Right from the start, you should spend some time learning how to buy a blog (the right way) to ensure you are acquiring a blog that has the potential to grow and generate a return on your investment.

Before investing in any digital asset, you must do your due diligence thoroughly so you can feel confident about purchasing.

By carefully following these essential blog acquisition best practices, your journey to owning this asset class can be enriching financially and personally.

Find a niche that is important to you

Unless you hire someone else to manage your blog, buying a blog that you’re passionate about or at least familiar with is essential.

Maybe the niche you want to break into is cooking, hiking (like Hike with Ryan), writing, personal finance, marketing, travel, fitness, film, photography, parenting, or others… but what’s important is that you have a Blog buy a space that is personally important to you.

If you decide to buy a blog in your niche or specialty, you will feel more confident in creating content that will resonate with your audience.

In a saturated, competitive online arena, chances are there’s already a blog on the topic of your choice — so it’s essential to narrow your content focus.

For example, if you want to write about vegan cooking, you can focus on finding a blog that caters to newly converted vegans and has step-by-step recipes for the average beginner.

Once you’ve decided on a specific blog to consider as an acquisition target, a robust blog strategy can help you expand the post-purchase reach of your new blog.

Invest in original content

So you’ve narrowed down which niche you want to explore. Before taking the plunge into buying a blog, you should run a plagiarism check to ensure that all of the content on the site is original and unique to the site.

A site like Copyscape allows you to search the web for content originality and duplicates’ presence.

You may come across similar existing content on the internet that doesn’t necessarily need to worry about. However, word-to-word copypasting or content written by some mindless AI should become a red flag.

However, taking the time (before buying a blog) to do this research will show you how saturated the blog’s niche can be — and why you should focus your acquisition goals on a blog with original content rather than a ton of repurposed ones that won’t serve your purposes very well (or at all.)

Understand the business of the blog you are buying

Chances are you live thousands of miles from the blog seller. Whenever possible, meet with the current owner, virtually or in person, ask questions, and gain insight into everything you need to know.

Understand what the blog needs to support it thoroughly. Is there a team that takes care of certain aspects of the blog? Does the current owner hire blog content writing services to create blog posts?

Be mindful of additional blogging costs that may be required to keep this blog running.

Identify all the pieces that will help support the blog and ask yourself what you would need to keep it going.

This can mean changing the previous owner’s team to continue working with you or doing it all alone.

Whatever decision you make, have a strong strategy and meaningful blogging goals that will allow you to keep your blog successful over the long term.

Examine your blog’s traffic statistics

Traffic is one of the most crucial website characteristics to look for when buying a blog. With tools like Google Analytics, you can check a blog’s traffic source and the results of any marketing efforts.

Since you will be the next blog owner, it is essential to have traffic generation strategies that have room for your blog to grow.

This also includes factoring in any advertising costs you may need to generate a consistent traffic flow.

Third-party reports like SEMrush help a buyer gain insight into a website’s traffic and overall health. Flippa has partnered with SEMRush to bring this valuable tool to website and blog buyers at a low cost.

It’s important to understand where a blog’s traffic source is coming from and to ensure that those traffic sources are consistent with your blogging skills and interests.

If a blog has social accounts, email subscribers, YouTube videos, or other additional assets, you want to make sure you acquire them as well, as these assets will be instrumental in driving traffic to your blog in the months and years to come, increase new blog acquisition.

Analyze existing revenue and potential growth

A thorough sales check is the most important thing you will do before buying a blog.

Reviewing a blog’s financial history can ask the owner questions about spikes or dips in sales — and it helps a lot if the blog posts some financial data publicly.

This is where you can use a magnifying glass and really start to understand how the blog generates monthly income.

Does the blog run on affiliate marketing or sponsored ads?
Does it generate monthly revenue through Google AdSense?
Does it solely depend on organic traffic?
Do sales look seasonal with ups and downs?

These questions can help you understand blog profit margins before you commit to buying a blog.

Start the blog acquisition process

After completing the steps above, you are ready to buy a blog. Here the owner transfers all supporting assets like social media accounts, email subscription lists, and passwords.

Depending on how you decide to buy a blog, having an expert like a real estate agent by your side can give you peace of mind in your purchasing decision.

They can point out blind spots, guide you through the blog review process and handle all the legal stuff.

To protect both the buyer and seller during the acquisition process, Flippa’s escrow feature allows a third party to hold large sums of money and all digital assets before the transition officially takes place.

This period is crucial to ensure everything is running smoothly before officially taking ownership of your blog.

Well, are you going to buy a blog for yourself?

You can breathe now. You’ve taken the time to go through the learning process of buying a blog. Now it’s time to identify the right blog acquisition goal for yourself and get down to the creative work.

Remember, focus on how to grow your blog and stand out from the rest with unique content. Most importantly, don’t forget to have fun!

How to Buy a Blog: The Ultimate Guide to Buying and Growing a Blog in 2022

How to Buy a Blog (And Make Money From a Blog Acquisition) in 2022