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 post Blog Sale – The Content Edit appeared first on The Blog Method.

• 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.

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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