A Common-Sense Approach to Buying a Blog For a Profit

Many Internet entrepreneurs buy and sell blogs on a regular basis. Most of them aren’t speculators; and most of those who speculate only hold small portfolios of blogs. The amount of entrepreneurs who hold large portfolios of blogs and profit from them is relatively small.

The reason for this is important to understand: buying a blog is no different from any other asset market. Just like buying and selling properties or buying and selling stocks, you will face a market price that has emerged from information contained in hundreds of thousands of transactions. If the price of a blog is expected to rise sharply in the near future, this will be accounted for in the price when you purchase it.

This is precisely why it isn’t as easy as it looks to buy a portfolio of blogs; sit on it; and then resell your blogs at an enormous profit in a matter of months. Indeed, making profits selliong blogs will require a large portfolio, some risk, and patience.

With that said, there is a lot of money to be made as a “blogger.” And there are many different strategies you can adopt (just as you would when you purchase stocks) that will provide a healthy return and also hedge against risks.

Legitimate forms of buying blogs for a profit typically involve subtler forms of portfolio construction, maintenance, and liquidation. In particular, bloggers generally consider at least one of the following item before selecting purchasing a blog:

1. The volume of type-in traffic. If a blog name is short, has .com as its top-level blog, and contains frequently searched keywords, it may already received copious amounts of type-in traffic. This will make the blog inherently valuable to site owners, which is why speculators often use this as a criterion for selection.

2. The number and quality of inbound links. Another criterion that bloggers use when selecting sites is the amount of inbound links pointing to them. This is an important consideration in the secondary market (but not primary market) for blogs. In the secondary market, blogs were often hosted and promoted for some period of time before being sold; and, for this reason, often still have inbound links and traffic.

3. The top-level blog. A top level blog is everything after the “.” For instance, top level blogs include .com, .biz, .net, .info, .org, .mobi, and a vast array of different country codes. Not surprisingly, .com blogs are typically more valuable than other top level blogs; however, short blog names with country code or .info TLDs are still desirable.

4. A paid valuation. Many sites offer paid valuations of blog names. Getting such a valuation is very similar to sending a piece of jewelry to a gemological laboratory to get a certified appraisal. It is important to note, however, that many appraisal services overestimate the value blogs. It is also important to remember that the appraisal depends on market conditions; and will not remain true over time.

5. Whether or not the blog is a “good fit” for an existing portfolio. Just as you would consider whether or not a stock is a good addition to your portfolio, you must make the same consideration when it comes to blogs. For instance, if you’re looking to reduce the risk of your portfolio, then you may want to diversify and take on a larger amount of lower-value blogs, rather than buying up a handful of expensive ones.

Of course, buying a blog is a complicated practice; and these five items are just the starting point. However, if you begin to use these in your endeavors, then will provide an excellent means of avoiding embarrassing and costly pitfalls.