Traffic Court - Value of a Website

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal article on Angie's List upcoming IPO suggests that the site will be valued at $723 million based on a share price of $13. At this writing the stock is now trading at $16/share, making the company worth nearly $900 million.

You can see by the graphic that Angie's List had 2.1 million unique website visitors in October, and that the site loses an awful lot of money.

What if there was a website that had about 13% of the number of unique visitors, and that website actually was profitable? You would think that website would be worth at least 13% of what Angie's List is worth.

For all you web investors out there buying stock in LinkedIn.com and Angie's List, may we suggest you consider Town-Court.com:
While our revenue is much lower, we have a secret trick to earning profits. We spend very little money. And we're happy to sell at a substantial discount off our apparent $100 million valuation. Call me. :-)

To avoid federal persecution, please note that I'm kidding. And just in case, pretend that we've added all kinds of disclosures required by Sarbanes-Oxley, and whatever other SEC regulations there are, just in case.

A Visit to Massachusetts Traffic Court

We took a little excursion yesterday to see how things work in Massachusetts Traffic Court. It was educational. Massachusetts speeding tickets and other tickets matter to drivers from there and from other states.

For MA drivers, most moving violations put two "surcharge points" on your driving record. Major violations, such as a DUI, are 5 points. The official explanation is at the Massachusetts Safe Driver Insurance Plan.

Massachusetts is not a member of the Drivers License Compact, but we believe they still report violations to other states. Per Chapter 2 of the RMV manual (pdf), most out-of-state tickets will affect a MA driver.

We talked after court with the police officer there. He said that the typical increase for one 2-point ticket is $200/year. The impact can last 6 years, though the SDIP explanation (see link above) indicates it's more complicated than that.

So how does Court work? Keep in mind that we went to only one court and only saw one "judge" - they're called Magistrate, or Clerk-Magistrate - and one police officer. We suspect that things may vary depending on the court, magistrate, and officer.

From what we saw, here's the deal:

1. Your case is scheduled for an initial hearing with the Clerk-Magistrate. You have to show up. We're researching whether a lawyer can appear for the client or if the client has to come. Practically speaking we think that a lawyer who does his homework can handle your case without you there.

2. They kept the courtroom empty. I'm not sure where the defendants waited, but probably a nearby waiting room. A bailiff comes out and gets you for your case. The Magistrate was kind enough to allow us to watch.

3. The officer in court presents the case. Usually this will not be the person who wrote the ticket, but someone from that police agency.

4. After the officer speaks, it's your turn. You present your case (or you don't).

5. The Magistrate decides the case, finding you responsible or not responsible. In some cases the officer in court does not have enough information and the Magistrate will find you not responsible.

6. The Officer may agree to convert your ticket into a warning. Two things seem to play a role in this decision -- your driving record and your attitude. If you admit guilt and have a clean record, you have a better shot at the warning. You're probably not getting this on a high speed or serious infraction, but you might get it on a minor violation.

7. If you are found responsible, you can appeal. This is a de novo hearing with a judge in the district court. De novo means new -- you get a fresh shot at the case. The officer who wrote the ticket has to appear, and you do too.

Traffic Court 2008

2008 was a good year for our traffic court website. Here are some numbers:

Almost 900,000 visits (897K)
Over 700K unique visitors (different people using the website)
Over 2 million pageviews

The site's homepage was viewed over 220,000 times by over 150,000 people. The NY page had over 80,000 views by nearly 55,000 different people.

The top court pages were:
Jersey City Municipal Court (over 10,000 views)
Philadelphia Traffic Court (over 8,000)
and
Nassau County District Court (over 8000)

Not far down the list was our own Albany Traffic Court with over 7000 views. The Criminal Part page had over 4000 views. The Courts in California are on the rise and some of them will likely crack the top in 2009.

Overall, site traffic more than doubled from December '07 to December '08. Meanwhile 2009 is off with a bang. The Monday after a holiday weekend is usually strong, and January 5th was far and away the site's biggest day ever, with nearly 7000 visits. Tuesday and Wednesday were lower, but bigger than any day before Monday. Revenue from Google ads and direct attorney ads are both up dramatically, and the site remains profitable. We have invested nearly all the revenue in improving the site, adding courts and new features.

Speaking of which, any day now we will be introducing the lawyers' club. Lawyers will be able to create accounts, list themselves in a directory of traffic lawyers (by state, county and court), and write articles. The "killer app" (I think) will be a calendar feature accessible only to lawyer-members. Lawyers can put in where they're going to be. Lawyers who can't make it to a court appearance will be able to see who is going to be there. The club will be free for 2009, and we expect to charge $100/year starting in 2010.

Other site improvements will include a "flag comment" feature so people can easily note incorrect information, inappropriate content, copyright concerns or other issues. We are also improving our Google ads, though most users will not notice this. The site will use "channels", mainly by state, so people viewing NY pages should see less ads for VA attorneys and such.

While on 2008, I should mention that our law firm's main site: Albany Lawyer had over 100,000 unique visitors and over 200,000 pageviews. It is the driving force behind our firm. This blog was viewed by over 25,000 different users who viewed 40,000 pages. The top blog post hands down was my 2005 post about 1110a and our traffic violation research project - viewed over 4000 times. In a distant second and third place were posts about tailgating and marijuana dismissals, both from 2006. An August 2008 post on car depreciation is booming and was the #1 post for December. I'm a little puzzled by that one.

Why hire a traffic lawyer?

If you want a good reason to hire a traffic lawyer, watch this show of people going to traffic court by themselves. It's called Speeders Fight Back and it's on TruTV.

The site also has a list of future episodes.

The show is set in what looks like Plantation Traffic Court, part of the Broward County Court system.

Milestones on the web

Our websites hit some new milestones. First, The Redlich Law Firm site had over 10,000 visits in July. We came close to that in both January and March, but this is the first time we went over. It wasn't that long ago we had only 6000 visits a month, so this is good for business.

Next, our Traffic Court site has a few highlights. We had over 80,000 visits in July, with over 70,000 unique users. And the site has now topped two million pageviews since October 1, 2005. One of the biggest areas of growth right now is in California. We've covered most of the state now, including the major population centers. The various pages of traffic courts in California had over 10,000 pageviews in July, up from a bit over 1000 in March and less than 7000 in June.

That's some growth! California is now the third busiest state on our site, and I suspect it will pass NJ (28K pageviews in July and growing) by December. Not sure if it will ever catch NY (83K - still have a few dozen courts to add to complete NY too).

Florida and Texas are also growing rapidly and we are adding courts in both. CT is still growing, while MA and RI seem to have leveled off. VA and OH are growing (and we are almost done adding courts to both), as is VT (but Vermont will never be huge).

Los Angeles Traffic Court story

Just a quick one - the following is a great story about handling a speeding ticket in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles traffic court does not come off well. Great photos, good story, etc.

Traffic Court Hits 75K

Our traffic court website reached a new level the other day, with over 75,000 visits and over 65,000 unique visitors in 31 days. There were nearly 170,000 pageviews as well.

We've been adding courts in a few states. Our California traffic courts page now covers 23 counties, and the Los Angeles traffic courts page has become one of the busiest pages on the site. I'm not sure why, but the Alhambra court page is one of the top court pages.

We've also gotten a good start on Houston on our Texas courts page. Texas is, of course, a huge state, and there's an awful lot of courts there.

I went to college in Houston, and grad school in California, so I have a bit of a personal attachment to these areas.

Finally, a family member has been adding traffic courts in Florida. He's doing a great job. We still have a long way to go in terms of traffic though. It seems like our pages do better over time. CT now gets over 7000 page views a month, and MA gets over 5000. Florida is still at 1000 or so, and Texas (which we just started) isn't close to that yet. Rhode Island still gets more than Florida.

More Traffic Court News

Our Traffic Court website has shot up in the world a bit. According to Alexa, the site is now among the top 350,000 websites in the world. That's a big jump, but not really because of an increase in the importance of our site.

Alexa changed the way it measures websites. They had been criticized for some time for relying too much on their own "toolbar". It's unclear exactly how they've changed their measurement, but it appears they are adding other techniques. For us it's great, but others are unhappy with the change.

Who knows if it really means anything. We know that visits to our site have grown. We're very close to a consistent 60,000 unique users per month. We've added a bunch of new courts in California, Florida and Ohio. Sooner or later those pages will start to attract more attention and the site traffic should go up a bit more.

Traffic Court continues to grow

This past week our traffic court website hit a new high. Monday had over 3200 visits and Tuesday was just short of that. Both days had more than 3000 unique visitors (different people using the site - some people visit twice in one day). The site is now seeing consistently more than 60,000 visits a month, with roughly 55,000 unique visitors.

We are close to finishing the Ohio Municipal Courts, which handle most of the traffic cases there. So far Hamilton Municipal Court seems to be the busiest court page there, but I'd guess some others may catch up and pass them over time.

Traffic Court News

Our traffic court directory is doing well. The Alexa "rank" is approaching #600,000 (i.e. the 600,000th busiest site on the web). By comparison our law firm site is ranked over 2,000,000. Alexa is not perfect, but it's in the ballpark. Within the US the site is now within the top 100,000 websites.

We've added a lot of traffic courts in Ohio. So far not many people are going to the Cincinnati Traffic Court page, but that will probably pick up. We also have substantial progress with Virginia traffic courts, which is now the third busiest state page on the site.

We've revised the underlying code to enhance security along with making our work on administration of the site easier. We are working on the "lawyer's club" feature, and hope to have that up and running within a few months.

We now have well over 2000 courts in the database with courts in 11 states. We have several attorney advertisers and make substantial revenue from Google ads as well. We actually had a profit for 2007 (though not much), and we are optimistic about the future of the website.

Philadelphia Traffic Court - the delicious irony

Great story in Philadelphia. 15 candidates for traffic court judge in the Democratic primary. Of those 15, 8 owe parking fines. Three of the eight actually owe over $1000 in fines. One of the other candidates has his car registered in another county. And four candidates don't even have a car registered in their names.

These are the people who may be ruling on traffic court matters in Philadelphia. Yet another reason for me never to run for judge - I'm apparently overqualified as I don't owe any fines.