Now, as far as having to continue to post after the sale of the blog, that doesn’t make much sense to me. Seems like the same amount of work. While some see that as beneficial, as the seller, I don’t think I’d do this. Buyers need to also realize what they’re buying into before they commit to a sale.

Cheers,
Lee

“Myspace sold a few years ago for close to half a million dollars and this year microsoft bought a portion of facebook for 200+ million dollars.”

MySpace was bought by newscorp for $540million. Not half a million.

I see blogs as magazines. Only theres alot more choices and theres no yearly subscription, no driving to a book store to buy one mag for $3.99 or however much.

Not all that bad for a “newbie” blogger.

I wanted to comment on this. Being the former owner of One Man’s Goal, I believe that I can shed some light on this misconception. My blog was indeed on the tipping point of success… but my new one is already there, and I did it faster with the knowledge that I gained from my first blog.

I get about 40% of the traffic, 25% of the Rss Subscribers, and Bryan’s Journey (my new blog), is only 3 weeks old. Tipping point or not, I’ll take the payday and produce something even better.

I am actually in the market to purchase a small to medium sized blog of a few hundred visitors right now. Anything you would recommend? Thank you Yaro!

but i dont’ know…

seosmarty: onemansgoal.com sold two weeks ago.

I believe only Blogtrepreneur has NOT sold yet.

Having said that,I consider it blogging suicide to sell a blog just at the tipping point of success,just at the point when you can begin to reap the ‘fruits of your labour.’

Yaro,you have been blogging for 3 years and you know that maintaining a blog demands a lot of hardwork and commitment.So,selling a blog right at the point when you can begin to enjoy sounds unreasonable to me but like I said earlier,one cannot condemn those selling their blogs as they have their reasons for doing so.

Interestingly,this happens in our search for success all the time.You find people quitting right at the threshold of getting what they have been toiling for all the years.No wonder H. Ross Perot said “Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success.They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.”

As regards if the buyers will be able to sustain the readership once the person that started the blog has gone,I think it will take a lot of hardwork to do that because a blog,whichever way you want to look at it,is a personal publishing tool.I read EJ because I like Yaro,and if Yaro is no longer there,I may not read EJ again.For God’s sake,we are human beings and we are not always objective.We can be sentimental to death!

Myspace sold a few years ago for close to half a million dollars and this year microsoft bought a portion of facebook for 200+ million dollars.

It’s unrealistic to think that a blog will make that kind of money but I think in the next 5-10 years blog prices will only go up.

Keeping that in mind, I don’t think I would sell just yet.

Prices may even out, and the blogs will be found to be of better quality, but I think blog sales will increase over the next 10 to 20 years, not decrease.

And there will probably never be a lack of blogs… this is not a mass exodus, only the beginning.

Thanks, Jason M. Blumer

For those building their blogs, it may seem foolish to sell these just as they are getting to the point where they could show real profits.

On the other hand, we don’t know what’s happening in those folks lives making it quite sensible to sell and move on to something else.

But I do agree that the blogger usually is what makes the “brand” for the blog – at least at first, and them leaving will be a loss of steam.

Hopefully the buyers understand this, and can move beyond it, but they should be prepared for a dip in readership which they should’ve factored into their purchase offer price.

A mature blog like ProBlogger being sold would be interesting. On the one hand, Darren has moulded it according to his own style, but with more and more contributing authors, it’s morphing into something that looks more like a large corporation with no single face, than the sole propriitorship it used to be with just Darren.

That is obviously the way to go if your exit strategy is to sell some day. Turn your blog into a business that slowly gets to where it doesn’t need you anymore – then selling it to a new owner will likely have little if any impact.

For someone to shell out over $10,000 for a blog, that is a HUGE investment, and that is what it is, an investment. As Yaro pointed out, one would only buy a web property if one can make the ROI.

I have like 5 blogs and cannot keep them all up, it was even foolish to think that i could. That was an amateur mistake from months ago. So i plan to sell one or two of them. But my flagship blog (Groovy Vegetarian) i plan to develop further, it is my mouthpiece and my baby. I am in love with it.

PatBiz: I disagree with you because i think that a massive blog like ProBlogger would still continue on and thrive (if managed properly) even without Darren, because it has such an established brand, and also because of SEO, i’m guessing it gets alot of SE traffic, which means newbies. I think Darren leaving would be a major loss, but i think ProBlogger (the blog) would carry on.

Missy.

Perhaps those in the making money niche are doing what they started. Making their money, and then flipping the blog to work on another making money blog. They will still have all the social media tools to make whatever new site they create have a good traffic source. People who take over the blog, probably won’t receive the bookmarking profiles like stumble/digg/sphinn/mashable to get as much for their content as the previous owners.

As you mentioned Yaro, it must be very difficult for the new owner to keep the momentum. Readers are following the blogger, and he leaves. It’s almost mission impossible to keep the same hype, because you cannot impersonate the blogger’s personality. For instance, imagine either Yaro, Maki, John Chow or Darren would sale their blog, who could replace them? Nobody, I think it’s impossible. And if you take this at a lower degree, selling a blog that has 500 RSS subs, while it may sound attractive for the buyer because of a cheaper price, still readers are following a leader that has a voice and a personality, and the switchover is not guarantee to succeed.