What’s Your Blog Exit Strategy?
By Pinyo • Sep 17th, 2008 • Category: Better Blogging Tips, Lead StoryOkay, you have launched your blog, and you have been pouring your heart and soul into it. You are gaining readers, made new friends, and enjoying the overall experience. Since nobody can blog forever, have you ever thought about what you’ll do down the road? I haven’t thought about this until a friend (DebtKid) asked me that question.
Photo by Will Foster via Flickr
Seven Blog Exit Strategies
As I went through the process and considered what I could do if I ever got tired of blogging, here are some of the options:
1. Go Out Quietly
The first option is to simply take it offline. Let the web hosting run its course and the blog will simply disappear into oblivion. This is probably the most common fate for blogs.
2. Stay Online, But Stop Updating
If you have a profitable blog with decent amount of organic traffic, leaving it online without updating may be a sensible option. All you have to do is minimal maintenance and enjoy the residual income from all the hard work you have done. I believe the official term for this is mothballing your blog.
3. Stay Online, Update A Lot Less
A variation of the one above is to keep it online and only update it once in a while as a post idea emerges. One of my favorite blogs, Skelliewag, is following this strategy — hopefully for a short time only.
4. Sell Your Blog
There are many marketplaces that you can buy and sell blogs — i.e., SitePoint Marketplace and DigitalPoint Forums. Just like any other assets, a well developed blog could fetch decent amount of money. Yaro wrote about high-profile blogs for sale that’s worth reading if you are exploring this option.
5. Sell Your Content
Even if you can’t sell your blog as a whole — i.e., the buyer don’t want your domain name and brand — your content is still valuable. Depending on the niche and the quality of your content, you could sell your articles for decent amount of money.
6. Turn It Into A Group Blog
If you are simply tired of writing, but you still want to stay in the blogging business, you could do turn it into a multi-author blog. Of course, this only works if there are proper incentive for the potential contributors — i.e., money, traffic, recognition, etc.
7. Buy And Republish Content
The reverse of “Sell The Content” strategy is to buy content and republish them to keep your blog active. I am certain that this is not a good long-term solution, but definitely a viable short-term patch to help you through the exiting process.
Do you have a blog exit strategy? If not, do you think you need one?
Other articles about blog exit strategy:
- 7 Steps to A Profitable Blog Exit Strategy at Performancing
- Blog Exit Strategy at OptiNiche
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Interesting - I’m hoping to blog for a good while (if not forever) so an exit strategy is not really relevant at the moment.
If I do ever want to get out of blogging then I’ll probably come up with a plan at that time. I think the mothballing idea is a good one or possibly hire people to create content for you.
I don’t think I need an exit strategy yet, but certainly a strategy for how I’ll continue.
In the end, I think I’ll mothball. I get 1/3 or more of my traffic from searches, so people will still come even if I’m gone. Or I might pull a Skellie, just not for a while.
#2 is the goal in several years. Very interesting article, I think I have somewhere where I can link back to it.
@Four Pillars — Just like investing and personal finance, it’s never too late to think about your end game. Mothballing will definitely work for a while, but the blog will slowly fade…what then?
@Mrs. Micah — Skellie is not active on Skelliewag, but she’s definitely around doing her other projects…and she has a lot of them.
@BTG — Eventually
Obviously the best thing to do is selling it…
Since the majority of my money from from a non-blog source, I’m not too worried about it. However, if the blog picks up a bit more I’d have to say I’ll just sell it.
The thing is, I don’t think it’ll happen for another 20 or so years. I’m in it for the long run.
I’ve never really thought about this but I guess I’ll just sell it. I’d rather see it at it’s peak and let someone else continue the good work.
Hire someone to ghostwrite the blog and concentrate on learning marketing strategies to increase income potential. Great post!
#7, #5, then #4