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How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

blogtyrant.com

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Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#21

Post by chopsueyar »

sofuture wrote: post #14

What an appalling and offensive use of one's time. Make not-so-much money by providing generic content on a subject until X level of popularity is reached, at which point you transition the audience into a not-astounding paycheck and the web property into a commodity valued solely in visits. And the world moves on, nothing bettered, and very little changed, beyond a tiny shifting of money ownership.

This is the greatness of Google.

Information Dilution. Instead of a site with dense, focused, relevant content, we can create hundreds of sites with watered-down information.

The more sites we have to sift through, the more money everybody makes.

Google has incentivized the web to dilute content.

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#22

Post by chopsueyar »

astrange wrote: post #12
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will come for the old content and consume the new content, possibly to a decreasing level, but still. Also if you're simply buying the blog to point some links to another site for garnering Google linkjuice or to own the first SERP or whatever then you probably don't care it's the current link structure (on- and off-site) that's working for you.

> Also if you're simply buying the blog to point some links to another site for garnering Google linkjuice That sounds like paying for a link to me. Does it count as paid links to them? I always wondered about this kind of thing - I would never keep visiting an authored website if something like this happened to it, and I don't know anyone who would, so I've never understood what the buyer gets in this situation.

Would you really notice one addtional href in the footer?

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#23

Post by endlessvoid94 »

sofuture wrote: post #14

What an appalling and offensive use of one's time. Make not-so-much money by providing generic content on a subject until X level of popularity is reached, at which point you transition the audience into a not-astounding paycheck and the web property into a commodity valued solely in visits. And the world moves on, nothing bettered, and very little changed, beyond a tiny shifting of money ownership.

Come on.

Everybody starts somewhere.

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#24

Post by lsc »

chopsueyar wrote: post #22
astrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also if you're simply buying the blog to point some links to another site for garnering Google linkjuice That sounds like paying for a link to me. Does it count as paid links to them? I always wondered about this kind of thing - I would never keep visiting an authored website if something like this happened to it, and I don't know anyone who would, so I've never understood what the buyer gets in this situation.

Would you really notice one addtional href in the footer?

no, but I'd notice the content change (assuming they changed authors.)

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#25

Post by petercooper »

sofuture wrote: post #14

What an appalling and offensive use of one's time. Make not-so-much money by providing generic content on a subject until X level of popularity is reached, at which point you transition the audience into a not-astounding paycheck and the web property into a commodity valued solely in visits. And the world moves on, nothing bettered, and very little changed, beyond a tiny shifting of money ownership.

It's crass, but an extra $20k in the bank as a safety net can make the difference between someone becoming an entrepreneur or stay working full-time.

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#26

Post by kristiandupont »

GFischer wrote: post #11
kristiandupont wrote: post #2

$20,000 for 8 months work isn't very much. It's not very clear how much time he spent per week but it sounds quite significant.

I always qualify "isn't very much"... for the U.S. I could definitely use U$ 20.000, it's more than a year and a half of my (post-taxes) salary here in Uruguay. (And yes, I should look into consulting, etc. HN is a great way to nag me to move forward and it's good advice).

Right, I guess my comment might even be insulting to some - if so, I apologize. I am in Denmark but I think wages here are pretty comparable to the US for many industries.

But, if what you say is true then surely you should consider writing a blog as described in the article?

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#27

Post by pbhjpbhj »

chopsueyar wrote: post #22
astrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also if you're simply buying the blog to point some links to another site for garnering Google linkjuice That sounds like paying for a link to me. Does it count as paid links to them? I always wondered about this kind of thing - I would never keep visiting an authored website if something like this happened to it, and I don't know anyone who would, so I've never understood what the buyer gets in this situation.

Would you really notice one addtional href in the footer?

Footer links are pretty much discounted, at least by Google, if the SE can sniff the context, FWIW.

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#28

Post by pbhjpbhj »

astrange wrote: post #12
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will come for the old content and consume the new content, possibly to a decreasing level, but still. Also if you're simply buying the blog to point some links to another site for garnering Google linkjuice or to own the first SERP or whatever then you probably don't care it's the current link structure (on- and off-site) that's working for you.

> Also if you're simply buying the blog to point some links to another site for garnering Google linkjuice That sounds like paying for a link to me. Does it count as paid links to them? I always wondered about this kind of thing - I would never keep visiting an authored website if something like this happened to it, and I don't know anyone who would, so I've never understood what the buyer gets in this situation.

Google, et al., may look like a clan of prescient mystics, but they're not. If you don't change the whois info they don't know the domain changed hands - indeed paid for links are really hard to spot algorithmically if done right. The regularity of updates will affect rank (increasingly it seems) but this can be maintained and content can be purchased at very low rates. Unless your site gets flagged for review by a human I think you're unlikely to be caught.

>I would never keep visiting an authored website if something like this happened to it

My blog, for example, gets most hits for a couple of posts on the Safari browser. Despite being entirely unrelated I can drive traffic to other sites from this blog, not high value traffic for sure, but if I were looking to bolster my pageviews for some reason (1st round?) or give another site an injection of PageRank short term then it works well enough.

Re: How I Sold a Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months

#29

Post by GFischer »

kristiandupont wrote: post #26
GFischer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always qualify "isn't very much"... for the U.S. I could definitely use U$ 20.000, it's more than a year and a half of my (post-taxes) salary here in Uruguay. (And yes, I should look into consulting, etc. HN is a great way to nag me to move forward and it's good advice).

Right, I guess my comment might even be insulting to some - if so, I apologize. I am in Denmark but I think wages here are pretty comparable to the US for many industries. But, if what you say is true then surely you should consider writing a blog as described in the article?

It wasn't insulting, don't worry :)

I always observe how living in the first world changes the perspective of people... (latest example: " travel doesn't take a lot of money." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601857 ).

And yes, I should :)

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