Author Archives: Admin

Sale Fever: First Blogging Fingers, Now One Man’s Goal

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Of course now that Google’s PageRank update is over, everyone that can flip their site for a good profit, is taking the opportunity. Blogging Fingers recently sold for $6000, and now One Man’s Goal is on Sitepoint with a current bid of $6400. It is very interesting to see so many great sites sell long before they have shared the full breadth of their knowledge. Had Darren Rowse given up on Problogger.net and just sold it, I doubt we would all be talking about him so much today.

Here is some of the text from the sale:

After much thought, I’ve decided to sell my high-profile blog OneMansGoal.Com.

This blog is a true gem, and it is already causing quite a splash at only 4 months old. I’ll get into the traffic and the revenue a little later, but I want you to know how truly magnificent this blog is.

After only 4 months of blogging (I was completely new to the blog scene), I’ve managed to earn a PR4 and quite a few high quality backlinks. These backlinks include some of the biggest blogs in the make money online niche such as Problogger.Net and Entrepreneurs-Journey.Com (among many others).

I am selling the blog because I have a new project in mind that I believe will be a big earner for me. Rather than neglecting One Man’s Goal and it’s family of loyal readers, I’d rather sell it to someone who can give it the attention it needs.

I might be persuaded to stay on as a paid blogger if you would like. Also, if you need me to, I will stay on for a period of two weeks until you get settled and running smoothly (free of charge).

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues. The good news is that most sites, once they are sold, even if the author stays on for a while, the transition usually creates a drop in traffic. That drop, in my experience, can be as much as half, so that makes my work in rising up the ranks of this niche that much easier.

Originally posted on November 3, 2007 @ 10:01 pm

Blog World Expo – Wish I Was Attending

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Blog World Expo LogoIn a few days the Blog World Expo conference will begin, and in my industry, it is the conference to attend. With names like Matt Mullenweg, Jeremy Wright, Leo Laporte, Brian Clark and many others attending, it would be silly for a full time blogger not to attend right? Well, despite the fact that I totally agree with my previous statement, I won’t be able to attend. Not because I have previous arrangements, but instead because of the recent transition from Bloggy Network to Splashpress Media.

See, I didn’t expect to change companies this year. Early in 2007, I assumed everything was looking good, but like everything in the world, things change, and so do priorities. I had assumed that the Blog World Expo would be the last conference I attended this year. I was really looking forward to going to Las Vegas for the first time since I was a child, but with the change in focus, it just didn’t work out that way. Bloggy Network sold some of its powerful blogs to Splashpress Media, and unfortunately, it is just too late to arrange everything now, even if Splashpress could dump money into me going down south for the event.

I am hoping that the event will go well, that everything will be recorded, pictures taken, articles written, and I can live vicariously through the experiences of others. Even more important to me is that it is so successful that they do it again next year, when I will hopefully attend. If you are going to Blog World Expo and plan on recording the event in one way or another, please let me know so I can follow what you write, photograph, or otherwise record.

Maybe next year they will ask me to come down and speak on a panel? *Hint hint, nudge nudge*

Originally posted on November 5, 2007 @ 8:53 pm

10 Tips to a Successful Blog Sale

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Over on NorthxEast there is a great post talking about what you can do to successfully sell your blog. There are six points on what the seller should do, and four on what the buyer should consider.

A great post all around, and very relevant, especially with Splashpress purchasing some well known blogs from Bloggy Network.

From the post:

Here are some pieces of advice on changing blog ownership:

Ask the old blog owner to stick around for a while
Change is always easier if the lines are blurred, so asking the old blog owner to stick around for a few posts is a good way to make a steady transition between writers. This is probably harder for cheaper blog sales, but I know that in this instance when Cameron asked if I would post once or twice more, I was quite happy to given that the sale price was so much higher than I’d expected!

Introduce changes incrementally
Change is inevitable, but it’s best done incrementally. If you try to add a new posting schedule, new writers, new design, new topics and so on all at once, you are going to alienate some of the existing reader base. You might attract new readers, but why alienate old readers unless you have to. It’s much better to incrementally change your new asset and keep the old readers and attract new ones.

A great post with some valuable lessons.

Found via Crenk.com.

Originally posted on November 1, 2007 @ 5:26 pm

Story: I Once Sold a 12 Character Domain for $500

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So many people have been wondering what I have done that makes me worth following online, and that’s really a hard question to answer. I fell into my position with Jacob and Bloggy Network thanks to being in the right place at the right time, and my new job with Splashpress Media is all about the connections and impressions I have made over the last two years.

One thing I will talk about today though is how I sold a twelve character domain that had no keywords for $500 US dollars.

Before I was a teenager, I enjoyed super hero movies, and one of my favourites was Phoenix from Marvel’s X-Men. She was very powerful, and also a very conflicted character. I empathized with her and also thought the alias was very interesting. The myth of the Phoenix was also very powerful and interesting to me.

I took on the name Phoenix as my own personal symbol online, and used it in pretty much everything I did. Even my first websites created on Geocities used my Phoenix code name in one way or another. As I grew up, I finally decided to get my own domain name, and I registered Phoenixrealm.com.

I worked really hard on that blog, and as I continued to grow up, I felt less and less like the “Phoenix” name suited the online persona I wanted to portray. So one day, I decided to sell the domain. Not the content, or anything else. The domain didn’t have any keywords really, nor any other major marketing points. It was a personal blog about my life, and my work online. From time to time I would post a smart article about something I was passionate about, but I was taking that content with me. I figured that I might only get a bit more than the registration fee on the domain, but I tried to talk about all the great things I had done with the site. The traffic I had brought in, the back links, and even my Technorati rank. Anything I could do to make the domain seem valuable.

Thankfully Gary, a great guy, saw the site and what it could be used for and decided to purchase it for $500. He turned the site into a great SEO blog which is still around today. I moved on to DavidCubed.com, and continued to write about my life and everything in it there.

While it might be pretty common place to sell a domain for three figures, I doubt too many domains without keywords usually do so well.

The lesson you can all learn here is that value really depends on the buyer. If you can find a buyer and can convince them of an items value, you will make more money than those that just continue to lower their prices to please buyers.

Originally posted on November 7, 2007 @ 9:51 am

My Splashpress Media Job Responsibilities

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So you might have noticed that there was no post on Friday on this blog, and I have tried to make it a goal of mine to bring new content every weekday on this blog, but with my new duties at Splashpress Media, I have been working hard at getting integrated into their team, and that hasn’t left much time to do things around here. Don’t fear though, I still have lots of ideas, and will make sure to find the time to continue to share my experiences and knowledge.

Today, I wanted to talk about what my new duties will be at Splashpress Media to continue the transparency I am working on creating about my new job. The first thing some of you might have noticed is that I am the new Head of Marketing. This means I have a marketing budget which I have to organize and use effectively to promote the Splashpress brand, as well as the brands of each of the properties held by Splashpress.

This is a relatively new job for me, as I have only started learning promotion and marketing, but with all the resources online, I hope to learn quickly and do well at this new task.

Continue reading →

Originally posted on November 3, 2007 @ 3:24 pm