Should You Purchase a Popular Blog Just Because It Is Popular?

Sep 28, 2007

A popular blog — NorthxEast — is for sale and bidding is going on. I was just wondering if someone buys this blog finally, what benefits would it bring to the new owner. Currently its strengths are:

An established brand
Lots of RSS subscribers
Some great posts by the likes of Leo Babauta.
Steady traffic

A blog, especially of the NorthxEast kind, is an extension of the bloggers who write for the blog. For instance, it is not just a post, but a post by a blogger called Leo whom people adore, or at least have strong feelings for. Once with the new owner, will the content go through some change or will it have the same orientation? What about the writers; will the same writers still be writing the same kind of stuff.

And what about the monetary performance? I have no experience regarding this but with 75,000 unique visitors per month, $175 per month as revenue is a bit low I would say even by my own blogging standards. 75,000 visitors means on an average 2,450 visitors per day. Recently I started (due to a fluke of course) drawing around 1,000 visitors per day at Writing Cave and that started generating around $5-$10 everyday with just Google AdSense. Since I don’t write there regularly and promotion of any sort is non-existent the traffic has come back to 150-200 per day.

So given the high popularity and a bit low revenue generation of NorthxEast does it make sense to buy it just because it is very popular? It depends how you look at blogging.

If blogging is merely a business opportunity for you then you have a 50-50% chance of making NxE a success. You’ll need to keep the momentum and if your revenue sources remain the same then you’ll have to increase the traffic multiple times of its current number to make some decent money. You can also explore other revenue sources and you’ll need to sell your blog to the advertisers more aggressively. You can also change the nature of the content. Most of its content, although very well-written, I’m afraid, is not unique. For instance, Maki’s blog has very unique, useful content most of the time and people can implement his suggestions immediately and improve their blogging performance. By the time people — people who really click the ads — reach NxE they’ve already read the stuff and so go quickly through the post, comment if they want to, and move on.

If blogging is a passion for you and you want to leverage NxE’s popularity I think then too, if you have lots of disposable money ($5,000-$15,000 is lots of money for me) then you should go ahead and buy the blog. You’ll have a ready platform. Just be sure the quality doesn’t suffer. There will surely be a sudden drop in traffic but I don’t think the RSS subscribers will unsubscribe en masse just because the ownership has changed. Provide them good posts to read and they’ll keep on reading.

Apart from that, if you have money but no blogging passion, don’t buy it. You’ll just waste a nice blog, and the effort that has gone into it.

Technorati Tags: northxeast, blog selling, popular blogs

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2 Responses to “Should You Purchase a Popular Blog Just Because It Is Popular?”

Qurratulain
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Well Amrit, I’ll look at the issue with two different angles, i.e. as a writer, as a business concern. Being the former I’ll buy the blog at first instance while being the later, I’ll have to rethink the financial side and the possibility of revenue generation (if there’s any) and then if I find it profitable I’ll buy else will keep on being a reader there! lolz!
Make Money Writing Blogs » Make Money Writing Blogs September 28, 2007 9:22 am
December 16th, 2007 at 11:42 am
[...] Should You Purchase a Popular Blog Just Because It Is Popular? You?ll need to keep the momentum and if your revenue sources remain the same then you?ll have to increase the traffic multiple times of its current number to make some decent money. You can also explore other revenue sources and you?ll … [...]