Why I’m not selling Upstart Blogger on Flippa
The more astute amongst you will have already figured out last Friday’s little riddle. It’s true. Upstart Blogger is for sale.
And yes, this is the second time that I find myself trying to sell Upstart Blogger since December 2009. Having already received some third party investment I felt, wrongly with the benefit of hindsight, that things would progress positively and that I would slowly but surely get back into the blogging habit.
But there are 2 very large reasons why Upstart Blogger needs to be sold.
Reason number 1 is that I just don’t have the time to devote to it anymore. I made it clear from the outset that my tenure here at Upstart Blogger was simply a way for me to build an income stream to support my music career. And I’ve achieved that. Regular readers know that I still have a raft of Twitter accounts, all automated and powered by the Twitter system that I developed and launched back in June 2009. And those Twitter accounts continue to make a growing income.
Yes, I withdrew the product from sale but I continued to use it for my own personal income generation. Had I wanted to spend the time arguing with the FTC, in particular reminding them that their ridiculous rules don’t apply to anyone outside of their own small geographical jurisdiction, things might have turned out differently. I get emails from people every day asking me if they can buy my Twitter method. And the answer is always the same. I don’t sell it anymore.
And that leads me to reason number 2.
Upstart Blogger is more than a blog. It is, or was, also a thriving affiliate program. A very healthy affiliate program that is now dormant. Is it fair to all of those affiliates, let alone all of the customers who still want to buy my Twitter method, to effectively take away my toys from everyone else simply because I don’t want to play with them anymore?
No. Of course it isn’t.
For the right person, Upstart Blogger represents a turn key affiliate program that could be cranked back into life in under 24 hours.
For me, Upstart Blogger represents a massive drain on my time. And, since I now use my Twitter method to generate a passive and fully automated income, it also represents a potential drain on my time that is, for me, totally unnecessary.
That is why Upstart Blogger needs an individual, or group of individuals, to take it forward to wherever it’s headed next.
And that brings me to the sale itself. My cryptic post wasn’t just intended to be funny. It was intended to be a way of finding someone who, in my mind, would be a good fit for Upstart Blogger. An individual, or group of individuals, who would be willing and able to take Upstart Blogger to the next level, developing the products that are currently sitting idle, including the aforementioned Twitter method, and restarting the affiliate program.
Finding such an individual, or group of individuals, isn’t easy. First of all, as I’m sure you are aware, a blog with a Google page rank of 7 and over 11,000 unique visitors a day isn’t cheap. I paid $14,000 for this blog a little over 2 years ago. It now has 10 times the traffic and is capable of generating 10 times the income that it generated 2 years ago. My asking price for a 100% buyout is inline with that potential. A price that will liberate me financially, at least in the short term, whilst still reflecting good value for the incumbent owner or owners.
And that is why I’m inviting people into a dialogue with me privately. This isn’t the kind of online property that belongs on something like Flippa. Flippa is fine if you want to pay $100 for a 1 month old blog with a Google page rank of 1 and a handful of artificially created back links. It’s not the kind of place, in my opinion, where serious businesses that create serious incomes are bought and sold.
So, to all those of you who read my recent post and asked, no, I won’t be selling Upstart Blogger on Flippa.
If you are interested in learning more about exactly where all of this is headed, email me on contact@upstartblogger.com. Serious purchasers will be furnished with logins for all statistics packages that detail traffic and income along with any other information that is required.
Ashley, it’s a shame you’re not interested in listing on Flippa. Although there are plenty of low-end sites being bought and sold, we do also regularly list larger online businesses. Over the last 2 days we’ve seen a $70k and a $90k auction and Retweet.com is just about to sell for over $150k. If you change your mind, let me know.
Thanks Luke. I think that my aversion to Flippa comes from some of the people that are so heavily pushing it. Not you, I hasten to add. And that group of people are advocating the sort of domain buying tactics that make my skin crawl. Building websites quickly, just to flip them and make a quick buck. When in reality those quickly built sites are absolutely worthless. In terms of traffic and reputation Upstart Blogger is very old school and I think that an equally old school approach to selling, in order to move things to the next level, is probably the best bet.
However, the fact that you have taken the time to contact me speak volumes about you and your company. Perhaps I was too quick to speak critically of Flippa when, as I said, my real problem is with some of your customers and an issue that no company can control.
My experience with Flippa hasn’t been good. I bought a small site, paid for it, soon after the site (server) failed, seller attempted or at least made signs that he was working on it. That went on for a couple of weeks, in the end I suggested he perhaps just refunded me and we looked at it again once it was all back up and running. This is when he dissappeared.
Flippa can’t do anything, the don’t hold any money. Paypal won’t do anything because it’s technically a digital transaction – nothing “to hold and smash on the floor” (in their words).
Just one bad experience I know, but still, it leaves a bad taste.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that I noticed happening. Lots of people building blogs and then using every trick in the book to offload them as quickly as possible. Again, it’s not Flippa’s fault, nor PayPal’s, it’s just that Flippa seems to attract an awful lot of bad sellers.
Might be worth selling UB as a business? BusinessesForSale.com has a few sites on there, but if you are looking for $100k plus, and you can justify that price, it might be worth listing it there? Might have more chance of finding someone who doesn’t necessarily know a lot about the net, but looking to invest?
Ashley, it’s a shame you’re not interested in listing on Flippa. Although there are plenty of low-end sites being bought and sold, we do also regularly list larger online businesses. Over the last 2 days we’ve seen a $70k and a $90k auction and Retweet.com is just about to sell for over $150k. If you change your mind, let me know.
Is Flippa having bots post in these comments or what? Firma and Luke sure know how to talk someone into using Flippa with their generic copy and paste responses.