I recently posted an article about flipping blogs for profit and I discussed some of the different methods on how to make money from blogging in the long term. There were actually two questions I felt compelled to answer: Should I build a blog, or should I buy a blog?
While most methods work for 90% of bloggers, you are still entitled to try as many new things as you possibly can. If you have time, I would fill it with trying new things, because that is how tremendous discoveries are made. The methods tend to be biased with my own personal conviction on these topics, mixed with my professional opinion.
Before we make the decision to build a blog or buy one, lets dissect the two ideas just a bit more:
Build a Blog
When you build a blog you have a deeper connection with the blog and how you want it to look and function. Nobody knows exactly what you want to take out of a blog more than you do.
When I first started my blog, I started it with the idea that I could coach other businesses on internet marketing. Later I began to move into teaching people methods for making money online while simultaneously quiting their day job and automating their income. As you can imagine the latter topic meant more to me and my blog slowly grew to fill it.
No blog you could ever buy would have the flexibility for you to change focus from one niche topic to a completely different one without losing traffic, popularity, and money. SimpleTiger only had a small audience of about 10-15 daily visitors when I first got it up and running, even though I was churning out good pillar articles every day I was having the hardest time enjoying it, which showed through in my work.
I sat back one day and thought for a moment, I started a marketing firm and I wanted to write about that marketing firm and marketing ideas on my blog, but I don’t enjoy writing about these things as much as I enjoy doing them. Imagine if Michael Jordan was just a coach. I realized that my blog had an identity it didn’t deserve because the owner didn’t have the will to follow that identity. I learned that in order for your blog to really be identifiable to an audience, it has to first be easily identifiable to you.
So with an audience of 15 and a subscriber base of 3, I decided to change the identity of my blog to something more interesting, and something I liked writing about and teaching. You see I know a ton about marketing, and I learn new things about it once every few weeks. I learn new methods for making money online and automating your lifestyle in order to join the New Rich a few times per day. When you are on a personal journey that you feel others may be on themselves, it is very likely that what you write will be highly effective in acquiring a reader and subscriber base. You can then turn what you are learning into a means to a full time income.
As your blog grows so do you, and vice versa. People who have been reading your blog for a year have probably seen you go through new phases of growth and as they see you becoming more popular it motivates them to do the same. I know Caroline Middlebrook is motivated personally by the work of Yaro Starak, and Yaro is motivated personally by the work of Darren Rowse. I consider Darren one of the biggest, coolest bloggers and he got their by going on his journey, being honest with his readers, and helping people like Yaro and Caroline. I look up to each of these people in ascending order and it helps me see my way through to where I would like my blog to be someday.
One of the hardest parts about building a blog is you are ultimately taking nothing and making it something, then making an income from that something. Building a blog is definitely not something for the less determined, but making an income from it is even harder.
The good thing about building a blog is that you are able to watch your self build on your past successes and experiences. When you pick up a strangers blog, you have no experiences or lessons learned with that blog, and your chances of losing traffic are far greater due to the fact that the traffic that is there has already experienced the blog owner going through a growth stage and doesn’t want to witness it again.
Buy a Blog
As I mentioned in an earlier post, you can go to a site like SitePoint or DigitalPoint and purchase a blog in the same day you decide to go this route. Some blogs and sites are fairly cheap, but the money makers are going to cost you. It is a general rule of thumb that a blog or site pays for itself in 1-2 years. So if a blog is turning $200/month the asking price will range between $2400-$4800. I wouldn’t go over $4800 unless I loved the niche and knew what I was doing. If you can get one for closer to $2400 or a one year break even point by all means do it.
Chances are when you buy a blog, there will be a lul in the traffic for a moment, but if you do everything right there may instead be an increase in traffic during the transition. People like to see change for the better as long as you can define better.
Lets say you are about to buy a blog about technology from someone and you don’t want to lose a single visitor, instead you want to increase traffic during the transaction. I would recommend following this list of steps to ensure you keep up the traffic:
- Get the original blogger to announce the new owner of the blog and let the audience know that you will be owning, operating, and writing to the blog from now on
- Write a post, and get the owner to post it to the blog before it moves over to your server. Include somewhere in the post a thank you to the owner and your new audience
- Ask the owner if you could implement a poll before the blog makes the transfer. The poll will ask the audience what they think of the design and if it could use an update. People tend to like to see something they are investing their time and energy in actually improve and grow, changing a design is a good way to do this.
- Over the next few weeks you should dive headfirst into reading all of the posts on the blog. It may be nearly impossible for you to read the entire blog within a week or two, but you should do your best to catch up with the audience you already have. Also, it’ll help you learn the style of the blog and if you need to change the style you will be able to slowly so you don’t shock the audience and turn anyone away.
- If you do need to change the writing style or topics over time, write more than one post at a time; one with the old style and one with the new style, this way people will be able to see the transition.
Before you buy a blog, its a good idea to learn everything you can about that blog. Dig deep into it and read as much as you can. See how it works, what the audience is like, what kind of questions they ask etc. You have to know that blog beginning to end and every little tiny thing about it in order to run it better than the original owner.
Conclusion
As you can see I am obviously more for building a blog than buying one. If you have built your own blog and it really takes off and works well for you, after time its a good idea to buy one in order to duplicate the process of income blogging. As I have mentioned before, you can always hire a writer to post to the blog for you, this way you don’t have to worry about most of these issues.
Try building a blog on your own, and target a very niche category. Target a category like dog training, boating, or something very specific and see how well it works for you. Creating a less niche blog is a much harder way to make an income than making a very specific blog.
