What is your blog worth?
I must confess, I have a fetish for watching online properties being auctioned and sold. It's not that different to people who follow real estate but for some it may seem a little *cooky*.
Well... this morning when I tuned in to Sitepoint's Marketplace to see what was going on I noticed that a gardening site had been listed. I clicked the link and lo and behold it had already been sold. Upon checking the listing stats it became apparent that not only had it sold within an hour of listing (most usually take days) but it had sold for the Buy-It-Now (BIN) price of - $US1200.
For that kind of money you would expect to find a pretty amazing blog or website with tonnes of content and lots of backlinks through Google. Yet all it offered was #5 ranking on MSN for the keyword "Container Gardening" - it hasn't even made the first 100 for the term in Google.
What did it have going for it? Here are the stats;
- More than 2500 unique visitors per month
- Domain is over 12 months old - started Feb 17 2007
- Earning Adsense revenue of between $1-$4
- Currently earned $24.25 for the first 7 days of May
- 28 Pages indexed on Google
- 68% of its traffic comes from Google
So was it a good buy? Now there's a tough question. The rule of thumb in buying websites and blogs is calculating the monthly revenue by 20 and this should give you your buying price. In this case it should have been $2,706 ($24.25/7 = $3.46 x 30 days = $103.80 x 20 = $2076) so it seems like the buyer has bought an extraordinary good deal. However, as April and May are the biggest months for gardening revenues I'd be surprised if this sustained.
I wonder though, how much our blogs would be worth should we measure them against the backdrop of this site? If your blog is the same age - or older; gets as much traffic via Google and earns similar revenues through advertising then extracting similar dollars from a sale may be quite possible.
But, could you really sell your blog?
Comments
That is crazy Stuart! Are they not going to tell the readers that there is new management? People are probably reading to read what that blogger had to say. Well I guess anything is possible.
Posted by: LetsPlant | May 9, 2008 7:56 AM
I'm not sure why I'd ever want to. It would be like selling part of me. Maybe I'm weird, but I love my blog. I've poured so much of myself into it and even though I doubt it would be worth much to anyone else, it is worth quite a lot to me.
Posted by: Robin | May 9, 2008 7:56 AM
If you went on an hourly rate for the amount of time we spend on our blogs, that price looks way under what it should be.
It shows our blogs are a labour of love.
Mine's much more precious to me than a couple of thousand dollars :)
Posted by: VP | May 9, 2008 6:53 PM
No Way! It's like my child or part of me. I agree with Robin.
It would be interesting though to track the one that sold, see what changes they make to it, and see if it makes any difference to the traffic flow. Maybe if they lose some longtime readers, new ones will come on board who like the new version. Interesting, though.
Posted by: Barbee' | May 10, 2008 5:12 AM
That is not really much of a price.
Posted by: eliz | May 10, 2008 1:01 PM
I'd have no problem transferring my posts to another server/blog and selling the blog domain/name (without the current posts), if it were really, really worth my time. I have way too much personal info on my blogs to sell it with the posts though.
Posted by: Amy | May 10, 2008 1:51 PM
A million pounds would come in handy.
Esther Montgomery
Posted by: Esther Montgomery | May 10, 2008 9:33 PM
Ha!!! This is fascinating, Stuart! Why would someone want to sell their blog?! I agree with Esther, a million pounds or dollars would certainly come in handy, but surely the lottery would be less painful than losing creative control of your own blog!
Posted by: our friend Ben | May 12, 2008 7:12 AM
I'd be happy to sell it for a million pounds or $3mil, if I were permitted to post that I was changing blogs & I could take my content with me. Then I'd just start a new one with a more clever name. (Never sign a non-competition agreement!)
Posted by: Mr. McGregor's Daughter | May 15, 2008 4:40 AM
Stuart, I have a friend you may know who frequents Sitepoint forums who has a cat site and was recently offered about 350K (US) for it. Now, she makes about $1,500/month off of Adsense alone, to say nothing of ads. She has a forum with 23,000 members, lol. She wouldn't sell either, is my point. Why turn down 8K a month when it's still growing and she still loves it? She asked for 600K. That shut them up.
Posted by: Steve | May 20, 2008 9:58 PM
Isn't selling your blog similar to Judas selling out for 30 pieces of silver? Blogging has been like a savior for me lately (now then, I said "like"). It has helped keep me sane in a time of personal chaos and provided a way to connect (fellowship) with a lot of wonderful people. I imagine that a lot of bloggers feel the same way.
Posted by: Ingrid | May 21, 2008 2:31 AM