Congratulations on your company's second appearance in the New York Times in as many months. Care to share how Digital Due Diligence became the go-to source for this sort of analysis at the New York Times and elsewhere?
Thanks! I would ascribe some of it to random chance, not in the "Anyone can do it," sense so much as the "We will not likely appear in the Times or similar sources on a monthly basis in the future," sense.
I wouldn't characterize us as the go-to source, by any means. We've gotten some good press, but there are lot of companies that get quoted on this kind of issue. That said, my cofounder and I have been cited by the NYT twice each, in under a year, so we're getting something right.
Here is what I would advise: find a way that you can provide uniquely useful data to journalists. Only contact them when you have something useful to say. It's okay to fact-check people, as long as you frame it more as "Here's an insider's view," not "Here's why this person is wrong." (And, within their paradigm, journalists are rarely wrong--but it's often possible for them to do a follow-up piece that discusses things from another angle. That's where the industry experts come in.)
I also have to point out that Digital DD is in the unique position of evaluating companies as our business model. Our job is to have an opinion, so it's natural that if a journalist wants to talk to someone with an opinion about a related issue, they'll reach out to us. You can't count on this if you're not in the business of researching and analyzing other people's behavior.
I'm assuming this is rhetorical but I'm not getting the message. I see how it's a "sellers market" in this situation, but a heavily functioning source of recurring leads for a one time purchase should pay for itself in time- I can't see why a legitimate valuation wouldn't work in this scenario as well. Some of these "lead-gen" sites are probably individuals who would be happy to sell their site for 10 to 12 months revenue upfront.
It's a market for lemons: some lead-gen sites will last a while, and some will get burned by Google or the FTC. If you're a buyer, you know that those are possibilities, so you bid less than what you'd bid assuming that the site would last forever. Now sellers know that if they sell a good site, it'll be undervalued, so they have a natural tendency to sell the bad sites.
The original "market for lemons" paper valued a lemon at half the cost of the good version. When your lemons are worth zero, or have a negative valuation, there may be no market at all.
