I Bought This Blog! What’s Next?
If you were frequent visitor of this blog, you might have seen that this blog, WP Blog Tips was kept for sale. I bought this blog recently, my name is Shahzad, the new owner and glad to see you here :)
Hereafter you can expect down to earth blogging tips advice. I promise you that this blog will not be just another how to make money blog. All the stuffs I am going to publish here will be what I’ve learned from my experience of blogging for many years. So no more bullshits but just what I’ve learned ;)
Why I bought this blog?
I love the idea of buying and selling blog since I heard about that idea. I spend some time on Flippa.com, a marketplace for buying and selling websites but unfortunately have not found a blog that suits to my passion and interest that comes under my budget.
Fortunately I landed on this blog while browsing on web. Immediately I made an offer to the old owner, Anuj Sharma. Long story short… And now I am proud owner of this blog.
Buying Blog- Pitfalls
Buying blog is nice idea. You don’t need to spend your valuable time on creating a new blog from scratch, building traffic and community around it. However, there are many cons for buying a blog.
1. You should compromise a lot
Let’s look at my example. My domain is WPBlogTips.com
Whenever a new reader land on this blog, he might think that this blog is all about WP tips and tricks. But unfortunately, the term WP has no role in this blog. Exclude the fact that this blog runs under WordPress platform. Neither the existing content nor the future content has to do anything related to WordPress coding.
This is one of the big pitfalls of buying a blog. You should be OK with some of the facts of your blog that you don’t love really.
2. Content
Have you checked the archives page on this blog? NO??!! Then you must check here.
You can see a lot of unrelated articles were published earlier, for examples categories like OS, Gaming and Android etc. which have nothing to do with the niche of this blog. However, I am not going to remove any of the previously published article because I don’t want to distract Google bots. In fact, I hate to be landed on 404 pages and I hate for the same for my readers too.
Some blog may have a personal approach of their previous author. So if you are buying such blog, the challenge for you is to change that approach without boring or loosing the existing audience.
How to Prepare Yourself for Buying a blog?
Before jumping straight forward to buy a blog, you need to do many homework and prepare yourself like arranging money, bargaining with the current owner and more. Doing better homework before purchasing may help you to avoid later time disappointment.
1. Examine the purpose
If your only aim is to make money rather than passion on the niche, rethink about the idea. Think twice. Ask yourself some questions.
- Are you really passionate on the niche of the blog that you are about to buy?
- What is your content strategy? Will you have enough time to spend for writing articles for your blog or will you be accepting guest posts? Does it enhance your audience?
- Is the blog under monetize? Can you figure out any ways to monetize it further?
- What strategy will you be implementing for building the traffic and interactivity of the community?
2. Ask for some stats
Stats can tell you how much the blog is worth.
- Ask for at least last 6 months monthly income.
- Get some verified Google Analytics stats.
(I’ll write in details about this topic on another post.)
What’s Next for WP Blog Tips?
As said earlier, you can expect killer tips that makes you much better blogger. What I’ll be publishing here is what I’ve learned so far. This blog will not be yet another make money shitting blog.
1. My Content Strategy- Nothing is better than something
Earlier, on this blog a lot of guest posts have been accepted. Guest authors were given Dashboard access also. So for admin, it shorten the work.
But when I first login to my WP dashboard, I found many spammy contents were submitted for review by those authors. The funny thing is some Chinese articles were also submitted for review (or is it Japanese?? I don’t know…lol!) So first of all, what I’ve done is removed all the unpublished content and the users!
Currently I am not accepting guest posts. I believe that guest posts can be accepted only when you don’t have enough time to write posts yourself or if you are receiving really excellent posts that provide greater value for your readers. But if your blog is small you can’t expect killer articles from those authors.
In fact, I am NOT a believer of publishing a post a day keeps the Google bots and audience awake. For me, less is more…
2. Talk about stats
When I first saw the stats of WP Blog Tips before buying this blog my eyes get stuck on the bounce rate part.
The bounce rate of the blog is 81.61%. Not so good, right?… That is, with less efforts, I can improve the pageviews so easily.
3. Traffic and Networking
What you’ll be doing, if you were about to start a new blog again??? You may have different answers.
Ask me the same question. I’ll start networking with other fellow bloggers in this niche.
What I’ve learned from blogging so far is that you can’t be a better blogger if you are anti-social.
So my strategy for building traffic and community is to publish guest posts on bigger blogs and do comments on social blogs. What I meant by social blog is, a blog whose author respects his community and give value for each and every comments on his blog and responds on it and don’t regret to help out other fellow bloggers because he know how important socializing is for his blog.
Social blog will have a powerful community around it. So if you do involve on such blogs, you could easily build a powerful interactive community on your blog too.
4. Monetization Strategy
Currently I am testing by adding Adsense slots here and there on this blog. If it works well, no problem… else I’ll keep it off from the blog.
I’ll also be trying for further monetization options other than Adsense. However, my main focus will be on the services I provide here.
So what would you suggest me to do on this blog? What are you expecting from me? Let me know your thoughts
- Shahzad
The Social Blogger
Hey Shahzad,
First of all, congratulations on your acquisition. WPBlogTips.com is quite a premium domain name. I see you getting to great heights with this one in the months to come.
With those visitor stats, it should not be long either before you start turning a profit.
Great job! Great buy!
Hey Yeremi,
Welcome my new home :) Great to see you here!
Thanks for your kind words. Will work hard to bring this blog to next level
Great to see a strong blogger get stronger Shahzad.
I don’t think that bounce rate will be high for long…let me know if I can help at all.
Oh Yeah! for sure Greg. Know you are a bounce rate reduction specialist :)
Regarding bounce rate, I’ve included an archive page on navigation bar and categories section on right sidebar. Now it is 79%.
Not many old posts have internal links inside it. Will be adding internal links too to reduce it further.
Good move. I’d check out this post: http://www.dearblogger.org/blog-post-title-seo because before readers can even get to an internal link they’ve gotta be interested in a post.
Ha ha but yeah, everything is in my eBook.
Hmm.. I love this part on that article…
“If it’s a tennis article, you’re most likely to click on “Federer wins, reacts strangely”, than “Federer wins: crowd applauds”. Why? Because the first is just more different…”
It’s great to see you bought this domain name Shahzad. What I like most about this blog is It’s domain name!
I’m sure you’ll be doing great here. Put some work on the customization of your theme.
Hey Ehsan,
Welcome home! Nice to see you here. Did you love this domain?? Haha… but personally I don’t love it as much as you do because as said on the post I believe “WP” has no role here on this blog.
I am more fond of simple domain names like Greg has e.g “DearBlogger”
I really appreciate for your suggestion about customizing the theme. I do have some work remaining for logo design and more.
Honestly, I am really bad while deciding how a blog should look like. Could you please help me out by suggesting what changes you would like to see on overall design?
Haha Shahzad, it’s not funny at all if you buy a blog that has too high bounce rate.
Your domain name is great, even though you bought your domain name with WPBlogTips. I know exactly what you want to write for the community. Keep your great work up!
Thanks – Ferb
Haha…
Welcome to WPBlogTips. You got me bro, you know what I am planning to write. Will be expecting you here again :)
Thanks for your appreciation
Not a bad buy at all. the name itself is already a brand. Nice and good luck
It’s perfect time to make some plans for the future and it’s time to be happy.
I’ve read this post and if I could I wish to suggest you few interesting things or advice. Maybe you can write next articles referring to this article. I desire to read more things about it!
Wow Kathy!
Thanks for that. I was thinking that most of my readers would not be interested in buying and selling specifically. So I am actually regretting to write similar articles here. But will do hereafter as you suggested.
I will also recommend you to read this article.
http://www.wpblogtips.com/analyze-google-analytics/
This will help you to learn how to identify the potential of a blog you are about to buy
I know it’s late to comment about this article, but now I can see the changes you have made to your blog more clearly. Indeed ! a good blog it is, to read in free time.
Actually I was reading your another article and land on this after reading that.
Congratulations!!! Good Luck for your future!!!
Shahzad, it is really a great article to read as I have come to know about the new way of monetisation through website flipping. This is a great way of getting good sorts of income. I have enough SEO capabilities and writing ability and related stuff to bring the branding and power to a blog (I am confident on that part). But, I have a small question in my mind. If my website has more than 500 twitter followers and 1500 facebook likes, how can I sell these facebook and twitter profiles for the person who buys the blog? Awaiting your reply- Thank you,
Hey Rakesh,
Nice to see you here. About your question…
Do you want to sell that twitter followers and facebook page for extra money.. I think that’s not a good idea. It should be given as free.
For transferring the facebook page, you can make the buyer as admin and for twitter change the login email and give him credentials …
Do these answers helped??? Let me know
I did not mean to sell them. I was asking about transferring them to the buyer who buys the website. Thanks for your reply. I will now work on a blog that could potentially bring some money. Thanks for a great post. Will be back with a guest possible if I make the things work around with the plans I do have about this flipping phenomena. thank you once again,