» Interview with Duncan about selling Blog Herald

Interview with Duncan about selling Blog Herald

January 18th, 2006

blogherald.com screenshot After it was made public that Duncan Riley is selling The Blog Herald, and I saw others interviewing him, I thought it would be nice to hear him out on selling and buying blogs. So I droppped him some questions, and he kindly responded.

Site Sales Blog: You’ve put a lot of effort and time into the blog over the last couple of years, so you must have gotten a special relationship to the blog and its many readers. So I guess that you have had some special considerations regarding potential buyers. Can you tell me more about that?

Duncan: To a point yes (considerations in relation to buyers) and this was one of my reasons for letting Jeremy Wright handle the sale, because not being associated with the site emotionally meant he could handle this a lot better than I could. However I’d think also at this level than anyone wanting to buy the site would unlikely be looking to gut it either.

Site Sales Blog: What do you think will happen with your loyal readers, when or if somebody else takes over writing?

Duncan: I hope they stick around. Certainly there may be some small drop off but I’m confident the new owner will take the site onto bigger and better things. Certainly the mix of blog news, tips, blog industry gossip is pretty unique to the site (yes you can get it on other blogs but not really from one blog alone) so I think people will stick around. The site also gets a lot of referral traffic in as well so as long as the content/ news delivery is maintained I’d actually see this growing.

Site Sales Blog: In the interview Darren Rowse did with you, he asks you about how you valued the blog. So you’ve had a lot thoughts about that, but are you able turn those thoughts 180 degrees, and come up with some things, that a blog buyer should consider regarding a blogs value?

Duncan: Interesting question
If I was looking at a blog to buy I’d be looking at it this way

What’s the traffic, and where does it come from
Links/ influence: does the blog have a decent network of links in from others, how does it rate on sites like Technorati. Do other sites syndicate the content or refer to the site within its given niche
Revenue: its current and potential revenue, particularly whether I could do better with the site with changes (everyone has their own ideas on what works).
Market Place: what’s the competition for the blog like, are there a lot of people doing similar sites that could be a threat? (this was a big bonus for The Blog Herald, its pretty unique). Am I able to compete as owner of the blog with the competition?
Opportunity Cost: what is the opportunity cost of acquiring the site? will I benefit from spending time with it (both directly and through the leverage the site will provide) or will it take away from other more profitable/ or important ventures.

Site Sales Blog: And finally, can we expect to see you selling more blogs in the near future?

Duncan: Maybe I’m not sure that I’ll ever have a blog the size of The Blog Herald again but I do have part ownership of 70-80+ (I’ve lost count) blogs at b5media and if someone comes along and offers us $25 million for them in the same way as AOL bought Weblogs Inc., I’d have to seriously consider it

Tags: blog herald, duncan riley, blogs, blogging