297: Blog Flipping - Developing, Monetizing, and Selling Websites with Chelsea Clarke

Hey, folks, York here recording on a different mic today.

If it sounds different, that's why it is. The actual interview, which is with Chelsea Clark from blogsforsale Co, is with the normal mic.

So you'll hear a little switch when it switches over to the interview with Chelsea.

But I wanted to record a quick.

Intro to set up this interview.

I'm really excited about it because it.

Offers a different way to look at building a business. One of the things that we try and do on the podcast is represent as many different views and as many different angles that we can for ways that you can build a successful and thriving business.

And a lot of times we talk.

About starting and we talk about growing, how to do that well, but we don't often, sometimes, but not often do we talk about acquiring. And that's what this interview is about. I know a lot of people, some friends in my close, ish circles, Internet circles. So however close those are, who. That's the only way that they operate. They only operate through acquiring. They almost never start. And we don't talk about that a lot in this podcast. But if you're interested in having a successful business online, whatever that looks like for you, whether that be monetary success or the ability to kind of build your day and have time, autonomy, one.

Of the ways that you can do.

That is through acquiring a business. Now, there's potentially a little bit more risk or just different risk in that it requires you to spend money or potentially take out a loan to be able to purchase an asset, a business, a website. But the advantage is, you know that there's a history there, you know that there's traction with it. And it's one of the great ways that you can get a leg up that you can jump ahead of the people who are starting is by acquiring something that is already up and running. So I wanted to take some time to talk about that, how you can do that, strategies for doing that. And Chelsea, who is a broker, much like you have a real estate broker, you can have website brokers. She's a broker for blogs. So we're going to talk about what that looks like to acquire a blog. Let's go ahead and jump in. Chelsea, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm actually just, I've been so excited knowing that this day was coming because I've really been looking forward to get to talk to you. I've actually been following you for some time. So thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah, for sure. It's always fun when people have a little bit of context for what we do. We've had some conversations with people I'm trying to think of like what an industry might be, like bookkeeping or accounting or something where people are kind of coming from a completely different realm. But this is like squarely in the. In your realm. It's what you do. It's what you know, you know, you reference Tasty Pins, which is a WP Tasty product. And being familiar with that and so we can kind of hit the ground running. But I'm curious to hear your story a little bit. How did you get into this world and talk a little bit about your kind of background in marketing monetization specifically, which a lot of people are really interested in. And then we're going to talk about kind of the concept of buying or potentially selling websites.

Let's do it. Well, I got started as I was in school for marketing and digital media way back in the day. And I love building websites, I love the marketing side of things. And I also really enjoyed the strategy of how you can monetize your content, your own digital content. And after school I got into corporate marketing and I was building websites for companies and I was working at a business brokerage where all of the brokers were just really focused on brick and mortar companies. So buying and selling, real walk in the door kind of businesses. And I really noticed there is a lot of money and amazing creators in the digital space. So I've always been a blogger, I've always loved it as a passion. And around this time I was monetizing my blog and I said, hey, I'm going to go to my own and just develop, monetize and sell sites for myself. And so that's really how I got started doing it. And then pretty soon people started asking me, hey, can you help me sell my site? Or hey, can you help me monetize my site? Teach me about affiliate marketing. And so that is really how I started doing it. I became a broker, I went through IBBA and now I do it full time helping people buy and sell online businesses.

Can you tell? Can you share a little bit? Ibba? So what is that for people who aren't familiar with kind of the industry slogans, myself included, like, I'm guessing it's some type of certification around brokerage.

It is an international business brokers association. So they offer training for brokers and they really focus also on brick and mortar specifically. But I went through that program with it in my mind that I was just going to apply what I learned there to what I already knew about content monetization and just apply it to online business, the online space.

That's awesome. It's one of the things that I think is really an important concept for people to know about, which is, hey, not only are you building something that is cash flowing, but anything that cash flows then in and of itself is a product. It is a thing that you can sell. So sometimes we think on the micro level as we should, like, how do we create more ad income? How do we create a, you know, a product that we can sell on our website? Maybe it's an ebook, a course. But you know, there's a, there's a lot of different factors that go into this. But for the most part, you know, every dollar that you earn within your business, that represents a value increase of what your business is worth. So there's, there's this thing called multiples, which maybe we can talk about. But like if you earn $10,000 from your website, you might be able to sell that website for 30,000 or you can go up and up and up. If you make 100,000 from your website, it might be worth, you know, 300 to $400,000. A lot of it depends wrapped up in that. But it's really an exciting thing and an important thing for people to think about. It's not just cash flow that you're creating, it's also a valuable asset. So I'm actually curious to rewind a little bit. When you were doing at the brokerage, people were selling brick and mortar, what was that experience like? Like, were you doing some of the brokering, were you helping in different ways kind of support those brokers and what types of businesses were they selling?

Yes. So I was in the marketing department, I was building the sales pages, I was building all of the deliverables about the businesses that the brokers were representing. And I was creating the email newsletter. So I was working in the email marketing side. I really got to hone in on a lot of different things that I would always do for my own blogs. But I was able to do it for the brokers. So that really helped me to see what was possible. And it was a great experience. And it also really taught me about looking at things always from a business perspective. And so when I was then. Sorry, I'll jump back. The type of businesses that they were focused on, they. A lot of the time they were like mom and pop shops or a small business bakery, coffee shop. We sold a lot of things.

Imagine it was like in the Building that we are in. So in this office, there's a frame shop in the bottom right corner, Steven's Art and Frame. And they have gone through the process of selling it, but he's owned it for like 30 years and he's going through the process of selling it. I'm imagining that's the kind of businesses where it's like, somebody's owned it for a really long time, they're retiring, their kids don't want to take it over, so then they need to find somebody to buy it. That type of situation.

Definitely that type of situation. And now with the online space and bloggers, we're seeing a lot of people who either created their blog, maybe their passion has changed, or they're focusing on a different niche now. They don't have to just let it fall or the hosting expire. They can actually sell it to someone else, make a profit, and put that money onto their next project.

Can you talk a little bit about why that is? Because I would imagine people listening. They're like, wait, if you have a website and it's making $1,000 a month, $10,000 a month, whatever it might be, why would you ever sell it? It feels like something where it's like, this thing's working, you finally achieved a certain level of success. What do you see in the conversations that you're having with people for why they're like, you know what, it's time to wrap up, want to get rid of this. Why would people do that?

The biggest reason that I see is people, their interests have changed. They maybe built it from the ground up. And now as they've developed themselves as a content creator, they've realized that their passion is actually in a completely different niche. We see this a lot with people who, when they're just getting started, maybe they'll start a lifestyle blog with travel and beauty and fashion and tech and like so many different things. And then they realize, oh, the money. If I really hone in on one of these categories and make this what I'm known for, I can grow that bit much more. So we see that we also have people who, they've got their website to earning $1,000 a month, and then they think, hey, I could just cash out and I can just do something else completely. So if your site is earning about $1,000 a month, you could sell it for 24,000 to $36,000 and that just that that head start to focus on your next thing. Buyers will typically pay two to three years times the monthly earnings of a Site. So that's one way. And then we also have a lot of people who did it, like me, they're blog flippers. They create something there. They can create a startup business, they can monetize it quickly, they can drive traffic to it, they can create digital products, but they don't want to literally be the person sitting there creating content for all eternity. They get it up and ready, and then someone else can come in, acquire it, and then they can run with it.

Yeah, it's almost like you think of people who flip houses. What they love doing is coming in. They love to. Or even developers building something from the ground up. They build it, they sell it, and then. But they could rent it out, but they just decide not to. That's not what they do. Or you flip a house, you come in, you clean it up, you improve it. And that being one of the options. Like, a lot of people might say, hey, what. What I'm gonna focus in on is I'm gonna take something that is available for sale, somebody else has already done the work, and I'm going to come in, improve it, optimize it. So it's kind of like there's all these different stages. Some people could be.

Exactly.

If you think about it from like an investing standpoint, you could be from, like the zero to one where you're like, hey, I'm gonna start this thing and I'm gonna build it to a certain point, and then I'm gonna sell it. And there's other people who are like, hey, I'm gonna find something that's already built, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna improve it, and then I'm gonna sell it. And then there's another group of people. I think of my friend Kevin who has a company called sureswift Capital. They're like, hey, we're gonna come in, we're gonna improve something, and we're gonna hold onto it forever. Like, we don't wanna get rid of it. We're just gonna hold onto it. We know that we have a team that can support it. So I think what's great about this conversation is on the podcast, a lot of times we talk about starting. Here's how you get started, here's how you build your thing. And for some people, that's going to be a good fit. But for others, it might be a good fit to say, hey, I'm going to take some of my savings, maybe I'm going to get a small business loan, and I'm going to purchase something that Already has cash flow. So what if somebody is like, gosh, that sounds really awesome. What are the things that they need to consider in regards to like getting money to purchase something? Can you get a business loan? If it's an Internet business, you're going to have to have savings. Do you have any thoughts on that or have you seen anything around, like getting financing if it does get to be kind of expensive for the asset that you're going to purchase?

Definitely. And again, it really depends on the scale of the business that you're looking to buy. If you're coming in and looking at a business that's for sale for, let's say $40,000, you may be able to do that with savings. Your bank may be able to give you a loan, depending on your credit. Of course, everyone will be different. But there's also such a thing as seller financing as well. So sometimes when purchase a business, the seller could, in a sense, it's almost like loaning it to you. So you'll pay a payment plan until it's paid off, and then once it's paid off at six months to a year, that would be long, a year, But I have seen it done, then you completely own it. And then you get the domain into your registrar account. So that's one way of doing it. You don't have to always have that big lump sum of cash up front. But 90% of the deals that we do are paid in one escrow payment, so. So it's a cool way to get on the digital property ladder is to buy a smaller business and then develop it. You can even sell it on, get that profit and then you buy the next one. So there's so many different options. And the great thing about it when you buy a business is yes, like we're talking, it has cash flow, but it also has an audience, it has traffic, it has email subscribers as customers, people buying things. Someone created a ton of digital products. Maybe it comes with an online course, hundreds of articles of reviews, views, or content that would take you or your team months, if not years to actually write. So that's another huge benefit is the actual content that you get to acquire when you buy.

Yeah, you think of that like if you had hired freelancers to create content and maybe it's 200 blog posts, who knows what the price would be like? That in and of itself is valuable, especially if it's, if it's good content. But you're also buying the cash flow from the business. One of the things that's interesting, you had Kind of referenced this earlier. You said, you know, $1,000, easy number to use. Let's say a site is earning $1,000, and we'll assume that's profit. So it's like there's revenue and Maybe there's like $1,200 in revenue and then $200 in expenses, whatever that might be. So you consider that $1,000 of income that you get each month. And so that would be 12,000 in a year. And you said two to three times earnings. So like 24,000 to 36,000 might be what something sells. And a lot of it depends, you know, what type of product it is, what type of blog it is, all of those factors. But can you talk about kind of why that? Like, why two to four, why does that exist as kind of the multiplier on yearly income? Whereas, like, if you were buying, let's say a commercial building or like a residential house, it might be like 10 to 15 times. So it seems like, wait a minute, that cash flow, so to speak, is kind of like quote unquote, cheap, considering how quickly you can potentially pay it back. Why is it different for a website versus like a physical building or maybe even like a brick and mortar business that you would have sold before?

Yeah, and I think it is because it's easier to scale a digital business. So when you take it over, there's not many expenses. You're not relying on customers having to walk in the door, you're not paying rent, you're not XYZ that a physical business would have. Your return on investment can come back a lot quicker with a digital business. I didn't make the rule. That just seems to be an industry standard that it would be between two and three years. We have seen some sites sell for more, and the reason for those ones selling more, in my experience, is because they're getting so much organic Google search traffic. So if you have a site that is really ranking really well and you're getting those high keyword searches for your site, that's a really valuable asset that will come into the valuation of your business for sure. But I also always recommend, don't just focus on one traffic source. And I know you guys have talked about this on your podcast before too, but diversify your traffic stream. So go into Pinterest, use tasty pins, use Pinterest marketing to really get another source of search traffic for your business. You're not just, you know, because we all. We've seen it. Algorithms change, Things change at any time. You don't want to lose all your eggs in one basket.

Yeah. And I would assume that, you know, as you, as you look at the potential risk involved with websites would maybe be another consideration where, let's say you do have something where you're like, great, I've got this website, it's got traffic, I'm earning income from it. But then if you dig into it, maybe you realize, like, wait a minute, a lot of the traffic is coming to like one blog post about my banana smoothie. And it's like, nobody else has written about banana smoothies and I totally own that organic keyword. But then maybe there's like a banana smoothie craze and then everybody posts about it and then your post drops out. Suddenly that income goes away. So I'd imagine another reason why websites or blogs or whatever it might be is like the risk involved. There's a certain level of risk involved with you spending, let's say, $50,000 and potentially that algorithm changes after you buy it, and then it all goes away. So have you seen that happen or. If somebody is interested in buying a digital asset, we'll call it just to like, broadly speak about websites, what are the things that they should be looking at and being like, wait, I need it. I need to check along the way, kind of the due diligence process. You know, if I, if I was buying a house, I'd make sure that the furnace works and you know, that there's not any, like ants in the basement. But like, what is the equivalent of that for a digital asset?

I'm so happy that you asked that question. It's so important to cover that. And in your due diligence, when you're thinking about buying a business, an online business, you're going to want Google Analytics access. You can actually go and see what pins are popular. You can see where the traffic is coming from and really get a full overview of what it is that you're buying. And then you're probably going to want to jump on a call with the. Or if you're working with a broker like myself, you would jump on a call with me and the seller and we would actually go over the seller's dashboard. So over the shoulder, they would share their screen and you could see the WordPress backend. You can see the plugins they use. You could see all of their ad dashboards. If they're with Mediavine, you can actually see their RPMs, you could see what payments they've had. You can see what are the most profitable articles from their mediavine dashboard. You can also go and look into all of their affiliate accounts with them on the call, so see what their share sale payouts have been, what their most profitable affiliate programs are. You really want to just make sure that you're looking at everything and really just understanding because yes, things can change. And like we're saying about diversifying your traffic sources, you're also going to want to make sure that the site diversifies their monetization sources too. So we don't want to buy a site that only relies on ad revenue. Ad revenue is great, we like to have it, but it can't be the only thing you want it to also earn from affiliate programs or its own digital products as well. That's like the holy grail, the holy trifecta, the three programs, digital products and ad revenue combined. And then on the just note about the traffic too. When you're looking at the traffic for a site, you're also going to want to make sure that the business comes with an email list or social accounts that are active so that even if something did happen and your traffic dropped, maybe it's seasonal, you're not sure if it's going to come back. You know that you have a customer base and email list that you can continually just send those newsletters and keep people engaged. If it comes with a Facebook group. These are all things that put together a healthy picture of a business that you would want to acquire.

Yeah. One of the things I love about it is, you know, we don't the way that we operate businesses, we're like, hey, we love this. We imagine ourselves doing this for a really long time. But it's even just like best business practice type stuff. Even if you aren't thinking about selling it or acquiring a site is to think about like, am I diversifying? You know, am I building an email list? The reason these are good things to check when you're buying a site is because they're good things to have with the site that you own. It's. There's a certain level of stability there if you have an email list or if you've built multiple sources of traffic or you have multiple sources of income, regardless of if, if you're going to sell it eventually or you know, regardless of if it's a site that you're looking to acquire. So it's one of the great things about starting talking about any of the purchase process is, hey, these are just generally things you should be doing even if you're going to hold onto it for 10 to 20 years or never Sell it at all. What are the things that you see when somebody puts a site up, they say, hey, I want to list this. And then somebody buys it. Where are the opportunities that you see or the gaps? A lot of times when people purchase it, if it was a house, you might come in and you say, oh my gosh, if we upgrade the kitchen and like add another bathroom, we'll be able to charge 500 more dollars for rent. Are there equivalents for websites or blogs specifically where somebody purchases it? And really quickly you can start to slot some things in that makes the site more money or makes it more valuable. What do you see in the. In the deals that you've done?

Absolutely. So in the deals that I've done and when I'm purchasing sites myself, the first thing that I always do as I go in and this is just seems like something small, but this is always my step is I go and I remove a bunch of the plugins because I always see so many sites, they have too many plugins and they're just not necessary. And a lot of the time I can just write my own code to do what the plugin was doing. So I go through and I just set that up. And then I'll usually give a new theme, something more professional. I'll get it on Genesis so it's just faster. And then I'll go right into the content. So the main thing that I focus on is the actual content. What is there, how can I build on it? And this comes into play when you're looking for a site to buy too. You're always going to have an easier time monetizing it and developing it if it's in a niche that you specifically have some experience in or are connected to, or you're educated in, or you just are interested in learning more about. So that way, when you go into the content, you or someone on your team that you're having help you, you can improve what's there and build on it. You can make the articles meatier, have more information, improve the affiliate links, add more pictures, write with better SEO in mind. There's so many things that you can actually do with the content. Even if it' already ranking quite well, I'm sure you can make it better. So that's where I would say start. And then the next thing would be to go and look at the community that came with it and put yourself in front of them. Go into the Facebook page, go into the Facebook group, if it came with one Instagram account, and just go and start engaging with the community that's already there, letting them know about changes or upcoming things that you have with the business. And that is also just really going to help you. Because I know when you acquire business, some people get nervous and they feel like it's someone else's audience and they wait too long to speak to them, they wait too long to send an email, they wait too long to engage in the Facebook group. And if you just jump in, you throw yourself in, it's going to be a lot easier and then people are going to come to know and like and trust you as the new owner. And then it's just going to be so much easier to help them and find out what their pain points are and create products to serve them better.

Yeah. What about the personality driven sites? Right. So there's, especially in this space, you think of, a lot of times you'll think of a site and you'll attribute it to a person, which is, I think, great when you're building, when you want to connect with people, it's a personal brand. But my guess is that ideally when you're looking to purchase a site, you'd be looking to purchase not a personal brand, but a brand that's personal, like maybe has a voice, has a personality, but it's not like somebody's face everywhere. Because then if you do jump into the Facebook group, they'll be like, wait, you're not this person, you aren't the brand. Because the brand kind of becomes synonymous with the person. So how do you handle that if it's a very personality driven site or is it like maybe you don't want to purchase those types of sites?

Yes. So we have two types of buyers, usually one type of buyer, they want to come in and be able to put their own picture, their own name on and essentially just take over the content. We see this a lot with coaches. So coaches will buy an authority site that they can just slap their name on and then they have all of this authority content related to their name in Google searches. So we see that. But then we also have, it's usually the bigger corporations, the bigger website investors that come and buy up websites to hold like you were mentioning, they actually, they want to buy the Persona of that person on there. So there is a lot of bloggers, blog sites where the blogger has been gone for years, but you'll still see her face on the image and she has allowed the new owner to keep her name in the email. So it looks like she's still there, but she's not. It's a corporation, you know, running it, running the shots now, and it really just comes down to the sellers choice. So personally, if I created a business with my name, Chelsea Clark on it, I'm not going to sell that with Chelsea Clark in my own image because I have my own personal brand. But I create startup businesses with an avatar. So I start from the beginning where I come up with a new name. I have an image of a stock photo of someone. That way the new owner can just come in and either leave it as is or they can add their own name. So it really is something that's worked out on a deal by deal basis and it's whatever the seller is comfortable with. If you don't want your Persona to go to the new owner, you don't have to. Whereas if you don't mind, there will be buyers that will be interested in that as well.

Sure. Yeah. It's interesting. I would imagine that there's in certain scenarios a premium that comes with buying the Persona of somebody. So it's like, hey, if you want to own my Persona, like there's definitely going to be a price tag attached to that. But I would imagine like any deal, there's probably different, very like varying different ways you could structure that. For instance, you could say, hey, you can purchase all the content. I'll keep my name on it. Like I wrote it. You don't have to update that. But like you, you can't write things as if it's from me. Maybe that's one of the things that you say or like, yes, I would imagine there's like 50 different scenarios that you could come up with to meet the, the, the, the needs of the, the buyer and the seller, which is like, you know, that's deal making is figuring out what works for everybody.

Exactly.

So would you say, would you say, like, hey, here's how you know if you're like a buyer versus a starter. Is there any advice that you have for people who want to kind of sort through and understand and reflect on, am I somebody who's like a starter or am I somebody who's a buyer? Are there characteristics that you see for those different types of people or any advice that you'd have for people who are like, wait, I've always just thought about starting, but maybe I am a buyer. How do you know if you are one of those people?

Yeah, I think if someone has always thought about starting their blog, but they just don't seem to get around to it, or they try, they got their hosting, maybe they installed WordPress. But then they're like, oh, this is so much work. You are probably better suited to buying if you're noticing that time is going by and you're just not getting those startup things done. Fair enough. It takes a lot of time to build up something from scratch. So if you would like to literally jump ahead and acquire something that already has that traffic, the community, all the content done and it's already making money, then you have those options. And that can be really appealing to someone who, you know, we've wanted to do it for so long, and there's always a million things that seem to get in the way. Family comes up. There's certain things that are stopping you from actually making it happen. You can give yourself a break and just make it happen. Sort of just cut ahead.

Yeah. How about teams? Like, if somebody has a site and they have somebody helping, does the site usually come along with the team that somebody was working with, or what does that look like and how does that work?

Yes, we have. Sometimes that does happen. A lot of times sites will have virtual assistants that will be willing to stay on, and that is worked into the deal as well. But so it's not necessarily that you're taking on their employee, but you have a contact for their virtual assistant and someone who already knows the business, and then that way you can just continue working with them if you wish. So that's always a great. A great thing to work into a deal as well, because that person knows the ins and outs of the business. They've probably written content, they've probably engaged with the audience. So it's just an easier process when you're transferring things along. But it's not required. If you have your own team or you just literally are passionate about it and you want to work on it yourself, you absolutely can. That's a great thing. Like, I know we were talking about with house flipping, it's very similar with website flipping, website development, except you don't need a huge mortgage, you don't need a huge team of contractors. You literally could do it yourself on a small budget if you wanted to.

Yeah. So walk me through what the process would be. So you have your. Your site. If you could talk about your site a little bit where you're listing different blogs. One of the things that's great about your site is it focuses on blogs. Right. There's a lot of brokers who will be like FBA businesses for Amazon and SaaS and blogs and like E commerce. But it's like, hey, you're focused on content sites, on blogs, within different niches. But what does that process look like? Like, if somebody's like, I think I might want to be somebody who looks at buying websites, start to finish, kind of high level overview the outline. What does that process look like to actually like find a deal you want to move forward on and then actually close on it and then own the site?

Absolutely, yes, I will walk you through every step. And yes, we do specialize in blogs. The website is a marketplace and brokerage. It's called blogsforsale Co. So co. And although we specialize in blogs, we do also sell Amazon, FBAs and E Commerce sites as well. But blogs is my passion. So I always have a lot of blogs there too at all different niches, as you mentioned. And so if, if you are someone that you're thinking of buying a website, you can come and take a look. And we have everything listed on the site so you can actually see the domain, you can see how much it's earning. You could read the profit and loss sheet, you can see a snapshot of the analytics and sort of just understand the business. And then if it interests you, there's a form on each listing that goes right to me and then we can get in touch and I can answer all of your questions. On some of the bigger sites, like the ones that are selling for over $100,000, we don't usually post the financials live on the site, but you can get that one on one after. And so the process is really seamless. So after some questions are answered and maybe we'll jump on a zoom call to really see if it's the right business for you, then you can make an offer. So there's asking prices listed on the listings and the asking price will be within that two to three year multiple. But you are welcome to make an offer that you feel is right for you. So that offer, you can send that to me via email, I present that to the seller, they have the opportunity to either accept it or decline it, or send a counter. And then once we've agreed on the right price, I'll provide the legal contract that will protect both you and the seller and have everything outlined so you understand exactly what you're getting. Everything is listed, the social accounts, how the transaction will actually happen, and you'll both have the opportunity to sign that, agree to it, and then I open an escrow account so that you can send the money to a secure third party for holding while we get all of the website files and assets sent to you. And during that time, that's really important. I know if you're ever buying something, maybe not from my site, but you're just thinking of buying a site that you see out in the world. It's always best to go with a broker just so you have that, the legal protection and certain things that we see to be aware of that you may not be aware of. But if you are going out on your own, I would say always, always, always use some sort of escrow service. Never buy or sell any big businesses over PayPal. You're just not protected. But if you're working with a broker, they will handle all the escrow. So that's okay, that's covered. Once more money is there, it's secured, it's being held. And I'll also mention when it's held in escrow, nobody sees your bank information. The seller doesn't see it, I don't see it, and you don't see theirs either. That's part of the security level. Then we just start sending everything to you. So you'll get all the passwords for all the social accounts. You may actually acquire the whole email service provider. So it may be something like ConvertKit or it might just be a file with all of the email addresses that you can upload to your own. If you already have one, you'll get the actual WordPress site. So we do a website migration from the seller's host over into your own host. The only thing you really need to buy ahead of time is just make sure that you have web hosting. Then the domain gets transferred to you and any other assets that come with it. YouTube channels, Google accounts. You know, that can be a bit of a process because Google is so secure. So we have to usually go back and forth the confirmation codes for that. But once that's done, you're in the clear. As I said, the social accounts, any digital products, so canva templates, if you have online course, you'll get the, the online course access anything else that comes with the business. We just are there to make sure that you all get it in a timely fashion. And then once it's all on your side, you go back to escrow. You say, you click yes, I've received it, and then that unlocks it, it releases the funds to the seller, and then now you have everything. The final step, I would say if you're buying a business that is an LLC or it has a trademark, that process will take a little bit longer, and that's the trademark. Offices like to do that. After you have actually closed escrow. That's when they will start to do it because they just want to know that it's all tied up so they don't want to have to go back and do it. If something happened, you backed out of escrow and they've already started some trademark work that's all done afterwards. And then once you have everything, that's really it. You have it all. And then I'm also there to provide marketing support, monetization support. I have a lot of online courses on marketing, blog monetization, email marketing, all that kind of stuff that I can help people with at any time as well. And really then you're just, you're free to run it however you want to run it. Everything is then in your name.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's fun to think about that moment where it's like suddenly everything's transferred over and then you go and check like the mediavine account or the Ad Thrive account or whatever it might be Stripe. If it's like payment processing, it's like, oh, and then there's money coming in and like you've then purchased a business and, and, and you have the, the, the benefits of, of that said business specifically around mediavine and Ad Thrive are those. Do those accounts transfer over in the same way or like the ad. Any like Google adsense, you know, whatever it might be. Do you create your own account and then like put in the ad code on your own or do you like transfer that account over? How does that work in an acquisition for any of those ad providers?

Absolutely. It's a great question. So each ad provider is a little bit different if you are buying a site that's on mediavine. Mediavine recently changed some of their requirements so they still will allow a site to move to a new owner's account, but it just has to be getting over 50,000 monthly sessions. So that's something that I should have mentioned too. When you're looking at the traffic, you'll just want to make sure if it's with Mediavine, that it is getting close to 50,000 monthly sessions in order to stay on Mediavine. And then we actually work with Mediavine. They work between the buyer and seller to actually take the website and move it right into the new account. So there's no downtime, there's nothing that needs to be changed. It just really just switches from one account to the next and then the new owner starts being paid the day that it lands in their account. And the actual ads on the site don't need to change. Everything is done on the mediavine end. AdSense is a little bit different, but the great thing about AdSense is usually you just have one little block of code that you've put onto. If it's in Genesis, you just have it in your header. You have it wherever you have your ad code for. Maybe you're using a plugin. That's really easy because then the new owner can just replace that with their own code or they can take over the Google AdSense account. But I recommend that you just have your own AdSense account because it has your own tax ID and all that kind of stuff that you'll just want to have that it fresh as your own. It's really easy just to put your own code in. And then AdThrive I haven't worked with, but I know Ezoic is really easy to move sites for as well. And the sessions are much lower. So that's something that we've done as of last summer for any sites that we're selling that are Mediavine sites that aren't meeting that 50,000 monthly threshold. That's okay because you can still buy it and just move it to Ezoic. And we have our rapid Ezoic. That's really great. And they get that, that sorted really fast.

Cool, that's great. One of the things that you had talked about when you were recapping the process was, you know, going in, looking at, analyzing the, you know, the, the site itself, make sure that it's a good fit, make sure that something you want to move forward on. It's one of the things I'd suggest even if people are super early on and they don't know if it's something that they want to do to start getting in the process of looking at financials for businesses. And you know, I'm on a. My friend Mark has a site, Quiet Light Brokerage, which is another brokerage you might be familiar with. And I get the email listings and like this morning it was like sent out this listing for like. I forget what it was. It was like a site that was started five years ago and it was like, is this the one? No, I'm looking up in real time, which is like the worst thing to do in a podcast. But it was, it was, oh, five year old. It was a five year old site in the beauty space. And it was like a $5 million listing. It was like, oh my gosh, that's super inspiring and interesting to look at. And I think for myself or people who listen to this podcast, we're probably not going to be buying a 5 billion dollar website, but it's interesting to look at it. And in the same way, you know, there's a site, you know, recipe blog on blogs for sale right now. Depends on when people are looking at this. And it's $76,000 to purchase it. And you can click and look and see like, here's the P and L profit and loss statement for this website. You can take a look at that and kind of like explore to see like what the details are on that site. And it's like, oh, you look at it and it's like March and April, those are really profitable months. You know, May was a profitable month. That's when you can start to kind of dig into it and start to learn a little bit, ask those questions about certain, certain sites and learn a little bit. So even for people who are really early on and you know, maybe you're not going to buy something in the next month to start the process of educating yourself around, you know, different businesses, their P and ls, how those businesses are doing to inform your own decisions. But also the site that might be a good fit for you if you do want to decide to go the buy route. And then just to shine a light on the escrow comment how important that is to make sure you have this central place. We've used it a couple times for buying domains. So we bought tinybit.com we haven't spun it up yet, but that was an escrow account. We bought Clarity. Clarity with an I at the end for a new SaaS product we're working on. We, we said, had a conversation with like a Go GoDaddy broker on domains and we're like, we're about to buy Clarity. And he's like, okay, it's going to be a million dollars. I was like, what million dollars? He's like, that's it. If, if it was with a Y, it was with a Y. So I was like, actually it's the I at the end. And he's like, okay, that, that makes sense. That'll we could probably get that for 10,000, which is how much we bought it for. So, but just really important to, to escrow as well. So one of the things that's fun on your site is like the different niches. Can you talk about those? Obviously food is one of those areas, but there's a couple of other niches that you focus on, kind of all within the like publishing category for the most part. You said you also do fba and other sites as well. But talk about the different niches that you have and any differences in those in terms of like monetization or how those sites are run or are they all pretty similar across the board?

Yeah, well, I noticed that a lot of the. Even if the niche is really different, they're still run in a very similar way and they're monetized in similar ways. So most of them really focus on affiliate marketing, which is great. I like to see that from any site. So if you're thinking about just even developing your site to hold having that sort of affiliate marketing, the links and all of that in there is so important. It's so good. What I noticed too is although we do our food blogs sell very fast, so everyone here listening, I know that you probably have an awesome food blog. I would love to take a look at it if you are thinking of selling it. We do have a lot of buyers who are always looking for food blogs. Do you know why that is like that?

What is it about food that makes them like food specific sites that makes them desirable?

Everybody likes to eat. I think no matter what, people are going to be looking things up on Pinterest. What's for dinner, what's for lunch, what do I give my kids for their school lunch when they're back to school? There's so many, you know, everybody is interested in that. Personally, I'm a terrible cook, but I will go to a food blog just to get a quick inspiration of what to, what to make.

So I think maybe something about like evergreen too. Like it's not like a tech blog where it's like within two weeks it's, you're going to have to create.

Oh, that's huge. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And anything that's an evergreen niche like health and wellness, food, money and relationships, those will always be, there will always be so many different ways to monetize a niche like that. And there will always be interest. I believe when you get into more of the really like sub niches, I think that can still be very profitable. I know we just sold a pets niche. It was about dogs that went so fast. There was so much interest on that because it was so niche down and you know, they're talking. There's so many things that they can promote. There's so many dog products. I say like when you get a new puppy, it's like having a new baby. You have so much gear that comes with them. So there's therefore there's so many different types of gear that you can promote. And earn commissions with.

Yeah, that's interesting. There was somebody that they were sharing the other day about, like, fba. So those who aren't familiar with fba, it's like fulfillment by Amazon. So essentially stuff that you're selling on Amazon. He was saying the same thing for pets. He's like, pet sites. Just like, people love buying pet sites. Uh, yeah. Which is just. It's as a dog person, easy to understand. Um, me too. But something for people to check out, even just to see, like, what are other sites doing and, you know, what do they look like and how do they work. It would be something great to kind of explore as people are looking through that. Um, so, you know, as you think about somebody who's like, great, I'm super excited to do this, at least to learn a little bit more about it. I'll do a plug for a book I've talked about before. Buy Then Build. Do you know Walker? Have you ever. He'd be somebody who'd be a great connection. He wrote this book called Buy, Then Build, all about, like, why it makes so much sense to buy a business and then build it as opposed to starting. But how about on your end, Chelsea? Like, anything that you'd recommend as, like, the first step. How do people get into this? Obviously it's a little bit scary to think about, but, like, how do you take those first few steps?

Yes. And I think you nailed it too, when you were saying just about educating yourself. Go into these different sites and see what's. See what people are selling. Go and dig into the financials. Even if you're not ready to buy yet, you may be down the road. Go and sign up to people's email list. So get on our email list on the site blogsforsale Co and we send weekly listings out. And then that way you could just stay up to date on what is coming out, how much things are selling for. And you never know, like, your dream site may pop up down the road. And if you're on that email list, then you have the opportunity to see it before anyone else. And yeah, just educating yourself, going and figuring out what your personal interest is. So we don't want to just buy any site that looks profitable. We want to buy sites that will be profitable for us because we understand how to continue to run them and continue to grow them. So if, like I was saying before, if you have a personal connection to something, you have a passion or interest, skills, past experience, something that you can apply to that niche, nine times out of 10, you're going to make that more profitable than the one that someone else has made profitable. But you have no idea what it's about. So just really educating yourself. The first site that I sold was a beauty blog and I built it up because I believe in cruelty free beauty. So against animal testing. So I created this niche site that just promoted brands and ethical companies that talked that sold beauty products that didn't test on animals. So that was so niche down and I was able to grow it and monetize it very quickly and I sold it on its one year birthday for $50,000 and that was like yeah, it was just like a quick build it. I love it, I have a passion about it but I don't want to be running it forever. Someone else now can take it and just make it theirs. So anything like that, that's really what it is. Just education max with your own interests and you'll be good to go. Anybody can start website investing. Anyone can buy a site, anyone can sell a site. Developing your site to sell is exactly the same things that you would do to develop it for yourself to improve it and grow it and make it successful.

That's awesome. So blogs for Sale obviously something people can check out. We'll link to that as well. But other places that people can follow along with you Chelsea and what you're up to and connect with you if they have other questions.

Oh sure. And I always love to chat with people so you can find me on Instagram at Her Paperroot or Blogs for Sale. I have two depending on what your interests are. So Blogs for Sale is where all the business brokerage and blog flipping stuff is. Her paper route is where I share marketing, online business development, blogging content, all that sort of good stuff. I really love to dig into funnels and email marketing so you'll find that on the her paperroot side. But yeah, just jump in my DMs. I would love to chat with anyone and if you are thinking of selling your site I'd be happy to give you a free website valuation. Just go to blogsforsale Co V A L like short for Valuation. There's a form there that you can fill out and I will give you an email back with some information and a suggested listing price for what you may be able to sell that site for.

Cool, that's great. Love it. Super fun to talk about this stuff. It's a topic that I love so it's really easy for me to. We could jam on this for hours and hours but we've got other things, too.

I love how educated you are on it. You know all this stuff. So this is so cool.

It's really fun.

Jump back and forth about.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. I think it'll be a new perspective for a lot of people, something that a lot of folks will be excited about and hope that a couple people are able to connect with you. Chelsea, thanks so much.

Well, thank you so much for having me. This has been so, so much fun getting to nerd out with you on this stuff.

Thanks.

Thanks for coming on the podcast, Chelsea.

And thank you for listening.

As always.

Be sure to check out the show notes if you want additional links that.

We talked about today on the podcast, or if you just want to dive deeper into some of the other podcasts we have, you can just go to foodbloggerpro.com podcast to get all of the different show notes and resources that we have. And while you're there, you can poke.

Around and learn a little bit more.

About Food Blogger Pro. And of course, you can check out Chelsea's sites as well. We talked today about blogs for sale and she also has her paperroute.com root route, whatever you'd want to say. So be sure to check that out as well.

That is a wrap for this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Make it a great week.

Thanks, Sam.