I recently sold one of my personal blogs and didn’t realize, until it was over, how difficult it would be to let go! I decided to sell for a variety of reasons – the amount of work going into the blog wasn’t corresponding to enough pay, and although I adore the topic, I was starting to feel burned out writing about it on a daily basis. Sure, I probably could have monetized the blog more effectively, but I couldn’t commit to that time and decided it was now or never.
Throughout the sale I did some research, learned a ton, and so I thought I would share my top 5 tips for selling a blog:
- Be Realistic:
This is a hard one, or at least it was for me! I mean, I wrote on this blog daily for two years. I had a Google PageRank of 4. That should be worth something, right? Well, in the blogging world – not really. When you’re selling a blog most times the buyer looks only at the amount of profit your site obtains. And that’s not last year’s spike in income – it is today’s profit. In the bricks and mortar world, most companies will sell for 2-3 years of the total net income, but online I found that it’s only 1 year. That was a little hard to digest!And those website value calculators? A buyer could really care less!
- Gather Documentation:
No matter how you sell your site (an auction website or broker), you will need a variety of documentation – the most important being your traffic and your income. You are going to need at least three months history of your statistics including traffic, unique visitors, bounce rate, etc. You will also need to put together a P&L for the last year (or more) that provides proof of payments from your various income sources (ad sales, Google AdSense, blogads, whatever). Get everything together beforehand so you can show documentation when asked. - Own Your URL:
This wasn’t an issue for me, but I’ve seen people try to sell out their LiveJournal and Blogspot accounts, and it’s pretty touchy … You are much better off owning your own domain and paying to host it. Your blog needs to be a real web property. What I mean by this is that it needs to be a real domain, on hosting you are paying for. - Be Available:
Be available to your potential buyers during the sales process and after. You may need to answer questions, provide additional documentation, and of course you’ll need to transfer all the data in a timely fashion after the sale. - Offer Additional Elements:
With the sale of my blog, I also offered up the Facebook and Twitter account (with 2500 followers) I had developed for the site. I’m not sure if this influenced the price (I doubt it did) but it may be a good factor if you don’t have a huge amount of traffic on your blog. Your social media efforts and development will only enhance the sale and prove that you were vested in building an audience for the blog.
I’m proud of the way the transaction went, even though I had to swallow my ego and accept a reasonable offer (far below my initial expectations).
What tips do you have for selling a blog?
Nikki Katz is the Managing Editor for the BlogWorld Blog. Feel free to follow her Twitter @nikki_blogworld and @katzni
Image Credit: SXC
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