Webmaster Blog Resource
Buying Blogs
This is an interesting auction to dissect so let's get stuck in!
Firstly, the site being sold is a blog. This is bad. What's the problem with blogs? They usually require regular work. I say usually because there are some rare exceptions that receive good amounts of traffic without being updated regularly. For example, this one, is as good as a static site in that it still receives good traffic despite the fact that no recent updates have been made. Back to this auction: the site receives 15,000 uniques per month, which is impressive, but we need to check to see where those visitors are coming from. Straight away we can see that awstats is being used to log traffic (they tend give inflated figures) but lets have a look anyway.
Those referrer stats are a magnificent giveaway. Just look at the percentage of visitors coming via direct type ins and bookmarks. It's a staggering 53%!
What's Significant About Direct Traffic?
Direct traffic refers to people who have visited the site previously and who decide to come back based on their experience. What they are looking for is... updated content. There is no other reason for bookmarking such a blog, or typing it directly into the address bar of a browser. This huge chunk of traffic is dependant on there being new content regularly published on the site. If the owner stops blogging, this kind of traffic will dry up. This is a major concern for anyone interested in buying the site. Why? Who wants to buy a site they have to work on to get revenue?! Most people want a site that gives them passive income.
Passive Income From Websites
A website that generates passive income is every webmaster's dream. Unfortunately, this site doesn't fulfill the requirements of "passivity". Interestingly, and erroneously (i.e. it's a lie), the seller states that
Derek-ang.com has been a consistent and passive revenue machine for me over the past one year since it was established.
Consistent the site may be, but passive it certainly isn't. The owner publishes around 10 posts per month (you can check the blog archives to verify this), putting this site very firmly in the "active" realm. Passive income is income that rolls in without you having to do anything. This site clearly does not generate revenue passively. Here, traffic - and revenue - is dependant on the owner writing and publishing new material.
We've deduced that should we stop updating this blog, 53% of the traffic (direct type ins and bookmarks) will probably disappear, so just how much traffic is left? Let's use the remaining 47% as the estimator. 47% of 15,000 is a little over 7,000 uniques / month. If you buy this blog and never update it again, you may receive 7,000 visitors per month mostly via the search engines. This is a lot lower than the 15,000 that the site currently receives when the owner blogs. The moral is never take traffic stats at face value. In this instance you will get the traffic detailed in the auction only if you update the blog regularly. To summarise what we've learnt so far:
- be very wary of blogs and your requirement to update them to maintain traffic levels
- don't believe a seller who claims revenue is passive - always check!
Over Personalised Websites
The owner's identity is inextricably tangled up with this blog as the domain name containes the owner's name. This may or may not be a problem for you. It will be more of a problem if you continue to write for the site, as readers may assume that you are Derek. But then again, adopting this alias might not be a issue for you - it's your call. If you don't update the blog, then this becomes a less significant factor.
The seller makes some dodgy statements, some of which I've commented on below.
Dodgy Statements
| Seller's Statement | Comments |
|---|---|
| It’s been a strong PR3 for past 1 year | What on earth is a strong PR3 and how can the seller know this? The answer is they can't. People use the word "strong" to imply some kind of stability in their PR, but, as we all know PR can go up and down at the drop of a hat. Nobody can guarantee stability in a site's PR. However, seller's do like to make ridiculous non-verifiable claims. |
| 3k strong backlinks according to Yahoo Site Explorer. | There we go again with the word "strong". I don't remember seeing a backlink strength indicator in Yahoo! Site Explorer. The statement is meaningless and non-verifiable. |
| 250 feed subscribers | Warning! Warning! These subscribers have needs that must be satisfied by way of regularly written posts. Hard work alert! |
| Marvelous SERPS | This is a complete red herring, often offered by sellers who want to talk up the value of their sites. Good rankings in the SERPs are only useful if they lead to traffic. We've already counted the traffic in our assessment, so this "selling point" is redundant. We don't need to count it twice. |
| Considering the little effort taken to build the links, promote reader base, it has done fairly well on auto pilot. | This is a walking contradiction. The seller thinks that:
... is running a site on auto-pilot! God help us when he tries to sell a site that he thinks requires maintenance! |
| One factor that I am proud of this site is the quality google values it. This is one of the main reasons why my reviews can sell out.
#1 - the brand name – Derek ang #Top 10 – webmaster blog #Top 15 – blogging resources blog |
Those rankings are only useful if people are actually searching for the terms given. There aren't many people searching for "Derek Ang", I can tell you that. Alas, the same is true of the other phrases. "webmaster blog" actually gets searched 5,400 times per month, according to the Google Keyword Tool, but appearing #15 for this phrase won't bring this site much traffic. As a point of interest, I can stand on one leg for 15 minutes. Both this amazing feat and the misleading rankings presented share the common property of doing absolutely nothing to generate revenue. |
Buying A Blog To Boost Existing Sites
In addition to or even as an alternative to using this site to generate revenue directly, one option the interested bidder has is to use this blog to boost existing sites in their portfolio. This activity happens a lot in the webmaster world. There are 138 posts on this blog and each one could be amended to include a contextual link to a page on another site that the buyer owns to boost it in the search engines. All the seller has to do is find posts that relate in some way to their other sites and insert a link that blends in contextually. Hey presto, instant link juice. Depending on the PR of the linking pages, and how related they are to existing sites, this may be a viable route to take. The homepage is a PR3 so to entertain these ideas of link manipulation, the blog posts themselves should have at least some PR. They don't according to my Google toolbar, so this idea is up the creek.
Sitepoint Listing
Marvelous Webmaster & Blogging Resources Magazine Blog – Pr3 | passive $$ | great SERPS
Don’t waste such good opportunity! A Bargain!
- URL: http://www.derek-ang.com/
- Established: Mon Dec 31 2007
- Page views/month: 30,000
- Monthly Revenue (USD): 180
- Google Pagerank: 3
- Uniques/Month: 15,000
- Listed: Today 03:34
Description:
Read This Before Continuing..
Derek-ang.com has been a consistent and passive revenue machine for me over the past one year since it was established. It’s a personal blog that I developed to find out more about blogging and has gain me great knowledge in blogging and thousands of dollars on the side. Much as I wanted to continue developing and maintaining it to increase it’s potential to the next level, I can’t as I am currently seeking to raise funds for my business venture. It’s regretful that I finally had to make a decision to sell this ‘baby’ of mine. Therefore, I am hoping that I am able to find a new owner that is dedicated to put in more effort to bring this blog magazine to the next level.
Topics Genre:
This blog magazine covers a wide variety of topics ranging from webmastering, blogging resources to search engine optimization. It is targeted mainly at the group of people who is interested in learning more about utilizing their websites and blogs
Blog Statistic:
- It’s been a strong PR3 for past 1 year
- Alexa ranking of 300k
- 3k strong backlinks according to Yahoo Site Explorer.
- 250 feed subscribers ( little promotion effort) - feedburner
- 138 quality post with around 460 comments
- For traffic, It gets around 10k to 15k uniques monthly.
- Marvelous SERPS
Google Pagerank
I have not been purchasing paid links from other websites. Only done some directory submission for it. Considering the little effort taken to build the links, promote reader base, it has done fairly well on auto pilot.
Design
For the design aspect, I have been putting in quite an effort ( well, I am a web designer). From a free theme when it started out, it evolves to using a paid theme to now, a customized unique paid time. Visit the magazine, and you will be convince that you won’t find a second design like this on the web. Uniqueness is what that plays a part in building a brand and good awareness. Going by the market rate, it will probably cost you a few hundred bucks to get a design with such quality.
Google love the site
One factor that I am proud of this site is the quality google values it. This is one of the main reasons why my reviews can sell out.
#1 - the brand name – Derek ang
#Top 10 – webmaster blog
#Top 15 – blogging resources blog
I also get top rankings for some of my post content. Below are the examples:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Writing+an+effective+“About+Me”+page&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=better+webmasters+forum&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=webmaster+forum+technology&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
- There are a lot more which it’s a hassle for me to list down, you can research yourself in google.
Revenue Details
This blog magazine has been earning me passive $$ monthly. Passive as in no effort required. Currently, it is earning money through a few different medium. Taking into consideration to the amount of exposure this blog magazine gets, you may ret weak the ad prices. I am offering FAR reasonable prices for the advertisements
Text Links Ads - $69+
Direct Ads (125x125 ads): $30+( varies monthly)
BuySellAds ( 125x125 ads):: $30
Kontera: $30 - $40+
Links Sales(footer): $15 to 20
This is the minimum amount of money that I made monthly with no effort requires. Total: $180+
Also, there is money generated from selling paid reviews too, at the price of $40 USD per review. However, such deals do not come everyday. Most of the time, I get review deals from digitalpoint or sitepoint forums. Thus, for this aspect, the amount of $$ that you can made varies alot. There’s one month that I managed to get 5 to 6 review deals (making me addition of $240 more). Usually, buyers buy reviews in this blog as it has great SERPs and fast indexing in Google engine.
This month, I even get a affiliate commission of $50 from hostgator which surprised me as I never did intentionally promote the product. Just a banner on the center section of my post.
Reserve price
I have a reserve price, but I am not going to reveal it in public yet. But definitely, the buyer has a great opportunity and bargain deal. Of course, I am looking at the range of thousand. This is very reasonable consideration the breakdown of worth below.
Design: $300
Blog magazine: $2000 (with a basic 10x revenue rule)
Subscribers Base: $250 (taking considering the norm practice, $1 for 1 subscriber)
Amount of Post Content: $1380 (charging each quality post for $10 each)
more including back links, serps performance, pr, traffic details etc+
Contact
You can contact me via pm on sitepoint or netbuilders (username = Derek). Alternatively, you can leave a message below and I will try my best to answer it asap.
Revenue Details:
Details @ description
Traffic Details:
50% Search Engines, 50% Direct. Look at attachment for more info
