Time to Cash In? Three Signs Your Blog May Attract Buyers

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中国结走过一程人生旅途，写下一段心路历程，留住一份美好记忆. << Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes | 主页 | VC's Blog >> Time to Cash In? Three Signs Your Blog May Attract Buyers 2005-12-09 Time to Cash In? Three Signs Your Blog May Attract Buyers September 23, 2005 Brian Stelter set tongues wagging in the blogging community last year when he accepted an offer to sell his television-news blog, CableNewser.com, to Mediabistro.com Inc., a New York-based media networking and education site. The student, now 20, agreed to sell the rights to his blog, renamed TVNewser.com, and continued to write for it. In return, Mediabistro.com essentially "pays my college tuition," Mr. Stelter says. "It was a great deal for them because they're getting great content every day," he says. "And it's the perfect job for me because it gives me income without being a 9 to 5 job." Mr. Stelter wasn't specific about the terms of his contract, but says his compensation covers the roughly $3,500 a semester he pays as a full-time student at Towson University in Baltimore. It used to be rare for an established, mainstream company to buy an individual's personal blog. Blogs are frequently updated online journals, typically authored by professionals, hobbyists, or regular Joes reaching out to share their thoughts, information and photographs with others. Few consider their blogs a business, though the growing use of advertising links and blog sponsorships have helped some turn a modest profit. While sales aren't making headlines every day, there has been some business interest in buying blogs and hiring their authors as employees. "Now you're seeing the professionalization of the product and they're starting to generate revenue," says Jason Calacanis, chief executive officer of blog network Weblogs Inc. in Santa Monica, Calif. So, if you're a blogger, could you cash in, and should you cash out? Here are three signs your blog may have what it takes to attract bids from prospective buyers, plus some considerations if you're mulling a sale. You have Web cred. If you're an expert within your industry or passionate hobbyist who can bring insight to a topic -- and have the ability to turn a phrase -- your musings may attract a buyout offer. Strong traffic to your blog, numerous links to it from other blogs and frequent reader feedback are a few signs your blog is generating buzz that can attract buyers. Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro.com, says media companies like hers are looking to bloggers to fill gaps in coverage. "Rather than hiring a full-time beat reporter, we hired a part-time blogger for a lot less," she says, referring to Mr. Stelter. Respected bloggers typically are obsessed with the subject matter they cover, she adds, and they attract a community of like-minded individuals that companies want to reach. "Having an engaging blogger to keep your customers coming back to your site is the quintessential 'sticky' factor," Ms. Touby says. Your blog is a cash cow. Beyond authoritative and popular commentary, there are other reasons corporate buyers are looking at personal blogs. Revenue is one, says Steve Broback, a founder of Blog Business Summit, a conference organizer in Seattle. Income sources from blogs can include ad sales; sponsorships; affiliate programs, where bloggers encourage readers to buy products from merchants or services in return for commissions; and your garden-variety swag, such as books, T-shirts, and mugs. How much a corporate buyer would be willing to pay for a blog varies depending on the content, but generally an offer of one to two times annual revenue would be consistent with offers for other small, Web-based media properties, Mr. Broback says. If your blog generates revenue of $10 a day, or $3,650 a year, you might expect to receive an offer in the ballpark of $7,500. In addition, blogs that focus on a particular topic that is highly desirable to advertisers also tend to generate higher-than-average ad revenues, another boon to a potential buyer, says Mr. Broback. You attract a coveted crowd. The type of readership your blog draws may affect the value of your blog to potential buyers, says Weblogs' Mr. Calacanis. "Certain communities are worth more than others. For example, if you have a blog for dental surgeons and the buyer is a provider of medical equipment, that's a highly valuable community," he says. Trickier to value is the size of a blog's audience. That's partly due to the proliferation of so-called RSS news feeds, Mr. Broback says. RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, is an information aggregator that lets users browse headlines and short summaries from hundreds of blogs and Web sites all on one page. If readers want more, they can click on the blog's link and go to the entire post. (Read Walt Mossberg's guide to RSS.) But if the reader doesn't click the link it isn't "counted" as traffic to the site, even though some of the blog's content has been read. "With RSS, it's extremely difficult to measure how many people are reading what you're writing," Mr. Broback says. Considerations when mulling a sale. Most often, companies will buy the rights to the blog and then hire the blogger, either as a full-time staffer or as an independent contractor, to continue writing the blog. Pay is all over the map: from a low of $4 per post to a flat fee of up to $75,000 for a sponsored site, according to research by Blog Business Summit. Full-time, salaried bloggers earn in the $20,000 to $70,000 range, depending on skill level and benefits. (Click here to read more about corporate blogging jobs.) Anita Campbell, editor of the blog Small Business Trends, based in Cleveland, Ohio, says she's also seeing more hybrid business arrangements, where the blogger retains ownership of the blog but is paid to direct traffic to a corporate site. A recent example of this type of partnership was French blogger Roland Piquepaille's deal with Zdnet.com, owned by CNET Networks Inc. in San Francisco. Posts on his Roland Piquepaille Technology Trends blog now include a brief description of his commentary on the particular topic at hand, but if you want to read the entire post you must click on a link that takes you to the Emerging Technology Trends blog he pens on Zdnet. If you're mulling a sale, you and the buyer should establish who will have editorial influence and control. "The second you filter a blog, the audience will know and step out immediately, and the blog dies," says Mr. Calacanis. Maurice Desmarais, president of the International Business Brokers Association in Chicago, says some in his organization are avoiding the business of buying and selling blogs for just that reason. "Some of our members have dropped blogs because it's too onerous a process," he says. "There's a liability for the acquiring company because [blogs] deal with personal content that may be offensive or even libelous." Bloggers who sell their blogs and don't stay on to continue blogging risk having their blog content altered or used in ways they'd never intended. Or the blog might wither and die from neglect, says Jeremy Wright of Ontario, Canada. Mr. Wright recently sold a blog, Wealthyblogger.com, for $2,000. (His reported sale of business and technology blog Ensight.org last year for $15,000 ultimately fell through.) Still, bloggers who are burnt out after years of feeding the beast may welcome the idea of passing it on, says Mr. Wright. "For some people it's like having a dog. You'd rather see it go to a good home than put it down," he says.

Write to me at fiscallyfit@wsj.com . gerald 发表于 2005-12-09 18:24 引用Trackback(0) | 编辑 Comments 发表评论最近更新