I make the real estate analogy often when I describe how to sell a blog. When a blogger sells a blog it can be just as personal as putting the family home on the market. You’ll also have to do some upkeep and make reparations in order to have a blog worth selling. Just as you would with a house, you’ll have to make sure your blog is staged properly, and also, that you have an asking price in mind.
Prepping Your Blog for Sale
When you’re ready to sell, you want to be sure your blog appeals to potential buyers. Though there are several ways to do this, there are three areas a potential buyer looks into the most.
1. Traffic: Obviously, the more traffic your blog has, the higher price you will receive when you sell. Most buyers will ask for proof of traffic so if you’re on a downward spiral, it won’t bode well in your favor. When I made the decision to sell, I worked hard at building traffic for several months in order to appeal to buyers. I studied search terms, gauged the needs of my community,posted content two to three times a day and promoted the heck out of my blog and its content.
2. SEO: If your blog reaches the top of the search engines, you’ll attract potential buyers. Though my blog had been at the top of many important search terms for several years, I continued to use those keywords and phrases to stay at the top. This doesn’t men that I wrote spammy SEO copy, because I didn’t – my community always came first. However, freelance writing blogs are a dime a dozen and I knew it was only a matter of time before I was dethroned from Google’s top spots.
3. Revenue: If you want top dollar, you’ll have to be taking in a decent amount of revenue. Serious buyers want ROI action. I had a heavily monetized blog which helped my bottom line. If you’re selling a blog or website, revenue is the single most important factor in determining a price. To prep for sale I built relationships with several private advertisers and now the new owner has continued those relationships. I also worked on other revenue streams. If I didn’t earn at least several thousand per month in revenue, my blog would not have been as attractive to potential buyers.
Everything else such as community, subscribers, and bells ans whistles are gravy on the proverbial potatoes, but it’s those big three details that matter the most.
Determining a Price for Your Blog
My biggest dilemma in selling my blog was in asking for and receiving a fair price. I did a little research on the subject and while there are a few links available, truthfully there’s not much out there that gives step by step details in regard to how to sell a blog. Fortunately, I have a friend who flips blogs and web properties on a regular basis and he was able to advise me through the process.
I learned:
- Private sale is better than a public auction for a blog the size of mine. The folks who buy and sell websites at auction or mostly doing so with smaller properties or domain names and the bids are lowballs. So, I reached out to the people who have inquired about buying my blog in the past. I also reached out to a few webmasters and network owners who might be interested.
- A rule of thumb is a year’s income times two or three, plus monetary consideration for search engine rankings and daily traffic.
- The amount of money spent on the blog each year is also a factor. For example, I paid ten bloggers and a webmaster, plus various guest bloggers. This amount doesn’t figure favorably into the bottom line.
- I had a price in mind, but also asked for two appraisals. The appraisals put the blog at a lower price than I originally intended, but a lot more than I expected to receive – if that makes any sense. I sold my blog at two years income, plus extra consideration for the search engine rankings and other amenities including a large Facebook group, 11,000+ RSS readers, a newsletter and more.
Next up…
When we continue this series, we’ll discuss how to reach out and what to present to potential buyers. Thanks to all who have reached out via email, Twitter, or comments – I hope you continue to find this series useful. In the upcoming weeks we’ll discuss everything I went through in selling my blog. I hope it helps you when it comes time to sell your own.
If you found this helpful, please see the other posts in this series:
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