The highly popular wordpress theme designer Small Potato recently sold his blog and wordpress theme business to internet entrepreneur Pawel Ciszewski. Although the original asking price was around $65,000 the actual price paid was, according to reasonably reliable sources, less than half that figure.

I know what it’s like to buy a blog, and I genuinely wish Pawel Ciszewski good luck with his new venture, but it’s not going to be pretty.

Why do I think this? I’ll explain.

When I bought Upstart Blogger for $14,500 I did a lot of research. Indeed, I had been a subscriber for a long time and felt in tune with the direction of both the blog and the author, Robert Ellis. As a professional musician who uses blogs to generate interest, and ultimately income, I was, and continue to be, an Upstart Blogger, profiting from my own successful blogs.

As an internet asset, Upstart Blogger had three components that underpinned it’s value. The author, Robert Ellis, the design, and the content. $14,500 only bought me the content and the design, not the author. If was to maintain and grow the value of the blog I would have to build on the content and move forward in a similar direction, keeping the blogs focus reasonably true to Robert’s original vision, whilst adding my own personality and, gradually, making the blog my own.

The potential risk was that people wanting to read the writing of Robert Ellis and not Ashley Morgan would leave, probably never to return. And that did happen, up to a point, but because more content was added and the focus was maintained this loss was minimized. More traffic was gained through adding new, and hopefully relevant and interesting, content than was lost through the ownership change.

It worked well. Upstart Blogger continues to be more profitable month after month and the initial investment of $14,500 will have been recouped, if everything continues to go to plan, by the end of July, probably sooner.

But WPDesigner.com is different. First of all the equity balance between author and content was much different than the equity balance here at Upstart Blogger. Many people visited WPDesigner.com more for the author than for the content. I’m not playing down Robert’s personal contribution to Upstart Blogger, not in the slightest, but I’m sure everyone would agree that Upstart Blogger was not, and is not, a personal blog. People don’t come here to read about the authors life. WPDesigner.com had an infectious and very personal quality that is now gone. Secondly the new owner has already, by his own admission, stated that he is not particularly interested, nor experienced, in wordpress theme development. Here is his introductory post,

I’m Pawel Ciszewski the new owner. I’ll keep this post short and to the point and answer some questions the community has been asking.

My names Pawel Ciszewski, the names Polish but I’ve was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI and currently reside in Miami Beach, FL.

I’m an online entrepreneur who actively pursues many differenet internet ventures and actively acquire sites that I feel are valuable resources to the Internet and will be profitable long term.

I will try to keep the blog posts and blog designs as good as they where by SP but that will be a challenge and nobody will replace SP.

Expanding the themes club will be my main objective. I myself won’t be actively posting or building themes, not by expertise and leave that to those who are.

Currently in talks with some well know WP theme designers to take over the building of monthly new themes and blog posting but have not yet determined who will take over that responsibility.

As introductory posts go it’s not great. Littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. He even portrays himself as someone who is simply buying up internet assets purely to make money. Thats’ fine, I’ve got no problem with capitalism, it has it’s place, but it certainly doesn’t sit comfortably at the wordpress community table. And it won’t sit comfortably with the WPDesigner audience.

In one post the new owner has confirmed that he has no in depth wordpress knowledge, he will not be authoring any themes and that he will not be blogging. Not a great way to win over an existing audience who were clearly hoping for Small Potato Mk.2.

I expect to see a huge increase in advertising and a correspondingly huge decrease in traffic for WPDesigner.com over the next six months. Since Pawel Ciszewki didn’t, in reality, pay a huge amount of money for the site he will probably make his mney back by shear weight of traffic. Throwing all that traffic into a new, advertisement heavy, design will make good money in the short term, but the income will decrease over time as the traffic drops.

Once it has been milked dry, probably in around twelve months, WPDesigner.com will be thrown back for sale into sitepoint as part of a final exit strategy. The price at that time will be low since the traffic, and, more importantly, the brand, will have been damaged.

If you were one of the many potential purchasers of WPDesigner.com then keep your eye on it. Bide your time and you might just pick up a bargain.