Three Part Series on Selling Your Blog: Part 1

Posted 7/24/08 

Mitchell Blatt, owner of Juiced Sports Blog, which can be bought for $80,000, and Stumbler who can be added here.

Part 1: How Much is My Site Worth

Inspired by Kellex’s quest to sell LeBasketbawl, I have decided to write a 5 part series on how to sell a blog. Take note, Kellex.

The first question you would want to ask when selling your blog is, how much is it worth? Don’t want to get ripped off.  There are some sites like DN Scoop that claim to value blogs. My blog, Juiced Sports Blog, for example, is worth $23,484 according to DN Scoop.  Since it makes about $120 a month, it would take just 196 months, or 16 years, to make back that investment…

Needless to say, any site that claims to value your blog will inflate its value tremendously just to get links.

Most people buying a website will look at a website as an investment. How long will it take to make a profit from buying that site? Most sites are sold for between 10 and 20 times monthly earnings. Since The Sports Dollar earns about $500 a month, Kellex could sell it for about $10,000, and the buyer would earn his initial investment back in 20 months assuming it keeps earning that much. (Not that he’s selling this site, just an example.)

Site valuations are affected by other sources as well. The money needs to be consistent, of course; you won’t earn $500 one month after earning $100 the past five then be able to sell for $10,000. How well the site is ranking in Google, its PR, other things of that nature will also impact the price. It’s all about making money when buying a site, and the less work you have to do on the site, the more your going to be able to earn.

Therein lies the problem with selling a blog. With most types of sites, you get a lot of search engine optimized pages, content, direct traffic, etc, coming to your site for a specific purpose that isn’t time sensitive. When it comes to a blog, you have to update every day. Naturally, that takes a lot of work, thus narrowing your potential buying audience and decreasing value. If you could make $500 a month by doing nothing on a site, you are freed to work on another site and earn money from there, but with a blog, you have to update every day. You have to factor your time into the expenses of running a blog or any business.

And when it comes to selling a sports blog, that would be even harder because sports bloggers are not typically known for their desire to earn money and to have money. They don’t have as much money to spend on buying blogs.

Because of these obstacles, you’re going to have to decrease expectations a little selling your blog. Instead of targeting 20 times earnings as your sales price, you might have to sell for closer to 10 times earnings.
However, there are many ways you can increase selling price before you make a deal. I will cover some of those methods in my next post in two days.

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