Jacob writes an interesting piece on Selling Blogs as someone who has been on the buying end of things in his purchase of CSS Vault:
‘A blog in my opinion is groomed and gets its personality from the author/creator. How can this atmosphere be recreated when the site is no longer being run by that person? Sure you could get someone to imitate, but never perfectly recreate the same atmosphere that was there before. The blog just wouldn’t be the same without the original owner. Deals can be worked out to keep the original author on for a certain amount of time, but you’ve got to think that deal will come to an end some day….
If you do ever plan to sell your blog, I recommend that you put on a few extra coats of skin. A blog is something that is part of that person….’
Wise words from Jacob. Many blogs revolve around a person or personality – to buy one of these without a deal for the authorship to continue would not be a wise move.
Other blogs however are less about the author and more about the the topic and might be more suitable for selling. I look over my stable of blogs and would say that ProBlogger is probably one of two quite personal blogs – (it’d be hard to sell for this reason) but that many of my other blogs could easily be transferred to a new owner and/or author without anyone really caring too much.
Sure, many blogs ~ and ProBlogger is one of them ~ are extensions of the blogger’s mind. It would be difficult to replace the originator. I’m reminded of those attempts to provide sequels to famous novels : Gone With the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, the James Bond stable, they’ve all been attempted with very limited success.
I think some of the newer commercial blog networks that are essentially group blogs, with a variety of guest bloggers, could be successfully sold on, provided the new owner subscribed to the prevailing methodology, or bettered it. These are different animals though to what we normally think of as a blog : a projection of the consciousness of an originative intellectual worker. Try replacing Seth Godin, for example, or Dave Winer at Scripting News.
It’s horses for courses.
It really depends on the type of that blog, i’m not a pro enough to state my opinion clearly here, but i think that blogs that was created intentionally to earn money can be sold if its’ sellers (owners) didn’t leave their “personality-prints” on it…
Heat