system like Twitter, but unlike Twitter it allows a user to read all messages broadcast in your surrounding area.  With nrme iPhone users can broadcast a message to any (and all) nrme users located within nine blocks of you.  Possible set to launch when the iPhone App Store launches, nrme sounds like it can be very useful for staying connected to local news, incidents and updates from restaurants and shops.  Though I like brightkite a lot I think nrme could be easier to use and therefore catch on a lot faster.  We’ll have to wait and see when it launches in July!

Rick Breslin of the Drive Thru Internet Marketing Podcast recently interviewed Tom O’Keefe about the benefits of Bizak for both startups and investors. Topics in the video podcast include:

• What is Bizak?
• Website Worth and Industry Data Comparison
• Startups Can Register for Free
• Investors Can Find Prospective Online Ventures
• The Bizak Calculator - Earnings per Visitor (EPV)

To date Barack Obama has raised a whopping $296 million for his presidential campaign. Much of Obama’s fundraising success is due in large part to a fantastic website, a dominate internet presence and the viral marketing efforts of his supporters via blogs, links, content and of course YouTube.

For John McCain his fundraising efforts are 143% lower than Obama’s at $122 million. McCain’s web presence comes in a distant second (comared to Obama) in every category.

Below are a number of web analytics which compare the candidates’ online saturation. When it comes to web analytics Barack Obama crushes John McCain in every category.

Google Results (Winner: Barack Obama)

When performing a search for Barack Obama on Google you’ll find 54,900,000 pages that at least mention the presidential candidate. The same search for John McCain brings up 37,600,000 pages. Impressive for Barack since he was relatively unknown before 2004 whereas John McCain has been a senator since 1987 and ran for president in 2000

YouTube Videos (Winner: Barack Obama)

This election is the first presidential election of the YouTube generation and to date there are 130,000 videos about (or talk about/mention) Barack Obama whereas just 39,400 YouTube videos focus on John McCain. Of course there is no way to tell if these videos are for or against a particular candidate but one thing is certain and that is more people are talking, writing, blogging, and recording Barack Obama.

Site Lookup - Google (Winner: Barack Obama)

A site lookup determines the number of pages indexed for a particular website on a search engine such as Google. Doing a site lookup (on Google) for BarackObama.com we see that Barack has 889,000 pages indexed. Compare that to JohnMcCain.com and we see that Obama has far more online content - McCain has 30,400 pages. Generally speaking the more pages a website has the more search traffic that website will receive. If optimized (called SEO) then more pages means more opportunities to be found online. If internet visitors are going to your site then you can craft your message exactly the way you want - not the way your competitor wants it.

BarackObama.com is a terrific website built in Web 2.0 fashion with social networking tools embedded into it. As we know BarackObama.com has raised a significant amount of money from small donations via the website. My guess is that the 889,000 pages indexed and the Web 2.0 features of BarackObama.com have a lot to do with Barack’s financial success.

InLinks - Yahoo (Winner: Barack Obama)

Inlinks (or inbound links) are the number of outside links pointing to your website. Inlinks are very important in determining a website’s search engine placement and therefore search traffic. Google’s original algorithium relied heavily on the quality of inbound links and based on this created the PageRank. PageRank (which had more pull a few years ago) measures the quality of a website in the range of 0 to 10. Both BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com have a PageRank of 7.

In the case of Barack Obama and John McCain you can infer the popularity of a particular candidate by the number of websites linking to it - in essence it can be seen as a recommendation. With that BarackObama.com has 60,801 links pointing to it and JohnMcCain.com has 21,905.

Both stats are from Yahoo which is more reliable than Google in determining inlinks.

Google Blog Search (Winner: Barack Obama)

Blogs have become a tremendous political force. Both candidates maintain a blog (Obama, McCain) but more importantly millions of Americans have a blog and now a voice. Bloggers have more influence than ever and some are arguable as influential as The Washington Post and The New York Times. With every election a new form of media has emerged forcing a candidate to adapt. In 2004 blogs showed their influence for the first time and this year video is a the new major player - now we have video and blogs!

So, one more way to measure the online success of a potential candidate is the number of blog posts about a particular candidate. In essence it measures what people are talking about, what people are thinking about and who they’re voting for. Once again Barack Obama has a commanding online presence over John McCain with 7,367,910 posts about him and only 4,242,637 blog posts about John McCain.

Keyword Searches (Winner: Barack Obama)

According to Wordtracker, the keyword “Barack Obama” is searched for 7,682 times per day. “John McCain” sees 4,392 daily searches. This means when people go to Google (and search for a candidate) they are searching for Barack Obama 75% more than John McCain. These numbers only include both candidates’ full name - there are hundreds of variations that people are also searching for. For instance, if you do a search for just the candidates last name then Obama is searched for 9,643 times/day and McCain 1,122 times per day.

People Count (Winner: Barack Obama)

According to Compete.com, BarackObama.com received 1,568,981 visitors in May 2008 compared to JohnMcCain.com which received 424,214 visitors. Both candidates (Barack 3 million and McCain 1 million) saw a huge spike in traffic in February 2008 thanks to Super Tuesday.

BarackObama.com

This data goes back to January, but I couldn’t write a piece about website earnings without computing the business valuation of a website’s earnings. In January Barack Obama raised $32 million, of which $28 million came from online donations. According to Techcrunch, over 250,000 individuals made donations of which 90% of those were under $100.

According to the Compete.com graph (above) BarackObama.com received around 3 million visitors in January 2008. Like I value a websites’ worth on this blog and on Bizak.com, I will attempt to do the same with BarackObama.com. Entering these numbers into the Bizak Business Valuation Calculator (and assuming no costs) you get a whopping $9.33 earnings per visitor (EPV). This means on average Barack Obama earns $9.33 for every person who visits his website. Internet powerhouses like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, & Myspace wish they had a $9.33 EPV. If BarackObama.com was an internet site making $30 million/month then they would have a valuation of $1.344 Billion!!

Summary

When it comes to internet marketing Barack Obama is far ahead of John McCain. Unfortunately, I can’t compare The Political Web for Bush vs. Kerry in 2004 so it remains to be seen if a dominate web presence converts into the presidency. What we do know is George Bush had only 35 electoral votes and 3,012,166 popular votes more than John Kerry in 2004. Both candidates had roughly the same amount of funds - at this time in 2004 John Kerry had accumulated $186.2 million. At the time this was 5x more than any previous democrat had raised. That was of course before Barack Obama who so far (with 4 full months remaining) has raised $296 million compared to John McCain’s $122 million. This equates to a 143% difference in funds. In 2004 George Bush had only 13% ($41 million) more dollars than Kerry, but only captured 2% more of the popular vote.