How NOT to Buy a Blog
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.
What You Do If Your Blog Isn’t Making Money
Some blog for money and some blog for fun, but it’s not fun to lose money blogging. What do you do if your blog is costing you more than it makes?
More Advertising
If you only have one well-blended block of adsense, maybe it’s time for a more prominent ad placement. Or if adsense isn’t performing well in a prime spot, maybe it’s time to try to sell that spot directly to an advertiser.
Affiliate Programs
There are many affiliate programs that you can make to fit your niche. I have been experimenting most with NeverBlueAds. NeverBlueAds has a lot of freebies, so it’s perfect for my blog It’s All Free Online. Not only can I display text and banner advertising for the ads, I can also post about them. I can still get paid to write about freebies
Expand Your Niche
If your niche is too specific, it could be limiting what you can do. If you’re blogging about tree frogs (bad example) try blogging about all frogs. You could even take it a step further and include other species of animals. Then you’re content isn’t as limiting and you can expand your niche.
Paid Blogging
Maybe you don’t want your blog to make money, that’s fine too. There are other ways on the internet to cover your costs. Some bloggers offer incentive to ‘guest bloggers‘. This month we are offering our two top bloggers 15$ each, which is enough to cover hosting costs. Not only do you get to earn money, you can further develop your blog and brand.
Those are just a few things you can do until your blog starts making money. What did you do before your blog started making money?
I’m Giving Away 5 Free Accounts To Family Secure
Written by Mark of Family WebWatch | Fave FWW | Subscribe to FWW
Most of you know me from MeAndMyDrum. I also author a site called Family WebWatch, which is where I write about how families can protect themselves online and be more productive by reviewing tools I find.
I found this one site called Family Secure. This is a site that’s designed to help parents protect their children’s identity. That may sound strange, but identity theft has been on the rise over the years. Criminals are now turning to stealing children’s identities.
Just think that by the time your child is ready for applying for a loan to college or a car, they could instead be facing a bad credit rating before they enter adulthood. Identity theft is bad to begin with, but to have to fight a bad credit rating before you’ve even had a chance to use credit is a whole other world of hurt.
One of the things Family Secure does is alert you when someone opens an account or applies for credit in your child’s name. Plus, they’ll do it when there is a significant change in your credit report.
I have five codes that I want to give away. With one of these codes, you’ll be given one full year of FREE service to Family Secure instead of paying $19.95 a month. This means one parent and their child(ren) can enroll.
What do you have to do to get one?
Just leave a comment here and I’ll email one to you using the address you use in the comments field below. It’s first come first serve, so comment now. One code per family.
If you’d like to know more about how you can protect yourself and your children online, I’d appreciate it if you subscribe to my feed to stay informed. 🙂
Video Blogging Made Easy
First there were personal diaries, then online journals, then blogs, podcasting, and now vlogs. Some of the bloggers that I read regularly have explored vlogging, or video-blogging. This allows you to get even more personal with your audience and interact with them like you never have before.
DealDotCom’s deal of the day is “Video Blogging Made Easy“. I have not personally tried this but it sounds interesting enough.
“Video Blogging Made Easy can show you how to make your own traffic-pumping vlog in an hour. She will show you the exact steps she took to get her site indexed in Google within 24 hours.” Bold promises.
However, the Video Blogging Made Easy has a 30 day money back guarantee, don’t you love things with no risk?
The product is 27$, which is 10$ of the regular price. Not convinced? Find out:
- How to choose the right template and design for your vlog. This is a crucial step most vlogging guides leave out!
- The steps to getting indexed in Google so quickly. And how you can do the same thing, and get the same results!
- How to make a video using either free or paid software. So you can do this on ANY budget!
- How to keep your vlog running and creating profits for you. So it never has to be a hassle, just a profit-generating machine.
I’d love to see if anyone has used this or is going to purchase this product.
Bloggers Choice Awards: Round Two
The finalists have already been decided for 2007’s Bloggers Choice Awards. With only a few days left until Blog World, the polls for this year have been closed. Blog about your Blog finished about 5th for the category Best Blog about Blogging.
New Voting
This year I hope to be able to compete more against the likes of ProBlogger and Lorelle. The voting is now open for all of the categories.
Vote for Us
I am sticking to mainly one category, but feel free to nominate us for anything else. We are currently displaying a badge where you can vote for us. Alternatively you can just click here, to vote for us.
I can’t settle for anything less than a top 3!
Comment for Votes
Make sure to vote for us, after you do so, leave me a comment so I can vote for your blog. Please link me to your blogs voting page, it will make things a lot easier for me. Support BAYB and we will support you!
October 2007 Stats and Earnings
In September we earned 307.23$. I think we will see an improvement this month. I also finally got my adsense check. It only took me a year to earn 100$! Remember I count money as earned in the month, not necessarily payed.
Traffic
According to statcounter, our traffic took a little dip having 8,826 unique visitors. Stumbleupon didn’t give us the usual traffic and we couldn’t get on the front page of sphinn until the end of the month.
RSS Feed
Our RSS feed count has been steadily increasing. Our biggest day in September reported 354 rss feed subscribers. When I announced our contest on October 17th, we had 364. November 1st we had 422 subscribers! 500 here we come.
Popular Articles
Our most popular articles for the month include:
- 10 Firefox Add-ons to Supercharge your Blogging
- Having Integrity While Blogging
- Getting ‘Scammed’ Got Us Mentioned on John Chow Dot Com
- 5 Things You Can Do With Your New PageRank
- Blogging The San Diego Fires
- Two Free Font Utilities You Should Check Out
Earnings
Now onto the good part, the earnings.
Google Adsense: 7.10$
TLA Referral: 25$
PayPerPost: 131.50$
Review: 32.50$
Private Ads: 120$
That brings our monthly total to $316.10. It has pretty much stayed the same these past few months. I am hoping to further monetize our blog.
Blogroll We are offering two more spots for 10$ per month
Feed You can also advertise at the bottom of the site feed for only 10$ per month. We have 434 readers! It’s a great rate.
Banner We have 125×125 banner space available. For one month we are looking for 25$ per month to get it started. The max will be 4 banners.
If you are interested in any of these please use our contact form and get in touch with me.
Author Payment for October
The traffic was down this month, especially for our authors. We had tons of contribution from Mark and a few from other authors, but the traffic was down. Seems that each month there are less bloggers contributing to BAYB.
Remember there is no minimum requirements, you can post one month, then 3 months later. We are just looking for quality bloggers.
One reason to blog is our incentive program. Our top bloggers will receive monetary compensation for their work. This month Mark contributed 8 articles and is a clear winner for the second month in a row. He will be getting another 20$ from me.
I was surprised that one of our most active authors Kinthehouse wasn’t among the top contributors. This month I am happy to give him 2nd place and 10$.
It was a fight for third but Ed came out on top with his article about Jiglu. It helped being ranked on the front page on google for Jiglu. He gets the third place prize of 5$.
A change for this month, hopefully to make it more interesting, the top 2 contributors will receive 15$ each.
Comment Friday for November 2nd
Man it’s Friday! The end of a crazy month. Over the weekend I will have our stats and author prizes. Halloween was okay this year, but of course Matthew got sick the day before, after a while candy wasn’t enough to continue on the quest. Hope to get some pictures as well up over the weekend.
I love our comment friday, it gives me a chance to communicate more with our readers through our comment system. Each friday we give a lucky person who comments a free link on our blog. This last week our lucky person was Sweet Mummy. She didn’t get a shout out, but last week she left her first comment on our blog and sent me a contact. Want your free link? Get noticed, go above and beyond commenting.
I’ve been covering the sale of Blogging Fingers. No, it’s not over yet, I should have my last, final, follow up article about it soon. In the meantime I want to know if you would ever sell your blog? If so, what’s the right price? I could never imagine selling Blog about your Blog, because the offer couldn’t be right. However, selling any of my other blogs, would definitely be a strong possibility.