Comments on: Valuating Your Audience Asset

By: RonAmok! » No apreciation…until it’s gone

RonAmok! » No apreciation…until it’s gone — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:01:14 +0000

[...] should be tracked as P&L. Over time, The theory has been refined through other posts, such as: Valuating Your Social Media Asset, Social Media is a Mutual Fund and Assets Produce [...]

By: ronploof

ronploof — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:30:33 +0000

You bring up a good point, Julien. 1) All assets are not created equal and 2) the value of assets change over time. I think of audience-assets the same way as financial investments like a stocks and bonds whose values fluctuate over time. Audiences, like financial investments, must be properly cared for in order to maintain and grow their value.

If Chris were to stop taking care of his audience through producing fresh content, the value of that audience would most likely erode through the passage of time.

By: juliensmith

juliensmith — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:58:09 +0000

You're absolutely right, of course. But we need to add in the opportunity cost/risk that this kind of growth will not provide person X in year Y the same value as it did Chris in 2010 (or someone else five years ago, whatever).

Main point is that the audience is a huge asset, but I suspect that as attention splinters to a wider number of channels the value diminishes. But I'm not sure.

By: Julie Wright

Julie Wright — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:52:27 +0000

I agree with Ron's thesis here, that while the ownership of Third Tribe may be split four ways, it was still Chris's audiences that produced the $1.128 million (on the low end of the estimate per Chris's note below) in initial annualized revenue. Add the revenue from books, events and more, and Ron's point is even more forcefully illustrated. Ron and Chris, I think you're both exceptional!

By: ronploof

ronploof — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:07:02 +0000

Thanks for the clarifications, Chris.

The numbers may sway a little, but the concept it solid. Your audience is an asset that pays dividends in many different ways!

By: Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:53:46 +0000

This is quite interesting. A few notes:

* Third Tribe is split 4 ways, don't forget, so I'm only getting a chunk. Plus, if I'm lucky, we'll get up to 4000 or 5000 members (adjusted to 3500 for churn) and that'll be even more.

If you laid out the various ways I derive money from those assets, it'd be like this:

* professional speaking
* books (two now - Social Media 101 just came out)
* third tribe
* events (new marketing experience and inbound marketing summit)
* ebooks (shortly)

And then the fun part is layering over all the free stuff:

* daily blog post
* weekly newsletters
* daily scouring and sourcing of things from blogs to share
* contributions to other blogs
* videos

See?

But it can be so super fun, and I love this post. Thanks, Ron.