Last week, I shown you the 10 most expensive blogs of all times, which have been sold for incredibles amounts of money. But what if you want to sell your own blog? Some month ago, I sold one of my blogs on the Sitepoint Marketplace for the sum of $3500. In this article, I’m going to show you how I successfully managed the sale and how you can do the same with your blog.
Things to know before selling a blog or a website Before explaining you the whole process of selling a blog, there’s a few things you need to know: First, after a successful sale, you’ll have to send the blog files/database to the buyer as well as transferring the domain name.
This is why I recommend to use separate hosting and domain registrar. Some hosting companies are providing free or cheap domain name, but you can’t transfer it. Which means that you’ll never be able to sell the related website. For my domain names, I use the well-known GoDaddy.com. They do a good job, they’re quite cheap and they provide quality service. For my hosting, I use WP Web Host, a quality web host specialized in WordPress. The other thing you have to know is ho to transfer files to the buyer (This basically consists of creating a zip archive of all the files on your server and dumping the database) and how to transfer a domain name, or push it to another account (If both you and the buyer are using Godaddy)
I’m not going to explain the whole process of pushing a domain name to another account because there’s lots of available tutorials around the internet to do this, but if you need help, feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can do to help you. Why selling a blog? Back in February 2009, I decided to sold Lyxia.org, which was my first “serious” blog, created in July 2007. Lyxia.org was basically a French version of Cats Who Code. It had 500 subscribers (Less people speak French than English, so don’t compare this number to numbers English blogs can get) at the time of the sale. As time passed by, I launched other blogs as such as Cats Who Code and WpRecipes.
Since I also have many other websites to manage, time was missing to take care of all those blogs and Lyxia.org was updated less and less frequently. This blog had a sentimental value due to the fact it was my first blog, so I weren’t really happy about the idea of selling it. But there where only two possible solutions: Finding enough time to update it, or selling it. Otherwise, the blog will slowly die and lost all of its value. It became clear that if I waited more without updating it, the blog will lost some of its traffic, and value. As Lyxia.org was the last on my priority list, I took my decision : It had to go. 
Time to act The decision was made. It was time to act and selling the blog. I decided to sell it on Sitepoint Marketplace, which is now called Flippa and have a lot of crappy new feature as such as a success fee, which basically means that Flippa will took 5% of the final price as a fee.
Back in the gold old Sitepoint days, I had to pay an honest $20 fee to post my auction, and that’s all. I paid the Sitepoint fee, wrote the auction text, added some stats and the sale were ready to go. I didn’t had to wait that long: Less than 24 hours after the auction started, a French guy bought it, using the “Buy it now” button, for $3500.
I sent the files to the buyer and one day after I transferred the domain name to him, making him the official owner of Lyxia.org. Where can you sell your blog? If you’re looking to sell/buy a blog or website, you should have a look to the following websites: Flippa.com : It was previously the Sitepoint marketplace where I sold Lyxia.org. I also purchased PsdVibe there before it became Flippa.
I have only good things to say about the old Sitepoint Marketplace, but I have to admit that Flippa’s “Success Fee” (A fee which applies to all successful sales and give 5% of the final price to Flippa) totally turns me off. But as Flippa is the largest place to sale your online properties, you’ll probably have more chances to sell your blog on there. Sedo.com : Sedo is a very huge domain name marketplace. I never bought or sold anything there but they have a good reputation. Namepros.com : Namepros is a well known forum for domainers. I have bought/sold many domain names there. They have a forum dedicated to websites/blogs sales. Posting is free, but I never saw really cool sites to buy there, Most are crappy blogs or MFA. Private sale/Word of mouth : This may be the best way to sale a popular site or blog. You can use Twitter and write a post on your blog to let people know that you are currently accepting private bids for your blog. And you, did you ever sold a blog or a website? Or do you often have a look at auction sites, looking to buy a really cool site?  | 
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