Is Buying A Blog Worth It? Benefits And Risks To Consider
Is buying a blog worth it? Buying blogs and selling blogs can be a rewarding revenue stream. And it is a fast-growing yet still rarely talked about industry.
Some investors buy a blog for passive income and hold them, while others buy, fix up, and sell blogs for profit (website flipping).
But, is buying a blog worth it, for you? In this article, we will detail the advantages as well as different types of risks to consider, when buying a blog.
So that you can determine if buying a blog is worth it for your personal situation.
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Is Buying A Blog Worth It? Benefits And Risks To Consider
Is buying a blog with it? Can you really buy a blog for passive income? What are the risks involved with website investing?
If you are asking yourself these questions – kudos – it means you are taking your potential blog purchase seriously.
But knowing if buying a blog is a worthwhile investment or not really comes down to you, and knowing your own skillset.
What may be the perfect opportunity for one person will be all wrong for someone else.
Do you have the time, know-how, and budget to develop and grow the blog? Or are you willing to learn, or outsource these tasks/skills?
Personally, I have made over half a million dollars flipping my own small blogs, as well as generating over $1,000,000 in website sales for other people, here at the Niche Investor marketplace.
Buying a blog is worth it to me because I know how to develop them to get a high return on my initial investment.
I buy sites in niches that I personally have experience and skills in, and I put in the time and effort required to generate revenue. This combined eliminates the risk for me, personally.
But everyone’s skill set is different. Like any business opportunity, there is always some risk involved and no absolute guarantees.
However, with buying and selling blogs you have a certain level of control over your investment, and the ability to actively generate an income.
This control you have as a website investor is something you do not have when investing in the stock market, real estate, or other people’s businesses which otherwise rely on outside sources you don’t control.
When you buy a blog, you have full control of the asset. And only you decide how fast you will increase the return on your investment by how much effort you wish to put in.
This is what makes buying and selling blogs so attractive to website investors.
What Are The Benefits Of Buying A Blog?
There are many benefits of buying a blog. When you purchase an established website, you get to start at the top.
TIME SAVED
Purchasing an established blog means you get to skip the entire start-up phase, and jump right into owning a business with customers, traffic, content, products, and revenue.
That right there is an incredible benefit.
Have you always wanted to start a blog but don’t know where to begin, or just never got around to learning how to start?
Buying an established blog will save you months, if not years of time.
Not only is buying a blog super easy, (simply preview the listings and choose which one you want) it also can make perfect sense.
Why spend all your time doing the hard beginner work, when you can have someone do that for you, and hand you the reins to an already profitable website?
The people that sell blogs are the same as you. One day they decided, “I think starting a blog is a great idea!” The only difference is, they did all the front-end hard work and created one from the ground up, and you want to buy one that already exists.
Both of those are really smart ways to own a blog.
And who wouldn’t want to avoid the mess of a blog in its infant stage? Infants are hard to raise! You have to do every single little thing for them and then they take time to nurture and grow.
Sometimes they take A LOT of time.
PASSIVE INCOME ROI FROM DAY ONE
Another reason why buying a blog is worth it: buying a blog for passive income.
When you buy a website that is currently earning revenue, you can continue to earn revenue the day you take it over.
Unlike when you buy a house, which usually requires renovations before a tenant can move it, stalling it from earning revenue right away. But a profitable website just earns money, without any need for halting earnings between owners.
When you buy a blog that is earning revenue, you potentially stand the chance of owning an asset that generates a return on your investment from day one.
If you want a business that runs itself off of ad revenue or product links (like Amazon or Mediavine) but you don’t have the time to wait for one to build up slowly, buying a blog for passive income is an excellent idea.
It can take months to years for a blog to build enough posts and search engine steam to get to the point you will need for it to become profitable.
Most of us don’t have that kind of time to give.
Related: Passive Income Ideas Bank
INSTANT COMMUNITY
Established sites typically come with a community of people around the brand. This could be an email list, social accounts, a Facebook group, or all of the above.
Building a community of fans, followers, and customers takes years to build from the ground up.
But when you buy a blog with a community, you get to roll right into a built-in audience!
Options For Growth As A Website Investor
You can buy nearly any type of business you want to. Just like when you go to the grocery store, it’s all about what’s for sale.
Whether you become a blog buyer or a blog seller really often lies in your business personality type.
Do you want to watch something go from nothing to Something? Or take something to something more?
INSTANT AUTHORITY
By far the biggest benefit of buying an established blog is the authority.
People pay tons of money for their presence. And while you can easily buy likes or clicks or get lucky and have a viral post take off, those types of traffic do not last.
The best way to ensure you have consistent traffic, therefore consistent income, is you need to have a website that search engines trust and believe will bring them good content.
When you buy an authority blog that Google trusts, you can just slap your name on it, and voila, instant authority for you and your business.
What Are The Risks Involved With Buying A Blog?
Now that you know some of the top benefits of buying a blog, let’s dive into the risks to be aware of.
1. Forgetting To Do YOUR DUE DILIGENCE
When buying a website, you will want to do your due diligence, before making an offer. Some things to consider:
- How old is the site? How old is the domain? (CheckPageRank)
- What are the revenue sources? (Check the Profit & Loss sheet, and ensure that you personally understand how to maintain that type of income. Take the Blog Flipping Society program to understand all of them.)
- What are the traffic sources? Are they diversified? (View the Google Analytics)
- What is the SEO profile? (Check backlinks and ranking stats via UberSuggest)
Failing to check these things puts you at risk of buying something you don’t fully understand.
Get free access to our handy due diligence tool here:
2. YOU ARE NOT A TRUSTWORTHY BUYER
As a buyer, you need to be trusted. Just as you want to ensure that who you are buying from is trustworthy, you also need to ensure that you are trustworthy, too.
Sellers pay a considerable amount of money to hire a broker to manage the sale of their business. And the broker will vet you as a buyer with scrutiny, on their behalf.
If the broker picks up on any red flags you may be giving off, that may make you look untrustworthy, there is little chance that your offer will be accepted.
You will risk having your offer declined if the broker doesn’t trust you. So always use your real name when making an offer, be willing to provide proof of funds, and have an open, honest discussion with the broker.
If in the past have you ever:
- Almost bought a website, signed the sale agreement but then you changed your mind before sending payment, and went MIA at Escrow and didn’t proceed with the deal?
- Stopped replying to emails?
- Left your seller and the broker on ‘read’?
- Basically wasted everyone’s time, so they had to find another buyer for the website?
Well, then you likely have now been blacklisted by that broker. And brokers share this with other brokers. It’s a small community.
So always answer the broker’s emails, never back out of a sale without permission, and simply, be trustworthy.
2. Not Being Familiar With The Niche
So you heard that the pet niche is popular and profitable, and you want to buy a site about dog training.
But you have never met a dog before, you have no clue about what a dog needs, and zero understanding about the industry at all.
Well, the pet niche may be popular and profitable, and the blog you buy may be profitable, but if you yourself don’t have experience then it won’t be very profitable for you under your ownership for very long.
Because even if you buy a blog for passive income, a website still needs to be updated with new blog posts and products, and the audience still needs to be engaged with.
If you are totally unfamiliar with a niche, it will be a lot harder to know how to speak to and sell to the audience.
So always buy a blog in a niche that you either have experience and a passion for, or you are willing to learn it. Or hire a team to do it for you!
Don’t buy a blog outside of your expertise.
4. EXPECTING ALGORITHMS TO NEVER CHANGE
Although you control your investment when buying a blog there is one thing we can’t control. And that is search engine algorithms.
Google can make an update that could affect a site’s traffic at any time.
But it goes both ways, an algorithm change can make your traffic go up, or down.
Website investors need to be aware of this and ride the waves.
That’s why it’s worth it to buy a blog with diversified traffic sources. That way If one source has a dip month, there are still other sources bringing traffic.
5. FAILING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
As a buyer, you are solely responsible for your investment. Realize that what revenue sources worked for the previous owner may not work for you.
For example, if you buy an affiliate site, you should have a good understanding of affiliate marketing so that you can continue to earn from the site.
It is not the seller’s fault if, after the sale, you tank the business and don’t make any money.
Plain and simple: when you buy a blog, you are the owner, and it is your responsibility to run it.
Is Buying A Blog Worth It? If You Answered “Yes”…
The short and long answer to “is buying a blog worth it?” May in fact be YES.
As long as it is the business you want to acquire, you understand the effort required to run it, and you are comfortable with the risks.
If you understand yourself well enough to know that you will simply hate doing the early work of blog building, then buying a blog was practically created just for you.
When you buy a blog, everything is turn-key and ready to go. All the social media accounts, email lists, products, search engine presence, traffic, etc.
Many times it also has a shop or an entire affiliate system set up.
It’s like buying money. Future money, but still money… much like the stock market. But unlike the stock market, when you buy a blog you actually have control over your return.
And that is exactly why buying a blog is an investment worth considering. You will be investing in something today, that you can develop further, to bring you in money for a long time.
Whether you are looking to buy or sell a blog we will walk you through the entire process for either option. Regardless of if you are in the market to buy, or have a business that you want to sell, Niche Investor is your one-stop-shop for all of it.
Read: Learn how to buy a blog step-by-step.
Business Insider featured our marketplace and ran an awesome story about me as the founder: How to start a business flipping websites.
What Type Of Website Investor Are You?
If the thrill of the game is more in creating and then cashing out, then you may be a seller. If the joy for you is instead in growing and holding, you will most likely enjoy being a buyer more.
One can’t exist without the other. Fill out your investor profile, to be sent deals that suit your specifications.
For a step-by-step guide, read: How To Invest In A Website
Choose your own website investing adventure:
Sell your blog here or buy your next blog here.
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