• TechCrunch, Friday, March 30, 2007 10:30 AM

Photobucket has hired Lehman Brothers to explore a possible sale, and the firm believes Photobucket to be worth something in the neighborhood of $300-$400 million -- cheap, given its growth.

Even thought the company's still in debt, sources say Photobucket is close to breaking -- even without having used most of the $15 million it just raised in venture capital. The insiders say the company made $4.35 million in 2005, $9.34 million in '06 and is expected to breach $32 million this year. But how is it making this money? Premium accounts and advertising, of course.

It's numbers are certainly strong. The photo-storage/linking site has 36 million registered users, growing at 80,000 per day (company CEO Alex Welch expects to see more than 60 million users by year's end), with 17 million uniques, which is more than Facebook, one of Photobucket's big distribution outlets. More than 300,000 sites link back to the photo provider.

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