Starting a successful blog, creating engaging content, and making money from your blog is a monumental undertaking. Almost every blogging niche is saturated, and it can be months (if not years) before you see any substantial income from your blog. In general, it’s tough to begin blogging and expect to generate any serious passive income.
However, blogging is a great way to generate passive income, especially once you have some courses, affiliate marketing, and regular clients that pay for sponsored posts. With little time and effort, your blog can generate solid passive income – but how can you skip the blog-building months/years?
You can skip all those months spent building a blog from the ground up by purchasing someone else’s blog, and investing a little time and money to monetize. Here’s the best way to generate passive income by building up an already-established blog.
Finding Passive Income Generating Blogs
There are a few ways you can find blogs for sale and (attempt) to determine how much revenue they’re bringing in right away. In order of the safest ways:
- Flippa.com
- WebsiteBroker.com
- Through your network
- Forums/Facebook
Flippa is one of the best sites to find blogs generating income right now, because Flippa requires sellers to include Google Analytics info. The most motivated sellers will take screenshots of their revenue and answer questions in the Q&A section of Flippa, and you can view all of this information even before you sign up for the site.
WebsiteBroker is similar and also includes business information, but you have to sign up to view anything more than the description of the website.
You’ll likely pay less and have more success finding blogs for sale through your network (friends, clients, coworkers) and through forums or Facebook. One successful multiple blog owner I know contacts people through Twitter, asking if they’re willing to sell their blogs to him. While many people aren’t, he has had some success and is already generating serious income from his blog-owning business.
Beware people looking to scam you. Some people will “sell” a blog to you, only to have you find out they never owned that blog in the first place. Before purchasing your income generating blog, check out Who.Is first to make sure the person who says they own the blog actually owns it.
Monetizing Your Blog
Once you’ve purchased your blog, sit down and determine where your income is coming from and how you could enhance it. Consider the following:
- Is the blog mainly just generating ad revenue?
- Does it rank high in SEO, or could you go through old posts and make them rank higher? (this will generate more traffic)
- Does the blog lend itself to an e-course?
- Are there companies you could reach out to for sponsored ads or posts?
Be creative in thinking of ways to monetize your blog. Some blogs, like travel, sports, and health lend themselves immediately to traffic and monetization. After all, if people are looking for those categories, chances are they’re willing to buy something related to travel, sports, or health (like food, supplements, work out gear, etc.)
Some blogs are solely in the drop-shipping business, making it easy for you to know how to monetize. I wouldn’t necessarily buy a blog if I had never run a drop-shipping business before, but if you’re familiar with it and willing to learn, an already established drop-shipping blog can be immediately profitable (and passive income generating, if done right).
Consider a Little Investment
While you could probably run your blog and generate passive income with little to no time commitment, consider investing a little time or money into your blog to keep it relevant. You can either do this yourself, or hire a virtual assistant to do it for you.
If you run an entertainment-type blog that generates passive income from sales, affiliates, or an e-course, consider making updates to your blog and/or course every once in a while. While much of your content is likely evergreen (which means it drives traffic and is relevant throughout the years), you may want to add some new posts every so often, or update your course to reflect changing technology, lingo, etc.
Many people who get into blogging don’t necessarily do it to generate passive income, but successful bloggers, after a while, are able to sustain themselves with solid passive income through their built up networks of affiliate links, sponsored posts or ads, and e-courses. If you’re interesting in owning a blog and generating passive income through it, consider skipping the beginning stages by buying an already-established blog.
Track All Your Accounts With Personal Capital
Personal Capital lets you see all of your accounts in one convenient place. Sign up now for free.Have you ever thought of buying a blog, or have you bought a blog in the past to monetize? What are your plans for establishing passive income in the future?
This is a completely new idea to me. I didn’t know people went around buying blogs. Of course there’s money in everything. I love blogging though I’m new at it I find a great sense of accomplishment in creating pieces or blogs. I t would be nice to one day be able to make money doing it.
This is interesting post and potentially great opportunity to acquire online businesses, or expand a function of your existing work. There is a joy that comes from the process of building something from nothing that makes the toil worth while. I have found you also meet a lot of great people along the way and build a network.