Yesterday I wrote a post about some of the factors that bloggers might consider when deciding whether to end a blog or not.
Today I want to continue the theme and look at some options available to bloggers who have decided to end their blog but who don’t quite know how to do it.
Here are some of the most common ways that I’ve seen people end blogs:
1. Sell It
Before you decide to delete your blog, or simply decide to stop writing – consider whether it might have some commercial worth. This might not be appropriate for all blogs (for example if you have a more personal blog you might not want to give it over to someone else) but if your blog is more commercial/entrepreneurial in nature you’ll probably find that it has some value to somebody else.
There are a variety of places where you can sell blogs and websites online but one of the best that I’ve had a little to do with is Flippa which has regular auctions of blogs and sites running. A quick survey of blogs listed there over the past few months has seen blogs sell for anything from two digit numbers right through to some pretty large sales (I just saw one that went for $60,000).
Obviously the more traffic and income your blog has the better but you might be surprised what people are willing to pay even for smaller blogs that have been around for a while and which have some page rank and incoming links.
Another option if you’re not willing to give away your content but still have a domain with some commercial value is to simply sell the domain without the content. Again – if you have a more established domain with lots f incoming links pointing at it you’ll find that some will be willing to give you something for it.
2. Hire a Blogger or Take On a Partner
If you’ve lost your passion for the topic of your blog but it still has potential to generate traffic and income you might want to consider hiring another blogger/bloggers to write for your blog (or even the run the whole thing).
There would be a variety of levels that you could do this on – from hiring a blogger to write a certain amount of posts per week which you edit, to hiring someone to write and do all the editing, to hiring someone to take on everything (including managing ad sales, maintaining the blog’s platform etc).
The model for this might be to pay a per post rate or you might choose to make it more of a partnership where you share ownership and income with the other blogger.
3. Transition it to a Community Blog
This is similar to the last option but if you have a blog that does have a group of loyal readers it could be worth handing the blog over to volunteers from your community to help you keep it running. In a sense it will become a blog which is largely made up of guest posts from readers.
This approach will only really work if you have an established readership who feels strongly that the blog is something that they believe in and want to keep running – even if it costs them some time to contribute to.
4. Relaunch
One option that I’ve not seen done many times but which could be considered is to refocus or relaunch your blog. This will probably only work if you have a domain name that is suited to more than one niche but instead of completely scrapping your site and starting again from scratch on a new domain perhaps you could build upon the Google rank that your blog has and start a new one on the same domain.
Again – there would be some branding considerations to keep in mind here and it work work best with a small shift in topic, but it could work in some situations.
5. Stop Writing But Let the Blog Sit as an Archive
I’ve done this a number of times – instead of just deleting my blogs I generally will just stop writing and then let them sit on the web in archive mode.
The benefit of this over completely deleting your blog or letting your domain name lapse and someone else grabbing it is that you keep the option open of using it again later and if you are monetizing it you have the opportunity to keep earning a little money from it in the mean time.
The other benefit is that you still are making your content available to readers who might be loyal to your blog and who want to keep referencing what you’ve written previously.
I’ve seen a number of people take this approach and also take up a more aggressive monetization of the site, do some link building to it and treat it virtually like a more static website that targets search traffic.
6. Redirect Links to a New Project
Another approach to consider if you’re starting a new blog on a similar topic is to set up your old blog and get it redirecting its permalinks over to your new project to help that new project get established with a little extra SEO juice and forwarded readers.
This is something I’ve seen a few SEO types do quite successfully and could be well worth doing instead of deleting your blog and not building upon what you’ve already done.
7. Delete it
This would be my last preference for most blogs but could be an option if you don’t want to keep paying for a domain/hosting and don’t care if your content disappears for ever.
I would probably sell my blog before doing this (or at least sell the domain) but I suspect that this is probably the most common approach among bloggers who simply let their domain names lapse and/or switch off their hosting.
What Have You Done with Old/Dead Blogs?
I’d love to hear what approaches you have taken with your old/dead blogs? Have you done some of the above or have you tried something else. Please share your experiences of ending blogs in comments below.
