Things to consider when you are buying a Blog

Posted by Jacob on Apr 3, 2010 in Blogging Tips | 0 comments

Did you ask your self first why do you want to buy a Blog? How much do you know about blogging? If you are new in this business I won’t recommend you to start your very first blog by buying it. It’s always wise to gather information before you jump into a conclusion.

Starting a Blog from the scratch is not as easy as it sounds if it’s your first time. If you are planning to setup a successful blog it’s not the content you need to only worry but few other factors as well. Different people have different opinions regarding this. In this business you will hear the phrase “Content is the King”. I do agree but you cannot just build contents over night unless you have been saving all your ideas and notes for a long time to start a blog and put them up. If you have already got ideas and research ready I would like to congratulate you because you have definitely found a niche and a topic that you would like to write about.

When you start a blog from the scratch you get no traffic (reader) initially. You will need to focus on getting your site indexed by Search Engines, Generate Traffics, Design the layout of your site, Optimize search engines and key-words for your contents. If all these sound alien to you then you are definitely not ready to buy a blog yet.

A blog does not become a super hit over night. For an example you have opened a new shop with a huge range of products. If you don’t do proper marketing, advertisements you cannot just expect people will be rushing to your shop and buy. But if you had bought an existing business, which is already established for a while, got goodwill, well decorated, stocks in order then you can skip all those initial hard works and focus more on your future plans. Concept of buying a blog is exactly the same. So ask your self how much time and money you got at your disposal. If you have got all the time in your hand go ahead and create your own blog. But if you are up against time and you don’t want to spend much time creating a new blog or someone selling a blog that you are interested in then buying would be the better option for you.

Once you have decided to buy a blog I want to share couple of tips for buying a blog.

Do not buy a blog on a topic that you know nothing about.

Try to gather as much information you can about the Blog. The blog’s traffic reports, SEO ranking reports, revenue data etc.

Don’t take the sellers word for it. I was looking for a blog to buy once. What ever the seller mentioned on his note I could match nothing on the original site. They will say anything to sell.

Find out why they are selling. There could be reason like seller getting good money or not interested in the topic anymore but there could be other reasons like, is the niche that the blog is in falling? Was the site penalized in search engines?

Have a plan. I would expect you already have a plan what you want to do with the blog and why you are buying it or you would not come this far to buy a blog without a plan of action.

How to calculate a Blog value:

There is no standard way to measure a blogs value. But you can still estimate a value considering some important factor as Audience (what niche the blog is covering and what type of visitors it is attracting), Content (how original or unique the contents are), Search engine ranking, Traffic, Inbound links, Design, Potentials and most important is the Profit.

You can estimate annual profit by multiplying the monthly profits by 12.

For a website

Assets = (Design Value + Subscriber Value + Technology Value + Niche Value)

Blog is like a Virtual real estate. You need to learn your market well. To understand the current niche and the blog value it’s good to check the popular blog sales sites and see what prices they go for.

Most active website auction marketplace is Flippa