Enrichment Depot – Profiting on the Net

Inspiration strikes in strange ways; in this case, I reached the end of Neil Patel’s excellent article covering 13 questions you should ask yourself while writing a blog post. In his discussion of the last question, he compared a blog post to a restaurant meal. Will your reader complain about your blog post because you’ve served them skimpy fare? Are you feeding people content so they are full when they leave your site…or are they hungry, looking for more? Patel asked. If they are still hungry, your readers probably won’t come back. So if your readers are devouring your blog content, th…
SEO Chat – Search Engine Optimization Tutorials

Tags: Blogs, Feed, Readers, Well

Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO panel from Affiliate Summit West 2010, which took place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas, NV.

Speakers:

• Kristopher B. Jones, President, Pepperjam Network, A GSI Commerce Company (Moderator)
• Drew Bennett, Professional Blogger, BenSpark.com
• John Carcutt, SEO Manager, MediaWhiz
• Tim Jones, Owner, TheRealTimJones.com
• Murray Ross Newlands, Founder, Affiliate Heat

Learn to maximize affiliate commissions using blogging, increasing your community, and utilizing SEO.

More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

Note: the company(ies) and position(s) listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO

If you liked this video, be sure to register for the next Affiliate Summit. The session videos aren’t made public until a year or more after each conference.

Affiliate Marketing Blog

Tags: Affiliate, Blogs, marketing, Monetizing

Skip the Backstory and Take me to the Free Video and MindMap!

In 2002 I started my first blog without even the hint that blogging would be anything more to me than a hobby.

Over the years that have followed I began to see the potential of blogging to make money and began to experiment – growing blogging from a hobby, to a part time job to a full time job and beyond.

The evolution of my blogs was wonderful in many ways but meant I ended up with…. a bit of a mess.

A couple of years ago I sat down to do some strategic thinking about my blogging and realised that I’d created something that resembled a house that had had many extensions added to it.

It all worked – but it was far from the strategic business that it could be.

Really what it needed was an Architect.

Meet the Architect

Today I’m excited to introduce you to someone who in many ways has become the Architect of my business – The Web Marketing Ninja.

The Ninja has literally added 0′s to my blogs revenue with his advice. He’s smart, humble, warm hearted and ethical (and a little shy). Just my kind of online marketer.

Regular readers of ProBlogger already are familiar with the Ninja – he’s been guest posting here for a year or so.

Get inside the Ninjas Mind with this Free In Depth MindMap

But today the Ninja is stepping things up a notch and is going to reveal an in depth overview of how he approaches helping blogs transition from hobbies to businesses.

I was meeting with the Ninja recently to talk about a product launch that I’m doing and as we chatted I realised this guy has so much great strategy in his head that we just had to capture it somehow.

I issued him a challenge – get your approach down and share it with ProBlogger readers. Off the cuff I suggested he create a Mind Map outlining what he does.

Little did I know that the Ninja would not only create a MindMap – but he’d also go on to create a complete 31 chapter guide to online marketing complete with a heap of other tools for bloggers!

We’ll launch the full online marketing kit that he’s produced in the coming week or so but in the lead up to it I’ve asked the Ninja to share the Mind Map with ProBlogger readers today and to talk us through it step by step in a video.

The free video he’s created is not for the light hearted – it is 30 minutes long and is a meaty overview into the topic of online marketing. You’ll need to set aside some time, make yourself comfy and grab something to take notes with to make the most of this.

The Ninja is a little nervous about presenting it – it’s his first foray into the public limelight – but I love his gentle and yet smart approach and trust you will to.

The video is completely free and we’re not asking for your email address to watch it. We’ve also included the actual MindMap as a free PDF download too.

It is part of the lead up to launching the Online Marketing Kit but I’m confident that it’ll provide value to any blogger wanting to make money from their blog – whether you go on to buy the full kit or not.

Check out the Video and Download the Mind Map here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Got 30 Minutes? Learn How The Ninja Turns Blogs Into Real Businesses

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogs, businesses, Into, Learn, Minutes, Ninja, Real, Turns

“Building blogs is like building muscles—in order for them to grow you need to use them.”

I tweeted the above statement a few weeks back and it got so much traction I decided to create this video on the topic.

The idea for the video came out of the a Skype chat session I had with five readers who all worked through the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook together. Their feedback was that they felt like they’d all signed up to the gym together and had just had a month of intense training. In each case, their blogs had grown (both in terms of content and traffic), and they’d come to the realization that daily blogging exercise was what had led to the results.

Transcription of Building Blogs is like Building Muscles

Hi. It’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Today I want to talk about a principle of blogging that I think most people understand but many bloggers I come across don’t actually do anything with that knowledge. And that is this: a blog is like a muscle, it only grows when you use it.

Most of us understand that to have a successful blog you need to actually blog. You need to actually create content. You need to do the activities of a blogger in the same way that if I want to grow my biceps I need to actually pick up something heavy and I need to exercise those biceps. If I’m just passive with them they won’t grow at all.

So most of us understand that, but most of us also just let our blogs happen when we feel like blogging. Most bloggers I interact with? You ask them, you know, “what is your blog posting schedule like?” and they kind of look at you a little bit blankly. “Well it’s kind of like when I sit down at my computer and I think maybe I should come up with something to write about”. It’s very impulsive, and it’s not very strategic.

Now, using this exercise metaphor, I’m actually someone who doesn’t exercise very well on an impulsive basis. I actually need to be a little bit strategic about it.

The times in my life where I’ve been the most fit and most healthy are the times in my life where I’ve actually put a plan in place to become fit and healthy. They’re the times in my life where I’ve enrolled in a program of some type to exercise. They’re the times in my life where I’ve enrolled in a gym and talked to a fitness instructor and got them to devise me a plan of the type of exercises that I need to do. They’re the times in my life where I’ve talked to a dietician who’s helped to put together a plan of foods that I should be eating at certain times of the day. They’re the times where I’ve been intentional, and have actually done something and put something in place to help me to be fit and healthy are the times that I’ve actually been fit and healthy.

And the same is true with my blogs. I remember in the early days understanding this principle for the first time, and noticing that the more I posted, the more readers would come to my blog. The more I posted, the more people would leave comments on my blog. The more I would interact with my readers, the more they would interact with me. The more you use your blog, the more successful it becomes. And so when I began to notice this, I started to put some plans in place to help me to blog.

I remember the first time, about three months into my first blog, I developed an editorial calendar. I didn’t call it that at the time—I had no idea what an editorial calendar was—but I got a spreadsheet out, and I put down the different days of the week, and the different activities that I would do on my blog. At that point I was posting on a daily basis, but I began to think, “Well, on Mondays I could ask a question. On Tuesdays I could do a “how to” type post. On Wednesdays I could link to another blog and bounce off something that they’d written and link back to them.”

And so I began to think about different types of posts for different days of the week as a strategy to get my blogging regular, and to be a little bit more strategic about it in some ways. In many ways it was kind of like an exercise plan for your body, but it was an exercise plan for my blog.

Over the years I guess that editorial calendar has developed, and has changed at different times depending on the different stage that my blogs are at. There are other activities as well—it’s not just the content that you write that you need to be a bit strategic about. It can also be about promoting your blog. So you may add in to your schedule, “In Tuesdays, I will visit five other blogs in my niche and I will watch what they’re doing. I will email their authors. I might leave comments on their posts.” Those type of activities can be things that you can be a bit strategic about as well.

Another area that you can be strategic about is around building community on your blog. So you may say, “On Thursdays, I’m going to email three of my readers and just say ‘Hi, I appreciate you reading, is there anything I can do for you?’” You can interact with your readers in the comments of your blog—that type of activity can be scheduled in. You can be a bit strategic about it.

Similarly you could add in activities around doing search engine optimization if you want to grow your readers through Google, or you could schedule in things about monetization, you know—looking at how your ads are placed on your blog, and doing some optimization of that on a regular basis as well.

None of these things just happen any more than muscles growing without exercising them, so be a little bit strategic about it. Now you may have the incentive and the initiative to be able to do that for yourself, or you may need to do one of two other things.

You might get a program like ProBlogger’s 31 Days To Build a Better Blog or ProBlogger’s Guide to Your First Week of Blogging. The reason I actually created those ebooks was to get people doing daily activities that would get them in the rhythm of blogging. So you may choose to use a program like that, or you may devise your own, or use someone else’s.

And the other thing I’d say is: don’t do it alone. One of the things I know about health and my body and being fit as a person, is that I’m much more likely to exercise if I’m somehow doing it with another person. Whether that be a fitness instructor, or whether that be a friend who I go for a run with, or a friend who I might play a game of tennis with. When we are social in what we do with our bodies, for many of us it’s easier, and the same I think is true with blogging.

When you join with someone else to work through a program like 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, or some sort of other program that you devise to take your blog to the next level, you’re more likely to actually put that into practice. There’s that sense of accountability. It’s a little bit more fun, and you can help each other and resource each other through that as well. So I’d encourage you to think about not only being strategic about your blogging and putting a plan in place for it, but to also think about how you can do that with someone else. How you can build some accountability and cooperation with another blogger to build your blog.

So I guess I’d encourage you with that advice again: a blog is like a muscle. You need to use it to grow it. And for most of us, that means actually being a little bit strategic and putting some sort of a system or a rhythm or a routine in place to help us to go to the next level. Whatever you do, don’t just leave it to chance. If you want your blog to be successful, if you want it to achieve certain goals, you need to put some systems and rhythms in place to take you to those places.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Building Blogs is Like Building Muscles

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogs, Building, Like, Muscles

This guest post is by Jennifer Fulwiler of ConversionDiary.com.

When I announced to readers of my regular blog that I had accepted a paid blogging gig for a national newspaper, my email inbox was flooded with one question: “How do you do it?” I have four children under the age of seven and am also working on a book, so, needless to say, before I accepted this new blogging position, I had to think carefully about how to write quality blog content with minimal effort.

I am happy to report that everything is going well: I’m able to keep up with both blogs without taking time away from my other priorities, and I’m getting great feedback from readers.

So how do I do it? Here are my top five secrets.

1. Keep a clean list of post ideas and update it frequently

When fellow bloggers tell me that they have trouble updating their blogs frequently, my first question is always: Do you keep a list of post ideas? I’m surprised at how often the answer is no, since I find this to be the key to regular blogging.

When the blank screen looms in front of you, there’s no way you’ll be able to recall every good post idea you’ve ever thought of. It’s critical to have a clean, well organized list to turn to. If you update this list frequently, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you amass great ideas (the list for my personal blog includes 87 items). The more ideas you have to choose from, the easier it will be to find a topic that inspires you when crunch time hits.

2. Have ideas for easy posts at your fingertips

There are times when life gets crazy and I simply don’t have time to write a regular post. That’s when I turn to my trusty list of easy post ideas, each of which allows me to touch base with my readers in a short amount of time. Some of my favorite go-to techniques are:

• asking readers a question (I keep a separate list called “Questions to ask readers” for this purpose)
• posting a roundup of my favorite links from around the web
• creating a “best-of-comments” post, where I highlight the most helpful comments from a previous post
• posting an interesting excerpt from a favorite book, with just a couple paragraphs of commentary (I highlight favorite passages in the books I read, which makes these posts especially easy)
• asking a question on Twitter and posting a screenshot of responses
• doing a photo post with one or multiple pictures with minimal commentary
• answering a series of “getting to know you” questions and asking readers to do the same (e.g. “What time do you get up in the morning?”, “What is the most dangerous place you’ve ever visited?”, etc.)
• reviewing the top products that make my life easier in the area related to my blog
• asking a fellow blogger to write a guest post
• writing an “awards” post where I name my favorite people in a certain category (e.g. “My 8 favorite female bloggers”)
• rerunning an old post.

3. Embrace deadlines

My new blogging job requires me to write three posts a week, on a set schedule. This has been a new experience, since with my personal blog I could updated whenever I felt like it. To my surprise, having deadlines has been a great benefit to me. It’s taught me to cultivate self-discipline, stay organized, and stop wasting time. Consider setting deadlines for your own blog, even if you don’t have to—you’ll find that it transforms your mindset from “amateur” to “professional” overnight.

4. Let go of perfectionism

One of the most fascinating discoveries of my new blogging venture has been seeing the benefits of lowering the bar. In order to keep up with both blogs, I’ve had to pull items from my post ideas file that I normally would have skipped. I’ve had to publish posts that I didn’t think were perfect. And you know what? My readers have loved it. I’m now sharing information that I would have normally kept to myself, and the response has been fantastic. In fact, my four most popular items within the last month have all been posts that I never would have written if I weren’t under deadline pressure.

My new motto for whether a topic makes the cut to write about is simply: If it’s interesting to me, it’ll be interesting to someone else.

It doesn’t have to be a magnum opus. It doesn’t have to include mind-blowing commentary that will change the world. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to include tons of links. If I’m doing nothing more than conveying a simple insight or tidbit of information that I found helpful, that’s enough; there are undoubtedly many other people out there who will find it helpful as well.

5. Remember that it’s not all about you

Before I had so much blogging to keep up with, I felt like everything had to come from me. Each post had to be based solely on my own personal wisdom. With my new workload I’ve been forced to share: I link to other bloggers’ content, ask for guest posts, share excerpts from good books, interview interesting people, post link roundups—and a bunch of other things that highlight someone else’s talents. The result has not only been a grateful response from other bloggers and writers, but my own posts have been better as well.

What tips can you add to help others run multiple blogs as part of their already-busy lives?

Jennifer Fulwiler is a freelance writer as well as the chaos manager for her busy household, which currently includes four young children. Her personal blog is ConversionDiary.com.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

How to Run Two Blogs in the Midst of a Busy Life

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogs, Busy, Life, Midst

As social media continues to reshape the online world, one begins to question the relevancy of websites and, more specifically, blogs.

After reading Rick Calvert’s comments about blogging and BlogWorld, which is expanding from one show to two this year, it’s hard to imagine that blogs won’t remain a key part of the media picture for the foreseeable future. As Calvert says, “All major magazines and newspapers in the country have blogs now.” But he adds, “Many of them have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as well.”

A recent article in the New York Times suggests, “Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people – particularly the younger generation.”

Still, bloggers and blog networks are high on the continuing need for blogs. In fact, entire networks have been built around blogs, primarily to consolidate them and make them attractive for major advertisers.

Deanna Brown is the new CEO of Federated Media Publishing, an ad network for blogs that reaches some 40 million unique users. Brown tells Advertising Age that Federated Media focuses on the “independent web” which, she says, “has a lot of authors and services and applications that are not owned by major media companies.” She says she is excited about “the individual publisher” and sees Federated Media’s role as helping “branded advertisers become conversationalists in the right environments at scale.” In essence, Federated Media is matching up advertisers who want to reach specific audiences with blogs that serve those audiences.

Elisa Camahort Page, Co-founder of BlogHer, the largest blog ad network for women/mommy bloggers, sees a real purpose for blogs: “If you’re looking for substantive conversation, you turn to blogs,” she tells the New York Times. “You aren’t going to find it on Facebook, and you aren’t going to find it in 140 characters on Twitter.”

Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, concurred, but suggested that blogs are changing with the times. She tells the Times that blogs are a forum for story telling, but “it’s just morphing onto other platforms.”

Certainly, bloggers have become the new media journalists of our time, adding independent voices to traditional media and, in some cases, replacing that media. Citizen journalists and amateur reporters/commentators have cast a brash, unvarnished light on the news, which is probably a good thing. Reporters who have long worked for traditional newspapers and magazines have gotten into blogging, and some of them have jumped from offline to online publications, perhaps as a result of seeing for themselves the handwriting on the wall. If anything, it seems that blogs are evolving into the preferred means of reporting and commentary, and it seems all the more likely that this is the manner in which consumers want to receive their “serious” information.

Blogs that have established a wide audience already are self-sustaining because their audiences know such blogs offer them content they can’t get elsewhere, or offer access to information before any other news source. TechCrunch and Gizmodo are good examples of this in the technology space. Blogs that serve very specialized niches will continue to flourish, because they’ll fill in the places that traditional publishers can’t afford to cover. Look at these blogs as the specialty magazines of the future.

But when it comes to casual, quick conversations, social media like Facebook and Twitter will be more appropriate. At least that’s what the consumer is telling us at the moment. In reality, the Facebooks and Twitters of the world can work collaboratively with blogs and support them by maintaining a two-way channel from social media to blogging and vice versa.

One never really knows what is just around the corner. But if they can continue to shift to meet the changing needs of the consumer, blogs will definitely have a future.

ReveNews

Tags: Blogs, future, there

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille discuss the filing of Texas HB 1317, Jon Spoelstra keynoting Affiliate Summit, and the New York Times claiming blogs are dead.

Also, LinkShare launches a mobile dashboard, bit.ly Pro for custom domain short URLs, a new product search feature from buy.at, why traditional book publishing is so 1999.

Show Links

• Texas Advertising Tax Bill Introduced
• Jon Spoelstra to Keynote Affiliate Summit East 2011
• The Road To Affiliate Summit with ShoeMoney
• How to Build a Treadmill Desk
• DIY Treadmill desk
• Yet Another Weight Loss Show
• LinkShare Mobile Dashboard Launches
• Related Products Feature from buy.at
• bit.ly Pro
• Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter
• Does the World Need Another Affiliate Marketing Book?
• Affiliates: Take the 2011 AffStat Affiliate Marketing Survey

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins

Tags: @sunshinetricia, Advertising, Blogs, Dead, Desk, Jeans, Pajama, Texas, Treadmill, Wears

This guest post is by Kevin Sanders, of strongandfit.net.

What if I said you’re only as good as the blogs you follow? Maybe that’s not completely true for everyone, but I’m willing to bet all the A-listers have several blogs they check out every day.

I think there are basically two types of blogs you should follow.

Type 1: Blogging blogs

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I believe every blogger should keep an eye on several pro blogs in the field—whether they’re on making money or SEO tips, etc). Why? Here are three reasons:

1. Game-changer posts

Every once in a while, I’ll run across a post that radically impacts my blogging from that point forward. One example would be a post I read here that explained how to optimize the position of ads. Following that advice greatly improved the profits I made through both Adsense and affiliate banners. I don’t find these high-impact posts every day, but they easily make up for the effort I spend following the blogs I read.

2. Motivation

I wasn’t even sure you could make money with blogging when I first started. It’s hard to keep posting every day when you aren’t even sure there’s a possibility of financial reward for your efforts. Following the pro bloggers gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going, even when profits were slow (or non-existent). It also helped me to have realistic expectations and patience. Building a good blog takes work and determination; never underestimate the power of motivation.

3. SEO tips

I was completely clueless about SEO in my early blogging days. I still don’t consider myself an expert—not by a long shot. I also don’t obsess over SEO. Having said all this, I needed to learn how to work with search engines—best SEO practices, so to speak. I learned most of what I know from reading what other bloggers had to say.

I follow about 17 blogs through feeds on my Google page. Do I read every post on every blog? No. I just keep an eye on them and click any titles that get my attention. Also:

• Don’t overanalyze them. At some point you just need to shut up and blog. Don’t try to follow every single bit of advice you read—some of it may not apply to you, your niche, or your blog. You’ll even run across contradictory advice if you follow the blogging niche long enough. Just use what helps you and disregard what doesn’t.
• Don’t snub the B-listers. Keep an eye out for up-and-coming bloggers who may not be well known yet. Some of these guys really know their stuff and are more accessible than their A-list counterparts. Some of my favorite blogs, in fact, are not nearly as popular as Problogger.net. One example is SEO-Hacker, a blog created by one of my friends here in Asia.

Type 2: Niche blogs

I mentioned that I follow several pro blogs through RSS feeds. I also follow several blogs within the same niche as mine (fitness blogs). Following blogs in your niche, or related niches, can help you in several ways:

1. Potential income streams

Your fellow bloggers can help you keep an eye on new ways of making money. You may learn of a new product or service to promote by watching other blogs in your niche. Most of us try to keep track of these opportunities through affiliate newsletters, but other bloggers can help you find even more opportunities.

2. Trends within your niche

Blogs within your niche will alert you to “hot topics” in your industry or specialization. You may want to post your own two cents about those trends—there’s always a chance you’ll get ranked well in search engines on a topic that everyone’s talking about (and searching for).

This is especially helpful if you live outside the country that’s responsible for most of your traffic. I live in Asia, but most of my fitness blog’s traffic (and revenue) comes from North America. It’s very beneficial for me to follow bloggers back in the States.

3. Rebuttal posts

Following other bloggers is also an opportunity to be a voice of dissent. If you read a post you disagree with, you can give your own unique point of view on a particular topic within the niche. This would likely be a post you would have never thought of if you weren’t watching the blogosphere in your niche.

The bottom line: watching blogs within my own niche gives me lots of new ideas for producing fresh, relevant, high-quality content. I think it will do the same for you.

What should you keep in mind as you follow niche blogs?

• Be yourself. Don’t just repeat what everyone else is saying. Always try to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Loyal readers want to hear what you have to say.
• Do your homework. Hopefully you’ll inspiration from other blogs, but be sure to do your own research. You’ll need to go back to original sources and studies to check the accuracy of other bloggers. You’ll also need to carefully look at products you choose to endorse—what’s right for one blogger may not be right for you (even if you are in the same niche).

Are there other types of blogs that you consider essential reading? Share them in the comments.

Kevin is a missionary, author and fitness enthusiast. You can check out his fitness tips at strongandfit.net. You can read his devotional thoughts and personal reflections at KuyaKevin.com.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Which Blogs Should You Be Watching?

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogs, Should, Watching

In addition to telling a story that is worth retelling, here’s how you can take advantage of YouTube features that enable viewers to share videos via social media and also spread the word to influential bloggers. …

Search Engine Watch

Tags: @Twitter, Blogs, Encourage, facebook, People, Share, Videos, YouTube

This guest post is by Andrew Knibbe of Flippa.

The responses to my last post raised the crucial issue of selling a blog that’s built around a strong personal brand.

Mark Wolfinger wrote, “When I write a blog, it’s my passion that the readers see. It’s my writing style and knowledge. Buy an existing blog and the blog’s voice changes immediately. How can you keep loyal readers who loved the previous voice?”

This is of course a key consideration in buying or selling a personally branded blog. It’s true that the strength of some personal brands may make a blog unsaleable, but that doesn’t need to be the case.

The blog as a business

In response to Mark’s comment, the Blog Tyrant pointed out, “Mark you read ProBlogger and hardly any of the posts are by Darren nowadays.”

This reminds me of that old saying that if you want to have a saleable business, you have to be able to step back at some point and work on it, rather than in it.

This seems to be the approach that Darren has taken with ProBlogger. He’s spent years building a strong personal brand, and building a blog that revolves around that. By establishing ProBlogger as a leading light in the niche, he’s able to attract some of the best bloggers and source high-quality content for the site, and that’s let him step back from the blog to work on aspects like product development.

We can guess that he’s now spending time he used to spend writing blog posts preparing courses, writing ebooks, and coming up with new concepts.

But the things that make ProBlogger what it is remain here, even if Darren’s time and presence on the blog has decreased from what it was when he started all those years ago. There’s a large and loyal community, a strong brand, an enormous, high-quality content inventory, and  a raft of happy advertisers, affiliates, and so on. So if ProBlogger was for sale, you can see that it would have a lot to offer a potential buyer.

Getting personal

What if this site was called DarrenRowse.net, rather than ProBlogger.net? Sure, that might reduce the overall sale price of the site, but it certainly wouldn’t make it unsaleable. As a potential buyer, you might choose to move it to a new domain, but if you were smart, and Darren was a caring seller, you’d probably negotiate a handover arrangement whereby you as the new site owner could be introduced to the ProBlogger readers and community.

Before you agreed to buy the site, you’d probably assess the alternative domains you could use, and you might buy one—possibly one like, say, ProBlogger, which talks about the niche more than a personality—as you bought the site. Perhaps you’d also secure Twitter and Facebook accounts with the same brand, or negotiate with the owner to transfer the existing account’s ownership with the blog.

During the handover period, you might undertake a gradual rebranding of the site and announce to users that its location was changing. Rather than switching off DarrenRowse.net the day your turned on the ProBlogger domain, you might have the two running in tandem, with a redirect attached to the personal domain, for a while.

Buying (or selling) an existing blog isn’t like buying a used car: it doesn’t need to be a take-it-or-leave-it situation. As the buyer, you can request any assistance you need to transfer the blog safely to your ownership, complete with its full complement of readers. If the seller cares about the community he or she has built up, they’ll hopefully be pretty happy to negotiate this kind of thing among the terms of the sale.

Finding opportunities on a personal blog

Another response to Mark’s comment on the article came from Alex, who wrote, “buying a blog which already has a small reader base and some articles can save you quite a bit of time, otherwise you’d need to “get the ball rolling” yourself, which is the hardest part of blogging, IMO.”

Mark replied, “It’s funny. I find writing to be the very easy part. And I have a decent number of readers (24,000 monthly unique). It’s the monetizing that’s difficult for me.”

These comments really show the variation that exists in the blog trading space—people buy and sell blogs for all sorts of reasons, and a blog that has real potential for one buyer will hold little appeal for another.

Take Mark’s comment, for example. It sounds like he’s built up a great content inventory, and a loyal, committed readership—but he has difficulty monetizing blogs. Alex says he finds the initial stages of starting a blog the biggest challenge, but perhaps he’s the type to easily spot monetization opportunities and do something about them. The fact that Mark’s been unable to monetize his blog presents an opportunity: if he wanted to, he might sell the blog to someone like Alex, who had monetization skills. After all, strong community and great content are valuable assets.

Mark comments that his unique style and personality are what readers come to his blog for. That’s great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that, if he wanted to sell the blog, he couldn’t.

Firstly, he’d be choosy about the buyers he considered, looking for someone who knew his site and understood what it was about—he might well find that among the interested buyers were some of his site’s current users. He’d look for a potential buyer who had an appealing writing style that he felt would really engage his readers. Perhaps he’d invite them to write some guest posts so that he could see how his readers responded to the potential buyer, and to help that person build a profile among the readership in advance.

If the sale went ahead, he’d make a personal announcement to his readers, perhaps via email to subscribers as well as in a post on the blog itself. He might also recommend a handover period to help the transition go smoothly, and keep readers as loyal to the blog—and the new owner—as possible.

Personal brands can add an extra dimension to the buying and selling of blogs, but they don’t have to be a problem. A buyer might be able to find a personally branded blog that doesn’t have a strong personal style (we’ve all seen them online)—another opportunity for the astute buyer who knows what they have to offer.

Have you ever though about buying or selling a blog with a personal brand? What other concerns would you have about the process?

Andrew Knibbe is the Marketing Manager at Flippa, the #1 marketplace for buying and selling websites. He blogs at the Flippa blog. Follow him @flippa.

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ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogs, Brands, Buying, Personal, Selling, Strong