Bob has a good post detailing how he built up a blog on the domain Computers.net and sold it for $155,000.
I get asked a lot of questions about how to sell a blog – but as I’m yet to do it I thought I’d do a speedlinking type post on the topic and link to those who’ve had a little more experience with the process:
- Selling a Blog – Interview with Duncan Riley – an interview that I did with Duncan after the sale of Blog Herald.
- Technosailor Sale Update – Aaron Brazell had a few reflections on selling blogs after he cancelled the sale of his.
- Selling Blogs: Thick Skin is a Requirement – Ahmed shares a few reflections on Aaron’s experiences and some from his own as a blog buyer.
- Selling Your Blog: What are Blog Buyers Looking for? – Lorelle shares a few tips on the topic.
- Selling Your Blog: What Goes into the Selling Price? – More good tips from Lorelle
- Blogs for Sale – How Much is Your Blog Worth? – an older post that I wrote on the topic back in 2004
- Why You Can’t Just Sell Your Blog – The Sheriff shares a few thoughts on the topic
My own experience with selling blogs is limited to being an observer and my own approach is to keep ahold of web properties and to build them into ongoing revenue generation streams. I’m not anti selling blogs but it’s just not my style to this point.
The really big amounts that blogs have sold for have generally either come from very established and highly profitable blogs or from those who have something special (like a domain like computers.net) to offer a buyer.
Have you ever bought or sold a blog (or attempted to)? What did you learn from the experience? If you’ve written about it feel free to leave a link to your advice in the comments below.
Thought your readers might be interested in my other post too: http://www.techsoapbox.com/blog-resources-are-in-demand/
THANK YOU!
I think that when selling a blog it’s very important to have the domain and not a blogger or wordpress site.
Plus, if you buy someone’s blog you’re probably have to maintain it. Imagine someone buying problogger.net from Darren. Sure, it’s doing great right now, but I would imagine that the traffic would reduce drastically after people found out it wasn’t Darren anymore.
My point is that with blogs it’s not necessarily the site or domain name, but the person behind it. And you can’t buy people.
http://www.BlogInterviewer.com
Another thing to remember when buying a blog is that you don’t know exactly what that person did to make it succeed in the first place.
You can read Problogger and notice the well written articles, the nice use of color, the user friendly-ness, but you don’t know what kind of work Darren puts into it behind the scenes to drive traffic.
Buy the blogger… Not the blog!
365 Days… One Goal… Can I Do It?
http://onemansgoal.com
I would also chime in and agree with you that the writer and person behind the blog plays a huge role in the success of the blog. It is obvious that Darren has built some long lasting personal relationships with many of his subscribers and has been active in the community too.
If the blog is less personal in nature and is built using systems and content if from a variety of writers then there is a better chance because it is not built on the individual but a team.
As you know Darren I recently sold my young blog for $1000 and there were lots of lower offers, so I am a firm believer that selling a blog is possible and it doesn’t have to be on a fantastic domain. I will be announcing my new blog in a couple of days from now :D
Selling a blog is completely distinct from selling any other site largely because of the personal interaction that’s required to make a success. A sold blog could lose all of its readership and all of its value, depending on the specific loyalty of the readers, without ensuring a smooth handover and similar style of content. I think selling a blog is a much more delicate process.
One of the popular blogs I like to read is called “The Lost Blog” found here: http://www.lostblog.net/ and they recently were sold. No ideas why, but most likely for the money. It was a great blog before, still is a great blog, but from a marketing standpoint, I wonder if it was smart to buy a blog right before the start of an 8 month lull in the show.
Somebody offered to buy one of my websites for a fair price, but I feel the value can be increased and I also prefer the income generation stream model
Darren,
This might help:
How to sell your blog in 3 easy steps.
cheers.
I’ve sold websites before..but not blogs. I imagine it’s the same premise though.. based on traffic, domain name value, regular members, ect.. Good post!
I would think after you build it up and get it to a certain point, if you already haven’t monetized it maybe you should. You’ll pull in a lot more in the long run that way. But then again, you DO have to maintain it, so maybe the quick cash isn’t such a bad idea.
I’d suggest using the free Website Grader tool (http://www.WebsiteGrader.com) to get an overall sense of a blog site (traffic, search rankings, popularity, etc.)
Much better than looking at just Alexa or Technorati (as it incorporates both into its algorithm).
I agreed with you Darren, better keep that on going revenue.
Having sold a blog-ish site for a non-disclosed amount, you can get more if you offer to train the new owners and stay on board for 3 months to a year to help out.
Darren,
i’d say sell and sell often. You can make 6 figures a year if you just keep selling your blogs.
I recently sold one of my blogs that I had built up but then had lost interest in. If I had kept going, I might have made plenty more off of it, but I hadn’t been posting regularly and the traffic was starting to fluctuate. Thought it was better to let it go to someone who could work it than to see it fail.
I wrote briefly about my experience on my personal blog:
http://www.thatedeguy.com/archives/2007/07/anatomy-of-a-blog-sale
It ends up being more of a how-to on small time blog sales, but goes through the experience as well.
The most important thing about a blog is not its design or its traffic, or the amount of money it makes. It is the author. Every blog has a unique style of writing and content. There is no use buying a blog unless you feel you can improve on that same style or duplicate it.
Guess the main asset when selling a blog is the domain…
I wonder: when selling it, what are you exactly selling and what the other party is buying? A look and feel? A domain? The existing content?
As a blog has a different set of usages different than a normal webpage, I don’t get what the value is in it (I am not minusvalorating: I just don’t understand it)…
I could understand someone “buys” a blog to re-orient the content for his interest or something like that but the other approach (buying the blog) it’s something I can hardly understand :-)
Thanks for your blog and please, don’t sell it!!!! :-)
Regards from Spain :-)
Interesting article and comments. Thnaks for the list of resources too. Actually both sets of suggestions make sense: keep it as long as it is giving you what you want (including revenue), and sell it when it makes sense to do so.
I agree if you have a steady source of good income why sell.
Darren,
Thanks for this post. The “about” page on Bob Caswell’s blog has given me some ideas for the “about” page on a new blog I just started, “Anecdotes and Images,” which is intended to be a blog where just about anyone can post public domain material related to the American Civil War.
my blog brought in it’s first bit of money today. i’ve made $17 so far and will continue to make 25% of the revenue generated by this poker player.
my site is pokerlife.wordpress.com. i’m really happy.
Hi Darren:
Well I an relative infant in terms of blogging. I only started to monetize with Goodle Adsense and an affiliation with a book publisher. But the traffic to my site is still quite small. I also write for ezinearticles. There my readership is building everyday, but is not translating to my Blog.
I enjoy your insights.
Gilles
http://www.themeaningisyou.com
Funny you should run this, Darren. Lately I’ve grown a bit tired of blogging. I’ve put in some effort over the past couple of months to get more Adsense Revenue – tweaking the layout etc. and whilst it’s paid off to the point where I average about $3 a day from Adsense now (when it used to be bugger-all) and I get a bit from affilates, we’re still only talking a net return of about $100 a month – not enough to give up the day job. So I thought I’d see what the thing’s worth – bearing in mind it’s only a blog – I have my own URL but it’s a hosted domain. I have 30,000 uniques a month now and some decent backlinks (like boingboing.net and The Sydney Morning Herald) and my landing page is PR5 but some of the pages are sporting PR4 and even PR3. So I was quite pleasantly surprised when someone offered me US$1000 for it yesterday. But now I find myself torn – should I sell or not? I’ve had this blog for nearly two years and its only just been picked up by boingboing – which was always my benchmark for having “cracked it”. /:-)
i would like to sell my blog ,can u teach me and how much i can sell it ?
Can’t say that I have bought or sold one yet. Hopefully in the future though, maybe not as much as computers.net but hopefully for a well off price.
I do have a blog and it is new. Thanks I have been learnt a lot from your post above!
I will focus on giving value content like this:
http://www.MoneyScooter.com
maybe the next, business going to be, build a blog market, to sell and buy.
another idea, something like virtual stock for bloggers, and have some shares from the blogs, sharing the earnings …
;-D
Hey Darren
I have a new marketplace just for buying and selling blogs called UsedBlogs. ( I was surprised the name was available. I think it works perfect for this marketplace. )
It’s in pre launch now, so not much traffic, but that should change soon.
I made a special voucher for your readers that will allow them to setup unlimited auctions for 60 days for free ( ends August 10th 08 ). That’s for just the setup fee. There aren’t any commission fees by the way. Here’s the voucher code:
6fbc2e501055
Regards
Tim Phelan
I dont intend to sell my blog .becasuse it gives me a good revenue !
check it out
http://www.lingeriezone.blogspot.com
how much and how to put the price when i want to sell it ?
please come to velue my blog.
Even I don’t want to sell my new blog but still I have few older blogs. I intend to sell them but whose is ready to get them?
My new blog URL: http://www.newbloggingtipz.blogspot.com