How to sell your 2 year old blog for £8.5m
Unbelievable as it may sound but a 2 year old WordPress blog run by just 1 person sold this week for $15m (£8.5m). The blog is Bankaholic.com and the press release about the sale can be found here.
On the surface this looks like a too-good-to-be-true scenario for the owner. After all the blog does reasonably well in terms of traffic and visitors but it’s certainly no Facebook. The site receives about 8500 visitors per month, is ranked 41,904 by Alexa, has a Google PageRank of 5 and has approx. 27,220 inbound links.
So whilst traffic and links etc. are certainly very healthy, is a site with that level of traffic worth £8.5m? I believe that the secret to such a high valuation is down to 2 things: the sector and the keywords that it ranks well for.
The Sector
The purpose of Bankaholic is to provide information on US bank accounts, credit cards, and other consumer finance products. The site is simple, easy to use and most importantly contains useful and well thought out information and product reviews.
As any finance affiliate will tell you however, the finance sector is one of the most competitive but also rewarding sectors to be involved in. Affiliate CPA’s for this sector are pretty much the highest available of all sectors, and therefore competition is steep.
However, do well in this sector and as we have just seen, the rewards can be very high. By focusing on finance, Johns (the blog owner) has made sure that he can command a selling price that is comparable to the high payouts available in this sector. For example this sort of valuation would never happen in retail. If the blog was a blog about clothing, discount codes, gadgets or anything else from the retail sector then I doubt very much it would command such a high asking price - especially with comparable levels of traffic. There just isn’t the margin in retail.
So by picking an ultra-competitive but highly rewarding niche your traffic and users are 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 times more valuable than less competitive sectors. Something to consider if you’re just about to launch your blog but aren’t sure on what sector to pick.
SEO
I’ve always said that WordPress blogs seem to do well in the search engines natural rankings, and this certainly seems to be the case with Bankaholic. Look at this bit from the press release:
“Bankaholic is ranked high in natural search for both deposit and credit card keywords. We believe their organic traffic will increase our deposit and credit card revenue, and with a high composition of free traffic, will help to improve margins”
Those wise words were from Thomas R. Evans, new owner of Bankaholic.
It’s clear that the key to the value of this blog, is it’s ability to rank well in the search engines for finance related keywords and keyphrases. So how do you rank well in the SERPS? Well as I’ve always said the 2 most important off page SEO elements are fresh regular unique content and inbound links.
The site clearly has loads of fresh content that seems to be updated daily, a great starting point. More importantly, the content isn’t just some existing content just rehashed and cobbled together by robots, it’s written by humans and is interesting to read.
For a site that’s only just over 2 years old, having over 27,000 inbound links is also clearly having a positive effect in terms of the SERPS. Again the blog owner has understood the importance of this and clearly worked hard at it.
So to summarise, here’s how to create a blog that will sell for millions of pounds:
Step 1: Use WordPress - WordPress is just a fantastically easy tool to use and is free, another bonus. But most importantly the search engines seem to love it and it’s already configured to create pages for you that are search engine friendly.
Step 2: Pick a profitable niche - If you’re creating a blog with the intention of making money from it, gathering a user base and eventually selling it on. Then pick a sector where there are lots of buyers with lots of cash to throw at you when the time comes.
Step 3: Write original, fresh and interesting content regularly for your users - I can’t over-emphasise the importance of this. A lot of people try to game the search engines by just throwing low grade content at a site/blog and hoping that some will stick with the search engines. It may do, but not for long. A much better option is to sit down every day and write an article that you yourself would like to read if you were reading your blog. This will ensure that not only will the search engines eat it up but your users will keep coming back for more as well as recommending your site to others. A prime example of this, is this very blog. I have never ever seeked out any links to it, yet according to Yahoo! Site Explorer there are over 12,000.
Step 4: Get other sites to link to yours - If you do Step 3 well you will find that other sites will link to you without being asked. You will become an “authority” in your space without ever asking for a link. Then if you actively start a linking campaign on top of all the natural links (by natural I mean the links that you don’t go out and seek yourself) you will see your site slowly start to rise through the SERPS. One thing I would advise against is paying for links. Never ever ever go down this route. Google doesn’t like it and will penalise your site if you get found out. Personally I much prefer a “clean” approach to link building, it may take slightly longer than buying links but you will stay in the SERPS with no danger of being kicked out for any wrongdoing.
That’s all there is to it! If all of the above sounds simple then it’s because it is. However don’t underestimate how much hard work steps 3 and 4 take. Both take up a considerable amount of time and resources and there are no “short cuts”. You need to invest the time to make your blog a success but if you do, the rewards will follow.
I didn’t write this article with the purpose of promoting my content writing and link building business but as I created the business to help me facilitate steps 3 and 4 for my sites, I would be remiss not to mention it here.
Let me start by saying that if you have the time to write your own content and do your own link building then you absolutely should. However if you are short of time and have a budget for marketing/SEO then I don’t see anything wrong in getting some outside help.
At ContentNow both myself and my business partner have and still do run websites and know the difficulties in getting inbound links to your site and writing engaging good quality content. Which is exactly why we set the business up, to meet this need. Like many other webmasters we have both tried to outsource link building and content writing to other companies - mainly with disastrous results. In the past I’ve found myself having to pay for articles clearly written by writers who don’t speak English as their native tongue and whose only talent is being able to cut and paste from Wikipedia. Likewise I’ve paid for linkbuilding services that have resulted in nothing more than links placed on the link building companies “farm” of 1000 sites.
So with our joint past experiences setting up ContentNow was easy, all we had to do was the opposite of what every other company who we have had bad experiences in the past does.
Our content writers, researchers and proof readers are all based in the UK and speak English as their native language. They all understand the culture, as they live here and they are all well educated and can write intelligently and even with humour when required. Likewise our link building managers are all UK based, and absolutely understand the industry and the approaches to take when dealing with potential link partners.
OK, I’ve already gone on far too long about ContentNow - I could go on for pages and pages as I’m passionate about it - but I don’t want to bore you all 
Instead I’ll leave the last word to our clients, here are some quotes from a couple of emails we’ve received this last week:
“The content has been fantastic and very engaging – exactly what we are looking for.”
“I have now received all 20 articles, thank you very much, it is clear that your writers have properly researched the subject and the writing style shows a strong command of the English language.”
What I’m listening to right now: Jazmine Sullivan - “Fearless”
Post from: Affiliate Marketing Blog Here.org.uk
How to sell your 2 year old blog for £8.5m
Original post by Kieron