Telegraphik

Back in 06 BlogMedia Inc was faced with a decision. A decision to expand our growing network of sites by acquisition. At the time I was actively involved in expansion by building out new sites. BlogMedia Inc had the available personal capital on hand by borrowing from one of the partners to invest in a site or two and the decision was made to do just that. But only if the right site came along. Sure enough it did.

The Blog Herald, was valued by many in the blogging community as the authority voice. At this time TechCrunch was just emerging and a few others sites really didn’t have the push that The Blog Herald did. We quickly took action. I was involved in negotiating the sale with Duncan Riley. Already a 75k buyout had fallen through. I knew he wanted to sell and we knew we wanted to buy this. We had some prices on the table and some options on financing. We knew we didn’t want to spend to much but we took the risk and quietly picked the site up at what we considered was far below market value.

For the right price of $30,000. Not bad for a blog purchase.

Matt Craven, Myself and a team of experts drove value back into the site over time. I was active through most of it but mostly it was Matt Craven who really put the life back into The Blog Herald. And in less than a year he decided the market was right again and it was time to sell. Sortof. Mostly he knew there was a climate of buyers. We had 3 serious buyers on the table and the deal was sealed within a week and a half.

What was BlogMedia Inc’s return on investment? The Blog Herald sold for $64,000. A nice return on investment of $34,000 in less than a year. To me this makes selling an easy decision. I might add that we had a buyer who was willing to increase the bidding to $70,000 at the last minute after our original sale had already been signed sealed and delivered.

To me this makes selling a very easy decision. One that you can’t second guess. So how much is your blog worth today? And what will it be worth tommorow or the next day? You won’t know until a buyer comes along. But you have to follow your gut instincts on when to sell and when to buy. Instead of starting a new blog maybe the right thing for you to do is to buy a new blog. The best place to buy a blog is Sitepoint Marketplace. You can often find a good blog in a variety of niches that will hopefully fill your desires for a new project.

Not every purchase will have this kind of return on investment, however a lesson can be learned here. Blogs, will normally only increase in value if you put in the hard work needed to continue the growth cycle. Rarely do sites loose authority unless a sale happens. And only if the site has been misused or the topic matter has changed dramatically. Or someone messes up the SEO. But that’s where the last post comes in handy. Seriously The Rich Jerk and SEOBook are two winners you won’t regret spending the time to read.