Blog for Sale: Selling a Blog Part 2
How much is your blog really worth? I know, it’s a suck ass question to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway. But before you answer, let’s set some ground rules.
1. Put aside emotional value.
You cannot attach an emotional price to your blog. We all want to do it, and we all think our blogs are worth their weight in gold, primarily because we work very hard to build them. But for our little excercise here, we have to put this value out of our heads.
2. No Internet Website Value Calculators
If you understand one of the concepts of “link bait” then you know that the main goal of websites like these is to tell people what they want to hear. When it comes to website evaluation calculators this becomes blatantly evident. The most popular calculators among bloggers and webmasters are the calculators that say your blog is worth the most. Once again, any value you’ve gleaned from one of these websites needs to be forgotten.
3. Potential Future Value
We all think we have registered the domain to end all domains and that we are sitting on the next internet phenomena. But I’ve got to tell you, howtogetastudentloanpaidoffblog.com is probably not going to be the next YouTube……
What you think it might be worth someday and what it’s worth now are two different things. If you want to put your blog up for sale, then you need to put a real number to it.
4. Appraisals
Who appraised it? Some guy in a domain or blog forum? Show me a certified appraisal for your website from a company that has actually BROKERED some blogs and that has some large numbers in this department and I’ll say, “maybe.” But if it’s some guy with a username like “blogeggspert” hanging out on sitepoint, then I’m going to have to toss it out of the mix too.
Now that we’ve laid a few rules down, let’s get to the meat of this post. My recent article, How to Sell a Blog caught a lot more attention than I thought it would. It seems there are quite a lot of bloggers out there looking to find a buyer for their weblog.
Since that post, I’ve been doing some more research on just how to sell a blog and what potential blog buyers are looking for. I hate to say I told you so, but I did in the previous article.
Blog buyers are looking for value. Income to be exact.
I spoke with a few real website brokers this week in order to find out what was selling these days. By “real”, I mean brokers that have track records in the millions. Portfolios of happy buyers and sellers totaling $20 million in overall website sales or more. What they told me, really came as no surprise.
It’s a tough market, according to one website / blog broker I spoke with. The buyers he works with want to see real numbers. Traffic is nice, but they want to see the Jerry McGuire movie. “Show me the money.” Profit and Loss (p&l) statements for at least a year, two or more years if they can get them. What the gross income of the blog is, how much you spend each month to get it, and the net income. If you can’t come up with that, you’re probably going to have to sell it on EBAY.
He did tell me that I was right in one regard. There are a few blog and website “flippers” out there looking for sites that hold top search engine listings in very specific niches. That if a site has a top five listing for a very competitive and possibly lucrative term, it might have some bearing on the sale price.
But sadly boys and girls, it doesn’t have as much bearing as most bloggers want it to have. The odds are, you’re not going to get a six figure offer for your bread tie blog anytime soon if it doesn’t have provable income.
It’s not enough just to blog with the hopes of a buyout someday. It’s not enough just to be a blogger. You need to be a business person. You need to make money with your blog if you want to sell it someday. So if you are not making money with your blog now, this is where you should focus your attention.
Monetize that blog. Monetize it correctly and make some verifiable income. Put together a year of solid income history and then see a broker or two. You might just get that six figure paycheck you have been looking for.
Tags: blog broker, blog flipping, Blog Market, buy a blog, sell blogs