How to Sell a BlogUltimate Guide to Selling (and Flipping) Blogs in 2024

You’ve put months, perhaps years of hard work into starting a profitable blog—and it’s paid off. So, let’s talk about how to sell a blog.

Let’s say you’re making a steady income from your blog, but it’s taking quite a bit of your time.

Maybe you’re no longer feeling the initial excitement you felt about your blog’s niche, or perhaps you’re simply ready to tackle a new challenge.

Too many bloggers end up abandoning their blogs and letting them slowly fade away. But there’s a much better solution—one that’s a win-win-win for you, your readers and another keen blogger.

Sell your blog.

It might sound a bit daunting, especially if you’ve never sold a blog before. You may worry about running into technical issues, undervaluing your blog, or whether you’ll even be able to find a buyer at all.

Perhaps you don’t actually have a blog yet, but you’re thinking ahead. If you want to launch and grow a blog that you can sell later down the line, you’ll have to figure out how to sell a website before you get to that point.

In this article, I’m going to take you through everything you need to know about selling (and flipping) blogs in 2024.

How to Sell a Blog in 2024: Ultimate Guide to Selling (and Flipping) Blogs

1. Why Sell Your Blog?
2. How to Set a Blog Up for Success (and a Sale)
3. Blog Selling Platforms
4. Pricing Your Blog
5. Taxes
6. Contracts/Payment
7. Flipping a Blog

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind. When you use one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep my in-depth content free of charge for readers (like you).

First, let’s take a look at the why. If you’ve got a successful money-making blog, why would you want to sell it in the first place?

Why Sell Your Blog?

People sell websites and blogs for a range of reasons. See if any of these resonate with you:

Your Blog’s Topic is No Longer a Good Fit For You

Perhaps you started your blog in a profitable niche that you liked, but that niche is no longer where you want to be.

It could simply be that you’ve lost interest. You’ve said everything you want to say about your topic, and you’re ready to move on.

Alternatively, it might be that you no longer want to be associated with that brand or topic. It might no longer feel like “you.”

Selling your blog frees you up to move on and start a new blog (or even take up a new business idea) without having your old blog draining your energy and momentum.

You Want a Large(r) Sum of Money, Now

Let’s say your blog is bringing in $1,000/month, every month. That’s great money to have — but what if you want a lump sum, rather than a small ongoing amount?

Having $12,000 (or likely more) right now could give you the cash you need to launch something new, take up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, or simply get some breathing space.

Putting up your blog for sale means you get a large sum of money all at once, and that can make a lot of things possible in a way that a small monthly amount doesn’t.

Your Life Circumstances Have Changed

Maybe you launched your blog back when you were a student, with plenty of time to work on it in the evenings or weekends.

A few years later, you’ve got a partner and two small children, and life is much busier.

Your blog’s still running without too much work from you, but your income from it is slowly declining and you just don’t have the time to invest in it anymore.

Selling your blog can be a great way to capitalize on all your hard work. Handing it to someone else gives you space in your life to focus on other priorities — and a useful sum of money, too.

You Have Too Many Blogs or Websites

Some online business owners love to launch new projects — and maybe you’re one of them.

You’ve registered lots of different domain names and installed WordPress more times than you care to remember.

Sometimes, your blogs or websites only last a few weeks until you lose interest, but maybe you have a few longer running ones.

At some stage, you’ll need to pare down your projects so that the ones you have left can truly flourish, just like a gardener thinning out seedlings.

Selling some of your blogs or websites gives you money, time, and energy to invest in those that are left.

Plus, learning how to sell blogs will pay off time and time again if you’ve got multiple blogs to sell.

How to Set Up a Blog for Success (and a Sale)

Whether you’re starting a blog with the hopes of selling it or starting it as a project to continually run by yourself, you want to give your blog the best possible chance of success.

Let’s quickly run through what you need to do in order to create a money-making blog.

Pick the Right Niche

Before you start a blog, you need to choose your niche. This means picking a broad topic area — like “travel” or “parenting” or “gadgets” — then drilling down to find a smaller, more specific niche to focus on.

Some bloggers will niche by choosing a sub-topic (e.g. “travel” could become “traveling in Europe” or “traveling on a budget”) and others will niche by focusing on a particular audience (e.g. “solo travelers” or “traveling with young kids”).

Name Your Blog … With Selling in Mind

Once you have your niche, you can choose a name for your blog. If you might want to sell your blog in the future, it’s a good idea to keep this in mind when naming it.

Ideally, avoid using your own name, as this could make it trickier to sell your blog, since it’ll be more closely tied to you as the blogger. Instead, try focusing on keywords or using a blog name generator.

Before you get too attached to your blog’s chosen name, do make sure that it’s available as a domain name (web address), ideally as a .com.

Create a Blogging Strategy

Choosing your niche is the starting point for your blogging strategy. You’ll also want to decide on:

What your goals for your blog are. If your main goal is to create a profitable blog and sell it, then that will inform the rest of your strategy.

What keywords it makes sense to focus on when creating your content.

Keyword research means figuring out what people are already looking for online, related to your niche. Then you just need to write content that delivers what they want.

What type of content you’ll create — and how frequently. Are you going to publish a couple of in-depth blog posts every month? Or much shorter posts every day?

How you’ll make money from your blog. Will you sell products, offer your services, bring in affiliate commissions, or something else?

Content/Overall Design

To be successful, your blog needs to attract and keep visitors. To bring people in beyond an initial glance, your blog should be laid out and designed to look good and function well.

That doesn’t mean you need to pay thousands of dollars for slick web design and a professional logo.

But it does mean your blog shouldn’t look cluttered or confusing. It should load quickly and new visitors should instantly get a sense of what your blog is about.

In terms of content, you’ll want to create regular blog posts — but you’ll also need key pages for your blog, like an About Me page and a Contact page.

Social Media

You’ll also want to set up social media accounts for your blog. Again, if you’re thinking about selling your blog in the future, it’s important to keep that in mind.

Ideally, this means separating your blog’s social media presence from your personal accounts.

It’s also a good idea to pick just one or two social networks to focus on. Otherwise, you might end up spreading yourself so thinly across lots of different sites that it’ll be hard to gain traction on any of them.

Of course, you can still set up accounts on other platforms. That could simply mean claiming your blog’s name and putting up one or two posts to let people know where else they can find you online.

In the future, those social media accounts — even barely used — could be valuable assets you can sell alongside your blog.

Web Hosting

All websites need web hosting. A web host stores your website for you on huge computers (servers) that are connected to the internet 24/7.

To build a successful blog, you need good quality web hosting. You don’t want a web host that’s unreliable or isn’t suitable for running blogging software like WordPress.

The good news is that web hosting doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Many of the best web hosting companies offer great deals in your first year or even your first three years, so you can get started quite cheaply.

• Dreamhost (one of my favorite web hosts) charges from just $2.59/month when you’re getting started — or you can pay for month-to-month hosting for $4.95/month.
• Bluehost is another fantastic option, starting at $2.95/month and offering great support.

Be sure to check out my full guide to all the blogging costs that’ll be associated with running a profitable site over time, if you want a preview of what you’ll be getting yourself into.

How to Sell a Blog (and Profit) in 8 Steps

Now you’ve got a pretty solid blog that’s bringing in not just readers, but income as well. But now it’s time for you to move on to something new. You want to capitalize on all your hard work. So how exactly do you sell your blog?

Blog Selling Platforms

Sometimes, bloggers will strike a private deal with someone who is interested in buying their blog. For instance, you might have partnered up with someone else to create a product — and you could ask if they’d be interested in purchasing your blog.

Alternatively, someone might email you out of the blue, asking if you’d consider selling your blog.

But most bloggers use online marketplaces to find sellers. There are a number of different blog selling platforms out there, including these ones.

5 Top Blog Selling Platforms (to Sell Your Blog Today):

1. Flippa: One of the most well-known platforms for selling websites and online businesses, with a huge number of sites listed for sale.
2. Empire Flippers: Another huge online marketplace, which has an approval process before blogs are listed.
3. Blogs for Sale: This is a much smaller marketplace, but specifically focused on blogs. It includes sites that aren’t yet bringing in revenue (listed as “starter sites”).
4. eBay: This might not be the first place you’d think of, but eBay has a whole section dedicated to websites. If you’ve got strong eBay feedback already, it could be a good place to list your blog for auction.
5. GoDaddy: Looking to sell a domain name? GoDaddy is a popular marketplace for existing domains, as well as being a registrar for new ones, but just be aware that you likely won’t be able to price in all your content and traffic here.

Of course, there’s always the option to reach out to other individual bloggers within your niche and see if they’d be interested in possibly acquiring your blog. While a bit more of a long shot, you might be surprised how many successful bloggers are often looking to expand their reach and diversify their businesses.

Pricing Your Blog

How much is your blog worth? It can be really difficult to figure out how much to sell your blog for. Ask too much, and you won’t find a buyer. Ask too little, and you’ll be missing out on money you should have had.

Here’s how to work out what to charge.

First, determine your average monthly profit from your blog. You’ll normally do this for the past 6 to 12 months. Let’s say you’re making $1,000/month.

Then, multiply this by 12 to work out a starting point for selling your blog. That gives you $12,000 as a baseline price point to consider.

Now, some people will say you can ask for 20 or even 40-50 times the average monthly income.

On sites like Empire Flippers where I spend a lot of time looking at blogs for sale, most sites have a sale price that’s a multiple of at least 40x their average monthly income.

Your sale price is naturally going to depend on other factors, like how much potential your blog has for growth, how big your mailing list is, how much organic search engine traffic you get, what niche you’re in, how high your email list conversion rate is, which revenue sources you have, and much more.

Ultimately, it’s up to you how much to ask for.

If you’re not in a rush to sell your blog, you might want to start out by asking for around 30-40 times your blog’s monthly income (that’s $30,000-$40,000 for a blog earning $1,000/month) and see if there’s interest.

If you don’t get any interest, you can simply lower the asking price a little.

You can also use online website valuation calculators to figure out a rough price for your blog. With these, you’ll need to answer some questions about your blog, like your annual revenue and monthly visitors.

Another good option is to check out the price points for similar blogs on Flippa, Empire Flippers or another marketplace, to see what the going rate for a site like yours is, right now.

Taxes

After selling a website, you’ll likely need to pay taxes on your blog income. Your profit may be considered a “capital gain” similar to—real estate.

This is good news for you, as it means you’ll only need to pay tax on the difference between the development costs (e.g. the amount you paid for the site or the amount you paid to develop it) and the sale price, instead of paying income tax on the full sale price.

You’ll likely want to consult a professional accountant or tax attorney to make sure you’re paying tax correctly on the sale of your website or blog—and not paying more tax than you need to.

Contracts and Accepting Payment

When selling a blog, it’s really important to be clear about exactly what you’re selling. That could be:

• Everything to do with the blog: Your domain name, content, design, logo, other branding, email list, social media accounts, and so on. This is what most people think of when they’re selling or flipping a blog.
• Just the domain name: Buying and selling domain names is a whole entire industry, itself.
• Anything in between: For instance, you might sell your domain name, content, and branding, but not your social media accounts if you’re using those for other projects too (or if they’re your personal handles).

You’ll need to draw up a contract with the buyer that clearly specifies what they’re buying from you.

Plus, you’ll also want to include information on how payment will be arranged. Usually, the buyer will transfer money into an escrow account (such as through escrow.com).

You’ll then transfer all your assets to the buyer, and they’ll release the funds from the escrow account.

Selling platforms like Flippa and Empire Flippers will usually provide their own sale agreement template that you can use, though you may want to get legal advice on drawing up a contract specific to your online business. And be aware that the major marketplace sites often charge a fee or take a commission on your sale price.

Flipping a Blog

Flipping is when you buy a blog or website, improve it, then sell it again. Think of it like flipping real estate—you might buy a fixer-upper cheaply, put in some time and money, and sell it at a profit a few months later.

Some people turn buying blogs and flipping them into a steady income stream.

The Buying Process

First, you’ll want to find a blog to buy. This is well worth taking your time with. You don’t want to invest a lot of money in a blog that’s not going to provide a good return on your investment.

Ideally, you want to find a blog that’s underpriced. Perhaps the owner needs to sell fast, or they simply don’t realize how valuable their blog is.

You also want to choose a blog that you can improve relatively fast. That probably means picking a blog in a niche that you already know well, rather than one on a topic or for an audience that you know nothing about.

You can use various online tools to find out more about a blog that you’re interested in. Some easy ways to get started are to:

• Use Alexa (not the digital assistant!) to get information about the website’s traffic, competitors, and more. You’ll be able to see information like whether the site’s traffic is increasing or declining, which is — really important if the site owner is providing stats from months ago.
• Use the Wayback Machine to get a sense of the history of the website. This site lets you see snapshots of what a website looked like in the past. Be cautious about buying a domain that’s changed hands a lot, particularly if it looks like it might have had a shady history — like being used for lots of spammy links.
• Use Built With to check which WordPress plugins and WordPress theme the site is using, and whether it’s even running on WordPress. You’ll likely need to pay for your own licenses for any premium plugins if you want to keep using them.

Once you’ve decided that the blog looks like a good investment, it’s time to contact the owner. Let them know that you’re interested in buying their blog and ask for more details.

They should be able to provide you with traffic statistics, income reports, and information about the number of people on their email list, social accounts, and so on.

Tip: Bloggers may be open to selling, even if their blog isn’t listed for sale anywhere. Is there a blog you used to read that hasn’t been updated for ages? If you’d be interested in taking it over, approach the blogger and explain you’d be interested in purchasing the blog. You may be able to strike a great deal, especially if they were thinking of simply abandoning it altogether.

When it comes to actually buying the blog, it’s a similar process to selling your blog, mentioned above.

You’ll transfer the money into an escrow account, the owner will transfer the domain name and website files (along with any extras like social media account passwords to you), then they’ll receive the money.

Monetization

Your fixer-upper blog isn’t going to be well monetized — that’s why you’ve bought it at a great price! Perhaps it was bringing in a trickle of income through ads or affiliate marketing, but it’s nowhere near fulfilling its potential.

You need to think carefully about how you can best monetize the blog.

If you’re planning to flip it fairly quickly — within months, rather than years — then you need to choose income streams that you can implement quickly and easily.

That could mean:

Signing up for relevant affiliate programs and making sure that all the most popular posts on the blog promote an affiliate product. I’ll cover affiliate marketing in more detail in a moment.

Creating a simple product to sell — probably a digital one that’s quick to make and that has very low overheads.

Making use of any existing resources that you purchased along with the blog. For instance, if the blogger had a video course for sale, you might be able to get sales going more strongly using an automated email sequence.

Affiliate Links

As mentioned above, affiliate marketing is one great way to make money from a blog.

Because it doesn’t require you to invest time and money in making products, it’s a particularly good way to bring in a steady income from a blog that you’ve purchased.

If you’re not yet familiar with affiliate marketing, here’s how it works. You sign up as an affiliate for products or services that you like and want to promote.

You’ll be given a special link to use when linking to those products or services. Whenever someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you’ll receive some commission.

It’s really important, then, to make sure that you’re using your affiliate link whenever you mention a particular product or service.

To get the most from affiliate marketing, you should:

• Seek out services and/or products that are highly relevant to the blog’s readers. You might want to look through some reputable affiliate programs to find suitable options.
• Go through any recommended services or products already listed on the blog and sign up for affiliate programs where possible.
• Use a plugin like Thirsty Affiliates to easily manage your affiliate links. With this tool, you can instantly change a link everywhere it appears on your site, which is helpful if the company moves to a new affiliate system and gives you a different link.

Always disclose affiliate links. This is a legal requirement in the U.S. If you’re using affiliate links, you should make sure that you clearly let readers know that you’ll earn some commission.

SEO

One way you can quite quickly improve a blog that you’ve purchased is to spend some time on search engine optimization.

Many blogs are under-optimized. Make sure you understand the basics of keyword research and on-page SEO and that you apply them to key posts and pages on the blog. A couple of great ways to start are to:

Having an SEO title and meta description for every post. The easiest way to do this is to use a dedicated SEO plugin, such as Yoast, All in One SEO, or RankMath.

Remember, you need to craft titles and meta descriptions that not only include your keywords but also draw readers in.

Using Google Analytics to see which posts are getting the most traffic and doing what you can to boost them even further.

For instance, you could make sure that you’re using a keyword in the title, meta description, and several other places in the post, as well as an image and alt text. If a post is ranking #5 in Google and you get it to #1 or #2, that’ll mean a huge jump in traffic.

Once your blog is bringing in more money and traffic, you can sell it for a profit — and move on to flipping your next blog.

Ready to Sell Your Blog? Final Thoughts to Consider

Selling a blog isn’t usually a super quick (or easy) process.

It can take time to build a blog that’s going to fetch a good price, and you may also encounter some lowball offers or time wasters before you manage to find the right buyer.

The technical side of transferring your domain name or files can also feel daunting when you’re first looking into how to sell a blog.

Don’t be put off. Selling your blog could be the next step on the path to your goals. It can free up time and energy, give you the money to invest in a new project, or even become a new career in itself if you decide you enjoy flipping blogs.

Looking to start a new blog to sell — or even your first blog? Check out my complete guide on how to start a blog. It takes you through everything you need to know.