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Blog Herald Sold for Nearly Six Figures

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Last Wednesday I posted about a mystery blog for sale. It turns out the site is The Blog Herald, and it’s going to sell in the 60-72K range (36 times monthly revenues).

There’s a lot of talk over this: Was the site overpriced? Or is it really worth what it’s selling for?

The general rule of course is that a blog is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. I might also add that when there are three bidders in the price range, it obviously isn’t just a fluke.

But back to the numbers: the site is bringing in 2K a month of revenue. But what is it’s monthly profit? Let’s make an assumption: that you could replace Duncan Riley’s posts with comparable quantity and quality posts for $1k a month. This leaves us at $1k/month profit. And at our magic number 12, we can value the blog at $12K before adjusting the valuation for “bonus factors”.

Which, of course, this blog has many ‘bonus’ factors which would increase its value above just a 12x profit multiple.

  • Diversity of revenue streams – the Blog Herald runs several types of advertising. This isn’t 2K a month solely from Adsense.
  • Uber Google juice – If you had, say, a network of blogs, you could use the Blog Herald to link to them all and feed LOTS of Google juice into them.
  • Profile – This is a ‘big’ site in the blogosphere, and having profile and readership can benefit you if you have other projects going. For instance, would anyone give a damn about Squidoo if you or I started it? Not a chance. But Seth Godin leveraged his profile to give it a lot of buzz, and in the process, gave it a much more likely path to success.

It’ll be interesting to see who the buyer is, and how exactly they leverage the site. For the record I do think the price is high (as in, it is more than I would pay), but I also think it’s silly to judge the valuation until we can see how the buyer leverages it.

This Just In… Pro Blogging is HARD

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I’ve been noticing a bit, of, erm, frustration in the blognetworksphere lately. (worst… madeupinternetword… ever.)

My friend Nandini thinks it may have something to do with inflated profit expectations.
To use a Slashdot joke, here is the business plan I think some of these people have:

  1. Start a blog network with sites in a ton of niches, most of which are not very profitable
  2. Realize that making money on a celebrities blog is like squeezing water out of a rock
  3. Get into catfights with other blog networks because you’re frustrated
  4. ?????
  5. Profit!

To be fair, even the originals (Denton and Calcanis) have consistently been little sissy boys of the highest order when it comes to trashing each other. But the new generation is even worse. I guess this is what happens when a bunch of 20 year olds equate the term “blog overlord” with “overlord” and envision their mug on Fortune magazine.

OK, there are hundreds (or thousands) of dollars at stake here. Maybe even hundreds of thousands, if you stick with it for half a decade. But not hundreds of millions. Lighten up, kids! 🙂

Blog Networks: Play Hard, or Don’t Play At All

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Scrivs has predicted that many blog networks will fail in 2006, and I think he’s spot on.

Why Most ‘2nd Tier’ Blog Networks Are Garbage

  1. Many new blog networks do not have the necessary funds to pull off a medium-scale project. You need a stash of cash to pay writers through the first six months (before major ad revenues come in and balance out this cost), and it doesn’t hurt to have money to throw at good development, design and hosting, too. (Yes, I’m aware that some networks have tried paying writers on a rev-share basis, but this seems to fail time and time again.)
  2. Most new blog networks have an identity crisis – they can’t tell you what they are (besides a ‘blog network’), or what differentiates them. They are, in a word, generic.
  3. They aren’t putting out content which is useful to the reader. Most of them just re-post regurgitated news without adding much value or commentary.

So, although I do believe that owning content is generally a good investment, it’s also apparent that if you don’t have the resources to do a blog network right, it’s not gonna be a huge success. Not that that surprises anyone!

Who do you think will rise to the top in the 2nd generation blog network race? My money is on FineFools and InstaBlogs. The flip side: who will crash and burn (or just slowly fade into irrelevance)?

Biggest Blog Sale Ever

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Jeremy Wright has posted an announcement of an anonymous blog for sale (“it is in the top 100 blogs in the world”). Bidding starts at $40,000 USD. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is new ground for blog brokering. Wow.

Monetization Makeover Special Edition: Quick Hits

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Last week I posted that I would be taking suggestions for Monetization Makeover. Well I got a whole lot of them, and couldn’t decide on one site to profile. So instead, I looked at every single site and commented on the first and foremost change I would make to monetize each site better. So without further adieu, I give you the first Monetization Makeover Special Edition: Quick Hits.

p.s. sorry to the adult sites that PM’d me, I had to skip you.

  1. NewsDrunk – You might not like hearing my advice on this one. Briefly: this is going to be a very hard niche to monetize in any significant way. You obviously have skills, I suggest you apply them to a more profitable niche.
  2. The New Homemaker – This is a cool topic and I think it’s likely you can make a sizable community out of it if you put out enough good content. A topic like this screams newsletter. Go to ConstantContact.com and get rolling.
  3. The Wine Gift Guy – I only see a tiny ad unit above the fold. I’m all about clean design, but c’mon.
  4. OWatches – Nice product blog, and nice affiliate link implementation. I think you need to mix up your posts a bit though, I’d advise you to throw in the odd longer article (not watch review) for linkbaiting purposes.
  5. untitledlife – Your PM to me explained you know the weakness of personal sites, a site like this is nearly impossible to monetize significantly. Spend your efforts monetizing on a new site in a monetizable niche. Meanwhile write you can write on this blog when you feel like it, but throw in the towel on monetization. Sorry, that’s all I got.
  6. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity – The webmaster asked me to be brutal on this one. I’ll reluctantly oblidge. Why the crap is your skyscraper in the right column? Go LEFT, son. And what is with the ugly border & background on that unit, nevermind the fact that this color scheme is burning my retina, you have to blend to get high CTR. And why is Chitika on your permalink pages? Haven’t you heard they suck now? Your blog makes me sick!! There, was that brutal enough? 😉
  7. Yaybasketball! – Why not put some keywords in the title tag? e.g. “YAYbasketball! – the basketball blog”. Couldn’t hurt.
  8. holyvoip – Again, get some keywords in the title tag, at least on the index page. I also might lose the Amazon affiliate links — Adsense pays the best in this sector. Believe me, I know 🙂
  9. BikePortland.org – Advertising will not destory your credibility, just discuss it with readers beforehand and make sure not to go too far. Unless your readers pay you a salary, you have a right to put ads on your site, and they know it.
  10. Fantasy Football Spiral – Again with the burning of the retina. You gotta lose the striped background, it’s killing me.
  11. Daily Olive – Not too much I can critique here, you’ve done a bang up job. The Adsense implementation on your permalink pages may be just a tad too spammy. Try dropping the Chitika, and putting the Adsense where the Chitika is now.
  12. Anthropology.net – Again we have a very nicely done site. I’m guessing this is another of those hard-to-monetize topics. Maybe you can find a direct sponsor?
  13. Learn How to Box – The blog is darn near hidden from the main page. Why not feature it a bitt more? Perhaps put snippets / titles from the latest 5 posts on your homepage in a prominent position?
  14. Go Play AV – I think you’ve done a good job on this one (it’s inspired from Darren’s digital camera blog, and it shows). The only glaring fault I can find: it needs more links. Go get links from related sites, and consistently (and without being annoying).
  15. Camera News – In 5 words or less: You picked a tired niche. Go for something smaller, and dominate it. There’s just too many people doing these, it’s going to be very hard to compete when you’ve had a late start.
  16. Sales Team Tools – Get a newsletter. Use more Adsense units (and use them more prominently). How about an Adsense box in between the post and comments on the permalink pages?
  17. Miamity – Local-based blogs take a bit more effort to monetize. If you can get your traffic up, open it up to direct sponsorships via a little note on your sidebar. It won’t make you rich, but I could see you getting $100 a month each from a half dozen sponsors (local restaurants and such).
  18. Nate Ritter – Frankly I think picking “technology and business strategy” as your niche is making things hard on yourself. If you go a bit narrower, you can become the number one guy a bit more easily. Seriously, I think there are approximately 100,000 people already blogging on “technology and business strategy”.
  19. Piggington’s Econo-Almanac – Adsense unit in left sidebar, the link color is very muted. If you can use a shade of blue, red, or orange as the title color (and make it look good) you can probably increase CTR by a bundle.
  20. The Disabled List – For the life of me I can’t imagine how to monetize this one well. Readers?
  21. Backyard Cafe – Great ad implementation here. How about sexing the design up a bit?
  22. Scratch My Brain – Ads in left sidebar have a gray border. Blend them instead!

That wraps up Monetization Makeover Special Edition: Quick Hits (Volume 1). Sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings (not really).

I welcome your thoughts.

Monetization vs. Creation

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Shane Pike tackles a fun question in this post at ProBlogger: How do you become a professional blogger in half the time? His answer is smart, simple and useful: Double the revenue you receive from your current content.

What percentage of your readers performs a revenue-generating action? 1%?…

Now, how easy would it be to raise that 1% to 2%? That’s not a very big jump by any means. Quite likely, you could jump to 2% or even 3% by doing nothing more than tweaking your AdSense colors, ad size and/or placement. Little tweaks. Tiny tweaks. Nothing major at all.

Let’s say you make a few tweaks and get to 2%. What just happened to your revenue? Well, if you go from 1% to 2%, you’ve doubled your revenue—just that easy. Twice the revenue from the same amount of traffic in maybe 30 minutes’ worth of work.

The stock answer to the question ‘How do I make more money with my site’ has long been ‘Add quality content’. But this isn’t always the answer. As the monetization makeover series has (hopefully) shown, many bloggers are not monetizing their current content to anywhere near its potential. Thus a day spent with the Adsense heat map (and MM series?) can potentially double or triple your profits — not bad for a day of work.

That said, I think there’s a delicate balance that a successful professional blogger will strike. If you spend an hour every day tweaking ad colors and placement, over time this will mean adding less quality content to your blog. I suppose what it comes down to is a tradeoff between maximizing current revenue vs. maximizing long term revenue potential. What is the sweet spot? How much time do you spend tweaking monetization vs. writing content and marketing your blog?

Want a Monetization Makeover?

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To anyone who is familiar with the Monetization Makeoever series and would like to see their own site get made over: today is your lucky day. I am accepting site submissions via PMs, and will choose one lucky winner for next week’s MM. Before submitting your site, be advised:

  • I reserve the right to be brutal in the review
  • Many will enter, few will be chosen
  • I will not reply to the PMs
  • Please do not reply to this post with site suggestions, PM me instead. (If you do submit via a reply here, Nick will nuke it, don’t test him!)

Monetization Makeover: Devilish Heels

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I’ve posted about Manolo’s Shoe Blog before as an A-plus example of product blogging. Since The Manolo’s rise to fame, I have noticed a lot more product blogs popping up, especially in the fashion sector. Well today’s specimen for Monetization Makeover is none other than Devilish Heels. From the title, I like this blog already.

As always, please poke around a bit at the blog before reading further.

There. You back? Let’s go on.

Previously in the monetization makeover series I’ve asked everyone to take a long, hard look at the Adsense heat map. Well today you get a bit of a rest from that. Why? Well, that’s the great thing about product blogs: the ads and content blend together naturally, so things like the heat map don’t matter as much anymore (conversely, things like authority and content quality matter more than ever).

Now, onto our specimen. First off, let me go through some things I really like about this blog (remember, the Monetization Makeover series is not just about tips to revise monetization tactics, I also like to point out things that people are already doing right).

What I love about this blog

  • It’s a microniche! “Shoe blog” is already a pretty tight niche, but “Heels blog” is even tighter. The tighter the niche, the easier it is to become the authority. Traffic also tends to convert better on a tightly-themed blog.
  • Ads in content = yummy I don’t have any facts or figures, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that product blogs, if well-executed, convert visitors into buyers at a much higher rate than other types of blogs. When you make your ads the content, there is no risk that people will become “banner blind”. Or think about it this way: if 10% of people look at advertisements on a page and click on them, and the other 90% look at the content, then, if the ads ARE the content, you get 9x the people looking at your ads. OK, that was weak and periphrastic. But I think you know what I mean.
  • Purty pictures Large, aesthetic photos are a must for any product blog (gizmos and fashion come to mind, but seriously, I think just about anything would require them). They make the blog easier to look at, more inviting, more usable, just plain… better. Further, ecommerce research has shown that large, aesthetic photos are one of the most significant things that online shoppers refer to in the buying process. Therefore, prominent product photos should help the site convert visitors into buyers better via affiliate ads.

Content, Content, Content

One other thing I think the blogger does well is mixing in some other related content, besides just specific shoe posts. For instance, Take Care of Your Feet. A Pedicure How-To is great link bait. As always, good content wins. For further evidence, I’ll point you to this interview at Problogger, where fashion product blog godfather The Manolo refers to the importance of content over monetization schemes:

Yes, since the Manolo invented the shoe blog, there have been started many of the shoe and handbag blogs, some of them very good. Yet none of them are like the blog of the Manolo, none of them have the particular combination of shoes, fashion, celebrity, and humor that makes the blog of the Manolo one of the more popular places in the blogosphere.

And so the lesson the Manolo he takes away from this for the new bloggers is to be aware that the large part of the mission of the blogging it is to entertain, and so you must write well, in the lively manner.

Do not be afraid to be different, in the fact, being different it is the advantage in the marketplace where there are fifty hundred new blogs on the topic you have chosen. Also, do not be afraid of the odd combinations of the topics, or of the peculiar view of the world, or the different way of approaching your subject as long as these things can be entertaining. Do this, and post faithfully everyday, and be generous with your links and with your readers, and your audience it will find you soon enough.

There you have it. Good content, decent ad implementation, great niche, what could possibly be improved on Devilish Heels? Well it won’t be Monetization Makeover if I don’t ask myself, “What Would Andy Hagans Do [WWAHD] if he owned this blog?”

What I might change on this blog

  • Product pics aren’t affiliate links? As a reader, I expect these product pics to be linked to somewhere where I can get more product specs, including price, and the ability to buy the item. Seriously, you can justify this as a usability thing. (Meanwhile why not get your 8%?)
  • For the love of God, get off of Blogspot! There are a lot of reasons not to be on blogspot. People not taking you seriously, the lack of a domain name, and the lack of support for categories are three good ones. Bit the bullet now (The Manolo did), and get it over with.

And that’s actually all that’s sticking out in my mind. Devilish Heels has a great niche and good content, and has the potential to be a very profitable blog. Kudos, Marsha!