I would like to you to tell us about your way of making money online. Like the process you followed on purchasing a site for 10K and selling 14 months later for 575K. That would make a great case study series.

I am looking to transition from off line businesses to online ones. I want the freedom of being completely mobile. However I am not yet internet savvy.

Would you recommend someone like myself find a partner who is internet savvy or just jump in and hire programmers / designers as needed?

I look forward to discussing your future posts

I hardly would consider this website a lemon. 50,000 Alexa ranking? The profit he made in less than 9 months? A lemon? Sure it isn’t making as much at other sites but come on. A lemon? Have you read the stats and traffic reports?

Selling it doesn’t show it failed, it shows he can use his resources (whatever they are, whether it was manual labor, songwriting, blogging whatever) to make MORE money than he is with the blogging experiment. That doesn’t mean it failed.

You feel the new owner made a bad choice, how about you give it some time before you say that.

When did you start following this blog China? If you have been around since near the beginging like I have, I would venture to say you’d hardly find this a failure.

Cheers!
Scott

I happen to believe that whilst not a failure, the “blogging experiment” was never had a sustainable business model.

Selling is admitting that it failed. It obviosuly become clear that the previous owner was not able to make this business sustainable in the long term. He therefore front loaded teh reviews and picked the low hanging fruit to boost his bottom line figures.

Sales of the “theme” were also falling and it is not repeat business.

I believe you have bought a lemon and that you could have bought a similar theme or eyeballs a lot cheaper. Given you develop websites you surely didn’t buy this for the theme alone.

It will therefore be interesting to watch how you progress from here in terms of RSS and income. I believe this to be a poor investment but how poor depends on how much you spent which for some reason you seem reluctant to tell us. I am still not sure why as it goes against the ethos of this being an “experiment”.

@ redwall_hp – Please checkout today’s post to see my thoughts on this.

@ China – Ben already shared the site was sold for 5 figures, that’s pretty transparent. One day I’ll likely share exact figures, but does it really matter (aside from inquiring minds wanting to know)? I’ll put together a post soon that explains WHY we decided to buy this site, it’s not just RSS eyeballs, that’s for sure.

Your comment makes it sounds like you thought Ben’s experiment was a failure. To me, it was a raging success. If you were making $9.00/hour at your job, the $1500/month this website makes right now is a full time income for you. Ben’s goal was to go from $0 to a full time income, which is what he did.

@ Scott – completely agree with everything you said. I will have a different style than Ben no doubt. If you do the exact thing as someone else, you can expect the same results they were getting. My goal is to take this to the next level, so obviously some things will be changing.

This goes if we are talking about a restaurant or a website. Each owner is different and can see potential, but in different ways. This is good.

I don’t expect things to stay the same, and I don’t blame you at all for wanting to make it your own, but, readers, are sometimes fickle… I am sure you can expect to loose a certain number in the end, but you will gain some new readers as well, just the way it goes.

You bought it, its your blog, do what you want to with it (as I am sure you will). I am glad to hear that Ben is going to stick around for a while and work with you on the content. I know he has put his heart into writing day after day and it is nice to know he will be around a bit longer.

Best of luck to you, look forward to seeing what is ahead. Scott

This information is crucial if you want readers to stay around. It shows transparency and gives us an idea of your level of “investment”.

Moreover, the title of this blog is “experiment” which is what Ben did with some success and some failures.

Ben sold because he would no longer be able to hit his targets. The blog design was looking tired and he was running out of reviews to do (and they put off readers).

You have bought “RSS eyeballs” – what part of the experiment do you intend to continue with?

If we know how much you paid then we will know whether this new “experiment” for you makes or loses you money.

I figured someone had to say that…