I got an email last week from Ross from The Blighty Traveller offering up his site for sale. He’s had put it up on an auction site and my guess is that he was also contacting folks he knows online to see if they were interested, and I was one of them.
At first I didn’t consider it at all and wished him well with the sale. But then, out of curiosity, I had a look around his site and was impressed with the content, the way it’s organised and the look of it and then I started thinking about it a bit more. He emailed me over some stats, talked to me a bit about existing deals, and suddenly I was interested.
I bought the site today for GBP1,950 which is just over US$3,100 and I think that’s a good deal based on what sort of earning I think I can get out of it. Ross already has a few ad deals already set up including monthly posts for GBP50 (a price I think is way too low but I don’t look at paid posts as free content, I look at them as advertising), plus a few other good advertisers.
The site is about travel in the UK and, as I already have three sites with UK-related content (Stuck in London, London Olympics, Airport to London), I think there will be a lot of crossover with my ads. I can approach people who currently advertise with my UK sites to see if they’re interested in ads on The Blighty Traveller as well. I feel like this alone could be good for quite a few easy deals. Having another site to show to potential advertisers is always good… especially a PR4 site like this one.
Plus Ross hasn’t been using Adsense on his site and I think, as 73% of his visitors come from Google searches, that it will do well. I’ll spend a half a day whacking it up on the site and hopefully I’ll see a bit of a jump up in my Adsense earnings finally. I’m not expecting anything crazy but $40-50 a month wouldn’t be out of reach.
I also want to attempt to grow my mini web empire by a one quality site per year. I know first hand the benefits to having a collection of sites and the more I have, the more potential there is for attracting ads. I’m not so into the ‘do keyword research, build a shitty site, build links, then hope for an affiliate or Adsense payout’ style of doing things so I feel that (since I’m lazy and haven’t been motivated to put much time into anything except my Kigali site) maybe acquiring sites could be one way forward. So this is a wee bit of an experiment.
Lastly, I have money sitting in my bank account not doing anything for me and I want to start taking some more risks with it. Eventually I’d like to maybe buy land, or invest in some offline business but I’ve never really taken many chances with my money. I’m not averse to taking risks… maybe I just haven’t had an opportunity pop up. So this is just a baby step towards getting a bit braver with my cash.
Ross had the site listed on an auction site for US$2,500 with no interest up to that point and I feel like, had I waited awhile, I could have gotten the site closer to that price. But I’m not really one of these ‘get the lowest price at all costs’ kind of people and I feel like what I paid is a fair price for the site. I’m happy, I think he’s happy and, well, happiness is in the air. Besides, I’m terrible t keeping track of my receipts and it’s looking like there could be a nasty tax bill next April so this purchase takes a bit of a bite out of that. Win win.
I’m going to keep close track of any any earnings that come from this site so I can see how good of an investment this has been and report back to you guys. I have no doubt that I’ll earn my money back, it’s just a matter of when. I’m going to aim to earn my money back in six months by using ad contacts and seeing how Adsense does. I might play around a bit with some affiliates, too.
For me, passive income is the thing I’m after and even if I don’t earn my money back for two years (ok… maybe I’d be annoyed if it took that long), it’s the extra monthly boost in earnings that I want, not the initial one-off payout.
This is the first time I’ve bought a website and the first time Ross has sold one, so there were a few kinks. I decided to finally branch out with my hosting and I’m hosting this site on Hostgator, which is the same host it was on before and I guess makes the transition easier. Plus I keep hearing it’s not smart to have all of your sites on the same host, so I’m finally paying attention to that advice.
I was lucky because Ross took care of the entire transfer for me. He knows a guy, the guy did some stuff, and the site is now mine. Yesterday was a hugely frustrating day though because I couldn’t log into the WordPress account and neither could any of my friends here… but Ross and the people at Hostgator could log in fine. As it turns out, when you transfer a WordPress site, something has to happen and that something happens a lot faster in the USA and UK than it does in Africa. We were stumped but all is well now.
So I have a new site at my disposal! This is all new to me so I’m excited to see how it works out!
We got there in the end Kirsty. I will be following along with everybody else to see The Blighty Traveller do well. Be good with my baby
I’ll do my best!
Congratulations! This sounds like an exciting business venture. I hope it goes well, and, like you, I’m sure you’ll get your return on investment, as well as much much more. Good luck!
Thanks Mack. Day two and I’ve already locked in a monthly deal worth $55. Small potatoes but the little bits add up and I love those monthly deals!
That’s an idiotic domain name. “Blighty” isn’t exactly a positive nickname for the UK, you know. You do know what blight means, right? Why would anyone want to take a trip to “Blighty.”
Nicely done! It’ll be interesting to hear how it turns out for you!
Congrats! Let me know when you’re serious about buying a window washing business.
That’s Cool Kristy!
I’m also curious in the experiment!
BTW: There is a difference between ‘blight’ and ‘blighty’…
from Dictionary.com
blight·y [blahy-tee]
noun, plural blight·ies. British Slang .
1.( often initial capital letter ) England as one’s native land; England as home: We’re sailing for old Blighty tomorrow.
Very cool, I’m interested to see how you will improve the site and create another passive income stream.
Very cool! I smell an empire….
Well done Kirsty! It already looks a decent site and I’m sure your monetising ingenuity will make a nice little earner out of it. It’s a nice fit with the rest of your portfolio – I can’t wait to see what future acquisitions you make!
@idiotic_domain_name I’m afraid, sir, all you have demonstrated with that comment is the extent of your cultural ignorance and your poor research skills.
Cool purchase, especially given how much it made in last six months. I’m still amazed by how much a site with only roughly 100 uniques a day can make off direct sale adverts if it’s in the right industry and has some OK backlinks.
I know, me too. I think I’ve been asked for traffic stats about twice in the whole time I’ve been doing this.
This is really interesting! When I started our travel website I thought about an exit strategy and specifically designed it so that anyone could take it over should we decide to move on to another endeavor and not have time for it anymore…I’ve seen websites that make an estimate of your site’s worth based on stats but I had no idea anyone actually bought small independent travel websites. Glad to hear it and wishing you all the best with your new site! =)
Congrats Kristy. Would you mind sharing on which website the site was for sale?
I’m pretty sure he had the site listed on Flippa.com. But I found out about it because he emailed me directly.
smart move mate – best of luck
Well done, you’ve clearly got yourself a bargain there. We’ll all be heading over to Flippr now!
Interesting post. The info I’d be curious to know is @Ross – why did you decide to sell?
HI Jeremy,
More of a money reason than anything else. Selling The Blighty Traveller has allowed me to invest in two new websites. I did not sell it for what I could of done, I had a private offer for more and the reserve on Flippa where I was also selling it was $4,100 but with this being my first website sale I wanted to work with somebody I trusted so was happy to take less as long as it covered the cost of my new websites.
Kirsty is very nice to work with and delighted to see her build a stronger Blighty Traveller.
I was wondering what happened to The Blighty Traveller. Best of luck!
great idea Kirsty,I recently have done the same thing and purchased a site for $1,000. I thought mine was expensive but clearly a bargain compared to your site. Keep up the good work