24/7 Wall St. Ranks the Most Valuable Blogs

24/7 Wall St. chose the 25 most valuable blogs, based on a pretty loose set of criteria.

The most interesting thing about this? The Perez Hilton site is worth an estimated $32 million. For writing campy tripe and drawing on pictures with his white markers, Mario Lavandeira apparently earns nearly $9 million a year in advertising revenue. He's a hard-working guy with a definite, tireless talent for self-promotion - don't get me wrong. Just WOW, though.

So, what else pops out? Well, we apparently like gossip, politics, technology & gadgets, sports and financial information - in various combinations. There is some support for the notion that people tend to gravitate to like-minded people. Sugar is for girls and young women. Wowowow is for women over 40. The Huffington Post and DailyKos are largely appealing to those who are politically center-left or simply left. However, gadget geeks and investment folks are all ages, genders, locations and political affiliations, so we're still engaging in diverse interaction on a lot of topics.

I was surprised at the popularity of the women's sites. I also think women fuel the popularity of the gossip sites - purely because most of my friends who are interested in pop culture are female. So women are a force to consider now, which is amazing considering how scarce they were when I got started in this online business 15 or more years ago.

News is of interest to folks, but via Drudge or HuffPo, not CNN, MSNBC or Fox. Or, they want topic-specific news they find at SB Nation (sports), mashable and TechCrunch (technology), or the Alley Insider sites (Silicon Alley, Greensheet, and so on).

Last, site traffic seems to be on the upswing for many of these sites. So, even if advertising prices drop, I am willing to bet that readership numbers will continue to increase for well-written blogs and sites centered on those core topics - gossip, politics, technology & gadgets, sports and financial information. MAybe I'll go sign up for Google's AdSense and dip my toe in.

Cool Tools: My Favorite Christmas Shopping Site

I may be a marketer by trade, but I am curious by nature. I am also surrounded by beloved friends and family - engineers and gadget geeks all - who intuitively understand how things work much better than I ever will. So, I use Cool Tools to keep up with all things useful and ingenious, inexpensive and opulent, simple and complex. I use the site to surprise the geeks in my life with presents that help muddy the waters about how cool I actually am.

Kevin Kelly, the site's guru, co-founded the Hackers' Conference, and, unlike me, he is inarguably cool and eclectic. He has been affiliated with Wired magazine since its inception, was with the Well back in the day, and sits on a variety of boards, including The Long Now Foundation, which seeks to take a long view of history. In that pursuit, it has purchased a mountain top in Nevada to house a 10,000 year library and clock.

On Cool Tools, he finds and reviews (or posts reviews others have authored) about an amazing array of useful stuff ranging from simple screwdrivers and the latest incarnation of Sculpey sculpture clay to the best explanation of relativity and a guide on building an underground dwelling for $50 and up. Eclectic? You bet'cha. Useful? Indisputably. A nice place to get lost for a few hours and emerge with gifts for curious and outdoorsy friends and family - and a few new interests to explore yourself? I highly recommend it.