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Last month we launched our very first ProBlogger course. After a whirlwind few weeks (months, actually ), I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a bit of what happened behind the scenes while creating the Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog course.
To say it’s been a long time coming is a bit of an understatement. We’re constantly asked why we don’t offer courses, as it seems like the most obvious thing we should be doing. Our focus has always been on offering great value that’s easily accessible, whether it’s our free blog posts, podcasts or world class (yet very reasonably priced) events.
All of which takes up a huge chunk of time and dedication from our small team.
We’ve been thinking about courses for a while now, and our goal is to create a blogging course unlike any other. Something that goes beyond the that goes beyond the prescriptive “this is how I did it” approach that doesn’t necessarily work for everyone.
And so we created the Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog course, and made it available for free.
But this is just the beginning. We have many more courses in the pipeline, and together they’ll help you piece together the best approach to blogging for you.
Our first course starts at the beginning – how to start a blog. Actually, it starts even earlier in the process, as one of the first things the course asks is whether you should even start a blog.
That’s one of the reasons our first course is totally free. We don’t want you buying a course on how to blog if you find out blogging just isn’t for you. We also don’t advocate investing too much in getting your blog set up.
But we strongly suggest having a solid base (your own domain and a self-hosted site) so it’s easier to progress if you decide to stick with it.
So, the first course provides a lot of guidance about:
All up there are seven steps. And while it’s basic it’s also quite comprehensive – at least for a free course.
This was our beta launch, which we ran in the lead up to our self-proclaimed International Start a Blog Day on February 7th – a day to celebrate starting a new blog in a new year.
We get a lot of people asking us how we created the course site. So here’s the breakdown in case you’re looking for a possible way to launch your own.
The content for the course is a mix of repurposed content from our blog, podcast and events, along with new content created specifically for the course. So we spent a lot of time editing existing audio, creating accompanying slides and converting them to videos, as well as creating new worksheets and other downloadable resources.
At first we were a bit worried about repurposing existing content. But when we realised how much work it is to a) find it in the first place, and b) organise it into a comprehensive easy-to-follow course, we were glad to have these resources to draw on and add the extra value of convenience and structure for our readers.
We have a separate WordPress installation for our courses site, which sits on a different server to our main blog and podcast site installations. Here’s what our ‘stack’ looks like.
Learndash – we like how this solution is both comprehensive and easy to use.
Social Learner – incorporating Buddypress elements for community features (we don’t use all of them), this theme provides a good looking layout for the modules and lessons. We also used Thrive Architect (which works nicely with Social Learner) to build some of the extra content elements into our pages.
WPFusion – this is an elegant plugin that lets us easily control access to content based on tags specified in Drip for our course members.
We use Campaigns in Drip to automatically onboard course members after they’ve either filled out one of our Thrive Leads opt-ins or registered directly through the site.
Whilst the first course has been free, we’ll use our existing e-Commerce solution Easy Digital Downloads to process payments and pass information to Drip and the courses site via WPFusion.
Forum/Group
While our setup has the option for a forum, groups and comments (we turned comments on for some of the modules), we elected to run a Private Facebook Group for the first intake of students. Partly to test one against the other, but mainly so we could get students’ feedback on the course as they progressed through. It also served as a customer service channel.
We won’t be maintaining an ongoing group for the course throughout the year (course members can join our main Facebook group at problogger.com/group). But we will run one in conjunction with International Start a Blog Day each year.
Building awareness, and the call to action to sign up for our Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog course, was done primarily through the ProBlogger podcast, along with a sales page and a couple of articles on the blog.
Over the Christmas and New Year period, we changed how we did the ProBlogger podcast to generate interest in starting a blog and the course we were launching. Instead of a weekly podcast, we released a series of 12 shorter podcasts (one each weekday). And is each episode we shared a different blogger’s story about how they started their blog and how far they’ve come. These stories were told by ProBlogger podcast listeners who submitted their stories as audio files. This series of podcasts has one of the highest levels of engagement of any I’ve released. In each podcast there are calls to action to sign up for the course via the sales page on the blog.
The sales page for the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog course had an easy-to-communicate URL (problogger.com/startablog/), and a snappy design created using Thrive Architect. We linked to it in our “Start a Blog” section of the blog, as well as in a couple of articles we wrote about a starting a blog in the New Year.
Knowing that most of our audience had already started a blog, we asked people to share the information about our new course. We asked our existing readers to share it with those they knew who may be interested in starting a blog. We also asked the people who signed up for the course to share it with their friends.
Trying to launch anything early in the year can be tricky, especially when everyone in the southern hemisphere is typically on summer holidays. Like many course creators, we were still creating content and making the site look and work the way we wanted right up to the deadline.
We had team members holidaying in different time zones with bad wi-fi issues and sick kids. Some last minute re-recording of tutorials had Laney chasing away noisy dogs and throwing sticks into trees to scare away squawking birds. (We have some pretty obnoxious birds in Australia.)
It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. But we kind of made our launch date (I’m sure we made it in a timezone somewhere in the world). And the actual launch happened without too many hiccups other than some people having activation issues because they clicked the link more than once.
The main takeaway? Don’t expect everything to go smoothly, keep your cool, and prepare to work hard when it counts.
We were blown away by the response. We knew there would be some, but given our readers have mostly started blogs already, it was hard to know just how many students we might get.
Sometimes you just have to trust your gut and go for it.
By the time it went live, almost 5,000 people had signed up for the course. Of these, roughly half went on to enrol in the course once it was launched, and half of those started the course (a little more than 1,000 students).
In the time between launching the course (January 10) and International Start a Blog Day (February 7), more than 1,000 new subscribers had signed up for the course. By the time February 7 came around, more than 2,000 students had started the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog course. More than 100 new blogs were launched in time for International Start a Blog Day, with many more launched since. You can check them out here.
And there were other positive outcomes too.
We ended up with more than 1,000 members in the beta Facebook Group, which gave us very useful environment for getting direct feedback from students as they were trying out the course. We learned a lot about:
International Start a Blog Day was also a very rewarding experience for me and the ProBlogger team. We got to really see and celebrate the course outcomes for the many students who launched new blogs as a result. We loved compiling the honor roll of new blogs – exploring their sites, reading people’s stories, and seeing how they put their learning into practice.
And we now have a very comprehensive opt-in that helps us identify people we can help on their blogging journey. Best of all, they’ve shown they have the drive to take action, which makes it even easier for us to help them succeed.
In March we’ll be launching our first paid course – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog – the successor to the ever popular book of the same name. The course version includes:
For more information, and to sign up as one the first students to sign up for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, visit courses.problogger.com/courses/31-days-to-build-a-better-blog/.
We’re also reviewing the feedback we’ve received from the beta Start a Blog course group to help tweak and improve that course for future students.
Have you launched a course recently? How did it go for you?
The post Behind the Scenes of ProBlogger’s First Course Ever appeared first on ProBlogger.
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When I started my travel blog back in 2005, I never imagined I’d be selling it.
After all, I just wanted to tell my family and friends what I was up to. I had no idea it would become a business that supported my family.
Even when it became a central part of our lives ten years later, it was like another child to me. I loved it, coddled it, and put so much of myself into it.
I learned a lot from growing and monetising my blog. I also learned a lot from selling it. And in this post I want to walk you through the process of selling my blog, and what I learned.
The interesting part is that getting a blog ready to sell is really about making your blog more valuable. And that’s something every blog owner can benefit from—even if they never plan to sell.
So whether you’re planning on selling your blog one day or not, my tips will help you get your blog earning more without needing your constant attention. It will help reduce the stress of running your blog while making more money. And if you ever decide to sell, you’ll walk away with the maximum amount possible.
So how did my blog go from something I thought of a another child to something I couldn’t wait to get rid of?
There were a few reasons.
I had way too many sites, and needed to let some go so I could focus my energy better. I’d just sold my first niche site, and letting it go felt so good that I decided to sell all my other niche sites and have just my two main blogs.
Then I realised I’d be better off getting rid of the blog (where I spent a lot of my time) rather than the sites that brought in money without any effort.
It also coincided with me restructuring my business. Thanks to some bad advice, I’d just discovered I’d have to pay capital gains on the value of my business to move it to a company structure. I couldn’t afford to pay tax on something I wasn’t getting and value from, so selling it made a lot of sense.
And of course, the money from the sale would remove a lot of the financial pressure as I worked on building up my second blog.
But the biggest reason I decided to sell it is that I simply didn’t want to do it anymore.
I started writing about travel because I was passionate about it. Travelling was the one time I could really live in the moment.
But blogging about travel ruined that for me. I took it very seriously, and while my blog became very successful, travel became more and more stressful. My brain worked overtime as I analysed every aspect of what I was doing and how I would write about it.
We also did crazy things like visiting six attractions in a day. Try that with three young kids.
Towards the end I was exhausted and burnt out. I hated everything about the blog, and stopped working on it.
Thanks to my business model (using Google for traffic and affiliate marketing for income), money was still coming in. But no income is truly passive, and I knew my earnings would decrease over time if I couldn’t rekindle my passion.
And then I found myself on Facebook, where I described my blog as a gangrenous arm that needed to be cut off.
It was time to sell.
No-one buys a blog because they’re passionate about the topic. They buy it because they think it’s a good business to own.
Which means they’re looking for a good business model.
They aren’t interested in what many of us bloggers stress over—page views, number of followers, etc. They want to know:
That’s it.
Yes, a blog with strong metrics in page views, email subscribers and social media can make it more attractive. And they may want to talk about how you do what you do. But what they’ll care about the most is how much money the blog makes.
So don’t be too concerned about page views, number of likes, etc. They really don’t matter that much. What you should be concerned about is whether your blog is doing what you wanted it to do. Anyone looking to pay good money for a blog will want to be sure they’re getting good a return on their investment.
And page views don’t pay the bills.
A lot of people didn’t think I could sell my blog because my name and image is all over it. But that’s not a problem so long as it doesn’t need you to make money.
Figuring out the value of a blog is the same as figuring out the value of any businesses. You need to look as the profit it makes.
Along with my travel blog I’ve sold three other sites, and each time the value was based on a multiple of its monthly or annual profit.
Note that we’re talking about profit, not revenue, which means you need to subtract a wage for the effort you’ve been putting in.
A good broker will ask you to estimate how much time you spend on your blog each month, and put a value on that time. For me, they recommend US$25 an hour.
And just like any other business cost, this gets subtracted from the revenue.
While multiples vary, a good starting point is:
Monthly profits are based on the site’s average income over the past year.
If profit has been steadily increasing you may be able to base your calculations on the past six or even three months’ worth of figures. But chances are you’ll get a lower multiple. For example, the profit of one site I sold was going up steadily, and the overall profit of previous six months was higher than the six months before that. I was able to use the average of these months, but the multiple went from 30 to 29.
My travel blog had a good steady income, big audience numbers, and potential for monetisation beyond affiliate marketing. It also appealed to people who wanted a passive income and to be able to claim their travel as a tax deduction. That meant I could list the site for a higher multiple than those earlier examples.
Depending on your site, and exactly what you’re offering, you may have to negotiate the price when you find a buyer.
But again, page views and social media followers didn’t matter, and played no part in the negotiations.
You’ve probably heard of Flippa—a well-known platform for selling sites.
I sold two sites on there recently, and it’s a relatively painless process.
However, I only recommend Flippa for low-value sites worth less than $10,000. At this price level, you’ll struggle to get a good broker.
For a blog doing well, you’re better off using a broker.
For the two higher-priced sites I sold last year, I used Empire Flippers and FE International.
I had very positive experiences with them both.
They both have a similar process. Expect to spend a few full-on days getting your financials together. There’s a format they need to go in, and you’ll have to show proof of everything – a receipt for every payment and some type of tracking for every payment.
You’ll also need to write a lot about your blog to explain to potential buyers what it’s all about, why it’s a good purchase, what tasks you work on, etc.
Once you hand over everything, expect them to keep coming back with more questions and wanting more proof of various things.
This was the most (and possibly only) frustrating part of the process for me. I wanted my sites for sale immediately, but we did this back and forth for a couple of weeks and sometimes it didn’t seem necessary.
When this process is finished, they’ll tell you the price they want to list the site for. (You’re allowed to negotiate.)
Once you both agree on a price, the details are put up on the broker’s site and sent out to their email list.
Potential buyers may ask questions that you’ll need to be ready to answer. They may request a phone call to discuss it further, and will probably want access to your Google Analytics and, in my case, Amazon affiliate account.
For each buyer there might be a contract discussion (more about this later) and possibly haggling over the price.
These options took a 15% cut of the purchase price. Empire Flippers and Flippa also have listing fees. It can be a lot of money, but I think it was worth it. My sites all sold not long after they were listed, which would never have happened otherwise.
While Flippa doesn’t really do much for the money, using a broker is fantastic. I didn’t have to deal with enquiries, and they have processes to ensure they only deal with serious buyers and I’m not sharing my financial information with everyone in the world.
Buyers also like buying through a broker because they know they’ve done a lot of due diligence, which minimises the risk of fake information and protects both parties.
Once you have a buyer, they also make the transition process very painless. They’ll do the negotiations, write the contracts, and ensure you won’t be ripped off by someone taking your site without paying you.
I highly recommend FE International or Empire Flippers for selling your blog.
I found Empire Flippers better for sites that are straightforward, such as my niche site that I spent basically no time on and was all about SEO traffic and affiliate income.
They also make potential buyers pay a refundable deposit to see your site data, which helps keep away nosey people (and potential competitors).
For sites that have a higher value and/or get more complicated (e.g. most blogs), I found FE international better. I’m glad I sold my blog with them. They tell you how they’ll value the blog and what price to expect before you have to start providing all the information.
Empire Flippers will only discuss this after you’ve provided all the information. But they do have a calculator on their site you can use to value your blog.
The biggest concern I had about selling my blog was that the new owner would use photos of my kids in ways that I didn’t like or that they would impersonate me.
Thankfully, you can make a contract for your blog sale that has any conditions you want (assuming the buyer agrees of course).
I made sure my broker understood that I needed to negotiate clauses that helped me feel less concerned about these points.
The buyer is likely to have things that concern them too that they will want to negotiate.
You can expect one condition to be that you can’t build a competing blog for the next 2 years at a minimum. There may also be conditions around you training the new buyer to run your blog.
There will also be conditions on when you get paid. On Empire Flippers, the buyer had a few weeks to verify the income by default before the money would be released from escrow to me.
FE International had a policy of releasing the money to the seller as soon as it was verified that everything had been handed over.
If you have any concerns about how the new buyer will handle your blog and the assets that make it up, discuss this with your broker and potential buyers in advance and you can probably find a solution.
This was actually far less painful than I expected.
After the buyer has put the money for the blog in escrow, you will start handing over. Your broker can help with this.
FE International helped me complete a huge handover document with everything the new owner needed to know from how to get the actual blog to social media logins to which affiliate accounts they needed to set up where to how to run the site day to day.
This made it so much easier and meant the buyer had access to everything immediately making the transfer fast and smooth.
To make things easier we tended to give our hosting accounts to the new owners. Hosts like SiteGround will allow changing the owner’s details. Otherwise, the broker or your host can help if you can’t transfer the site yourself.
I also used shared Google drive folders when handing over sites where I put everything related to my sites from logo images to affiliate partner contacts.
It’s a good idea to be readily available at handover as we had Skype calls in all cases to help things move along. After all, the faster things are handed over, the faster you are paid.
Within a few days of the sale going through, I had the money for my blog.
The only mistake I made in selling my blog was not deciding 12 months in advance so I could better remove myself and my family.
There are two reasons you may want to do this.
Firstly, a blog is going to be more attractive to buyers if it doesn’t look like it relies on you. Having your photo all over it isn’t ideal.
A better idea is to start using a pen name in advance and limit the amount of yourself on the blog.
This is also a good idea if you feel nervous about selling your image, and what can feel like part of your identity, to someone else. It is much easier to just have anything you don’t want on their gone when you sell it rather than coming up with conditions for the contract that you have to hope the other person follows.
You may also want to remove some of the more personal posts.
You should do this 12 months in advance because you can’t change anything that could affect the business operation of the blog right before you sell it.
If you remove posts or change the site much in the months leading up to the sale then the buyer will have a legitimate concern that the earnings that you have declared are not correct as obviously how much your blog earns is affected by what is on your blog.
It’s also good if you can remove yourself from the day to day running on the blog. Your blog will look more attractive if you have an already trained VA which the new buyer can hire as well.
This should also help the value of the blog as a VA usually costs less than having an hourly rate for yourself.
I recommend looking at these areas of your blog even if you don’t plan to ever sell. I think it’s good to regularly reflect and adjust how much of yourself and your family you want to share, for example, and making you less essential in the day to day running of the blog is a great way to save yourself a lot of stress and give you more time to work on more important tasks in your business.
The value of your blog is all about the profit you are making so the easiest way to increase your blog value is to make more money while putting in less effort.
Thankfully, this is easily achievable in blogging.
I always concentrated on getting traffic with SEO and converting it with affiliate marketing which helped my blog not only earn good money, but made it worth a lot of money because this is largely passive once you get it working.
I recommend you work on this aspect of blogging before getting to the point of wanting to sell your blog.
The way to do this is to concentrate on learning about buying keywords and reader intent.
Making affiliate profits is easiest when you attract readers to your site that have a buying mindset. This means that they already have the intent to buy something; they just need you to point them in the right direction.
SEO is a very powerful way to do this as you can write articles using keywords that people use when they are in this buying mindset. These are called buying keywords and are statements like “best juicer”, “juicer reviews”, “top juicer on the market”.
If you have a health blog and published an article on the best juicers that helped people looking for one find the perfect one (with an affiliate link of course) and were able to rank on the first page of Google for these keywords, you would make a lot of ongoing cash with very little effort.
If you can have even a few articles like this ranking well in Google and converting well with an affiliate, this can add a few extra thousand a month to your profits.
Times that by 30 and you could add an extra $90,000 to your blog value.
And if you never sell your blog, the extra money will be great in your pocket.
There are other ways to make more passive income as well. Display advertisements using services like Mediavine or Google AdSense are a good option.
Products can also be passive once you have a sales funnel set up if they are items like eBooks that require little ongoing support.
The best way to find time to work on the things I mention above, like growing your passive income, is to cut out all the tasks that don’t really matter.
This will also mean you don’t need to work as much which will also increase your profits.
I highly recommend going through your task list monthly and removing anything that isn’t directly related to your blogging goals whether you plan to sell or not.
This means that unless your prime goal is to get x number of page views, stop working on tasks just to get more traffic. More traffic generally doesn’t lead to more income unless it’s the right sort of traffic. For example, if you want to make good money with affiliates, you need readers with the right reader intent as mentioned above.
It can be hard to let go of something like going on social media, but if it’s not helping you reach your goals and is only sucking away your time then it can be highly valuable to focus that energy elsewhere.
It’s been a few months now since I sold my blog and I haven’t regretted it for even a second. It does feel strange to not be a travel blogger anymore when I was so focused on it at one point, but it feels great to have let it go and to have moved on to my other blog, DigitalNomadWannabe.com, where I get to do work that I love.
Whether you should sell your blog or not is a very personal decision.
If you are at all considering it, I recommend you start doing the tips I recommend above as soon as possible so it leaves you in a better position when it comes time to sell. By the time I realised I wanted to sell, I was so over it that I couldn’t give myself a 12 month run up to remove myself in the way I would have liked.
If you do this and you never end up selling, having more income and less work to do will be a bonus anyway.
Bio
Sharon Gourlay is an Australian blogger who now only blogs about SEO, internet marketing and making money from blogging at DigitalNomadWannabe.com.
The post What Happens When You Want to Sell Your Blog? A Case Study appeared first on ProBlogger.
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