According to EOSGO update, Daniel Larimer, the CTO of Block.One criticized steemit for not finding a way to generate revenue. Here's what he said:
And you know what? I totally agree with him. The problem isn't the 2 million dollars required to run steemit.com and api.steemit.com node. The problem is that steemit.com isn't generating 2+ million in revenue.
Steemit.com could have generated that much revenue very easily with ads when it was ranked in the top 2000 websites in Alexa.
Ned stated that after cost cuts, it will cost around 1.25 million to run it. But even though steemit.com has lost a lot of traffic, it can still make profits according to the estimates of hypestat:
steemit.com receives about 293,025 unique visitors and 902,518 (3.08 per visitor) page views per day which should earn about $3,726.44/day from advertising revenue.
Estimated site value is $2,057,342.71. According to Alexa Traffic Rank steemit.com is ranked number 3,736 in the world and 0.0208% of global Internet users visit it.
If we assume these stats are true, then steemit could make around 1.36 million dollars of revenue in a year (which is higher than the operating cost of 1.25 million).
But I don't believe these stats are true. I am confident hypestat's algorithm is grossly underestimating the site value of steemit.com and how much it can earn per day.
Steemit.com is mainly a finance focused website. Generally, ads on finance related sites are 2x to 3x costlier. I hope this gives my readers an idea of how much money steemit.com could make.
Steemit.com isn't going bankrupt because it doesn't have value but because of mismanagement. That's exactly what dan highlighted in his comments. And that is why I agree with him. I hope Steem Inc will add advertising to the site to make sure it is sustainable and profitable.