Blog Selling - How I Selling My Blog and What You Can Learn From It
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| Image by 200 Degrees from Pixabay |
For a long time there was no advertising at all, then very little, later a few affiliate links were added here and there, but none of that was the focus. I just loved WordPress and enjoyed writing about it because I kept modifying and adapting it a lot myself.
Then at some point, WordPress was over for me. The popular content management system became too bloated for me, I switched to static systems ( Flat-File CMS ). What remained was FastWP, a heart project, but now somehow pointless. So it had to be sold or passed on.
How I did it and what you can learn from my experience, that's what it should be about today.
Cleaning Up Before Selling
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| How I Selling My Blog and What You Can Learn From It |
Selling a project that was never meant to be sold always poses a few problems. One of these problems affected a large number of accounts, all of which had been registered with the corresponding email address of the domain.
My luck was that I only used the mail for WordPress relevant accounts and therefore knew all logins exactly. So I was able to manually delete these so that no data was transferred with the sale. That was a bit annoying because most accounts cannot be deleted just like that, but require intervention by customer service, which in turn can take some time.
The second thing I wanted to do before making a sale was to double-check the website. Were there any errors or problems with WordPress? Was everything up to date?
When a project slowly loses interest, one often becomes sluggish and sloppy. Updates are ignored, errors are not considered so important and improvements are usually no longer implemented. With FastWP, there were minor updates that had to be made because the project simply stayed in sleep mode for a certain time.
It's a bit like a great car that has been gathering dust in the garage for years and is now supposed to be sold because you simply no longer drive it yourself. It's still a great vehicle, but the dust needs to be cleaned up and some parts that have been idle for a long time may need to be replaced before being presented to potential buyers.
You have to pay attention to this when selling!
Be sure to delete the logins that are associated with the domain in advance. You should also bring the blog back into shape, fix errors, and install updates so that everything is presented in the best possible way for sales.
How Much Is Your Website Worth?
As soon as the website has been spruced up, the logins have been cleaned up and, in general, it has simply been ensured that it is in an ideal, ready-to-sell condition, a price must be defined. It is a difficult undertaking. Sure, sales can be extrapolated for a shop and advertising income for a portal, but what corresponds to the current value? At FastWP, three things were immediately clear to me.
- Since there is no income, the blog is completely worthless on paper.
- Since there is great content that all ranks well, it is worth a lot from the SEO factor.
- Since it is a project close to my heart, I am not selling it to someone who wants to abuse it as a link farm or paste it with advertising.
But there were more problems. I haven't tracked users for years. In my opinion, this prevents good content, and, viewed objectively, the numbers have never helped me. If so, then they harmed the content, because I suddenly saw what was relevant instead of dealing with topics that I was passionate about.
So there was no marketing for the blog, nor were visitor numbers recorded, which made it difficult to determine an actual value. By the way, you can find out how the value of a website is usually composed here.
So for me, there were no numbers and no income to find a buyer quickly and easily. What I had were good rankings and excellent content, so I wanted to find someone who wanted to make something out of it. Who himself recognized how valuable the project is. Who had a plan for the future to make FastWP great again?
You have to pay attention to this when selling!
There are some guidelines for calculating the price of a website, but in the end, the value is always individual. How much work have you invested and how well is the project doing? With enough good rankings and high visitor numbers, you can then set a price. Don't just ask yourself what you can get out of it, be honest and ask yourself how much the project is worth to you personally. A limit upwards and downwards gives room for negotiation.
How Do You Sell a Website?
A question that now arose: How do I sell the blog exactly now? And where anyway?
I've had zero experience with such offers myself because I don't usually create a blog to sell it at some point. It was never even remotely my intention. But since the alternative was to completely discontinue the offer and then my work would have been in vain, I wanted to do it differently this time.
In general, there is a wide range of platforms on which advertisements for websites, domains, blogs, and projects of all kinds can be placed. So I picked out a few and tell you right away: those that cost money were unsuccessful in my case. That's why I don't even mention them in more detail.
What helped the most was a little hint about FastWP itself. Thereupon many interested bloggers got in touch, but especially SEO's of course, who came across the offer during their backlink research or analysis. From here on it is important that you have a fixed price in mind that you can name accordingly. You can also hope for offers, but you should already know what you want for your website in the end. For example, I would have preferred to discontinue them than sell them below their value.
You have to pay attention to this when selling!
There are a variety of platforms. For me, those who asked for money did not help at all. A notice on the website and an advertisement in forums and platforms that are free, on the other hand, brought a lot. Spread the info about the sale wherever possible, because sometimes you just have to reach the right person who is looking for exactly what you have to offer. Also important: have a minimum and maximum price in mind, otherwise, you cannot negotiate.
Find the Right Buyer
By now everyone knew that the project was going to be sold. The information was spread as far as possible, nothing more can be done for the sale. For me, the main thing now was to find the right buyer. FastWP was not about as much money as possible, but about keeping the project as such. The content should still be available and help users.
Some of them may not believe me, but if you are passionate about building a blog as a hobby for years, then you don't want to sell it to someone who just wants to applaud everything with advertising and backlinks. So it is important to find the right buyer.
For me, that meant rejecting many offers and always asking exactly what the potential prospect was planning. Since I had also written a specialist book on WordPress that used a few links and redirects from the domain, I needed a guarantee that these would remain. So I needed a contract.
The contract for the sale of a blog should be completed before negotiating with a potential buyer. On the one hand, because during the creation it is often clear to you what exactly matters to you with a buyer, but also because you gradually notice or remember certain points that should be added.
It is normal not to think of everything right away, so it is good to have the contract ready in advance so that you can add additions if necessary. There are a few sample contracts at Projektify. You can use these as a guide, but you should also add your points where necessary.
You have to pay attention to this when selling!
Ask yourself in advance what you expect from a buyer? Do you want the project to last? Do you care what he's planning with it? Is it just about the money? Everything's okay, just be clear about it when choosing a buyer. A contract should also be completed before the negotiation and contain everything important to you personally. Model contracts are good, but often also incomplete.
Domain Transfer and Data Transfer
To be able to sell a website, including the domain, takes at least two steps. In the first step, you save the entire content of the domain via FTP, i.e. download all files. In the case of WordPress, you then have to download the MySQL database. You will give these files to the buyer so that he can set up the entire website in advance on his server. The website is up and running even before the actual domain is transferred. This is important to avoid failures and errors.
The domain, on the other hand, should only be transferred when the money for the purchase has been transferred in full, the contract has been signed and everything is on the dry side. Actually, with such purchases, you should always act after you've done so, but it's especially important with the domain. Once transferred, that was it.
Most hosters only need a few clicks for the transfer. Select domain, confirm the transfer, receive auth code. This auth code is then communicated to the buyer because this is the only way he can register the domain for himself. It's quite simple.
If it is a WordPress blog, it also makes sense to use a plugin to transfer the files. So not everything has to be saved and integrated laboriously by hand. WordPress plugins, such as Duplicator, do such tasks quickly and, above all, easily.
You have to pay attention to this!
Before you take action and submit data, wait for full payment and the signed contract. Clarifies in advance exactly how the transfer should take place. With WordPress, plugins like Duplicator are recommended, otherwise, everything has to be transferred by hand. Do not transfer the domain until the very end!
What I Learned from Blog Sales Myself
I have now explained in great detail how the sale took place, as well as further information that you should pay attention to. But what was my lesson from this whole thing?
I think that something should be taken away from every event for the future. For me, it was very different things. The first thing I realized was that I no longer wanted to commit to WordPress in the future. In total, I stopped three large blogs because I didn't want to continue them like this and WordPress became too bulky or used too much power to run at the same time. Don't get me wrong, WordPress is a great CMS, but for me, too much convenience comes at the expense of performance.
In addition, you quickly become dependent on plugins, which are then only available for WordPress. Plus all the security holes and updates - nothing I want on my server if I'm not actively using and managing it.
I learned from sales themselves that you should never sell under pressure. I didn't have to sell FastWP, I wanted to. Because I wanted to hand it over to someone who could liven up the project and make something new out of it. Because I didn't want my work to be in vain. But I would never have just sold it just to get rid of it. This gave me the luxury of refusing multiple offers and giving me time to find the right buyer with a vision for the future.
The final lesson is that sales like this always hurt. In addition, it requires work alongside work, because here too you have to make sure that everything works out and goes its way. In the future, I would therefore like to concentrate only on projects that I can and want to continue in the long term. It remains to be seen whether this is that easy. Above all, however, I am now concentrating on my job as a content manager and author, because that is where my calling lies, as I have noticed in recent years.
Hopefully, this article was a little help to you. It should be a field report and a guide at the same time to show what to look for in a sale. In this sense: All the best for you and your projects.
Have you ever sold a website? What would your tips and lessons be?
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