How To Sell Your Blog: Top Factors

Author: Panah | Tags: buy blogs, sell blogs
Filed under: Buying a blog, Make Money Blogging | Comments

I am personally not a big fan of selling blogs. The blogs that I have started during my career are usually about topics that I am very passionate about. But from time to time you get an offer that is hard to refuse. Sometimes you may need the money to expand your business or pay for an emergency situation. Selling a popular blog can net you a lot of money if you play your cards right. You shouldn’t undersell your blog under any circumstances. If you have worked hard to generate valuable content for your users and have created an authority blog, there is no reason to sell it too much lower than its real value.

I still remember the first blog that I sold a while ago. I had blogged on it for 2 years, and it had some decent traffic. It wasn’t an authority website by any means but it certainly had a lot of potential. I listed it for $25,000 thinking that it would sell overnight. What I didn’t realize was that people were going to ask me to justify the price for them. Justifying the value of a decent blog is not that hard, but you’ve got to know what factors to focus on if you want to get paid for your hard work. People are not going to part ways with their money that easily, and you shouldn’t expect them to. Your goal is not to sell a piece of junk to your customer. You want both sides to be happy with the purchase. That’s why you should spend time to create a proper valuation sheet for your blog to convey to your customers why they should pay what you are asking for your blog.

Here are the factors that I use to value my own blog:

• Traffic: traffic is one of the most important parts of the equation. If you’ve got no real traffic, you are going to struggle to justify the price.
• Community: your community is a big part of the transaction well. The number of your RSS subscribers does matter here as well.
• Posts: your number of posts also matter here. The more quality posts you have, the better.
• Technorati/Alexa: I am not a big fan of Alexa rankings, but that’s what people look at to value your blog. Don’t dismiss it.
• PR: your blog’s PageRank shouldn’t matter, but it does. Pay attention to it.
• Revenue: your monthly review is another important factor here. The more money you are making per month, the more you can ask for your blog. I usually multiply my revenue by 3 and add that to my final valuation number.
• Domain value: if you have a killer domain, don’t underestimate the value of your blog. You can use sites such as BuyDomains to figure out how much your domain may be worth.
• Social Media value: if you have dedicated social media accounts for your blog, those need to be included with your blog as well. Don’t undervalue these assets. Your Facebook & Twitter accounts do have some value.
• Domain Age: you should charge a decent amount of money for your older domains. Remember, you can’t just take a shortcut when it comes to age. A domain that has been around for years is much more valuable than a new domain.
• SEO Value: if you have been doing your own SEO on your blog, you should include that as a part of your valuation.
• Forums: if you have a forum on your blog, you’ve got to count the size of your forum in your valuation formula. Your forum is a big part of your business, so don’t underestimate its value.
• Other Assets: if you have a logo or a custom design for your blog, you have to include those costs in your valuation as well.
• Support: if you are to provide after sale support, make sure you include the cost in your valuation.

Selling a blog is never fun. I wish everybody could keep his/her blog forever. But if you have to sell, make sure you provide a solid valuation document to justify your price. Remember, you are selling a business and not just a casual blog.

Don’t forget to read the first part to learn more on how to sell your blog.

Should You Buy a Blog or Start One?

Author: Panah | Tags: buy blogs
Filed under: Blogging Strategies, Start a Blog | Comments

You may have heard this question before: “Build it or Buy it?” That’s goes around a lot in business schools. In essence, you want to figure out if you are better off making something (a business usually) from scratch as opposed to buying an existing solution. The same concept applies to blogs as well. You can start your own blog and hope to get ranked on Google in 6 months, or you can pay a premium to own a blog that has been around for a year or two, and has already passed the Google Sandbox issues. So how do you know which option is better for you? After all, you just wouldn’t jump into buying a business out of the blue without doing much research, would you?

Buying a blog is often as complicated if not more than starting one. You can buy a blog that has been around for a few months but has been stagnant for that month. While blog turnaround could be a very lucrative business, it is often complicated and not worth the efforst. In essence, when evaluating this decision, you want to pay attention to the following factors:

• Blog Age: blog age is one of the most important factors that you need to consider before buying one. If a blog is less than a couple of months old, you are always better off creating one than picking up the 2 months old blog. Things are very different if the domain that the blog is hosted on is more than a couple of years old. You want to avoid Google’s Sandbox at any cost possible, so the blog age can be very valuable to you and your business.
• Blog Traffic: depending on the premium that you will have to pay for a blog, you want to make sure there is a steady amount of traffic coming to that blog. If the blog gets 0 traffic every month, then you want to make sure you can justify the premium.
• SEO Links: when you think about starting a business, it is always good to have the option to take a few shortcuts on the way. SEO is something that you need to do for any blog. But you will have to do more of it for a brand new blog than an already optimized blog. If you find a blog that already has a lot of incoming links with optimized anchor texts, then it is definitely worth it to consider buying that blog. But again it all comes down to the premium that you are asked to pay for that blog. Buying blogs is anything but cheap, so you want to make sure you are making the most out of your money.
• Blog Structure: when you buy a blog, you want to make sure that you won’t have to make drastic changes that could turn the current readership off. So you want to make sure the blog your are considering buying has the right platform, design, and can be turnaround without making significant changes (knowing that changing platforms could be a big headache).

“Build or Buy” decision is anything but easy, but it should all come down to maximizing your time and money. The option that allows you to do both is often the right one.