Guardian Online, one of the biggest news/newspapers sites in UK, is in profits this year, according to Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers. This will come as news and surprise to some people, who swore to me over the last 2-3 years or so that the site must be bleeding money with all its online efforts on the editorial side. Waldman was speaking at the IFRA’s ”Beyond the Printed Word” conference happening in Madrid this week.

Within “six to seven years”, the group planned to dedicate 80 percent of its time to digital activities, compared to 20 percent at present, said Waldman.

Meanwhile the Internet arm of El Mundo, Spain’s second-best selling daily in print, has been “very profitable” since 2003, with a profit of 1.3 million euros (1.5 million dollars) in 2004, according to Elmundo.es director of development Emilio Plana Hidalgo.

Meanwhile, as usual, IFRA has an excellent moblog of the conference here: it has an interesting way of covering the conference with moblog pics and descriptions and even audio/video of the sessions etc. Some good stuff there if you want to browse through…