Flipping blogs
As promised in my previous post, here is my story, advice, or whatever you want to call it on flipping blogs. Since I most recently sold The Poker Blog I will base the advice on the success of this sale. While I’m describing how to flip blogs, almost all of this applies to selling content sites or communities as well.
Build it
First, you need to build a blog (or website). When you’re building a new blog you should think about what adds value to a website. I try to work on a few key areas that I think will help make a sale.
1. Content - People are looking to buy websites that have a lot of original content. This means less work for them. The beauty of buying an established website is that it already has a lot of content and requires a lot less work. With The Poker Blog I posted everyday for 3 months. I enlisted the help of my friend, Steve, and he posted too. We have over 100 posts in 3 months and every post is a decent size with original content. I cannot stress the importance of providing unique content enough, it keeps visitors coming back and it makes your site much more valuable.
2. PageRank / Backlinks - Getting a high PageRank will help boost your search engine traffic while you own the website and it will also help add value when you’re selling it. People like to see a site with a PR4 or higher, it lets them know the site is established and has a nice number of links coming back to it. I am by no means an Search Engine Optimization expert, but I achieved a PR5 on The Poker Blog very easily. All I did was say yes to people who offered to exchange links with me and post every day. Google loves new content and I was rewarded with a PageRank of 5 on their first update after The Poker Blog launched.
3. Traffic - Another great thing about buying established websites is that they already have a bit of traffic coming to them on a regular basis. My feed at The Poker Blog has 35 people subscribed and I average 100 unique visits a day. Nothing incredible, but it is a great start. If someone wanted to start a new blog about poker it would take at least a month to get to that point (unless your Weblogs, Inc).
Pricing your website
How do you price a website? I’m not sure, actually. You need to include a lot of different factors, including revenue, PageRank, backlinks, traffic, design, maintenance, etc. If you have a great design that took a lot of time it will certainly add to the price. If you have a high PR it will add more to the price. How much more? Only you can decide.
I set the “Buy It Now” option in my auction to $2400 for The Poker Blog. That is almost 20 months of revenue, which is a lot of money for a website - it would take almost two years to recover that money if the website’s revenue stays the same. But I also priced in my unique design, the PageRank, and the established traffic. I may have sold myself short, but I felt like $2400 was a fair amount of money in return for the work I put into the website.
Selling it
Selling a website is easy. Selling it well is not as easy. I sell my websites at SitePoint.com. You can also try Ebay or a number of other forums that have a marketplace for selling websites. I choose SitePoint because I trust a lot of the people on the forum and I have never had a problem.
You need to be 100% honest with your potential buyers. Do not leave out any detail that could influence someone when buying your website. When I sold The Poker Blog my auction included warnings regarding the legalities of advertising poker in the United States, I included an image of the web stats, 3 images proving that the revenue information I provided was true, and I explained my reasons for selling the website. Be as open as you can.
I have sold a lot of websites on SitePoint.com and every sale has gone smoothly because I am as honest as I can be. If someone has a question or a comment about the site I respond as quickly as I can. Some sales get negative comments and people question how honest the seller is, but I have never had that happen, I actually get comments from people that tell me I have a great site!
Flipping websites can be very profitable, it’s actually how I made money all summer because I didn’t have much luck finding a job. I’m glad I didn’t find a real job though, I learned a lot building websites and selling them and it was much more satisfying than working 9-5 all summer.
Related Articles:
- Writer’s block
- Today’s the day to buy a blog.
- Plans for 2006
- Performancing for Firefox
- Interviewed at I Heart Blogs
Great guide to flipping blogs! I think pricing the blog is the hardest part because it shouldn’t be based only on future revenues, PR and design, perhaps it should be approached like a tradititonal company, shouldn’t it?