You’ve finally done it. After years of hard work building up readership and gaining people’s trust, you’ve turned your blog into a nice source of income.
Maybe you’ve done it through advertising, maybe through affiliate marketing or maybe you’ve come up with some great products of your own and are really killing it. Awesome job!
However, after all this time working to build your blog, you know just how much of your life it can eat away.
In the beginning, this is no problem, as your blog was a great way to bring in extra cash and eventually help you kick you 9-5 gig that had been dragging you down. But now that you see all the possibilities out there, maybe you want to move onto something else.
That makes total sense, but before you just shut down your blog and walk away, know that there is a better way.
You can sell your blog to someone else, giving you a nice chunk of change to either invest in your next project, travel to some exotic location or do whatever you want.
This is far and away the best move for anyone looking to walk away from their blog.
To help make sure all that hard work turns into the payday you deserve, consider these steps for helping to make sure you get what your blog is worth:
Know How Much To Ask
This is the most important question you’ll need to answer: how much is my blog worth? A lot of things go into determining the value of your blog, but the rule of thumb is that it will be worth 2.5 times your yearly revenue.
A couple of different factors will make this number go up or down, such as your growth predictions and risk management strategies, but this is a great jumping off point.
Take a look at your records and do some quick math so that you can know about how much you should be getting for your blog. Any offer you receive that is substantially lower than this number will not be a serious offer.
You’ll need to be patient, as you might not find that perfect offer right away, but if you stay committed and don’t give into temptation, you’ll be much happier down the road when you’ve gotten what your blog is really worth.
And while you wait for that perfect offer, there are some other things you can be doing to help maximize the amount of money you get.
Shore Up Your Records
When someone does finally come along to make you an offer for your blog, they are going to want to see some numbers to back up the claims you are making about your revenues.
You should already have detailed records of revenues and expenses, but take some time to put them together into something easy to read and understand.
You’ll boost your chances of getting a great offer if you can send someone a report on past performance for them to look over.
But while you are doing this, also take some time to make some reasonable projections about the future. Where is the blog going? If you expect it to grow, why do you think that? And by how much will it grow?
If you can demonstrate to potential buyers that they are getting into something that will increase in value as they go, you are going to get a lot more offers.
Most people interested in buying a blog will want to run it for some time to grow it, but then they will want to sell it themselves.
Make sure you explain how you’ll be able to generate new revenues. Are there any marketing strategies you didn’t pursue that you think could be really lucrative?
If you think traffic will grow, you’ll need to demonstrate where it’s going to come from and why you think it will be converting traffic. You don’t need to do all the work for the next owner, but you do need to do just enough to convince them your blog is a worthwhile investment.
Optimize Your Processes
At this stage of running your blog, it really runs like a business, so you need to treat it as such. How do you generate content? Who does it? What’s your marketing strategy? How do you manage the site?
A lot of this stuff is probably second nature to you since you’ve been doing it for so long, but to someone just coming in, they won’t see things quite as clearly. The more you can outline and streamline the better. Being able to sell your blog as a turnkey operation is a major selling point as potential buyers won’t have to worry about a massive learning curve.
Take some time to go through everything you do to make your business successful and document it. Then, if there are any redundancies or unnecessary parts, just cut them out. An efficient and well-run blog will look like a fantastic investment to anyone with a good business eye.
Another thing to do is to make some contacts lists. It’s likely that at this stage that you use some contractors or freelancers to help you generate content or run the site.
Make it easy for future owners to get in touch with these people and use their services so that they can continue to run the site the way you did.
There’s a chance they’ll look for their own people, but again, making your blog look easy to run can only help you when the offers start rolling in.
Get Some Help With The Sale
Much like in real estate, there is a temptation to want to try and sell your blog on your own, thinking you can do better and then won’t have to pay commissions.
However, also similar to real estate, this is not true. There are sites out there, such as Flippa, where you can list your website for others to view and then make offers on, but this really isn’t the market you want.
Flippa got its name because it’s for people who want to “flip” websites, meaning they are looking for something cheap to turn around and sell for a big profit.
You want to convince people that they can sell your blog for a decent amount of money later on, but you don’t want to sell it for cheap.
The better option is to bring someone in to help you sell your blog. These digital brokers function much the same way a real estate agent would.
They work with you to figure out the highest asking price, and then they work within their networks to find serious buyers who are willing to pay what your blog is really worth.
These are people looking to buy an online business and are therefore willing to pay a little more for something with actual value. Resist the temptation of going it alone and you’ll be thankful when your payday comes.
Final Thoughts
Really the best piece of advice is to treat the sale of your blog much like you treated every other aspect of building it: with care. Think through the process and be patient.
You don’t want all your years of hard work to be tossed away because you jumped at the first offer someone gave you.
Building your blog was a big part of your life, so make sure it feels that way when it’s time to cash out.
About the author: Jock is an internet entrepreneur who has bought, built and sold several blogs and websites throughout his career. While he has worn all hats in the process of buying and selling websites, he knows how much work goes into building them and is always working to make sure other entrepreneurs get what they deserve for their hard work.
