Blogger Iceberg

Blogger Tips for Beginners

2010-02-24T16:31:00.003-08:00

This time I will try to give some tips on blogging. I think friends are trying to replace the template with a nice template, Well now our job is to post as many articles to our blog. The more the better. Okay here are some tips on blogging ... or let us go .. blog ... :

1. Choose the right theme for your blog, of course you would most like and that of course you have set when planning a blog. Where we have to write the blog title and description, well that's what I mean.

2. A good blog is a specific theme / specific example of information technology, about herbal medicine, on the engineering for example. Not too many themes in one blog. Unless personal blog, wrote up what to write.

3. Writing original articles of their own ideas, if you have no idea terpaksanya, yes copy paste, but the source emang must be written so as not to the manner by aselinya writer. Even better, give links to websites or blogs that are copied.

4. Do not add accesories that are not useful, usually a beginner bloggers love to put up put up less Acesories useless, like a clock, calendar, funny animation, funny. Useful's just a little useful, yet in the computer also has a clock, calendar already exists, it only makes blogs so heavy when opened visitors. and this is what makes lazy visitors to come back.

5. Follow adsense can google adsense adsense or Indonesia, too much. It's not a must, but our philosophy's "Time is Money". So why should we blogging for hours, many hours writing, but we did not get anything from our blog, you lose? Unless your blog intended only for fun.

Okay it was a little blogging tips in order to go ... blog ... hopefully useful for those of you who are still beginners. Who had advanced do not read it, like we wrote each other often visited.

Monetize Your Blog

2010-02-24T16:31:00.001-08:00

In this post I will try to explain a bit how to make our blog can create money for us. Here I describe some Internet programs that could make money, there was a big result there is a small, but clearly it needs to process and can not be instant like falling from the sky, among others, the program is as follows:

1. Google Adsense, and other similar adsense lot
2. Afiliate Marketing
3. Article Marketing
4. Pay to Click
5. Pay To Review
6. Pay Per Lead
7. Pay To Upload
8. Pay Per Sale
9. Etc.

You please try one of the above list, if a big bonus clear Afiliate Marketing.

Free Article Gets 1000+ Hits Daily

2010-02-24T16:28:00.000-08:00

In trying to make the most of this influx of revenue sharing opportunities all over the web, the question I am asked the most is: "how did you know what to write about?"

The short answer is, I needed money for my research and I am passionate about my cause. So I read other people's posts about making cash, joined sites that were going to share some of their cash with me, then I wrote about how I made it when I started getting it. Everyone wants to know about your money, online or off. Mind you, there are certain topics I really love to write about and would prefer to do it more, but they don't all convert to funds. Getting 1000 or more page views per day isn't hard if you have something simple that people can use right now, today.

Everyone wants the 'how-to', so give it to them, free.

Don't keep it to yourself whatever you do. This is precisely what everyone is searching for and if you keep it to yourself the money will run out very soon. You've heard the expression 'what goes around , comes around' well it's true! We used to offer e-books, and although there are some great e-books around, nobody seems to want them anymore, free or not. There is no point putting everything you know about making money in your book and trying to sell it for $5 online, when the blog waing in the search box next is posting it right there for the world to see. He's not selling it, but he just got a page view, maybe an ad was clicked, and someone told 5 friends where to go and see it too. Most people will see an informative page and begin reading, then it drags on for so long they scroll to the bottom. As soon as they see the Credit Card links the y will X the page off immediatley.

Free really does pay.

When writing articles.blogs and poems for money, not only must you use simple keywords, but you should also make sure to implement those words carefully throught your article. The number of times one can use the same word repeatedly looks very boring and makes your article dull. Conduct your keyword search by going to google and searching for a keyword tool. If you don't have a paid version there are many freebies out there easy enough to find.

When looking for the appropriate keywords for your article, you will need to use synonyms to eliminate the bore factor. Case in point: the word can be used quite frequently since people who are wanting it won't notice it peppered all over your page if they expect you're going to show them how to get some. However, using related words and phrases will disguise this while allowing you to still make your point.Those of us who are statstically inclined will tell you that 1.5 is the optimum useage for these words throughout your article.

I am not one of those people, I just keep doing what works - another old expression 'if it aint broke, don't try and fix it'.
by: Kerry Mulherin

Blogspot vs. Wordpress

2010-02-24T16:25:00.000-08:00

It’s been a few months now since I made the transition from Blogspot to Wordpress, and I’m a happy camper. :) Having blogged from Blogspot for a long time, I’m in a strong position to compare the two writing platforms.

Price

The big advantage of blogspot is, it’s totally free. Of course, WP is free as well, but to take full advantage of all its power and flexibility, you will need a professional webhost (Glowing Face Man is currently hosted by BlueHost, and it seems to be a pretty good host so far). You can get free hosting from wordpress.com, but you won’t be able to customize like you can with a professionally hosted blog. Blogspot allows you to run ads on your free blog, but wordpress.com does not.

Learning Curve

Blogspot has a much smaller learning curve. I had to manually edit the mysql databases just to get my installation of wordpress to work (granted that’s because I was doing some weird juggling with domain names during the transition so that glowingfaceman.com wouldn’t go down while I was moving it, but still…) Then again, a small learning curve is often a siren, suggesting a long-term trade-off, and indeed that is the case here. Easy to pick up initially, Blogspot is like a bicycle with training wheels welded on which you’ll never be able to remove.

Search-Engine Optimization

If you actually want your articles to reach the outside world, Blogspot puts you at a crippling disadvantage right out the gate. This might seem surprising, since it’s owned by Google, the leading search engine. Well, at least you can’t accuse The Big G of being biased against its own products. A Blogspot blog won’t send pingbacks to other bloggers when you link to their articles. In the heavily community-based blogosphere, that’s like driving a car with no headlights. With Blogspot, you can’t fully take advantage of Google’s own Webmaster Tools: there’s no way to make a legitimate Google Sitemap, there’s no way to add Google’s enhanced 404 page widget, heck, you can’t even control your robots.txt file.

Worst of all, with blogspot, you have no control over your URL structure. They decided it’s best to build the date into every single article URL. For example, if I published this article on my old Blogspot blog, the url might look like: http://www.glowingfaceman.com/2009/11/blogspot-vs-wordpress.html. This might be useful if your name is Markos Moulitsas and you publish 100 articles a day, but for the rest of us, it’s just clutter, and most SEO gurus think those extra folders hurt the article’s performance in the search engines. By contrast, on Wordpress, you can customize your URL layout, and you can edit the URL for an article as you write it (whereas Blogspot generates one with no input from you).

Customization

A professionally hosted Wordpress blog beats the tar our of Blogspot when it comes to customization. Blogspot is customizable to the extent that you can edit your “template”, a script in a bizarre language which is half XHTML and half some strange very-poorly-documented command-interface for XHTML (with commands like “” and “”). Even if you manage to learn the ins-and-outs of this weird scripting language, you’re still severely limited in what you can do with it, because all the “variables” are pre-loaded in a way you can’t control. For example, you cannot directly access the whole list of your posts: the posts variable is pre-loaded with whatever posts Blogger *thinks* you should have access to based on what page it is. A simple example of how limited blogspot customization is: noone has yet figured out a way to change the “Next Article” and “Previous Article” links to actually have the name of the articles in question. That ought to be trivial, but it seems to be impossible.

Wordpress? The entire program is open-source, written in PHP, and you can edit absolutely everything. The only limit is your knowledge of PHP, and even without that, there are thousands of community-generated plugins, which you can install with the click of a button. Unlike blogspot’s clunky undocumented “B:” language, there are hundreds of books and free tutorials on PHP.

Support

Wordpress has a great support community, with very active forums full of very helpful people. The open-source, transparent nature of WP makes it easy for the advanced user to help the newbie. Even if Blogspot had such a community, in many cases there would be nothing the experts could say except “Sorry, that’s impossible.” The Blogspot community seems to be extremely poor, a wasteland of unanswered questions with the occasional Google employee popping up to say nothing of much use. Much as I love Google, they’re about as transparent as the silt at the bottom of Challenger Deep. Great for thwarting spammers and creating an awesome search engine. Not so great for helping you find blogging solutions.

Overall Conclusion

Blogspot is the platform of choice if you just want to make a very simple blog with nothing fancy. It’s easy to set up, easy to learn the basics, and you can broadcast your “Hello, World” within ten minutes of making your free account. If you have bigger ambitions and want to really take your blog to the next level, Wordpress wins hands down.

A Closing Note about Blogspot

I realize that I came off a little harsh against Blogspot, but actually I do really appreciate what they do. The number of blogs they host is vast and enormous, and they do that for absolutely free– a huge value and a model for other companies to follow. I want to emphasize, the reason Blogspot is so cripplingly limited is not because of incompetence or anything like that. In order to provide the service they provide, they need a system which is extremely scalable. They couldn’t do it if they gave all their writers unlimited access to PHP and SQL. Viewed as an individual blog, Blogspot is not very impressive, but viewed as the centralized supercollection of blogs which it is, it’s an engineering marvel.

Source : http://www.xamuel.com/blogspot-vs-wordpress/

Blogger Iceberg

2010-02-24T14:59:00.000-08:00

Opening the secret Blogger

Blog dengan Wordpress Itu Tidak Berguna . . .

2008-12-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

Wordpress memang merupakan sarana CMS (Content Management System) yang sangat bagus saat ini, namun Blog Anda yang memakai Wordpress menjadi tidak berguna jika Tidak di Optimalkan dengan tools / setting yang tepat.

Permalink

Mengubah struktur URL Anda penting sekali agar judul blog Anda lebih mudah dibaca oleh pengunjung maupun Search Engine. Tentunya Anda tidak mau kalau judul blog Anda seperti ini : http://www.domainsaya.com/?p=12

Untuk mengubah-nya, silakan klik ke :
Setting > Permalinks
dan pilih Custom Structure, kemudian isikan : /%postname%/ atau boleh juga menggunakan /%category%/%postname%/ dan save setting Anda.

Perlu di ingatkan bahwa setelah Anda mengubahnya, jangan sekali-kali menggantinya di kemudian hari, karena akan berakibat link-link postingan Anda menjadi tidak berfungsi.

General Settings

Setting-an yang satu ini tidak kalah penting-nya. Silakan klik “Setting”

Beberapa hal yang perlu di perhatikan di bagian ini.

Blog Title : Judul Blog Anda harus mewakili Blog Anda secara keseluruhan termasuk juga Tagline
Wordpress address (URL) : pastikan Anda mengetik full URL http://www.domainsaya.com , jangan cuma http://domainsaya.com (tanpa www.) . Termasuk juga Blog Address (URL).

Membership : Pastikan “Anyone can register” tidak aktif kecuali Anda memang membutuhkan-nya.

Plugin : All-in-One SEO Pack

Plugin yang satu ini menjadi kewajiban bagi setiap Blogger. Harus di install untuk mengotimalkan Blog Anda di mata Pengunjung, terutama Search Engine.
Download di : semperfiwebdesign

Setelah di-install, Anda dapat menemukan plugin ini di Setting > All in One SEO

Pastikan Home Title , Home Description , Home Keywords di isi dan disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan Blog Anda. Pilihlah keyword yang sesuai dengan tema blog Anda. Untuk Home Title isikan sesuai dengan apa yang Anda masukkan di Blog Title dibagian Settings.

Setelah itu , scroll ke bawah dan pastikan opsi berikut dibawah ini dalam posisi aktif.

Use Categories for META keywords , Use noindex for Categories , Use noindex for Archives , Use noindex for Tag Archives , Autogenerate Descriptions

Setelah ter-install, maka plugin ini akan muncul juga saat Anda mau menulis posting-an

Sesuaikan Judul, deskripsi , keywords posting-an Anda. Untuk bertujuan agar setiap posting-an Anda dioptimalkan untuk keyword tertentu termasuk meng-optimalkan Judul dan deskripsi. Penting buat pengunjung Blog dan Search Engine.

Plugin : Google XML Sitemap

Plugin ini dapat di temukan di situs Wordpress : XML Sitemap

Setiap kali Anda meng-update Blog , maka plugin ini akan memperbaharui file sitemap (biasanya bernama sitemap.xml), dan akan memberithaui SE seperti Google , Yahoo , MSN untuk segera meng-index postingan Anda.

Plugin : Sociable

Silakan download dan install plugin ini : Sociable

Tujuan sociable adalah untuk mempermudah pengunjung Blog Anda untuk menambahkan bookmark mereka jika mereka mendapatkan postingan Anda menarik.

Plugin : Related Post

Jangan remehkan plugin yang satu ini : Related Post

Plugin ini akan menampilkan postingan yang berhubungan di setiap akhir postingan baru Anda. Ini akan menambah jumlah post view Anda secara signifikan.

Plugin : Feedburner

Anda harus mendaftarkan Blog Anda ke Feedburner terlebih dahulu : Feedburner

RSS memungkinkan pengunjung Blog Anda dapat mendapatkan updates terbaru tanpa harus membuka Situs Anda. Selain itu dapat digunakan oleh orang lain untuk menampilkan updates Blog terbaru Anda, ini berarti meningkatkan trafik ke Blog Anda.

Plugin : Google Analytics

Pertama sekali, gunakan email Gmail Anda untuk mendaftarkan Google Analytics, setelah itu install Plugin Google Analytics ke Wordpress Anda : Google Analyticator

Plugin ini akan menghubungkan Anda dengan Google Analytics untuk menganalisa negara pengunjung Anda, letak geografis, berapa lama pengunjung membaca Blog Anda , jumlah trafik , asal – usul pengunjung blog , dlsb.

Hal ini penting sekali agar Anda dapat lebih meningkatkan performance Blog Anda dengan mangacu pada statistik yang disediakan oleh Google Analytics.

Source : http://www.masterclickcom.com/blogging/blog-dengan-wordpress-itu-tidak-berguna/

Selling Points for Selling Your Blog

2007-02-13T19:46:00.001-08:00

From my short research venture, here is a list of the information most frequently requested by those selling their blogs and those interested in buying them.

Not all of the information needs to be made public, but you need to be prepared to present all and any of this information if a buyer asks.

* Domain Name: There is something in a name and the name means money. If your domain name is easily recognized and remembered, it will add to your blog’s value. Does the blog title match the domain name? Buyers take these things seriously into consideration.
* Date Blog Established: The age of the domain is important to Google PageRank.
* Google Page Rank
* SEOMoz.org Pagestrength
* Technorati Ranking
* Alexa Ranking
* Yahoo and Google Top Keyword Search Results: Which search terms bring in the most traffic consistently.
* Branding: Name recognition and value.
* Transferable Revenue from Ads: Include information on ad contracts and arrangements as well as amounts.
* Web Traffic Statistics: Averages for the past week, month, three months, six months, year, and farther if available.
* Recent Traffic Spikes: List recent heavy traffic spikes from mentions in Digg, Slashdot, Wired, Engadget, etc.
* Consistent Return Traffic Levels: How many consistently return for more?
* Feed and Feed Subscriber Statistics: How many subscribers? What type of feeds and how many are offered. Does the blog include category specific feeds?
* Unique Visitors Statistics
* Market Specific Content Description: Is the blog industry or marketplace specific, serving a focused group?
* Number of Posts/Articles
* Number of Comments
* Demographics: Who needs this blog and returns frequently?
* Google Inbound Links: Be honest. This is easily checked. Do not include intra-site links as inbound links. Only external sites linking to the blog.
* Incoming Link Sources: Where are the most links coming from?
* Inclusion in Blogging Networks and Social Bookmarking Networks: Is such inclusion transferable?
* Email Lists/Subscribers: Does the site come with any subscribers via email? How many? How often are they contacted?
* Newsletters: Does the blog offer newsletters? How many, how often, and what is the content? Does it soundly integrate with the blog or totally separate?
* Forum Included: Is there a forum or discussion/chat area included in the blog? What are the statistics and assets associated with the forum?
* Press Coverage: Some blogs and bloggers are now becoming sources for news as well as news themselves. Have the blog been featured in recent news stories or reports? Is it frequently quoted or listed as a resource in news stories?
* Events Associated With the Blog: Are there any special events, conferences, or regularly scheduled events associated with the blog and expected to continue? Has it consistently participated in the Blog-a-thon or reported on an annual technology conference?
* Sponsorships: Has the blog sponsored events or programs or other business entities or blogs? Is it affiliated through promotion, reputation and business relations with other commercial entities?
* Inventory of Assets: Web page design, Plugins, comments, written and image content, audio and video files, programming files, downloadable content, archives, and related content and code are included in the sale or not?
* Inventory of Intellectual Property: Copyrights, licenses, customized programming code, trademarks, etc., are included in the sale or not? What are the agreements for transferring the licenses? Handling renewal fees, etc.?
* Host Server Agreement Transferable: Is it included or not? Describe hosting agreement and features.
* Syndication Rights and Agreements: How syndicated and to whom.
* Your Participation After Sale: Will you stay or leave, share control, give up control, continue to participate in some way. Outline specifics for your involvement, if any.
* On-site Content Used and Referenced by Off-Sites: Does the blog host images, Plugins, scripts, tools, or other content for use on external blogs or sites? How is this maintained?
* Unique Content: Is the content unique and original or mostly link lists and blockquotes?
* Current State of the Blog: Is posting ongoing and current or old and dated? What is happening today with the blog?
* Posting Frequency: Has a pattern been established for post frequency? Do readers expect content published on a regular basis? When?
* Content Freshness: How “timely” is the content? Does it go out of date quickly or is it long lasting?
* Competition: What is the blog’s competition and how does it measure up?
* Blog Authors: Is there only one blog author or multiple bloggers contributing. How will the sale impact them? Do they come with or not? What are the rights to their content? Are the copyrights transferable?
* Non-competition Agreement: Will the blog seller be restricted from creating a similar blog in the near future after the sale? If so, how long is the restriction? Or no such agreement will be made?
* Use of Inventory After Sale: Can the new owner use the same program, programming code, and content? What are the long time permissions, fees, and agreements that need to happen to permit such use?
* Blocks or Blacklists: Has the site ever been listed on any spam blacklists or blocked in any way? Explain why and how it was removed from the blocks and lists.

Have I left anything off you think should go into the list?

Have you sold a blog or are you considering selling your blog? What do you think are the most important points you would need to make if you were to sell your blog? What would make your blog appealing to buyers?

Even if you aren’t considering selling your blog, do you know the answers to these questions? Might be worth investigating your blog’s value by answering them. If you don’t like the answer, consider putting a little more effort into change the answers.

Source : http://www.blogherald.com/2007/02/13/selling-your-blog-what-are-blog-buyers-looking-for/

How Much is Your Blog Really Worth?

2007-02-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

What does it take to make a blog worth $30,000 or $776,807.04?

While Brazell listed his blog’s marketable assets to include Google PageRank, SEOMoz.org’s Pagestrength, Technorati Ranking, Google Inbound Links, feed subscribers, and his web traffic statistics, what are the real selling points you need to highlight to sell your blog?

I went looking for the criteria for selling and buying a blog. What makes a blog a good buy? What are blog buyers looking for?

Blog buying and selling is still a new market. Domain buying and selling has been around for much longer. Buying a domain name is similar but different from buying a blog with content. When you buy a domain name, you are buying an address, like a piece of property without a building on it. When you buy a blog, you are buying the building, too.

BloggerTalk offers Blog Selling and Buying Guidelines, specifically designed for their forum and those offering their blogs for sale or buying blogs.

The information BloggerTalk requires for their blogs for sale listings are pretty basic. They want to know how much traffic the blog gets, income sources, average income, and other economics of the blog, as well as Google PageRank, Alexa Ranking, and Yahoo and Google top keyword search results. They also want to know the date the blog was established, how often you blog, and the blogging platform.

In the discussions between sellers and potential buyers, buyers want to know where traffic comes from. Incoming links have value. Do they come mostly from Google or Yahoo search results, or from Digg, Wired, Slashdot, Engadget, or other social bookmarking and networking style services or blogs? Are there solid and long term sites or forums that link to the blog? The correct number of backlinks are very important in judging the potential earning capacity of the site.

Average monthly traffic is expected, but they also want to know when and what caused traffic spikes, and how much of the traffic is consistently return traffic, not just an average pushed up due to some Diggs.

Blogspot blogs are not permitted to be listed for sale on Blogger Talk, as well as some other site selling websites I visited. Redirected sites are also not appreciated. The reasons are not clear other than the hassles of buying a redirect. I wonder if free WordPress.com blogs would also not qualify.

They say you need to be specific about exactly what you are selling. You can sell the whole shoebox, or just the domain name. Does your blog’s sale include everything on it, including the hosting service, all rights, licenses, trademarks, and customized programming and code? Or are you selling just the content and domain name? What about retaining licenses, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights? Are you keeping the content for yourself? What are you offering for sale?

Most buyers want the “whole thing”, taking over the hosting, and everything therein. But some sellers only want to sell part of the package, retaining control over the rest. You have to be specific about what you are offering when you post that first “buy this blog” notice.

If you, the packaged “blogger”, are part of the blog sale, you need to be specific with what your responsibilities will be after ownership has transferred. Are you giving up total control, or taking a step back from the power seat and only contributing? Or are you walking away? For extremely popular personality-driven blogs, new owners often want the old folks to hang around, at least for the transition.

SitePoint also offers established websites for sale in a forum-auction format. They offer a Selling A Website FAQ (pdf) and Guide To Buying A Website (pdf).

A key point they make in establishing your blog’s value is the power of its brand:

Similar to your domain name, if your website is an established brand in its content niche that might add value. For example, there is value inherent in the SitePoint name simply because it is a well-known brand among web developers and it has a presence in thousands of stores worldwide.

They also add inventory (if available), custom programming, script licenses, and an established community (regular return readers). Syndication rights and agreements would also be included in the content and services part of the blog’s value.

Looking through the list, I see a couple of blogs stating that their blog has been “appraised”. Who appraises blogs? How do you appraise a blog for sale?

Digital Point offers Domain Appraisals. According to their Domain Appraisal Guide and Appraisals: A Guide, they recommend a 10 point system for “grading” the quality of a domain name’s marketability. For them, it’s all in the name, not the history of the site itself, though for serious buyers, that’s critical. It just isn’t important for their appraisals.

Digital Point also offers Sites for buying and selling but I couldn’t find a guide listed in their forum.

I looked all over and couldn’t find any other resources or experts who specialize in appraising blogs. So I wonder where those appraisals came from? Do you know? Are there other blog buying and selling sites?

Source : http://www.blogherald.com/2007/02/13/selling-your-blog-what-are-blog-buyers-looking-for/

When is the Right Time to Sell Your Blog?

2007-02-13T19:43:00.001-08:00

How do you know when it’s time to sell your blog? Brazell admits he needs a change. He’s ready to jump off the cliff and sell his blog.

Many of the blogs I found listed for sale admit that the owners have just gotten bored or have too many blogs and something has to go. What would make you sell your blog?

In 2005, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger wondered how much you would sell your blog for, noting that timing is everything.

How much would you sell your blog for? How would you determine it’s selling price?

A few months ago I was offered $13,000 for Digital Photography Blog – I almost laughed when I got the email. If someone had offered me that much a year or so back I’d have jumped at it – but now I know it’ll make me that in a month or two just from its Adsense earnings. But it did make me wonder what I’d be willing to sell it for.

How much would you take right now if someone offered to buy your blog? How much would you have taken a year ago if they offered then?

Is there a right time to sell your blog? When would be the right time for you?

Many sell their blogs when they are bored or finished with them, but is that the right time to sell your blog?

The right to sell is when it is at the top of the charts. When it is doing its best. After you’ve just had two or four hits from Digg, Wired, or other traffic generating sources. When your blog is getting the most attention, this is when it has the most value and looks the best to buyers, right?

You aren’t just selling a blog, you are selling what the blog is built on: the return readers, reputation, quality content, and incoming links. When the blog is doing great, you will probably get a better price than when it is doing nothing.

Source : http://www.blogherald.com/2007/02/13/selling-your-blog-what-are-blog-buyers-looking-for/

Selling Your Blog: What Are Blog Buyers Looking For?

2007-02-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Aaron Brazell of TechnoSailor is selling his personal blog on Ebay Sitepoint. He’s added a “Buy Now” price of USD $30,000.

I’m not sure what the future holds for him, and I do hope he will not leave his passionate and much appreciated involvement in WordPress.

Still, this got me wondering about how much a blog is worth.

In October 2005, a fun gadget tool was developed which allows you to test your blog’s value, according to a combination of Technorati popularity and ranking, along with a value equal to the “dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal“, which was one of the largest blog sales at that time.

Using the tool, I decided to find out what Lorelle on WordPress was worth. In October of 2005, my blog was worth $80,000.00. Wow! I checked again a month later, and my blog was worth $145,651.00.

While it’s fun to make jokes about how I’m going to spend the money, this is just virtual paper, which is worth less than money on real paper. ;-)

Sixteen months later, and wondering about Brazell’s life changing blog sale, I started wondering what my blog is worth today.

It’s worth $776,807.04.

OH MY GAWD!

If my blog was a stock, you’d better invest in it cuz it’s going to split very soon. ;-)

While I was checking my own blog, I decided to check on Blog Herald. The Blog Herald is worth $964,234.32. Damn. Beaten.

Source : http://www.blogherald.com/2007/02/13/selling-your-blog-what-are-blog-buyers-looking-for/

Selling a Blog

2006-01-17T19:40:00.000-08:00

Interview with Duncan Riley from Blog Herald

Big in blog news this week is the sale of BlogHerald (no official word that it’s sold yet but it looks like final negotiations are taking place). The price is said to be in excess of over $72,000 (USD). BlogHerald’s owner is Duncan Riley (a partner of mine at b5media) so I shot him a request for an interview as the subject is so relevant to this blog.

Having never sold a blog of my own I’m fascinated by the process and so started by asking Duncan:

Why are you Selling BlogHerald?
A number of reasons. Firstly Ive identified that there is now a perception that I have a conflict of interesting writing about blog networks when I’m an owner of one. Whether this is fair or not I guess doesn’t come into it because the perception is there, despite me having written the blog for 3 years. Also becoming a full time Problogger back in December means I can always do with the money :-) The capital from the sale will fund my mortgage for atleast the next 12 months and allow me to finish off my house whilst building up income from other blogs and from b5media.

One of the biggest topics of discussion around this sale is regarding the ’secrecy’ and the strategy of not publically announcing the name of the blog being sold – Why did you do it this way? What were the pros and cons of this move in retrospect?

I don’t think it was so much a secret: certainly those who asked for the information from Jeremy (who were interested in bidding) where provided the details commercial in confidence. Although there has naturally been a fair bit of talk about the sale imagine how much more there would have been if The Blog Herald had been named from day one? Basically I didn’t want a circus around the sale, and from a marketing perspective I believe a full public sale may have been detrimental to the brand.

Why did you use a broker (Jeremy) in this case and has it been worthwhile doing so?
Jeremy’s got the runs on the board as far as blog sales go, and for memory I think he was the first person to have ever sold a blog as well (a few years ago with Ensight). He’s got a lot of contacts in the industry + he’s in North America as well. Sure, in terms of blogging being in Australia isn’t a restriction for me, but in terms of being able to talk to people, broker deals…as you’d know the time difference works against us. I’d note its also why I think the blog will go on to bigger and better things in the future as well. Being in North America provides to new owner/ owners a lot of advantages in being able to actually talk to people in the industry when reporting on blog news, as well as attend things like blogging conferences and similar, things I’ve never been able to do.

In terms of it being worthwhile using Jeremy? I’d happily recommend him to others, he really know’s what he’s doing and he’s got contacts I simply don’t have.

Many people ask me how to value a blog – what factors did you weigh up when deciding upon an asking price?
This was in many ways the hardest part. Naturally I value it even more highly than what it sold for :-) I couldn’t give you an absolute way of calculating the value of a blog, but you’d be looking at things like
- profit of the blog and potential profit
- how long the blog has been going
- traffic
- PR and links inwards, and its place overall in the blogosphere
How you put a value on those things is another matter. We had 3 bids all pretty close to the same amount in terms of dollars so others have priced it in a similar fashion which is a positive. Because the market for sellling blogs is still very small its impossible to benchmark these things as well but I’d expect as the market grows this will change over time.

What will you do with the time freed up by not having Blog Herald (assuming you’re not continuing with it long term)?

I will be contributing for the time being, the exact length of time however hasn’t been finalised, although its likely to be a couple of months at this stage.

b5media has really become my full time job sine I went “pro” in December and I intend on using a lot of the extra time working in building up b5media.

I also would like to spend a little bit more time posting more regularly to my personal blog. Occasionally it will include blogging related topic but I’d like to explore tech and politics as well. Literally a free form blog of my thoughts and ideas. I also might pursue a couple of new projects, whether these are in b5media or outside of it has yet to be decided, but I always enjoy taking on new challenges.

If you were starting Blog Herald again today how would you do it differently?
That’s difficult to answer because I wouldn’t start The Blog Herald in 2006, its a lot more harder today to get your voice heard in the blogosphere and build up loyal readers and wide readership than it was in 2002-03 when your starting from scratch. In 2002 there was nothing around like the Blog Herald in terms of blog news, and whilst there are a few sites today covering similar area’s (Bloggers Blog comes to mind) and a few different imitators have come and gone, there really still isn’t a lot of other sites like it, in terms of the brand being stronger than the person (except of course for the uber-multi author blogs), for example when most people think of Problogger they think of you, Micro Persuasion Steve Rubel. Certainly whilst a lot of people who read Problogger would associate me with The Blog Herald, try searching a blog search engine for my name v The Blog Herald, and The Blog Herald will win out by a country mile. It was always meant to be this way, I wanted to build a brand, not me personally.

Source : http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/01/17/selling-a-blog-interview-with-duncan-riley-from-blog-herald/