] Pound for pound, who's the biggest, richest media mogul ] on the Web? Terry Semel? Nope. Sumner Redstone? Not ] exactly. Try Matt Drudge. Years after his big "scoop" -- ] leaking that Newsweek was sitting on a story about the ] tryst between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky -- ] Drudge's website is bigger than ever. Run on a ] shoestring, the Drudge Report, a plain-Jane page of news ] links and occasional scoops, clears, by our ] back-of-the-envelope estimate, a cool $800,000 a year. ] ] While other news sites make money, they don't mint it ] Drudge-style. New York Times Digital scored an operating ] profit of $8.3 million last year. But it has 237 ] full-time employees, meaning that each worker accounts ] for about $35,000 in profit. (And that doesn't take into ] consideration the fact that the site's reports are ] actually generated by the newspaper staff, a cost ] allocated to the paper side only.) By any calculus, ] Drudge's site might be the most efficiently run on the ] Web; it makes the Times site look bloated. Drudge's is a ] two-person operation (although he never mentions his ] right-hand man); that means it makes $400,000 per ] employee. And he never has to leave the comfort of his ] Miami condo. Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Printable Version - The Secrets of Drudge Inc. |