Establishing Value on the Web

Ask any internet entrepreneur how they plan on making money with their latest venture, and there is a good chance you will get an “I don’t know yet.” In conjunction with that, however, comes their knowledge of the value of capturing eyeballs. It’s universally known that financial projections and a company’s estimated value are hardly accurate. It’s all in your team, your idea, and your market.

At Jamblr, we have been dealing a lot with determining our value. While we want to be attractive to potential investors, we also do not want to stretch the truth and be laughed at. After all, our array of assets speak for themselves. The last thing you want to do is come off as unrealistic and uninformed to the people that matter most to the future of your company.

So how do you handle financial projections in your business plan? The answer is simple - Just do it. Take a few hours to do the best you can to land in the proximity of accuracy, but don’t kill yourself over it. After all, even if your projections were 100% accurate at a certain financial amount, your company will most likely never see that exact figure. No matter how you look at it, your guesses will always be off.

So, my site is capturing eyeballs - why aren’t I making any money? First and foremost, it depends on the amount of eyeballs. Second, do you have any means of revenue? Do you charge for a service, employ advertisements, etc? If not, you must be relying on merely an exit strategy, which in today’s world, is a common tactic.

An immensely successful website like Twitter, for example, does not have any revenue streams at all right now. Their objective: to build their user base and earn a “real” projected value in the long-run. Like the stock market, value is determined by market outlook, among other things. If a potential shareholder believes your company is worth $10 billion by making a bid on acquiring you, then guess what? - You are worth $10 billion, at least for the time being. This is what we have seen with Facebook, when Microsoft bought shares at a suggested figure. Facebook will continue to grow and continue to be an attractive entity to those “big wigs” that want to take over the internet.

Jamblr is unique in that we have many different revenue streams. Similar to a corporate entity, our projections are based on estimated revenue streams and not strictly estimated value. Constant revenue and an accelerating user base make for major potential. We can only hope to be worthy enough for an evaluation from an entity like Google someday.