There are a lot of ways to make money with your blog. You can write a sponsored post, invite businesses to fill up ad space on your website, or include affiliate links on your blog posts. But do you know how to sell a blog for profit?
In this article, we will not be talking about the conventional ways of monetizing your blog; we will discuss an overlooked method of profiting from your blogs which are selling your entire blog website.
Flipping a website might look easy on paper, but this activity requires strategic planning to succeed. If you’re planning to sell your blog soon, this article is for you. We’ll discuss how to prepare your blog for sale, how to price it, and where to list your blog.
So if you’re ready to make that extra money, then let’s get right to it.
Preparing Your Blog for Sale
1. Know your numbers
Interested buyers will always want the intricate details of your website before they give further thought to whether they’ll buy it or not. The details here pertain to the numbers behind your website.
Before you sell your blog, make sure to know your average monthly traffic, monthly profit, engagement numbers, etc. An excellent tool that can help you with this is Google Analytics. It’s a free tool that can provide a lot of metrics to your website. The tool can show you the number of website visitors you had weekly and the number of interactions your visitors made in a certain time frame (viewing pages, link clicking, product purchase).
Google Analytics can also help determine your bounce rate which shows how many visitors closed your website or hit the back button. Although it’s not a metric that highlights your website, it still shows transparency to your potential buyers.
Aside from website metrics, you also need to show your financial statements. This tells your buyers how your website is financially performing and the other business activities it’s involved with. Your financial statement will give a clear picture of whether your website is profitable or has not seen an ROI yet.
A common metric shown by blog owners would be their email subscribers. Having an engaged email list is an excellent accomplishment for any website. This tells your prospects that your emails are highly read by your market and are anticipated by your audience. It can also mean that any marketing material coming from your website will always have a high engagement rate.
Another number that you can show would be on the side of your social media accounts. Potential buyers want to know if your website has a solid social media presence. If the numbers you present here are outstanding, the higher the chance you’ll impress your buyers.
The more metrics you can explain to your buyers, the better. Give them several time frames so they put things into perspective.
These buyers won’t purchase a website randomly. Chances are they already have an idea of what they want to do with a blog which means they need a certain set of criteria to be met. Most of the buyers you’ll meet here are up-and-coming businesses or brands in your niche.
These businesses don’t want the hassle and effort of building a website from the ground up. They don’t want this since a brand needs time to build an audience and have a solid presence in its industry.
Although bumping your numbers up might be appealing to your buyers, they would greatly appreciate it if you were honest with them. State your true metrics and average numbers. If they are the right buyer for your blog, they wouldn’t need made-up metrics.
2. Aim to increase your blog’s profit
When bloggers sell their websites, they don’t immediately list or advertise them the day after their decision. It’s usually down the road when they plan to sell it – the usual timeframe could be around six months to a year.
Since their date of selling the website is still far, they strive to increase their website’s profitability during that time frame. Now you might ask, why are they putting so much effort into their blog when they’re just going to sell it?
The answer to that is the higher the profit of your website, the higher the price you can sell it for. The concept is the same as when an investor buys an entrepreneur’s business. The businessman can’t sell his business for a million dollars when it’s only averaging a monthly profit of $10,000. The numbers just don’t add up.
So if you want to sell your blog for a higher price, make sure to do everything you can to increase its profitability.
To help you with this, here are some ways on how you can do it:
- Sell ad space
- Joining affiliate programs
- Talk to your audience
- Accept sponsored blog post
- Engage in social media marketing
- Create digital resources (eBooks, courses, seminars, etc.)
- Work on your PR
By doing these activities, you’re increasing your value to your market. More people will read your blogs, inquire about sponsored posts, and buy your digital products. All of this will ultimately affect your blog’s profitability.
Look at how Vidizmo uses its blogs to talk about topics like video sharing platforms and video marketing to relate it to their product software. This is a creative way to sell digital products, provide value, and boost revenue.
3. Build an engaged audience
No one will buy your blog if it’s a ghost town. If no one interacts with your blog or even reads your content, then no person will be interested in buying it. They would rather build a new website or purchase a blog with more engagements.
Remember that most buyers are looking to buy a website because they want an existing audience already. If you can present that you have an engaged audience that religiously interact with your post and inquire your products, then this will make your website more appealing
To build an engaged audience, here are some ideas to help you:
3.a Understand what your audience wants
Understanding your market is vital to any growth marketing endeavor. If you can’t answer this at the back of your head, then you haven’t done enough research about your market. Every set of audiences wants something specific from your website.
If you’ve been writing about general topics, it’s time to experiment on more specific topics and drill down on your niche. Look at how this website educates its readers about detoxing from substances. Given that they are a rehabilitation center, their audience is most likely looking to change their ways and avoid harmful substances. The topics are specific in helping and educating their market.
3.b Create attention-grabbing headlines
Some blogs wonder why, even though their content is excellent, no one clicks on their blogs. A common solution to that scenario is that bloggers don’t create attention-grabbing headlines. Your headline serves as your opportunity to entice or persuade your market to read the whole blog post.
An attention-grabbing headline can also be in a form that answers the questions of your market. Take a look at Mrs. Property Solutions’ titles on how they curate for its readers. It is location-specific and is clear on what the blog’s topic will be about.
3.c Engage with your audience
Any audience wants to be interacted with. They want their comments and replies to be recognized by the blogger – this is especially true for comments in question form. Once you provide valuable information and go the lengths of answering their questions, you are increasing your value to your market.
An example is how Transparent Labs always takes time off their day to respond to questions, whether it’s about body transformation, their whey products, or a discount code.
3.d Implement personalization strategies
Personalization is widely used in the business industry and can help with different facets of a business. This strategy helps create successful email marketing campaigns, improve engagement metrics, lower cart abandonment emails, and increase conversion.
Adding a personalized touch to your content is usually a sure way to build an engaged audience. When people receive content that speaks to them and answers their problems, they are more likely to read the whole post or buy some products.
3Wishes, a lingerie and Halloween costume store, is an excellent example of a website that uses personalization very well. Each product has multiple variations to cater to the different needs of their market.
4. Have a clean track record
Aiming to have a clean track record is another additional point for interested buyers. This makes them feel that their investment is a safe one. So before you sell your blog, make sure not to be involved or do any activity that can make Google penalize your site.
A Google penalty punishes a website whose content doesn’t abide by Google’s marketing practices. The penalty can make your website less likely to be found in the search engine. This can render your website invisible to interested people to buy your various products.
Here are some activities that you should avoid to steer clear of Google’s penalties:
4.a Buying links
Buying links is the process of paying another website to insert a link to your website on one of their pages. Some websites do this since it artificially boosts their search engine rankings. However, Google’s algorithm can detect when a website does this act.
4.b Duplicate content
Duplicate content is completely copying an already published post of another website. Google sees this act as plagiarism and lacks originality. When Google’s algorithm detects complete duplicate content, it will penalize the website.
4.c Keyword stuffed content
The use of keywords is important for any content that wants to rank. Some websites believe that the more keywords they use in their content, the higher the chance of ranking on the first page.
However, when a website overdoes this activity and is already using keywords just to stuff it even though it’s irrelevant, Google sees this as unnecessary. This will result in Google giving a penalty to the website.
5. Make the blog less personal
When your blog has too much of your personality on it, this might discourage your buyers since they want a website that still functions and receives the same engagement even though you’re no longer involved with it.
A way of making the blog less personal would be turning your blog into a multiple-author website. According to some websites, this initiative can help you transition your website to another owner smoothly.
If you’re the only writer on your website and if another entity buys it and the readers see that it’s no longer you that is writing the blog posts, this can cause other people to not interact with the site’s content anymore.
A good example is GroveHR’s website, wherein it has multiple authors discussing performance reviews, employee engagement, employee onboarding, etc.
6. Make your website interactive
If an interactive website fits the theme of your brand, then doing this can separate you from your other websites. Go for stylish themes rather than the plain old style of all texts and no images type of website. If you have a web designer, convey your vision for your website.
If your website is clearly outdated, this only means the buyer will have a lot of rework to do. They’ll need to hire an external party or employee to make the website lively and look up to date. This only means that the aesthetic of your website also plays a role in the decision-making of your buyers.
Look at how this site used big videos and images to make its website beautiful to look at. It even used a slider feature to display the services and facilities that it offers to its market.
Another example is Close’s website that sells predictive dialers and other sales tools. Its homepage incorporates images, videos, and GIFs to show its market how easy it is to use its software.
Doing things that are out of the normal can benefit your website. It can give people a fresh view of things and may consider your site to be better than the rest. This initiative can increase your web traffic metric. It can make people stay longer, remember your website, and share it with their network.
7. Show best practices
When the buyer asks more about how you’ve handled the blog, show them that you’ve been incorporating the best practices. Show the buyers you’ve been using the keywords appropriately and adequately. You can also present how you’ve been using meta descriptions and blog tags.
If buyers see that the website and the blogs have been taken care of properly, it gives them more confidence that your website is a good investment for them.
Here are ideas to give you an idea of the best practices for blogs:
- Use the right keywords
- Having the right keyword density for blog posts
- Producing high-quality posts
- Adding blog tags
- Linking externally and internally
- Including meta descriptions
- Filling up the alt description for images
- Proper use of headings
As you’ve just read, there are multiple ways to prepare your blog for sale. What’s important is to have a longer time frame before you list your site. This gives you more room to improve the metrics and the site’s profitability. It also gives you more time to fix and incorporate the proper optimization if you haven’t applied it before.
Preparing your blog is only one part of the process; you also need to know how to properly price your blog and where you should list it. Take note of the following sections since they will help you with the other processes of selling your website.
What Should Be The Sale Price Of Your Blog
There are a lot of valuation formulas for determining the sale price of your website. Some use complex ones, while others are good with a straightforward approach. A typical valuation formula is taking the average monthly net profit of the blog over the past six to twelve months and multiplying it to a certain multiple.
In the article on determining how your website is worth, we stated that multiple signifies the number of years of net profit that the business is worth. Buyers usually see multiple as the amount of time needed to go by before they can recoup their initial investment.
A 5x multiple could mean that the buyer expects that it will take five years for them to have an ROI. The same goes if the multiple is 3x or 2x. The only time the buyer decides the multiple is if they offered you a price.
Where To List Your Blog For Sale
One of the most prominent marketplace for selling websites is Flippa. Flippa is an online marketplace that facilitates the meeting of buyers and sellers to buy and sell digital assets and businesses.
Flippa is filled with serious buyers of other businesses. This is a better and faster option than just marketing your website on social media platforms. That route usually attracts scammers unless you have a strict screening process that weeds out the serious buyers from the bogus ones.
If you don’t have the time and resources to set up this process, Flippa can do this for you. The website awards users with the title of “Super Seller” and “Super Buyer” if they’ve met certain conditions.
Flippa also uses identity verification features. Users can show more about themselves and build trust with other users. They can verify their phone number and credit card to engage in several auctions. Users can also connect their socials to their accounts to have more credibility.
As for payments, Flippa does a great job in securing transactions. The website offers various options to make or accept payments. Flippa suggests going for the escrow service wherein a third party secures funds until the website assets are transferred to the buyer.
Conclusion
There are a lot of ways on how you can prepare to sell your blog. Strategic preparation is needed to get the best price for your website. Another tip for website sellers would be to have patience.
Sometimes, even if you’ve done the steps above, it will take some time to find the perfect buyer. There will be times that you will negotiate with a buyer, and the deal won’t push through – that’s perfectly normal. If you think the price isn’t right, don’t sell yourself short. You can always wait for the next interested buyer.
Patience is also needed when trying to increase the profitability of your website and creating an engaged audience. These processes aren’t easily done and can’t be achieved overnight. It takes time to successfully build these things to increase the value of your blog.
