Yesterday morning Michael Pollock skyped me. I thought he was going to offer some feedback on my last article titled - Small Business Branding - It’s Not “Weâ€Â, It’s “Me†- since he manages the SmallBusinessBranding.com site and clearly this article covered an area of his interest. However I was incorrect, he was in fact looking for some feedback about his decision to sell Small Business Branding.
I offered him my advice regarding how to value his site but I was quite surprised to hear that he wanted to let it go. Small Business Branding is his most popular site, his first blog and the pillar (at least I thought) of his growing blog network - Solostream. Michael however stated that Small Business Branding was slowing him down rather than contributing to his plans and he felt it was time to sell. I suggested perhaps hiring a writer to keep the site going but I think Michael wanted to completely severe his responsibility so that wasn’t an option either.
Immediately when Michael said he wanted to sell the site I felt excited. I’ve always admired Small Business Branding. I think the domain is great, the positioning great (even if Michael’s posts haven’t always been on-topic) and Michael’s constantly changing designs are always fun to watch.
I’ve been looking for website acquisitions a lot lately but nothing has really fitted in with my current plans. There have been plenty of possible site buys that fit into my future plans of establishing a portfolio of AdSense/passive income earning sites, but I’m not ready for that yet, so anything I was going to buy now had to clearly fit in with my *current* plans, not future plans.
I went back, did some calculations and made an opening bid to Michael. Of course it was a starting bid so I know Michael would prefer to wait and see how is notice about the site sale went first.
Throughout the day I mulled over what I would do with the site technically (how to host it, what blog software and design to use?), creatively (can I write for another blog, what would I write, do I want to write two blogs?) and would it make sense business-wise (how can this make money for me, is it worthwhile in a cost vs benefit evaluation?). I decided that it fit nicely with what I want to do now and I expect can become a solid partner site to Entrepreneur’s Journey and will help increase my exposure and traffic. I just have to do what I currently do here - keep on writing and teaching and build an asset.
The two sites are similar enough that I can create content for both but different enough that they will attract different target markets (with some overlap of course). In fact I think Small Business Branding has a better niche focus position at the moment than E-J has, but overall it will be a nice complimentary relationship that I feel capable of maintaining, at least for the moment (you don’t know until you try!). I decided that I definitely wanted the site, it felt right and I was ready to buy.
I had a top price I was willing to pay and I wanted to get moving on the exchange process as quickly as possible so I could have the new site up and running hopefully by the new year. Consequently I needed to pitch a “Buy It Now” (BIN) price to Michael so he would be happy to sell immediately. I asked Michael about a BIN and he offered one. I wasn’t quite prepared to pay it but I came back with a counter offer that he accepted. I think the price was pretty fair on both sides, I didn’t get a super bargain but I didn’t over pay either. It’s tough to really evaluate this sort of thing but after paying Michael the first half I feel good about it, no signs of post purchase dissonance yet, which is always a good sign!
How Much Did I Pay?
I bet you all want to know the answer don’t you! Well I’m not going to give you the exact number just yet because I actually want to, surprise surprise, treat this acquisition as a case study on buying a blog. I’m going to record some information about the process and how the blog goes, probably in audio format, and I’ll see what I end up with. I’ll definitely tell you the buy price and how I valuated the site, but not yet.
In the meantime you can review the figures Michael released regarding current traffic, income levels and other details in this post - Small Business Branding is For Sale - and come up with what you think would be a fair price. I encourage you to do so and pitch what you think you would pay for Small Business Branding as a comment reply to this post.
Currently Michael and I are sorting through the transfer process but stay tuned, you should start to see signs of me on Small Business Branding very soon.
Yaro Starak
Small Business Brander
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Congrats on your acquisition!
Congrats again Yaro… looking forward to see how it all goes.
I’ll take the technorati approach:
http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smallbusinessbranding.com
It’s saying $53,066.76 ! (not sure if this is in USD or AUD)
So I’d say you probably got it for around $35,000 … maybe
Congratulations, Yaro. By the way, it’s funny because College Startup just wrote a post about flipping blogs, so we can have two points of view: from the buyer and from the seller. Looking forward to read your case study!
Nice design, PR 6 but low traffic. Site is poorly moneterized. At a guess I’d think (in USD) maybe $2-3,000 give or take a bit. Despite the previous commenter on the Technorati method it never, ever works this way, if it did I’d be a millionaire by now
[…] 20th, 2005 and is filed under News Brief. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently notallowed. […]
Good luck Yaro!
If he was asking $1800 for making a new design, the site may worth something like $4000 to $6000?
Cheers
Javier
congratulations mate - nice pick up!
congrats yaro…
you are an inspiration to me…
around AUD10k maybe?
[…] As a die hard reader of Entrepreneur’s Journey, I was excited to see Yaro purchase smallbusinessbranding.com from Michael Pollock. […]
Nicely done Mr Starak, I look forward to the case study.
Hey Yaro,
Nice move and I hope you reap all the benefits from the extra exposure and seo that Michael’s built up - now all you need to do is monetize it to the max.
A guess on the price, you ask? Based on all the figures I’d say between USD $3,000-5,000
I’ll be watching this ongoing case study with interest - if anybody can delve deep into it then that’ll be you, Yaro
Merry Christmas
Excellent news to be greeted with after being off the blogging scene for some weeks. Many congratulations.
Congrats on the purchase! Looking forward to seeing how you develop the site.
My guess is US$2500, although I think you may have paid more.
Good buy. The site has quality content and a good following.. Congratulations
Interesting sale. I probably wouldn’t have paid too much because Michael is selling only the name and the blog posts…
Pretty much the same amount as the others have already said; $2-3k, I think that Blogs are intrinsically worth less than “normal” sites…
Well done Yaro - I nice acquisition. My guess is $4K USD.
If i wanted to buy a blog i would look these areas.
1-)Topic - This site have a good topic and realated to yours. And i think there is a demand for small business topic.
2-)Curent Traffic- 7000 visitor per month is may be good bud but it don’t generate much income. if you think that you will incrise popularity of the site and atrackt more visitors this number are good for starting.
3-) PR- PR6 is just very good and shows that this site is on its limits.
what to offer?
it earns 100$ per month. if you work on it tihs can be 200$; this is 2400 for a month and 5000$ for a year.
The price can be 4000-5000$.
And lastly,1800$ is so much for a site design. if it is normal then i should start site design business….
Congratulations, Yaro. I am looking forward to seeing your mark on the site.
Congrats on your new purchase!!!
I’ve only recently stubbled upon your site and enjoy it very much. I read tons of blogs and find yours very helpful.
My guess is $4,600 for the new site!
Merry Christmas
As a loyal reader of smallbusinessbranding.com I am glad to see something positive happen around the blog, I think Michael unloading it was a wise decision it was definitely beginning to languish.
As to the Adsense earnings with 5,000 unique visitors per month should produce 10,000-15,000 pages views per month the earnings he reports is definitely on the low end. With the new AOL, Google deal and including graphics in ads… things are about to change again. Not too soon in my opinion, users were starting to ignore Google adsense ads like they did traditional banner ads.
The blog needs more of a focus. What is the purpose? Is it an educational blog to teach business owners about small business branding, an industry blog to track news and brand concepts, a blog to review and critique small business branding efforts i.e. a best and worst examples?
Small business branding is a relatively new segment online and your market would still be in the innovator and early adopter segments. Meeting the needs of this early savvy group is quite different from the early majority segment. You can see an example of an adoption curve at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_adopter
In my book,
Tips and Traps When Buying a Business, as the new owner you have a unique, once in a lifetime (of the business) opportunity to reposition, re-brand, and put your ‘mark’ on the business or in your case the blog.
Making the transition from buyer to owner is crucial and to avoid the typical 3-month drop in revenue a new owner must have a acquisition and takeover plan. If there is anything I can do to be a support, make sure to contact me Yaro. Good luck.
[…] Let’s take some time to read about time to sell the branding from Michael. […]
I would guess $4,500 U.S. Please convert to whatever currency you want. I assume the Adsense numbers are U.S. greenbacks as well.
Good luck to both of you!
Thanks for all the guesstimates everyone. Some very interesting justifications and some numbers without justification as well!
Regarding comments on SBB current income level - I think the site will have the same issues as this blog does when using programs like AdSense. The CTR is terrible, the Ads are mostly get rich quick schemes or similar and you are lucky if you can get it up to $5-$10 even after plastering every little corner with ads. It’s just not a good topic for AdSense earnings since so many of the visitors are very familiar with AdSense.
I’d like to see how it goes with some affiliate products to start with, but one step at a time…
Small Business Branding Blog Sold
Blog is a great marketing tool for your business. Michael Pollock of Small Business Branding certainly has the kind of publicity and buzz from the blogosphere many marketers can only envy to. But to my surprise Michael stated that his blog was slowing…
I’d guess $2,000 but I would probably only offer $500.
[…] Last week, I sold my main blog, Small Business Branding, to my friend Yaro Starak. Everyone wanted to know what the selling price was, so we decided to do a case-study type of conversation about buying and selling blogs or websites. In particular, we discussed how to value a blog or website you’re considering buying or selling. The conversation was about an hour long, so I split it up into two separate podcasts. This is Part 1 of the discusion. Running time is about 34 minutes. Click here to download the MP3 file. […]
[…] I’m fairly confident if you followed a blueprint, which of course I’m yet to produce, your blog(s) would enjoy the same success as this blog. In my case I don’t want to produce something and just leave you alone to work your way through it by yourself. I’d like to work with each and every person that takes the course to offer personal advice and consulting style help, probably through a private online forum so others in the course can benefit too and we can work together to grow our blogs and help each other. The fun for me comes from working with other people and experiencing the excitement of working towards a shared blogging goal. I’d consider myself a participant as well as teacher, as I’d like to take Small Business Branding, my newly acquired second blog, through the blog traffic growth experience too. […]
[…] As you may know I recently purchased a blog, Small Business Branding (coverage here - Acquisition Of SmallBusinessBranding.com) and recently Michael Pollock, the founder of Small Business Branding who I purchased the blog from, and I sat down and recorded a podcast discussion about buying and selling blogs. Since we had just completed the transaction we were in the perfect place to discuss this topic and these podcasts should give you some good insights into the process behind blog trading. […]
[…] Yaro from Entrepreneurs Journey purchased Michael Pollack’s SmallBusinessBranding blog. Here’s the announcement. […]
[…] Last week, I sold my main blog, Small Business Branding, to my friend Yaro Starak. Everyone wanted to know what the selling price was, so we decided to do a case-study type of conversation about buying and selling blogs or websites. In particular, we discussed how to value a blog or website you’re considering buying or selling. The conversation was about an hour long, so I split it up into two separate podcasts. This is Part 1 of the discusion. Running time is about 34 minutes. […]
[…] You should check out the sale of Small Business Branding from Michael Pollock to Yaro Starek: Acquisition Of SmallBusinessBranding.com » Internet Business Blog | Entrepreneurs-Journey.com - by Yaro Starak You can find links through there to a pair of podcasts that the two of them did on the subject where they discuss how they arrived at a price and how they went through with the sale. __________________ http://www.Run to Win.com http://www.The First Time Home Owner.com […]
[…] a result of any purchases. I had already experienced what happens after buying another blog when I acquired SmallBusinessBranding.com back in December […]