It's hard to know when to sell a blog, but there are certain indicators:
- When the market becomes hugely overvalued. That happened several times in the last five years but maybe blog valuation tools are more established today. Valuations between 12x-36x monthly income are typical. Still, what if someone offers 40x-50x the blog's monthly income? With that sort of lump-sum payout, MMM could set up a foundation or a college scholarship fund or a think tank.
- When you're burned out and run out of things to say.
- When you want to hand off the infrastructure management to someone else... especially after a major upgrade. Hmm.
- When blogging is dying. What if we look at blogging five years from now the way we look at MySpace today?
I sold The-Military-Guide.com for the first & third reasons. I felt that I had a good offer but that the market value was as rich as it was going to get. I was also spending several hours a week on blogging chores that I didn't care for, and I wanted someone else to do them. Instead of paying someone a salary (which means they invest as little time as possible on the blog) or splitting the revenues (which means they contribute as little effort as possible) I decided to sell the revenue stream. The new owner (a U.S. military servicemember) is powerfully motivated to generate as much money from the blog as he can without annoying his military audience. We set up the sale as a large donation to Wounded Warrior Project, which means that I don't have to pay taxes on it and he might be able to take a deduction.
While the new owner keeps the blog running, I get to market my books on the site (and through its attached social media). Best of all, we set up an earnout that motivates me to stick around and write for a few years. I'm still inspired to write to get my book in front of more eyeballs, but I'm also motivated to write to send another lump sum to a military charity. In August 2017 we can renegotiate my writing as a freelance fee or I'll just move on to other projects.
I don't come for the blog anymore, so it doesn't really matter to me as long as they keep the forum.
Often during takeovers like that moderation teams change, and sites that were formerly lax are no longer so. That would be disappointing, but likely if MMM ever sold the site.
When Dory36 sold Early-Retirement.org to the new owner, it was a huge disappointment-- both because of Dory's abrupt change of heart, and because the new owner made a lot of dumb moves with the moderators and the members. You moderators should max out your MMM 401(k) contributions for the full match while you still can, and make sure you get paid for your overtime!
