On Selling and Buying Blogs

by Shai Coggins on July 25th, 2007

Quite a while back, I interviewed b5media CEO and business partner, Jeremy Wright, on professional blogging and buying/selling blogs. Other than his thoughts on personal and professional blogging, he also shared the following ideas about blog-buying and selling:

… a blog is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. In truth, though, most people value blogs based on what they earn. Typically, 10-20 times earnings is what most blogs are “worth”. However, that can go up or down depending on a variety of factors (such as what would happen if the owner stopped writing, how many income streams there are, how much traffic growth there is, how many subscribers to the feed there are, etc).

Jeremy Wright On Weblogs, Professional Blogging and Buying/Selling Blogs

… selling your blog is hard. It’s hard on you emotionally. It can be a roller coaster ride and at the end of it, you may not get very much money for your hard work. Unless you are writing blogs specifically to sell them (ie: built to flip), it is unlikely that you will earn decent money from selling your blog.
Anyone should think long and hard before buying a blog but, if they are willing to put in the work it can be incredibly rewarding personally and from a business standpoint.
… be smart. Don’t just buy the biggest blog or the prettiest blog. Buy the right blog for you and your interests.
I suspect we’ll see more and more people building blogs simply to flip them and, as the website buyer industry increases its awareness of blogs, we’ll see those blogs getting sold. I’m sure many small scale bloggers who have personal blogs will consider selling their blogs for a quick bit of cash, but most won’t sell it, or will get offers so low they’ll return to their personal blogs for the main reason they started them: for love of blogging.

b5media.com