Case Study: The Drudge Report
Posted by Mike | Filed under Case Studies
The Drudge Report is a simple website that provides links to the weeks top news. The site focuses mainly on U.S. political and controversial news. The site is owned and run by Matt Drudge. His claim to fame is breaking two stories before the mainstream media did. First, in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole’s running mate. In 1998, Drudge’s popularity surged when he was the first person to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
According to Business 2.0 magazine in 2003, Matt Drudge $3,500 a day! Since 2003 the site has become even more popular as a source for breaking news and a place to get caught up on the major events for the week. I would estimate his income to be around $5,000 a day from his website.
The Vitals (as of 26 Apr, 2008)
- Created: 14 Feb, 1997
- Google Page Rank: 7
- Alexa Rating: 545
Operating the site
If you take a look at The Drudge Report is is not particularly appealing to the eyes. The site is extremely simple that is also it’s strength. There are really only two things that are done to maintain the site; link news and break news. The vast majority of the time Drudge simple links hot news from 100s of different sources. On rare occasions you will see a breaking news report actually written by Matt Drudge himself. The site bandwidth friendly as it is mostly text with a few images and advertisement banners thrown in.
Take Aways
There is a lot to be learned from the Drudge Report as a blogger or website owner.
- Keep your website simple and bandwidth friendly! Not everyone has broadband internet and there are still millions using dial up.
- Keep your graphics small and compressed. All of the non-headline images were 200 pixals wide and less than 100kb. With a popular site this will save server resources!
- Update your blog or site often! As a general rule I try to post 1-2 blogs daily. The Drudge Report is updated several times an hour. Obviously, Matt Drudge has more time and a staff to keep the site continuously update, but the lack of staff shouldn’t keep you from updating once a day! This will keep your readers loyal and make the search engines happy as they like site that a “alive” vice dead and stagnant.
Final Thoughts
While many web developers spend thousands of dollars on custom skins, plugins and other bells and whistles, Matt Drudge shows that you can spend almost nothing on the look and functionality of your site and still make a lot of money. His site may look like it is still built using notepad and pure HTML, but there is know denying his success, income and popularity.
