In the dot-com age, starting a blog is old news. Everyone and their sister-in-law has one, and knows how to monetize it.
And it makes sense. Starting a blog is smart business and can be a great revenue stream. But the initial setup can be a pain. Waiting for a blog to start making money is a slog.
What if you could skip all that, and get right to the money-making part?
By buying an already profitable blog, you can.
Blog buying is big business now, with entrepreneurs buying and selling it like real estate. They purchase a blog that is already making money and can profit off it without any of the initial setup.
Want to learn how to buy a blog and start your own revenue stream without any of the initial hassles?
Let’s jump in and take a look at the entire process, beginning to end.
Getting Started
Before you even get started buying blogs, you have to look at the basics and know what you are getting into.
Like with any business, you have to start with a plan. Blogs don’t magically write themselves after you purchase them, so start off by asking yourself a few questions.
Why Do You Want to Buy Blogs?
There is a very profitable business in simply buying domain names that may be in high demand and then selling them for a profit. It’s high-risk, but people do make a living that way.
Buying blogs, though, is a different matter.
Do you want to flip blogs? Meaning, taking a less-than-profitable blog and making it profitable before selling it again?
Are you looking to have a passive revenue stream by employing copywriters to produce content?
Do you want to expand on your own blogging by adding a sister site or eliminate competition by purchasing a competitor?
Whatever your reason, make sure you have it clearly in your mind before you set out to start buying.
Who Will Produce Content?
If you are planning on using multiple blogs as an income stream, you’ll need to keep producing quality content on all of them.
Do you plan on writing that content yourself, or will you be outsourcing to copywriters? Either way is fine, but you’ll need to consider your own time in the former, and finances in the latter.
How Will You Finance Your First Purchase?
Blogs are like real estate. Once you start investing, you can usually use the profits from one purchase to make the next purchase, and so on. But figuring out how to finance that first purchase can be tricky.
Keep in mind that purchasing a blog will often require 12-24 months of its current earning potential.
If you can make that work, awesome. If you can’t, think about buying a non-profitable blog and flipping it to get started.
Make sure you have a solid plan going forward. Now let’s look at where you can find all these for-sale blogs.
Where to Look
When you’re looking for blogs, you can use one of two avenues; A blog selling site, like Flippa, or your own legwork.
Using a site like Flippa has several benefits. You can know the value of a blog up-front, and you know for a fact that the owner is looking to sell. It takes a significant amount of risk out of the process.
However, you can miss some real gems by only looking at blogs that are already for sale.
Finding a blog to buy independently may take a little more time and effort, but can pay off big in the long term. This works best if you are looking for sites to flip.
Find blogs that haven’t been updated in months or years, reach out and see if the owner is interested in selling. They may have given up on the blog for any number of personal reasons, but their loss can easily be your gain.
You can often pay less for sites like this, but there is more risk involved, since there may not be a recent record of earnings.
Know the Value
Once you’ve found a blog to buy, how do appraise its value?
This is flexible, but generally, you’re looking for five things:
- A blog over a year old
- More than half of search traffic coming from search engines
- 5K to 10K visitors a month
- 250 to 400 RSS readers
- Ranked well in Googles Page Rankings
If you’re willing to take a little more risk or you’re sure you can flip an under-producing blog, you can afford to fudge a bit on these, but to minimize your risk, you definitely want to make sure all of these criteria are in place.
If you’re looking to flip a blog or revitalize an underperforming one, you need to ask yourself the following:
- Does this blog fit with my existing business plan?
- Do I know anything about the blogs niche?
- Can I confidently speak to the niche’s target audience?
Need more info on exactly how to do your due diligence on blogs? Discover more.
Remember, you’re looking at blog buying in the same way you would real estate. You are looking for return on investment, or ROI. So while some risk-taking is great, but it’s important to practice smart business as well.
You Know How to Buy a Blog…Now What?
Buying a blog doesn’t have to be daunting and in fact can be a smart, viable business model.
But just knowing how to buy a blog isn’t good enough. Like any business, you need to have a plan and do your research. Demographics, target audiences, SEO, search rankings…make sure you know these things back and front before you ever try to buy a blog.
Need help making your blog (or newly purchased blog) the best it can be? Check out our WordPress tips today!