5 Places to Find Blogs for Sale

If you want to own your business and become the master of your destiny, one of the best ways to get started is to purchase an existing digital business like a blog.

If you’re new to the world of blogging or you’re not sure how to go about buying a blog, it can be tough to know where to start. But no need to worry. In this article, we are going to discuss why buying a blog is a good idea, review 5 of the best places to find blogs for sale, and give you some useful tips on how to buy a blog.

Why buy a blog?

Buying a blog can be a great investment. When you buy a blog, you are gaining ownership of an existing asset that has a proven audience and revenue stream. This means you’ll have a steady revenue stream but at the same time, you’ll have the potential to increase the readership and monetization of the blog so you grow its value.

Why not simply build your own blog from scratch? Purchasing an existing, successful blog has several advantages over creating your own from the beginning:

• An existing blog will already have backlinks to credible sources — this improves your ranking and can save you a considerable amount of time.
• If the blog is already established, you don’t have to worry about making sure it will have a decent search engine results page (SERP) ranking. That ranking will drive more traffic to your site from day one.
• In many cases, purchasing a blog actually proves to be less expensive than building one from the ground up.
• Existing blogs come with built-in authority and a built-in audience. If you want to create your own blog, you need to be willing to give it time to grow.

Building a business over time and incrementally is a much safer investment than more volatile investments like cryptocurrencies and stocks. You will have to commit some time and effort each week to run your blog, but the results will be much steadier and more predictable.

Best places to find blogs for sale

Wondering where to buy a blog? Now that we’ve discussed why you should buy a blog, let’s discuss some of the top places to find established blogs for sale.

1. Empire Flippers

Empire Flippers is another online marketplace that facilitates the buying and selling of digital assets like blogs. Once you land on their homepage, you can search for blog websites for sale. For example, if you search for fitness blogs for sale, you will be shown a list of blogs in this category along with highlighted information such as how it is monetized (e.g. – affiliate commissions, advertising, etc.), the asking price, and the monthly revenue of the blog. Because you can compare key metrics right on the search page, it’s easy to quickly narrow down the field to find which blogs you’re most interested in.

If you find a blog in the search results that you’d like to learn more about, you can click on the blog name and view the full profile. In the profile, you’ll be shown detailed financial information and analytics of the blog, along with a detailed summary of how the blog operates and the amount of work involved to maintain it. There is a lot of information in the profile which will help you make an informed decision:

• What assets are included in the sale (contractor relationships, existing email lists, code repositories, primary and secondary domains, social media accounts, associated Shopify or other sales platform accounts, etc.)
• Average monthly profit and revenue (and whether these are trending up or down)
• Profit margin
• Net and gross profits over time (in helpful graph form)
• Site traffic (page views and unique users) over time
• Any included support from the seller (usually a set amount of time the seller can communicate with you after the sale)
• How long the site has been in business
• Why the current owner has chosen to sell

To gain access to financial and analytics information, you need to create an account, which you can do for free. If you want to access more detailed information, see proof of site financials, make an offer, or purchase the site immediately, you will need to “unlock” the listing. 

Unlocking involves a couple of simple steps. To protect both you and the seller, you’ll need to verify your identity with a photo ID. You also need to prove you have the funds necessary to make the purchase.

Once you have verified the analytics and financials, you can message the blog owner and make an offer. If the blog owner accepts your offer, Empire Flippers will facilitate payment and transfer ownership of the blog to you. The company charges the owner a commission, so there is no fee for you to pay when you make a purchase.

2. Flippa

Flippa is an online marketplace where you can sell and buy online businesses. One of their main categories is blogs for sale. To find blogs for sale, you simply need to visit their website and then search for specific blog types. You will then be shown a list of all blogs in your desired category for you to check out. 

Each blog for sale listing includes extensive information about the blog such as the amount of traffic the blog receives, how old the blog is, what platform it is published on, and how it is monetized. If you find blogs that you’re interested in, you can sign up for a free account which will give you access to much more detailed information about the blog and the ability to communicate with the blog owner.

Once you decide to engage with the blog owner, you can ask them for access to the blog site’s Google Analytics account and detailed financial statements that prove how much money the blog makes. This can then be followed up with a call with the blog owner through the Flippa platform to discuss the blog and to ask them any questions that you have.

If you want to make an offer after viewing analytics, financial information, and talking to the owner, you can do so through the platform. If the blog owner accepts your offer, Flippa will facilitate the payment and take a commission for facilitating the sale. Once the blog owner receives payment, you’ll gain full control of the blog and its associated accounts.

3. FE International

FE International is a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory for digital businesses. On their website, you will find all the businesses they represent. If you’re interested in one of their listings, you can submit a request to the listing agent for more information.

Once you contact an agent and express interest in one of their listings, the company will get in touch with you and provide you with detailed information about the business. They can then facilitate price negotiations if you want to go forward with a purchase.

The company focuses on selling established SaaS businesses and e-commerce stores that have a track record in their industries. They don’t sell pure blog websites, but there are e-commerce stores with a blogging component.

Unlike other platforms on our list, FE International provides those looking to buy blog websites with a much more hands-on level of service, but the downside of using them over others is they have less than one hundred listings to choose from.

4. Niche Investor

Looking to buy a blog with a focus that’s a bit outside of the mainstream? Niche blogs can be surprisingly lucrative, and Niche Investor brings together listings for up-and-coming and already-successful niche blogs alike. 

A quick skim of the homepage reveals listings for course review websites, curly hair blogs, and even sites offering tips on caring for pet tortoises. While there’s quite a range of site types, there aren’t too many listed for sale at any given time. As of writing, there were only 75 sites listed, with prices from $699 to $349,000.

Niche Investor was previously known as BlogsForSale.co. Just as it did under its original domain name, it continues to offer quality websites for every price range.

This site has several requirements for site owners looking to sell, so you don’t have to spend additional time vetting sites you might want to buy:

• The site analytics must have been running for a significant period of time (preferably since the site launched)
• The site can’t have any broken links
• It needs to use WordPress (not Tumblr, Wix, Squarespace, Blogger, or a similar platform)
• The site owners must be tracking profit and loss for each month
• The site must have an accurate business valuation before it’s listed

Niche Investor also makes navigating the sale easy, even for first-time buyers. The platform provides a legal contract and will hold your payment in Escrow while the site owner transfers the site assets to you. That way, you (and the seller) are protected from any kind of fraud.

5. Contact blog owners

If you don’t want to go through a marketplace to buy a blog, one of the best alternative ways to find ready-made blogs for sale is to contact the blog owner directly. For example, if you find a blog that you like, you can send the blog owner an email and inquire about buying it from them. 

Depending on the specific circumstances, the blog owner might not want to sell, but it isn’t going to cost you anything to find out. If they are interested in selling their blog, working out a valuation can be done quite easily using tools like this one by Empire Flippers. Payments can be facilitated through one of numerous online platforms that provide escrow services.

Keep in mind that this method of buying blogs for sale by owner may well be more costly than purchasing a site on an existing platform. After all, if the site’s owner hasn’t listed their website, they aren’t in a hurry to sell, so they probably won’t be inclined to give you a great deal. But if you’re interested in the site, it’s worth asking.

Tips for buying blog websites

Before you jump in and make an offer on a blog, here are a few tips to ensure you get a good deal.

Decide why you want to buy

Before you buy a blog website (and before you even start shortlisting blogs you’re considering), take some time to clarify your goals. Do you want to buy blogs for long-term passive income or to expand a growing business? Or are you more interested in improving and selling websites for a profit?

If you intend to do the former, springing for a more expensive website might be worth it. A more established site may come with a higher sale price. But if it also comes with a high profit margin and a sizeable group of existing customers, it’s likely to pay for itself over time. 

If you look closely and run the numbers, you can estimate how long it will take you to recoup your sales price and start making money. Just make sure you factor in the time and expertise you need to continue to successfully run the site.

If you’re more interested in flipping a website, you may be interested in purchasing “fixer-upper” blogs. Flipping websites is a lot like flipping houses. House flippers don’t typically seek out the most pristine homes. Rather, they look for run-down houses or those in need of repairs. Because they know how to efficiently and cost-effectively transform properties, house flippers fix up houses and then sell them for a significant profit.

Just like a house flipper needs a certain amount of knowledge to fix up a home, website flippers need to have a strategy for increasing site authority and revenue. If you’re looking for blogs for sale with the goal of flipping them, ask yourself the following:

• Do you know how to spot a site with potential? 
• Do you know enough about the niche to expand the blog?
• Do you have proven methods of increasing website traffic?
• Do you have the time it takes to make meaningful improvements to the site?

If you can successfully do these things mostly or completely on your own, flipping websites might prove to be profitable. But if you need to hire more knowledgeable professionals to improve a site, it may not be.

Verify its history

Tools like Wayback Machine allow you to verify how long the blog has been published and check its progress since it launched. It’s also a good idea to double-check who owns the domain name to ensure they are the same person who is selling the blog. This step doesn’t take long at all, and it can save you from falling for a scam.

Verify analytics and financials

Always make sure you verify the claims made by the seller, specifically the analytics and financial information of the blog. As mentioned above, this can be done easily when buying a blog through a marketplace, but if you’re buying a blog directly from the owner you will need to do this yourself by asking for access to their Google accounts and affiliate marketing accounts.

Alternatively, some buyers opt for a live verification of site analytics. This involves getting on a Skype or other video call where the owner logs into the Google Analytics site and navigates through it, showing you all analytics in the process. Screenshots are relatively easy to fake, so showing you the analytics in real time is a much better option.

Don’t rush the verification process. Looking at the current traffic and financials is important, but so is looking at past traffic, revenue, etc. If you see sudden dips and spikes, that’s a red flag. But if the site has seen steady growth over a significant period of time, it’s more likely to become a sustainable source of revenue.

Look for faked traffic

Visitor engagement is a critical part of a successful website. But to artificially inflate numbers, some site owners may pay for traffic from click farms or bots. If you look closely at the analytics here, you can usually spot fake traffic.

Sites with a lot of fake traffic typically have an extremely high bounce rate (think something getting close to 100%). And even if there are a few returning visitors, those visitors tend to stay on the site for only a few seconds. Fake traffic might help make the site look more appealing to unknowing buyers, but it’s not useful for real, sustainable growth.

Make sure the content is original

It’s easy to skip this step. After all, a successful website has to have original content, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. And when it’s cheap and easy to check content originality, there’s no reason not to. Copyscape is the industry standard, and it even has a feature that lets you check the entire domain at once.

If you find a lot of similarities over the course of a Copyscape search, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the site owner has been plagiarizing other sources. Some unscrupulous site owners follow popular sites and try to spin their content, so there might simply be a copycat site out there. The seller might also own and operate similar websites.

Make sure you understand the category

It’s always best to buy a blog website that is about a topic or industry that you understand and may even have some experience writing about. This will ensure you can add value from day one to help the blog grow. The blog’s existing readership is knowledgeable about the niche, and readers will be able to spot an imposter. If that happens, you’ll almost certainly see your profitability drop.

Alternatively, you can hire specialist content writers to write for the blog once you’ve purchased it. Hiring writers is an investment, but it can certainly make the blog more profitable.

Just as you need to look closely at niche blogs for sale before purchasing, you’ll want to thoroughly vet your writers before hiring them. Not all content agencies (or individual writers) deliver as promised. Successful blogs center around quality content, so this isn’t the place to cut corners.

Research the market

Before purchasing an established blog, make sure you do some research about the market you’ll be entering. You want to find out information like who your biggest competitors will be and if there’s room for growth in the category. Doing extensive keyword research is also a good idea. This will ensure you’re buying a blog that has lots of growth potential.

Some people prefer to buy blogs in popular, in-demand niches. This is a strategy that can be profitable, but there’s a caveat: if the market has become completely saturated, there’s a lot less room for growth than you might think.

Look for a blog with multiple traffic sources

Buying a blog that already gets a lot of traffic can save you significant time and money. But keep in mind that search engine algorithms aren’t static. At the time of purchase, the blog might have a great SERP ranking. But the second Google makes an update, you might see that ranking drop.

Changing algorithms are an ever-present risk for website owners, but you can mitigate that risk by making sure the blog’s traffic doesn’t only come from organic search results. Look for other sources of web traffic like these:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Personal referrals
• Banner/display ads
• Paid search results

Ask for a non-compete clause

When buying a blog, inquire about having a contract made up that includes a non-compete clause. You don’t want to buy a blog from the owner only to see them turn around and instantly launch a new blog covering the same topic. If this isn’t possible, make sure you check some reviews and references about the blog seller before purchasing to see how they have dealt with past buyers.

The bottom line

Buying an established blog is a great way to get into digital business ownership. There are numerous platforms available for you to use to find profitable blogs for sale and make a safe and secure purchase. Just be prepared to put the work in once you make a purchase so you can take your blog to the next level.