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You know you can sell products on your blog, but did you know you can actually sell your blog itself? This guide takes you through what blog flipping is, how to do it, and practical tips to avoid mistakes and ensure your success.
If you’ve ever watched an HGTV show, you’d know that flipping houses can be rewarding, profitable, and even fun.
Blog flipping may not be as profitable, but you can definitely earn decent money from it if you do it right.
In today’s blog post, I outline what blog flipping is and the basics of how to do it. I also list down some tips for success.
When you flip a house, you purchase a house at a great deal, make improvements, and then sell it for a profit.
Similarly, blog flipping is creating or buying a blog and then trading it in for a profit.
If you choose to create a monetized blog for flipping, you can build it from the ground up (here’s how) and then put it up for sale on blog marketplaces. Conversely, if you choose to buy a blog, you can go to the same blog marketplaces and shop for blogs to buy and sell.
So this is all useful information, but why should you go into blog flipping?
It’s a fairly simple process. You don’t need any specialized equipment or training to do it. All you need is your laptop, an internet connection, and some funds, and you’re on your way.
It lets you control your time. This is one of those businesses that allows you plenty of flexibility. You can work as much or as little as you want. You can flip as many or as few blogs as you want at a given time.
You can even choose to maintain a blog that you originally intended to flip. Perhaps you stumbled upon a lucrative blog in a niche that you genuinely enjoy creating content and monetizing, and you want to continue it as your own project. That’s fine, too. The beauty of it is you’re not restricted in terms of what you want to do with a blog once you develop or purchase it.
It allows you to hone your blogging and internet marketing skills. Because you’ll have to refurbish a blog, you’ll get to constantly create plenty of high-quality content and practice your promotion and social media skills.
Plus, maintaining and even increasing an income stream for the blog you’re flipping improves your abilities related to blog monetization skills, such as in copywriting, sales, and page building.
It prevents burnout. When you’re flipping blogs, you don’t stay with a blog for very long. Thus, you do away with the monotony of working on the same blog for an extended time. You can even work with blogs that aren’t all in the same niche if you really want some variety in your blogging journey.
It’s potentially lucrative. When you create and buy the right blogs and you’re able to further increase their value, the potential for profit is huge.
Now that you know what blog flipping is and why it can be a good online business, here are the steps of how to go about blog flipping so you can have a better idea of what the process involves.
You can create a blog from scratch, write search engine-optimized articles for it, direct traffic to it, and monetize it, with the intention of selling it for a profit.
Pros: You control the quality of the blog and the website, from the content to the design.
Cons: It can take some time and effort before your blog is worth selling, depending on the blog niche, traffic to the blog, and the overall quality.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, you can buy a blog from a marketplace, improve that blog, and then sell it.
Pros: Everything in the blog is already set up; you only need to buy it.
Cons: You’ll need to put up some capital to be able to buy a blog.
Blogs can be bought from blog marketplaces where websites, blogs, domain names, and even apps are sold or auctioned off. You can think of them as eBay for blogs.
Here are some websites where you can shop for blogs.
When you’re shopping for a blog, you shouldn’t buy just any blog. Otherwise, you risk working with an unfixable blog, and your time and money investment would’ve been for nothing. Below are some considerations to make when picking out a blog.
Now that you have built or acquired a blog, it’s now time to renovate it in a sense. The goal is to put it in the best condition to sell at the best price possible.
Review the blog. You won’t know where to start if you don’t know what’s working well and what isn’t. Go through the data and analytics of the blog and prioritize the areas you have to work on. Remember that the longer you wait to start fixing up the blog, the longer you’ll have to wait for the return on your investment.
The following are the areas you’re most likely to have to work on.
After 6 to 8 months of sprucing up the blog, you should be ready to put it up for sale.
Yes, 6 to 8 months, maybe even longer.
If you’re aiming to flip a first-rate blog, you need to invest time to develop it, and it normally takes months of posting high-quality content and link building before you build up sustainable traffic and income.
You have two options when selling blogs. One option is to advertise it yourself on your own networks, through Google Ads, or on social media. The other option is to put it up for sale on the same blog marketplaces I enumerated above.
Put together comprehensive Google Analytics as well as financial reports. You can advertise your blog for sale however you want, but when it comes to your blog statistics and monthly income, potential buyers aren’t going to simply take your word for it. They are going to want to see evidence.
Prepare an extensive, accurate report of your blog data, such as organic traffic, referral traffic, bounce rate, engagement, as well as your social media statistics and other relevant data through Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics, and all other analytics of services you’re using.
If you have blog subscribers through email, you can ideally create a report through your email service provider, with the number of subscribers, number of opens, and all other email-related statistics. Be extremely careful of your subscribers’ personal information, though; remember that you have a responsibility to your subscribers to keep their information safe.
A complete report on your monthly income and your monthly expenses should also be ready for potential buyers. You can use different accounting software, such as FreshBooks and QuickBooks, to keep track of all your business costs and income, so you can also come up with accurate reports that you can show prospective buyers.
Use an escrow service for transactions in the thousands of dollars. If you’re not familiar with it, an escrow service is a third party in a transaction between a buyer and a seller.
That is, instead of the money going straight from the buyer to the seller, the escrow service holds the amount until a certain period of time to ensure that the buyer is receiving valid goods that are not substandard and defective, and at the same time, the seller gets the money that they should get for the goods they sold.
If the blog marketplace you’re working with doesn’t have an escrow service, you can use sites such as Escrow.com to secure your transaction.
Like many things in internet marketing, blog flipping is best learned by doing. Some advice from those who’ve come before you couldn’t hurt, though. Here are a few more pointers so your blog-flipping venture can be as profitable as it can be.
Choose your niche wisely.
Whether you’re creating or buying a blog to flip, research the niche thoroughly. You don’t have to love the niche, but having at least some knowledge of it and whether it has the potential to be successful traffic-wise will certainly be to your advantage.
Be honest.
If you plan to do this long-term, you need to be trustworthy and build up a reputation as such. Always be honest about the numbers and statistics of blogs you’re selling.
Never misrepresent information or pad your numbers, because your buyers will eventually find out the truth. Worse than never buying from you again, they’ll probably spread the word that you’re a scammer and not to be trusted.
Look for blogs that have diverse sources of income.
A blog that has a wide variety of incomes is more likely to stay profitable and give you a return on your investment quicker. If possible, go for blogs that have affiliate income and income from selling products, as these are more stable sources of income.
Consider the strength of the relationship of the readers to the blog author.
The readers of the existing blog may leave and unsubscribe when the author turns the blog over to you. Aside from a subtle but noticeable difference in the writing style, readers may have a personal relationship with the author.
A compromise you can make is to hire the author as a writer temporarily while making the transition, with a solid agreement that they will only be employed as a writer and that all blog income goes to you.
Do at least one thing with the blog every single day.
The heavy tasks when it comes to blogging include creating content, typing email newsletters, and developing your income streams.
But there are plenty of tasks that take only ten minutes.
For instance, you can post a social media update, or write one line of copy for a paid ad, or at least look at the analytics for that day.
Make sure you’re carving out time in a day, even just 10 minutes, to work on the blog (or blogs) that you’re flipping.
Get a sense of when to keep and when to sell a blog.
It’s a matter of balancing profitability and timing.
The blog may be currently profitable, but things may change further down the line, so you want to sell the blog before it becomes unprofitable under you. Then again, if you sell the blog too soon, that is, before it has reached its full potential, it’s a waste of an opportunity to make a large profit.
You might stumble upon a blog that you like working on that’s getting plenty of traffic, a steady income, and generally shows great promise. That’s the kind of blog you’ll probably want to keep.
However, there may be times when you’ll have a sudden need for cold hard cash, and a windfall from the sale of that blog may be worth letting it go. You may suddenly get sick, or there’s a debt you need to pay. Whatever the emergency is, you may find it in your best interest to sell a blog rather than keep it.
After you’ve been flipping blogs for a while, you should eventually get a feel for when the right time is to sell a blog. Similarly, you’ll eventually get a feel for when it’s more profitable to keep a blog for yourself than sell it.
If a blog seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Imagine finding a blog that claims to make $100 a day and they’re selling it for $1,000.
That kind of profit (or potential profit) at that low a price? Something is definitely amiss.
Always do business on reputable marketplaces or only with a trusted blogger. Even so, do your due diligence: Check the background of the blog and see if it’s blacklisted anywhere. Search on Google and social media to see what other people have been saying about this blog.
It’s very much a “buyer beware” situation, so always do your research.
Enjoy it!
To have a chance to maximize the income you can generate from blog flipping, you’ll need to be at least a little excited about the blogs you’re working on so you’re inspired to do it, and do it well.
If you like challenges and take pleasure in improving something so that other people can benefit from it, you’re probably going to find blog flipping fulfilling. So have fun with it!
If you’re looking for an alternative way of making money online apart from the usual, blog flipping may be for you.
Blog flipping involves three simple steps: Create/Buy, Fix, Sell.
Flipping blogs can be profitable if you have the patience and strategy to manage and grow a site, a knack for predicting niches that are lucrative, and the stomach for taking some risks.
Are you thinking of going into blog flipping? Did this article help you make up your mind? Share your thoughts in the comments!
JoAnne is your average, everyday, sane stay-at-home mom who believes in the power of the internet to make dreams come true. She has an insatiable appetite for chocolate, as well as all things internet marketing. She keeps up with the latest trends in blogging, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, and more.
