How NOT to Buy a Blog
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Blog sales have definitely picked up, I covered the sale of Blogging Fingers. We have yet to see the takeover, it’s supposed to happen in the next week. Matt is looking to stay on as an author to post, which I think is very important for the future success and face of the blog.
So far the sale has been pretty smooth, however if you are looking to BUY a blog, there are a few things you need to know.
Subscribers are Important
People subscribe to a blog because they like it. If you buy a blog and change the idea, theme, and direction you may lose loyal rss feed readers. You are buying a blog because it is already established, don’t go starting over.
Comments are Vital
This is a personal experience of mine. I talked to the former owner of Sitefever quite a bit before it was sold. After it was sold twice, I left several comments that went unanswered. There isn’t much more than bothers me than being ignored, and it was more than once. I unsubscribed from the blog and never went back (until I decided to write this article!).
Don’t Be a Jerk
If anything you want to be too nice after you purchase a blog. Your audience will be skeptical of you already, don’t give them any reason to stop reading. There WILL be some disconnection, you can expect that.
Take Sitefever for example again, it looks like everything went wrong here. They are no longer displaying their RSS feed count, however just a few days ago it was at about half of what it was when they bought the blog. It also appears they managed to chase away former advertisers (me included) and their advertising blocks are empty.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought it was a bad transfer?
Fred commented on a former post “The new owner should study the sitefever transfer very closely. A great example of what not to do.”
The way one person has built a blog, may not be the same style you will. That will come into effect at some point. People don’t necessarily like change.
When you are buying a blog and it has success, think of how you are NOT going to change it. Maybe you too will have success.
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8 Comments on this post
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Matt Jones said:
After this Friday I will still be running the Blogging Fingers show, but I’ll be posting 2 pillar articles per week rather than 7 posts per week.
Hopefully quality will win over quantity but it will be interesting to see how a lowering pf posting frequency affects reader numbers.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:23 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
you’ll be the only one posting?
November 6th, 2007 at 4:18 pm -
YC said:
I think it is good when taking over a blog you just bought, to concentrate on re-establishing communication channels with the present readers.
Unfortunately I have to say your example of Sitefever is quite on the money (unfortunately because the one who took over’s from the same country). I was one of the advertisers as well, and I must say was quite put off by the tone of the new site owner.
I just found it strange that after taking over, one of the first things he announced was how much of a track record he had online. I doubt anybody cared – they need to see what you can do first.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:38 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
i dont think i stayed long enough to see that. I asked a few questions on more than one posts about the takeover etc, and received no response.
Although I did get a letter stating my advertisement would end in a week etc
November 7th, 2007 at 12:59 am -
Matt Jones said:
Yes for that month I will be the only one posting
November 7th, 2007 at 8:20 am -
Dennis Edell said:
This may be a no brainer to most, but I think the very first post by a new owner should be, Hi how are ya glad to meet you, kinda thing.
Not talking about yourself.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:51 am -
Vancouver Island SEO said:
I could not image thinking of buying someone else BLOG. If I was going to buy a blog an existing blog, it would be an existing one that has already expired. I would then check out its back links to make sure that the previous blogger had a large following that linked to them, or had spent a lot of time link building to their own blog. I would then 301 their old structure so that everything went to the root of the site /, and would then restart it all from scratch. You avoid the skeptics and you start out with a fresh blog with links. This will help you avoid any aging delays if your trying to rank it. Cheers.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:18 am -
Stephen Lee said:
Thanks very much Matt for leading me to this. You certainly dished up some very good advice here. In retrospect, I wished I had read your post before diving into blogging – every bit of advice does help and I’m soaking it all up. But, I came in with my eyes wide open, I know what I’m getting into. I’ve no regrets, don’t think that I ever will. It’s really something that I had wanted to do for a long while but the opportunity never present itself until recently. The rest is history now, I’m resolved to grow Bloggin-ads like Mike had envisioned.
Good luck to you and your blog. Do drop by sometime. Later.
Stephen Lees last blog post..Why You Have To Post a Blog on a Daily Basis
August 15th, 2008 at 11:42 pm