The Homa Files

Ken’s Take: AOL was sitting on a golden goose … one that still generates about $1.5 billion in annual subscription revenue.

AOL.com and related properties claim over 100 million unique visitors each month  —   that’s about 1 of every 3 US citizens.

Was a great business … still is a good business … but slipping away.

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Excerpted from Standard.net, ” AOL reboot? “, May 24, 2009

The dial-up Internet service was AOL’s backbone. At its peak, in 2002, AOL had 26.7 million dial-up subscribers. Even as recently as 2006, dial-up was a $5.78 billion business for AOL.

But consumers have flocked to speedier offerings. Last year AOL’s Internet access revenue was down to $1.93 billion, and now AOL counts just 6.3 million dial-up subscribers.

AOL’s various online properties averaged 106 million unique U.S. visitors each month during the first quarter. That ranked AOL fourth; Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Corp. were first, second and third.

But AOL was the only member of this Web top four to see a year-over-year drop in traffic in the first three months of the year. It had averaged 110 million visitors in the first quarter of 2008.

And while AOL’s operating income totaled $150 million in the first quarter, that was a 47 percent fall from the year-ago quarter.

Full article:
http://www.standard.net/live/business/174069

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This entry was posted on May 29, 2009 at 7:10 am and is filed under Internet Marketing - eCommerce -. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.