Henry Blodget, the former Wall Street analyst who founded The Business Insider, reports that the business news site made $2,127 in net income last year on $4.8 million in revenue.
Blodget writes, “But, thanks to our generous sponsors and partners, we are, at last, able to reward our hard work.
“Our newsroom salaries for full-time employees, for example (which include bonuses and benefits) are now higher than at many companies in the traditional news industry. Because the digital news business is quite different from the traditional news business, we often promote from within, and we’ve had the huge pleasure of watching folks who joined us as interns grow up to take leadership positions. True, we can’t yet toss around the $300,000-$500,000 a year per brand-name columnist that Huffington Post and Daily Beast are now reportedly tossing around. But, in future years, if we keep doing what we think we can do, we should be able to pay our top people a lot more than we do today.
“(We also give our folks stock options, which helps make them feel and act like they own some of the place. Which they in fact do.)
“Now, before we move on, a quick note about our profitability: It’s not going to continue, at least not for the next few quarters.”
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