Written on February 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
Blogsavvy up for Sale – an Interesting Opportunity
Friend and fellow Melbourne Blogger James Farmer has decided to put his blog Blogsavvy on the market. It’s going to be an interesting auction to watch – because it’s a little different to many other blog sales that we’ve seen.
What is different about this auction is that it doesn’t run advertising on it, there’s no affiliate product income – in fact there’s no direct income on this blog at all. However – it does make James money.
You see this blog ranks well for the term blog consultant and enables James to sell his own services as a blog consultant. In the Sitepoint auction James reports his consulting income as $2000 per month. At the Buy it Now Price of $10,000 it’s a pretty tempting offer with those potential earning figures – not to mention it’s established presence in the blogosphere (it’s 2.5 years old).
Of course you’d need to be able to offer blog consulting services to make a business of it but I think it’s going to be a fascinating auction to watch.
29 Responses to “Blogsavvy up for Sale – an Interesting Opportunity” - Add Yours
shy guy
February 22nd, 2008 12:15 am
Great opportunity for rich blogger..
For me , poor blogger can’t afford to buy it..
David W Zemens - 1955 Design
February 22nd, 2008 12:25 am
It does look like an interesting auction.
My only concern would be the double “vv” in the URL. Although I recognize this happens out of necessity, I would think that “BlogSavy” is the stronger name, and that of course is taken and used by someone else.
Food for thought.
Tejvan Pettinger
February 22nd, 2008 12:26 am
You could do a lot with the domain beside just consultancy. Good value at moment
Andy Merrett
February 22nd, 2008 12:29 am
Interesting. I’m not convinced that whoever buys the blog is going to get the best deal, even if they are a “blog consultant”.
Maybe not quite so much as ProBlogger, but the brand seems to be as much, if not more, about James as it is purely about the subject — hence the ability to generate consultancy jobs from the blog.
If the buyer keeps the archives, then it has James written all over it. If the buyer removes the archives, the link juice will soon dry up.
Will regular readers continue to read a new voice? What if it turns commercial? Will it frighten off current readers.
I wish James and the blog well, I’m not suggesting it’s a mistake, but if I were the new owner I’d struggle to know the best way to take it forward.
Will certainly be interesting, though.
David Parkinson
February 22nd, 2008 12:38 am
Sounds very tempting to snap this one up. But yes you need to be a good blog consultant to carry on with it’s success.
Andrea
February 22nd, 2008 12:51 am
I think it’s very interesting and could be well-marketed to be so much more. Wish I had the cash, actually. :)
Mark from Bloglyne
February 22nd, 2008 1:23 am
No bids yet… still watching though *grins* wonder if it will be “sniped” at the last minute
Tom Beaton
February 22nd, 2008 1:28 am
It is interesting that they reached a valuation of 10k for a blog which produces no direct income. However it is obviously valuable. Best of luck to him.
Nick's Traffic Tricks
February 22nd, 2008 1:52 am
It seems to me that if he showed some consistent earnings directly from his blog with affiliate ads or whatever, even just for a couple months, his blog would fetch a much higher price!
Selling an asset like this and not positioning it in the best possible light is silly, imo. Kinda like selling a house without cleaning it up first.
Samantha
February 22nd, 2008 2:41 am
This sounded interesting at first, but his numbers on Compete don’t look that impressive. It would be one thing if he had thousands of visitors per month, but he’s only got something like 400+/-. I know, I know…with a little work and time and effort it could go up in the coming weeks and months…
autodope
February 22nd, 2008 2:58 am
This might be a deal if you can get it cheap on auction but the buy it now price has you paying about $10 per user / per month, if the Compete stats are to be believed:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/blogsavvy.net/?metric=uv
etavitom
February 22nd, 2008 3:01 am
good value for someone who knows how to leverage the name…
Travis Miles
February 22nd, 2008 5:44 am
So if he is earning $2,000 per month through the site $10,000 is a great price for someone to buy it at. It might in fact be a little bit low. Almost anyone could afford to buy it, in terms that they would probably have to borrow the money, although I am not sure how one goes about borrowing $10,000 for a website. It will be interesting to see how much it sells for.
Money Never Sleeps
February 22nd, 2008 5:50 am
very interesting…I think that this blog would sell better on Ebay!
Jordan
February 22nd, 2008 8:30 am
I’m a big confused by the second response here . . . You do know that savvy is a real word that’s spelled with two v’s, right? Or did we miss the entire Pirates of the Caribbean craze? Somehow deliberately misspelling the name of your blog for supposed “domain strength” just doesn’t seem . . . savvy….
Warren of Zen Problog
February 22nd, 2008 8:46 am
Here’s a logical question: if it is bringing him in around $2k a month, then why is he so eager to sell it—even having a buy now option that would be equal to his earnings in 5 months?
James Farmer
February 22nd, 2008 8:56 am
Good question guys… basically the new business http://incsub.com brings in more business that we can manage at the moment and I cant be bothered to subcontract extra work / smaller jobs that come through this. So the $2k could be way way more (if I followed everything up) but in the end is just an average of the few jobs I’ve accepted through the site).
And then there’s the small matter of http://edublogs.org which keeps me pretty busy too :)
Whoever buys it is welcome to the archives as well.
Opi
February 22nd, 2008 2:16 pm
Hmm.. am I missing something here?
The Alexa rank is 1,258,000
It is top 3 in search for “blog consulting” but according to Google there aren’t that many people searching for that term.
Is PR alone really commanding such a premium?
Manish
February 22nd, 2008 3:46 pm
Probably someone who buys it can earn through consultancy and can also start putting advertisements on the blog.
Hector Henry
February 23rd, 2008 3:15 am
Funny for me.
My question its , why he will sell it?
To have a blog that earns so much money its a dream for some blogger but my question its why you sell a blog that apparently its really good in money erning.
Nick's Traffic Tricks
February 23rd, 2008 4:27 am
I looked up blog consulting on WordTracker and very few people seem to search for that term.
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/?seed=blog+consulting&adult_filter=remove_offensive&suggest=Hit+Me
#3 on Google is nice but if no one searches for it then it’s not worth much…
Contact Management Blog
February 23rd, 2008 12:08 pm
Interesting link, Darren.
I, too, agree with Opi about the Alexa rank. It’s going to be difficult to locate an interested buyer who has the time to offer blog consulting services as well.
It’s a tiny niche business since most bloggers cannot afford any decent hourly consultant wages.
But I’ll keep an eye on it. Looks interesting enough!
James Farmer
February 23rd, 2008 2:06 pm
I’m selling it because I make a lot more money from http://incsub.com and http://edublogs.org :)
Scott Y.
February 23rd, 2008 3:12 pm
I don’t get it. $2,000 per month is NOT passive income! It is like buying a consultancy firm without their gun consultant, i.e. $10,000 just to buy the brand (and a relatively low traffic website). Unless you are Deloitte or EY, do people come to seek consultancy these days because of the brand or because of the person?
Sangeeta Sinha
February 23rd, 2008 6:21 pm
An amateur publisher like me cannot even think about it. But, I am sure lot of bidding will be going on.
John Rocheleau
February 24th, 2008 7:25 am
I’m a little confused with the Alexa rank on that site also.
It is 1,248,402. Maybe I don’t understand Alexa ranking as it relates to traffic, but my art portfolio site (linked to my name above) has a rank of 902,909. it was below 800,000 a while back. I get about 600 unique visitors per month. How can a site ranked at 1,248,402 get 3500. I also use AwStats as James does, so it apples to apples–or isn’t it?
Just curious,
John
Mr.Gadget Australia
February 24th, 2008 11:05 pm
All the best with your sale James Farmer!
Bob Brancato
February 25th, 2008 11:53 am
He’s the income producer, not the site. It’s worth the price of the domain name. No more, no less.
BlogSavvy
August 23rd, 2008 4:54 am
Darren, I’m proud to say that the New BlogSavvy site is up and running, check it out! Christoph
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