Would you buy a personal brand website ?

There was this interesting thread on Sitepoint forums, where a travel blog was advertised as for sale. It’s PR 6, so I thought I may buy it and headed to the details. Found that the site is www.richardsturner.com and immediately dropped the idea.

Okay, that was a fast forward of what really happened. Let me unfold the story.

Sitepoint is a great place to buy and sell online properties. If not tried it yet, do have a look. What interests me there is the “Established sites for sale” thread, where lot of great online resources are for sale (I thought I already told you that.)

Now, if you are trying to make money online with AdSense and some SEO work, there is an alternative to your “post daily - earn daily” methodology. Of course, you know that building a great website will take almost 6 months time and that too with good posting frequency and steady traffic. But, if you are after the money part, this is a risk you take. There is no guarantee that the site will do well and your hard work may not pay off, well if it does the world will know you, but yea, just thinking otherwise.

A better alternative is to find a great website, on a niche you are comfortable working with, and buy it with both the hands. Now, that’s smart work ! Well, before you buy, you may have to check a few basic details.

Now, the point here is (regards to the earlier case), the blog was on a good niche - Travel, something that I always wanted to experiment with and also the site had a reputation. PR6 is not too bad, is it?

Well, the prob here are two things.

1 - The site had a personal touch to it.
Richard Sturner, in whose name the site is about, is no longer associated with the blog. Boooooo ! That put me down in the first place. I’m not sure if readers will associate with the brand after the sale or not.

2 - The site had been selling links on TLA.
Boooooooooooo!! So that means your page rank is going to get screwed and you might be taken off the SERPs, and that’s indeed a huge risk.

So essentially, if your site had a personal brand, like your name/photo, on your blog and worse if you had your name as the domain, it’s better you not sell the blog. It makes sense to keep the domain to yourself, but if at all selling the blog, let that not be public. Because, your readers may be sticking to your blog because of your expertise and once it is not there, readers simply don’t see the point in following it.

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