How Much Would You Sell Your Blog For?
Written by George Manty · September 20, 2007
Recently, an Internet marketer who sells quite a few info products, approached me about buying my blog. I wasn’t really considering putting this blog up for sale, but I decided it would not hurt to see what he had to offer.
He wanted me to get back to him with a price, so I had to do some pricing research. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the prices that blogs normally sell for. From doing research, it seemed like fair market value for the blog would be somewhere between 12,000 and 30,000. When I looked at my current plans and made a realistic estimate at next years profits from this blog I came up with a higher number than 12,000-30,000. So, I went ahead and asked for a price that was over 30,000 dollars. I don’t want to give specific numbers in case someone else offers to buy my blog in the future. Also, the number I gave was higher than the number I would have taken.
I personally just couldn’t see selling this blog for it’s fair market value, because of the plans that I have for it. If he had made an offer at the upper end of it’s fair market value, I would have seriously considered it. I am glad he didn’t make an offer that was in my “I don’t know” range. He made it quite easy to turn down the offer.
The price I ultimately asked for was pretty close to the numbers being discussed in the sale of the Blog Herald. The potential buyer let me know that on average he was buying similar blogs to mine for under 10,000 dollars. He actually, gave me an exact number, but I don’t want to reveal it.
That’s when I changed from selling mood to buying mood!
I mean if I could buy a bunch of blogs with similar content and traffic to mine for under 10,000 dollars each… I am pretty sure I could make my money back in no time and have a nice network of blogs for fairly cheap. Alternatively, I could buy other people’s blogs, monetize them better and then flip them. That’s actually a business I would really enjoy.
Needless to say I have not sold my blog. However, the conversations I had with the potential buyer did help me to think more about what I need to do with this blog to make it more remarkable.
So, after going through this whole process, I am REALLY interested in knowing…
What would you be willing to sell your blog for?
Take the poll below and/or leave a comment to let me know.
Well done! I would add more choices to that poll, as there are many sites that would be sold in the $100-$250 range all the way up to $1MM+. The Huffington Post just got a multi-million dollar round of VC - so that just goes to show that the investors planned on making that back tenfold at some point down the road.
Of course, not every blog is in the same universe as the Huffington Post, but I think a lot of us are trying to get there.
Wendy,
I thought about adding more options, but I didn’t want to add too many options, because I have found that people vote less when there are too many choices.
And yes, it would be great to be in the same universe as the Huffington post or TechCrunch.
Geez George…give me a call, I will let my best ranked blog go for cheap.
digitalnomad,
How much traffic do you get?
PS. The blog you left in your sig is not working anymore.
Oh nevermind, you just mispelled blogspot. I fixed it.
BTW - I would never buy a blogspot blog, because you never know when Google might take it away.
George,
Hey! Neat post. I voted. Listen you can buy a blog, but you cant buy a personality, so I really dont see what would be the point.
Have a great weekend!
Andrea,
I agree. That is one of the reasons I was considering it. I figured if I created a new blog and got the word out, at least some of my regular visitors would follow me.
The reason a person would want to buy a blog (me included) is for the content and links. Blogs tend to have very search engine friendly content and lots of natural links. You might lose the community when you lose the person behind the blog, but you keep the Search Engine traffic.
Hmmm, I can’t see or vote in that poll, it’s giving me mysql errors, but anyway… I can see in this type of blog, that it would be worthwhile. With mine, it’s really about my little guy and our designs (it’s on the same site as the business and showcases new designs), so it wouldn’t be to our advantage to sell it unless we sold the business, and even still I wouldn’t sell the personal parts. Guess I need to start another blog in order to consider that ;). I’m keeping it forever, at least that’s my plan for now ;).
Agree with most of the above, and also a quick reminder that the poll is currently not functioning and has MySQL errors.
It is really only worth buying blogs where the content is not 100% reliant on the personality and characteristics of the owner. How long would the Shoemoney blog last if Schoemaker actually left?
I will have to get in touch with blogflux about the poll.
@Mark
Good point about Shoemoney.
@MamaDuck
Thanks for commenting. I can’t imagine you selling your blog either. It is the perfect example of a blog that wouldn’t be the same without the owner.
I just went over the blogflux (where my poll is hosted) and it is completely down. Hopefully it be back up soon.
I think your Poll is okay now… I’ve voted on it. About the poll. You can buy great blog but with out the maker’s knowledge you couldn’t continue keeping it great unless you have great knowledge on how to improve and monetize it better.
Seo ( if that is your real name
),
It started working shortly after it went down.
Thanks for visiting,
George
If a blog is built by a person, who puts there own thoughts into it and there personality how does someone gain from buying there blog. Do you still comment on it and make posts after the sale is complete.
I don’t think I could sell my blog. It has become a part of me and well I guess might if the numbers were good. After all I am here to try and make some money as well. And you could always start another one fast enough just based on the emails you have saved from peoples comments to let them know your somewhere else.
Collin,
It really depends. I think some blogs are more “flippable” than others.
What would make a blog flippable? This was a good post by the way. I do enjoy reading the comments sometimes as much as the post.
Cheers!
Interesting article George, its very hard to work out an accurate price on what a site is worth, I guess at the end of the day if you can make more money from it over a couple of years than what you could sell it for I think it is worth hanging on to.
Which brings the hard decisions about flipping sites, if you monetize them so they are bringing in good money, do you really want to then on sell them?
A good site is simply better than money in the bank! (I think anyway )
Chessnoid and Rob,
I may answer your questions in a separate post, otherwise I will respond tomorrow.
Good questions.
I need to discuss this topic some more, but I also wanted to let you know that I just wrote about a new product that Ed Dale is releasing about the ins and outs of flipping websites.
You can see my post here:
http://www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com/index.php/20071007-the-biggest-mistakes-people-make-when-buying-and-selling-web-sites/
All the best,
George