One often overlooked way to generate revenue from your blog is to sell it. Most monetization strategies focus on the short term, but they overlook what could be a very lucrative long-term play. A successful blog could sell for thousands of dollars –maybe as much as six figures if you’re lucky.
Whether you sell your blog for $1,000 or $100,000, the strategy is the same. Here are a few tips for how you can sell your blog to make the process easy and to get the best sales price that you can:
Build Up Your Audience
When someone buys your website, they aren’t just interested in the design and the articles. Those things can easily be changed. What they want — what they are actually buying — is your audience. In order to prepare your site for the best sale possible, you need to do everything you can to grow your audience. Be prepared to show your traffic stats in order to prove your market share and command the highest prices.
Build an E-mail List
Most marketers agree: The money is in the list. An e-mail list is one of the best ways to build long-term relationships with your readers to drive repeat traffic and conversions. If you have a large e-mail list, you’ll dramatically increase the selling price of your blog. Make sure you advertise and verify your number of subscribers when you list your blog for sale to help you increase bids.
Create Strong Social Profiles
Social media is an extension of your audience. These profiles can be used to connect with customers and to create more exposure for your brand. The larger the following you have on social media, the more valuable your blog will be. Develop an effective social media strategy for growing as many followers as you can. Then maintain an active presence on your networks, scheduling several posts per day on each.
Develop a Revenue Stream
How much money your blog is making is often the bottom line. Though a large audience may be enough to offset a small revenue stream, your asking price will still increase exponentially if you are making a nice income with your blog. As a general rule of thumb, your asking price should be the monthly income your blog makes times 12 or 24 months. By generating more revenue for your blog, you greatly increase the potential sales price of your blog.
List It on a Reputable Site
Sure, you can sell your blog directly to a private buyer. However, doing so leaves you vulnerable if the buyer tries to back out or engage in some questionable behavior. When you list your blog on a reputable site like Flippa.com, you get a third party that can guide you and the buyer through the process and to offer you both protections on the trade. Services like Flippa also offer you a number of tools to make selling your site easier, such as verification of your traffic and other stats to give buyers confidence.
Of course, if you have done all of these things to build up a great blog, you probably won’t want to sell it since you’ll be making a nice income from it every month. However, if you’ve decided that you’re ready to cash out, or if your long-term goal was always to sell your site, these strategies can help you to make the process easier and to get the most that you can in the final sale.
Have you sold a blog or website? Tell us what you did to maximize your profits in the comments!
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