We have seen some fairly high profile blog sales, at least in the make money online niche, including – BloggingFingers.com ($6,000) CashQuests.com ($15,000) OneMansGoal.com ($8,500) Blogtrepreneur.com (Not Sold Yet – Predicted low five figures)

If I had the writing resources available to me I would have loved to have snapped up all these blogs to create quite a nice make money online network, but that would simple be beyond my capabilities to manage at this time.

Blogging Fingers was the first to tip the scale, gathering attention from plenty of other blogs about the sale. This in turn led to the other sales, which haven’t quite garnered as much attention but that certainly hasn’t harmed the final selling price and I think therein lies one of the main motivations for this spurt of blog sales – the money is good.

I’ve been in personal contact with a few of the people behind these sales and I think it’s safe to say for every blog listed above, the main reason for selling is “personal reasons” of some kind, which to me means there are other projects they would like to move on to, they have grown tired of writing to their blog or something a bit more serious has forced them into the sale.

Does This Indicate The Start Of A Mass Exodus?

I expect we haven’t seen the last of high profile blog sales – we never will as long as there are buyers and sellers – however I think the last few weeks occurred purely because a few bloggers found themselves in a situation where they were thinking about selling, for whatever reason, and then when they noticed the amount of money they could get, that tipped the scales.

The final selling price for these blog sales was above average based on recent history. I still think they were fair deals given the readership and potential for revenue, but compared to the prices you can get for other website purchases, these outgoing bloggers made very good money for what they sold. Price is always a subjective matter and it depends ultimately on how the new owner can leverage the asset to whether they got a good deal or not.

What I think is sad about these sales is the lost potential. These bloggers were on the tipping point of big success. If they just continued what they were doing they would have possibly grown into leaders in the industry – which is very hard to do – and when you get there, the perks are fantastic. Sometimes the lure of a nice cash exit is tempting, but you really want to be clear about what you are letting go of. It’s going to be harder and harder to stand out from the crowd and these blogs were well on their way to doing that.

Building an authority blog is a challenge, and frankly, there are much easier ways to generate a few thousand dollars online, so if you want the money, selling your asset should be the last resort. That being said, I think for many of the bloggers in question for these recent sales, there was a need for urgency or a clear desire to leave the market, so the sales are justified.

Will The Market Sustain These Prices?

The World Wide Web is MASSIVE. That means there is and always will be bargains to be found if you are looking to buy websites. Usually the best way to find sites and pick them at cheaper rates is to approach websites that represent value to you (they target the market you target and you see a way to get a return on your investment) and then make a casual approach. If you find sites that are clearly being neglected (look for blogs with recent inactivity), chances are you can pick them up for much lower rates than what these blogs recently sold for.

On the flipside, if you want to increase the value of a website for sale, focus on the core metrics like traffic, RSS, revenue, content and incoming links, and then go out and drum up some buzz for your sale. I think with the growth of the Web and the strong interest in successful blogs, they will continue to attract higher and higher prices. Expect more of what we are experiencing now in the future.

Currently, the make money online and blogging niches have enough buyers that blogs like those listed at the start of this article enjoy high demand. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I suspect it’s because people see that there is money to be made about talking about making money.

Buying a blog instead of starting one from scratch is definitely a quick entry strategy, although there are risks involved since you may lose a lot of the value you paid for as soon as the blog changes owner. Some readers are only readers because of the person who was writing the blog. As soon as they leave, the readers leave too.

If you want further advice about buying and selling websites, try these articles –

• How I Generate $1675 Per Month Passive Income From Buying Websites
• How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
• Buying and Selling Websites The Ed Dale Way

Yaro Starak
Not Selling His Blog at http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com