The Blog Method https://theblogmethod.com/ Learn to Grow & Monetise Your Blog Thu, 22 Dec 2022 10:52:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 Blog Sale – The Content Edit https://theblogmethod.com/the-content-edit-sale/ https://theblogmethod.com/the-content-edit-sale/#respond Thu, 22 Dec 2022 10:52:10 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=193 The time has come to say goodbye to “The Content Edit“, it sold at the end of September 2022. At this point, I had owned it for 7 months. This...

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The time has come to say goodbye to “The Content Edit“, it sold at the end of September 2022. At this point, I had owned it for 7 months.

This website sold for $1,700, and here is why that is fantastic:

  • It's $701 more than I purchased it for.
  • It didn't sell with its email list or course members, so I'm up 6,000+ people.
  • I also got a lot of content that I could distribute between some of my existing blogs.

Overall I am extremely happy with the results.

Here is how I did it

Step one

I lifted out all of the posts I wanted to transfer. I had to do this as soon as I got the website as I didn't want to show traffic numbers that were incorrect at the time of sale. So I moved them as soon as I could. This way all the website stats were accurate.

As someone who previously purchased a website which the owner moved posts from right before the purchase (here's looking at you Life as a Butterfly), I could not have that happening to one of my buyers.

I placed redirects on the old links, so traffic was going straight to the other blogs. This way it wouldn't even register a 404 error.

Step two

The second thing I did was add in some original blog posts to the site that were affiliate link heavy (Email marketing links and Amazon Affiliates). I added the posts to Pinterest so it would gain some traction (the Pinterest account that was included in the sale).

When I did this, the site suddenly went from having virtually 0 affiliate income to between $30-90 a month. I knew this would make it so much more appealing to a new buyer.

Step three

The traffic to this website was minor, but that's no reason to not monetise it. I added the site to Google AdSense. I mean the income was minor, we are talking $0.03 a month, but a site that is AdSense-approved sells much faster than one that is not.

The transformation

In February, I started with a website that was drinking money. It was losing $104 a month on average. I took a few steps to bring it back into the green:

  • Canceled Shopify and moved the store onto WooCommerce
  • Canceled Teachable Premium as none of the features were actually being utalised.

I also gave it a design facelift and added a new, more user-friendly theme to it to freshen it up.

These small changes turned the revenue from an average of -$104/month to +$37/month.

At the end of the day, the buyer got a great framework for a content website, that was already generating some passive income each month, came with a handful of branded opt-ins, a digital product library, and had a good social media following and Pinterest account. It would have been a bargain to anyone.

The content edit website sale

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Blog Purchase – Arianna Danielle https://theblogmethod.com/arianna-danielle-blog-purchase/ https://theblogmethod.com/arianna-danielle-blog-purchase/#respond Wed, 24 Aug 2022 10:39:41 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=181 Right after I told myself I wasn't going to purchase any more blogs this year, I stumbled across Arianna Danielle. A blog all about woman in tech, university life, and...

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Right after I told myself I wasn't going to purchase any more blogs this year, I stumbled across Arianna Danielle. A blog all about woman in tech, university life, and London living. And to be fair, I didn't purchase it, at least not for a while.

I first came across AD around early June, it was listed for $1,800. This was a rather good price for the amount of unique content it had and the traffic it was getting. It was only when I hopped onto a webinar and they were doing a flash sale for $999 that I caved it purchased it.

These were the selling points:

  • 70+ unique long-form articles
  • 700+ Pinterest followers
  • 1.5k+ monthly unique visitors
  • 68 email subscribers
  • 5 “free download” digital products

Price paid: $999

The Downside

This is a fantastic blog with great content, however the website is ariannadanielle.com, which is a personal brand name. I'm all for building blogs, but I don't feel comfortable doing them under someone else's name. Seems like very low key identity theft haha. Thankfully this domain only has a DA of 8, so I'm not loosing much by updating the name. At this moment in time I'm not 100% sure on what I'm changing it to though.

The Plan

Maybe it's baby brain, or just poor planning, but I'm not too sure what I'm doing with this website yet. It's doing quite well by itself so my initial reaction is not to split it up and sell off parts.

What I've done so far:

  • Connect up Ezoic so it's earning ad revenue
  • Link Amazon associate products to it

What's next:

  • Change the domain
  • SEO blog posts
  • New website design so it's easier to navigate and more appealing
Arianna Danielle Blog Purchase

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Where to Start With Your Social Media https://theblogmethod.com/starting-with-social-media/ https://theblogmethod.com/starting-with-social-media/#respond Wed, 10 Aug 2022 10:52:00 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=184 Social media is amazing, it connects you with people around the world, allows you to share your blog or business and allows you to find new content. It can also...

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Social media is amazing, it connects you with people around the world, allows you to share your blog or business and allows you to find new content.

It can also be overwhelming, time-consuming and if you are still in the early days of your brand, you don’t know where to start. Have no fear, today I am going to share with you what you can use the different platforms for and where to begin with your social media journey!

Social Media Platforms

Below are the current popular social media platforms which you might want to consider having an account on:

Facebook:

Facebook is the biggest platform in the world per active users. This means there is a high chance people you want to connect with are on their somewhere! I’d recommend having not only a personal account but also a page for your brand, blog or business. This way people you don’t know can connect with you and keep up to date with what you are sharing.

Instagram:

Instagram is the fastest growing and is owned by Facebook. This platform is all about images which make it appealing to scroll through and a picture tells a thousand words so it’s a different way to connect with your potential audience. The use of hashtags also makes it easier for you to be discovered or to find people who might enjoy your content. With the introduction of Stories, you can connect even more and share more behind the scenes posts too. I must admit, it’s my current favourite platform!

Twitter:

Twitter is another great place to connect and have conversations with others. You can also share things multiple times (without being spammy) as the platform moves so quickly they may not see it the first time (depending how many people your followers follow). Like Instagram, using hashtags can help you connect with people. I find twitter is a great place to discover what is happening in the world.

Snapchat:

Snapchat is a video and image platform, which I must admit I don’t use as much since the launch of Instagram Stories. However, I know some brands have built up a big following and find it a great way to connect with their audience.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a little bit like Facebook but for business. It’s a place to make business connections of people in your industry (or people who you’d like to work with). Depending on the content you create it can be a good place to share what you have been doing.

TikTok:

By far the biggest social media crazy of the past 3 years. TikTok is a video sharing app. It's not one I've explored before, but it does have huge potential as their algorithm seems to share videos far and wide to everyone, so they don't need to be following you or even looking for anything related to you in order to find your content. Note to self, explore TikTok…

Pinterest:

Although Pinterest isn’t a social media platform, instead it is a search engine, I’m including this as is it is a great place to share your posts and drive more traffic to your website. Having at least one image or graphic on your blog posts which can then be pinned is a good idea.

These are the main social media platforms which you can use. I would recommend having an account with the name you are using online for all of them, whether this is your name or the name of your blog or business.

When you set up the accounts, ensure they match your branding with colours, images or logos so people can instantly recognise it’s you!

Where to begin!

Once you have set up your social media accounts it’s time to decide which ones to focus on first. In the beginning, I would recommend focusing on one or two platforms to really grow your following and connect with people. Try it for a few months and then if you want to change your focus you can.

To know which ones to start with, take a look at where your potential audience might be hanging out the most. Also, think about which platforms you enjoy using – If there is an overlap then you know this is where you want to begin!

When it comes to growing a following on your social media, remember it take time but with focus and consistency, you will begin to grow! It’s a great tool to help you with brand awareness, to allow people to discover you and for you to find people too.

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Should you spend money on a blog that makes no income? https://theblogmethod.com/spend-money-on-blog-with-no-income/ https://theblogmethod.com/spend-money-on-blog-with-no-income/#comments Mon, 23 May 2022 18:07:53 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=154 I want to start a blog, but I don't have very much money right now. Should I do it? Should you spend money on a blog that makes no income?...

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I want to start a blog, but I don't have very much money right now. Should I do it?

Should you spend money on a blog that makes no income?

The question of whether or not you should spend money on a blog that makes no income is one you might get asked by friends and family. They may ask for your advice, especially if they see your passion for blogging as something that can be sustained into a career.

The answer isn't as simple as it seems, but then again, nothing in life ever is. There isn't any single right answer to this question because it depends on who you are asking and what their goals are for the blog.

For example, I didn't pay for my first theme or design when I started my blog because I was just getting started and wanted to keep costs low at the time since I wasn't sure if this would turn into anything more than me writing about things that interested me (and hopefully other people too). On the other hand, some bloggers feel strongly about investing in custom designs right away because they want their blogs to look professional without having to spend hours learning how CSS works all while writing articles week after week.

Don't stress about the cost of design when you first start blogging.

Remember, you’re here for the content, not the aesthetics. If your blog is going to be successful, it's going to be because of what you write (and not how pretty or interactive your blog looks). So don't spend a lot of money on design when you don't yet have any content; focus on building up an audience instead by writing great pieces that people want to read.

There are many free and cheap themes available that can make your site look professional without breaking the bank. And if you want something more custom than those options provide, there are some great options.

Don't spend thousands buying into someone else's design when starting out; invest your time and energy into writing great posts that connect with people instead!

So should you get a custom blog design?

As a professional blog designer I've worked with every type of blogger under the sun. I've put together semi-custom designs for many bloggers just starting out, these are very popular. I've also created some amazing custom designs for extremely seasoned bloggers. To put it into perspective though, I've also set very professional bloggers up with templates, and built custom designs for complete newbies.

One thing I do want to mention though is how these custom designs have worked for new bloggers. I have personally found they work in two dramatically different ways. There are a few absolutely stunning blogs that I have created that only have 3 posts on them, and have then been abandoned. To me this is a little heartbreaking, but blogging obviously wasn't for them. I find this to be such a waste from both ends. And then there is the other type, the new blogger who is instantly elevated as a professional in their field and within the first month of launching has already secured brand deals.

In my opinion, only invest if you are 100% on what you want to provide and who you want to provide it for. Write a content plan and make sure that your blog is going to be set-up to run as a business, not just a hobby for a few weeks that you soon forget about.

Free and cheap blog designs

In addition to the free themes that WordPress offers, there are plenty of other options. For example, if you’re not a fan of the way your blog looks right now, try one of these:

  • Elementor builder – an easy way to put together great blog designs without knowing too much code.
  • 17th Avenue – simple themes to get you started with your blog.

Conclusion

We’re lucky to live in a time where the expense of starting and maintaining a blog is infinitely smaller than it once was, and we should all be taking advantage of that. If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog but haven’t done so yet because of financial concerns, I hope this post has helped ease your mind. Yes, there are definitely ways to start a blog without spending any money at all—but if you do choose to spend money on your blog, then go for it! Don’t think twice about it. Just make sure whatever you choose to spend money on is something that will actually help your blogging efforts and not just be an unnecessary purchase—like bad writers or logo designers. Good luck!

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Blog Purchase – The Creative Girl Boss Tribe https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-the-creative-girl-boss-tribe/ https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-the-creative-girl-boss-tribe/#respond Thu, 28 Apr 2022 13:54:21 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=148 The Creative Girl Boss Tribe (TCGBT) was my second ever blog purchase – only 1 day after my first blog purchase actually. And to this date it is by far...

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The Creative Girl Boss Tribe (TCGBT) was my second ever blog purchase – only 1 day after my first blog purchase actually. And to this date it is by far one of my favourites!

I purchased TCGBT in March 2021. Here were it's selling points:

  • Earning $68/month from affiliate sales
  • 76 unique articles
  • 1,200 users a month in traffic
  • A high traffic Pinterest account
The Creative Girl Boss Tribe Blog Purchase

Purchasing the Website, and my First Steps

I only really wanted one thing from this website, its unique content. Upon inspecting it all and reading through a lot of it, I noticed there were some VERY high-value pieces in there. I'm talking 6,000+ word articles that go in-depth on high-value topics, like this article on what to do in the first 90 days of starting your blog. These articles are honestly gold mines and so rare to find for sale. I knew this blog had to be mine.

Thankfully, my first offer of $2,200 was accepted almost immediately, and we got to work on the paperwork. As soon as I had control over the website it was an extremely process.

Step 1: Export all of the blog content from the existing website.

Step 2: Import it all to my main website Gillian Sarah (the niche matched perfectly!).

Step 3: Add a domain redirect for all traffic so it landed on the new page within Gillian Sarah.

Step 4: Use Pretty Links to swap out all of the affiliate links for my own.

Step 5: Pop the champagne!

Since Purchasing

Ok, so there has been a little bit of work since then. Most of the posts didn't actually have “featured images” within them, so I had to go through and set these manually. Not a big task though, I just loaded up HauteStock and downloaded relevant images as I went (this task is actually still ongoing over a year later because I'm so lazy haha).

I have also since changed a few blog post formats. The previous owner was one of those one sentence per line writers, and frankly, I find them impossible to read. Give me a 4 sentence paragraph any day, please! I also changed a few header tags within the posts just to make sure they were best optimized for Google.

The Pinterest Account

Since purchasing this site the Pinterest account hasn't seen much action at all. I've been pinning to it from my own website a little bit, but not much. It's been sitting at 80k+ monthly views for the past year. I've only lately decided I want to take it and turn it into The Blog Method Pinterest, as it was just wasting away feeling sorry for itself. The bonus of this is that I don't have to start from scratch on Pinterest and the audience is practically the same.

In Conclusion

I have zero regrets about purchasing The Creative Girl Boss Tribe. Even if I had just moved the posts and not updated the affiliate links, it's paid for itself in ad revenue alone with the traffic those high-quality posts have generated. It's also made me somewhat of a Pinterest authority, which I both love and hate (as a lot of you will know, Pinterest is the best platform to utilise for your blog, but I just hate using it haha). If I ever come across another site of this quality again, I'm having it. This site turned into exactly what I wanted it to be.

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Blog Purchase – The Modern Salad Grower https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-the-modern-salad-grower/ https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-the-modern-salad-grower/#respond Thu, 21 Apr 2022 19:36:39 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=139 “The Modern Salad Grower”, that's hilarious! Everyone who knows me knows I absolutely murder plants. So the idea of me owning anything to do with the gardening niche is just...

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“The Modern Salad Grower”, that's hilarious! Everyone who knows me knows I absolutely murder plants. So the idea of me owning anything to do with the gardening niche is just a joke. Nevertheless, I came across a great opportunity to purchase an un-monetized website with 132 unique blog posts. Most of these posts were stuffed full of Amazon product recommendations, so plenty of space for affiliate income!

Blog Purchase - The Modern Salad Grower

Website selling points:

  • 132 unique articles
  • An average of 200 unique viewers per month
  • Articles already ranking on Google
  • 10-year-old domain with a DA of 17

In mid-March of 2022, I scooped it up for $470. Which is great considering all of the unique articles. It's already beginning to rank on Google and getting a few organic clicks a day.

My plan for this site:

  • Move a lot of the generic gardening content across to “SOCIÉTÉ.me”, adding redirects as I go so existing Google traffic is not lost.
  • Link up the Amazon items on the remaining posts to affiliate links.
  • Set-up AdSense.
  • Once the blog is making some consistent revenue, sell it on (hit me up if you are interested).

This way I can split up the website, and what I don't actually use will just sit and earn passive income.

After digging into the content properly, some of the articles are great! Such as this one about creating a plant-aesthetic room and this product heavy post on a Beginner’s Guide To Herb Gardens: Ideas & Tips (both of which have already been moved and redirected). Of course, there were a few posts that were a little bit lacking, but most are actually very high quality.

I'm excited to see where this website will take me as it's really not a niche I'm familiar with, and I've also not worked with anything this Amazon Associate heavy before. The plan is to use the existing content to grow the revenue and the audience.

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Blog Purchase – The Content Edit https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-the-content-edit/ https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-the-content-edit/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2022 14:16:22 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=127 On February 16th 2022 I purchased “The Content Edit” for $999. A blog about blogging. This blog instantly caught my eye because of its digital assets: I instantly knew I...

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On February 16th 2022 I purchased “The Content Edit” for $999. A blog about blogging. This blog instantly caught my eye because of its digital assets:

  • Over 100 unique blog posts in the blogging, business & travel niches.
  • An online course with over 6,000 members
  • 5 different high-quality opt-ins
  • 3 packs of Lightroom presets

I instantly knew I needed this business, purely so I could pull it apart for scraps. Lucky for me, the profit on this business was -$104/month. Now you're probably thinking, why would you be at all interested in something that's generating negative revenue?

Simple, I'm pulling it apart. This means that any existing business costs are going to disappear as I add them to my existing business.

What was costing it money:

  • Teachable Premium Membership – as I am no longer selling this course I didn't need this, the free tier would do – $29/month was instantly removed.
  • Flodesk – I'm merging this with my own business, so I moved the subscribers across to my own account (sending them a welcome email explaining what was happening of course) and closed the email account down – $19/month removed.
  • Shopify – I knew I wanted these presets for one of my existing blogs, so there was no need for a Shopify store to sell them through the content edit – $29/month removed.
  • Hosting – The first thing I did was move the blog onto my own shared hosting, so all hosting expenses were removed.

After I did all of this, the blog had zero outgoings. I then started to move parts of it around.

The Content Edit Blog Mock-up

What went where?

Content

For me, the big one (and still is) was the blog post. With them being a mix of business, blogging and travel content, I had to split them between a few of my websites. Travel content went over to “Life as a Butterfly”, and the business and blogging content got split between “Gillian Sarah”, “SOCIÉTÉ.me”, and some ended up over here on “The Blog Method”.

As soon as I had copied it over I added a redirect on the existing site so any traffic going to that post from Google would end up on the alternate site. The posts were also just deleted from the blog as I went.

Cons of this:

  • Some of the content was very personal. And a few pieces were just Youtube videos (which I also now owned). Anything I felt was too personal has just stayed on the existing website.
  • Most posts were in fact the bare minimum. So just verging on 300 words. Like a series of micro-posts. Not the best for high-quality content.
  • The worst thing about absolutely all of this was that the previous owner had individually designed every single blog post using the Divi frameworks *facepalm*. While this is fine to build a website design with, NEVER create your actual content with it. It makes it impossible to transfer to a website that doesn't run that framework, so I have had to individually copy/paste every blog post out of there. I did change the theme, and all I needed to do was install the Divi builder plugin to ensure all the blog posts didn't crash and burn, but oh-my has it been a nightmare to move everything!

Course

Inside the Teachable account, there was a course with 6,170 students. These students were mainly all on the main course “Trigger your Blog”, but there were a few enrolled in a mini-course “100 Christmas Content Prompts”. Looking at the main course, it has never generated any revenue as it was used in course bundles and similar things. The mini-course had taken in $445 over its lifetime.

Looking at these courses, they are not the kind of thing I feel comfortable reselling. It's all video of the original owner sitting and explaining things to the camera, so it wouldn't fit with my own personal brand. But that's fine, like I mentioned previously, I removed the premium Teachable subscription so it's costing me nothing to keep this course up and running for existing students, and it's always there if I want to use it in the future somehow.

The mini-course is just a video with 2 accompanying PDFs. So I can use this as either an opt-in or an upsell around the holidays if I feel the need.

Mailing List

Truth be told, the mailing list was the true gold mine of this purchase. With half of the course members subscribing, it added an additional 3,000 contacts to my Flodesk mailing list. I welcomed myself, explained why they were now on my mailing list instead of hers, and then a few weeks later pitched them my new website template collection. Within 24 hours of this second email, I had made back more than my initial investment. Woohoo! Never underestimate email marketing (even though I really don't enjoy it!).

Products

In all honesty, I haven't touched a lot of the products that came with this purchase. There were 4 opt-in digital products, a webinar that had been used as a freebie, and 3 Lightroom Preset packs. I instantly knew I wanted to move the Lightroom Presets across to “SOCIÉTÉ.me” as they fit in much better with that audience. The other 5 products, I've not yet touched.

Socials

This came with a highly engaged Pinterest, and a not-so-engaged Instagram. To be fair though, she had mentioned she had been neglecting Instagram for a year or so. But I was still a bit shocked when I posted the first post and it got 6 likes. I expected more from almost 5k followers. The story reach was also very minimal. I quickly abandoned this.

There is a Youtube account set-up with the brand, it has 25 videos, most of which are embedded into blog posts on the site. Although they only have on average about 10 views each. Apart from a travel vlog that has 1.4k views.

The socials are a little underwhelming. But for what I wanted the website for, that doesn't really bother me.

The Future Plans

This is by no means a site I want to hold onto for a long time. At the beginning of June (once it's been 3 months since the initial domain transfer) I plan on bundling it up and selling it. Sure it will come with a lot less than was initially on it, but currently, I have the website running some ads and generating a positive profit, so it will be much more appealing to buyers. This means that I'll get at least my initial investment back, if not more, purely on the resale of the content I don't plan on moving. When I do sell this I'll include the original branding and socials, so someone will be getting a fairly strong Pinterest profile, and I might even include the course files so they can use them. I'm not too sure yet. If you are interested at all in purchasing “The Content Edit” do reach out. the domain is locked until June 2022, but I'm sure we can figure something out.

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New Blog on the Roster – My Life From Home https://theblogmethod.com/new-blog-on-the-roster-my-life-from-home/ https://theblogmethod.com/new-blog-on-the-roster-my-life-from-home/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2022 12:32:23 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=117 One of the aims of this website is to be completely transparent about the different blogs I own and run. How I monetize them, and exactly how much I make...

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One of the aims of this website is to be completely transparent about the different blogs I own and run. How I monetize them, and exactly how much I make from them.

The latest blog that I've purchased is “White Cottage Home & Living”. An 8-year-old home decor blog with 886 blog posts, currently making on average $87 a month. For this, I paid $4,999.

This blog isn't going to be your typical blog flip, or just a standard pull-apart and sell for pieces job. For this blog, I actually want to make it my own. My main reasons for this are entirely personal:

  • I want to actually completely redecorate my own house and I feel this will give me the motivation to do so.
  • I also want to become a lot more confident in sharing my own face on Instagram stories, again this is the perfect opportunity.
  • As I go deeper into “mum-life” I also just want somewhere casual to blog.

Authority

When purchasing this site one of the things that really stood out to me was the domain authority. PLUS it had been rebranded 4 years ago, and the original domain also had a very high authority. The first move I made was to move it back to the initial name “My Life From Home” as it suits me a lot more and seems shorter. It also had a lot more backlinks to it and had been around a lot longer, making it a great option.

Revenue

One thing you're probably wondering is why I paid almost 5x a site's annual profit when the standard for a sale is 3x. There are a few reasons for this:

  • This price does not take into account the strength of the socials. The Instagram account has 12k+ engaged followers, and the Pinterest gets over 200k+ monthly views.
  • Speaking to Amy (the previous owner), she has been focussing on her store for the past few years and has therefore not taken on any new collaborations or sponsored work, her site has almost been sitting dormant.
  • The running costs were rather high. She had a $49/month hosting fee and a $19/month email list fee. I instantly moved the site across to my own host which comes in at $17/month, and have canceled the paid email hosting for now as a free one will do to gather emails until I'm ready for lists. This has instantly given me an additional $36/month, taking the profits to an average of $123/ month – now the price has dropped to 3.3x the annual profit instead of the initial 5x.

There is one big con about purchasing this site though. Amy was making quite a bit of her revenue through MediaVine, but as her traffic has dropped lately, the site doesn't have enough monthly users for me to get MediaVine approved with it, so that revenue is going to be lost. However, I have applied it to SHE Media. Once approved – although this can be a long and frustrating process – the ad revenue will go back up again. Not quite to MediaVine numbers, but it will be something.

Design

You all know I love a good website design (obviously)! So something I took great joy in was instantly giving this blog a facelift as soon as it was purchased. The old theme went in the bin on day 1, and the new theme was built out. It's now just a lot more modern, easier to navigate, and it will fit the new style of content I plan on bringing to it a lot easier.

Old Design & Brand

New Design & Brand

Overall, I've just started working on this site properly as of today, but I'm very excited to see where it goes. I'm expecting a negative revenue for the first 2 months until I can get ad's approved and integrated. But we will see how it goes. I'll keep you updated!

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Blog Purchase & Breakdown – We Shoot Roses https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-breakdown-we-shoot-roses/ https://theblogmethod.com/blog-purchase-breakdown-we-shoot-roses/#respond Mon, 18 Apr 2022 14:59:00 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=134 In mid-March this year, I got my hands on the preset website “We Shoot Roses” for only $300. Here is what it came with: Around 80 Lightroom Presets, split into...

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In mid-March this year, I got my hands on the preset website “We Shoot Roses” for only $300. Here is what it came with:

  • Around 80 Lightroom Presets, split into packs of 5-8.
  • 12 long-form unique articles relating to the photography niche.
  • A Pinterest account

I instantly knew where I wanted to divide all of these assets and how I wanted to split up the website.


Lightroom Presets – Across to “SOCIÉTÉ.me” for the new preset store that was launching over there (remember we took the presets from “The Content Edit” as well).


Blog Posts – these had to move across to “Gillian Sarah”, with 2 of them ending up on “SOCIÉTÉ.me”, one about the best camera bags, and one about finding the best Lightroom Presets – because this is where the store was. Although the content in Gillian Sarah is aimed at bloggers and designing websites, I do have a lot of photography clients, so I figured some highly ranking articles in the photography niche certainly wouldn't hurt.


Socials – The Pinterest account gets just over 200 views a month, so I'm currently doing nothing with it. But I will likely begin to share the Societe preset store from there soon.


The Mistake

As soon as I got my hands on the Lightroom files, I was disappointed. They initially looked good, all in their folders with their example images. But when I loaded them into Lightroom they all switched names and started pulling into weird folders. Upon Googling these folder names I could see that the presets were from a variety of influencer accounts, where they were selling the same presets (with the same names even), and the example images matched the ones from this site.

Panicking, I messaged the seller to find out exactly where she got these from. As you REALLY can't resell someone else's digital products. She messaged the creator of them and did get confirmation that he in fact did make them in the first place, but he resells them, so they are not unique, but you do have the right to sell them to your audience.

This is fine, but it's not exactly what I am looking for. I would also have to re-export and repackage every single one of these presets in order to get them in a state that I am happy with, which is going to take a lot of time.

I've yet to add any of these presets to the Societe preset store. In the meantime I had another creator build me 6 fresh packs to my standard so I could get it all up and running.

The Lesson

Dig into EVERYTHING before you buy it. Would it have been cheeky to message the lady and tell her I want free access to all 80 of her presets before purchasing? Of course, it would have been. But it would have saved me a potential disaster.

All Was Not Lost

If I had bought this site purely for the presets I would have just declined it in Escrow. Sure I'd have had to pay the transaction fees, but in the state they are currently, the presets are completely useless to me.

However, the blog content is fantastic! Each blog post is 1,000-3,000 words and written almost flawlessly. I would have paid double this price for the blog content alone!

Where is it Now?

After moving the posts to their final destinations (for now), I added a redirect to each post link so it links to where it's moved to – just to keep any existing Google traffic. I then issued a re-crawl on Google so the new URLs can be indexed. Once all of the content was moved, a redirect was placed on the main URL to redirect all homepage traffic to the Societe.me preset store. “We Shoot Roses” has officially been pulled apart and is no longer an individual asset.

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10 Tips to Take Your Brand More Seriously https://theblogmethod.com/10-tips-to-take-your-brand-more-seriously/ https://theblogmethod.com/10-tips-to-take-your-brand-more-seriously/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2022 18:31:15 +0000 https://theblogmethod.com/?p=113 Are you taking your brand seriously? I love to use the word brand because it means you are building your brand no matter what type of content creator you are....

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Are you taking your brand seriously? I love to use the word brand because it means you are building your brand no matter what type of content creator you are. You are developing a brand From blogger to a business owner, – Even if you don’t yet realize it.

Your brand is what people perceive you to be; it can encompass a color scheme and a feel; it’s the subjects you talk about, your professionalism, and so many more things that go into your brand.

This is why it’s essential to take your brand seriously, from what you post on Instagram to the blog posts you write to the products you create – They are all part of your brand, whether you like it or not!

Take Your Brand More Seriously

Here are 10 things you can do to start taking your brand seriously:

1 – Have a plan – Know what you want to achieve from building your brand and have a thought-out plan for how you get will there.

2 – Create some systems – Create simple systems around all aspects of your brand and write them down. If you always forget things, this is especially important.

3 – Have a separate bank account – Open a new bank account for your brand; this way, your money isn’t all mixed together and will make your life much easier when you have to do your taxes.

4 – Keep track of your money – Keep track of your income and expenditure. This way, you know exactly what’s making you money and where your expenses are. You can use a simple spreadsheet for this on online cloud accounting like Xero.

5 – Invest in yourself – Have an appetite for learning how you can grow and get better. Be that reading self-development books, listening to podcasts, attending live events, watching videos – They are all an investment of your time and money.

6 – Invest in your business – Take courses that will teach you how to do things better or hire someone to do something for you.

7 – Track your stats – Add Google Analytics to your website and track them monthly. This way, you can see what is most popular, where your traffic is coming from and what people spend their time on within your website.

8 – Know what you do – It might sound silly, but do you know what you do? Can you share it in one or two simple sentences? It’s not always as easy as it sounds. Spend time refining your explanation of what you do; people will thank you for it!

9 – Tell people what you do – Don’t hide what you do, talk about it loud and proud. Then, both online and in real life, tell people what you offer.

10 – Have a good website – A pretty and well-functioning website makes you look professional. It’s the first thing people will search for after discovering you online or offline, giving them a good impression.

I know when building your own brand, there is so much to do, but these are 10 great starting points to really standing out and coming across as someone serious about the brand she is building.

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