Kumiko's Cash Quest

I’ve been a big fan of NetBusinessBlog since it started back in January and when it sold for $13,000 a couple of weeks ago, my enthusiasm peaked! Considering that my traffic levels are in the same league as NetBusinessBlog’s (although it has more subscribers) this represented a very bright future for those looking to sell their site! My main interest though was to see how successful the new owner would be in taking over the site so I decided to take an unsponsored look at the results. And there’s a big lesson to be learned from it!

A good start

Net Business Blog has been a fantastic resource about enhancing online business and due to some clever strategies by it’s previous owner, it was able to hit the Digg front page on multiple occasions. This resulted in the site having a high profile which saw it’s RSS subscribers grow to 1,400+ and on-site advertising earn around $1,200 per month.

The new owner, Adrian Cooke, came with fantastic credentials as he was one of the founding owners of a digital memory store which he reports is currently doing $3.5million a year in turnover.

I quite liked the first few posts of the new owner as they provided a refreshing change of style and were written in a rather different tone. Furthermore, they covered topics that hadn’t been written about before on the site and I actually found them quite useful and helpful to those conducting business online.

But a newbie blogger?

Despite a great start, I was quite shocked to read a post on the site yesterday where the new owner discussed how before he bought the site he didn’t have a clue about PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews!

What??? What?!

We were all new once, but these companies are easily the Top 3 when it comes to paid reviews and writing that you don’t know about all of them is pretty much equivalent to saying that you don’t have a clue about paid reviews. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re going to pay $13,000 and write for a blog where the tagline is “making a living online“, shouldn’t you have heard of these before??

The new owner even opened it up to the commentators to discuss their thoughts on the companies. I may be completely wrong here, but I feel that a blog which is essentially about making money online should be providing the information rather than requesting the information.

Perhaps it’s an exaggeration but I feel it’s the equivalent of six-figure blogger Darren Rowse selling his site and the new owner asking, “Any thoughts about blogging?”

While the previous owner taught us how to manage multiple on-site advertising campaigns, the new owner seems to be still learning the basics and unsure how to get one started.

How this affects traffic levels on the blog will be very interesting to watch.

A change in monetization

The new owner has also mentioned that he is considering selling text links directly (why wouldn’t you?) and changing the monetization model of the site.

Given that the site was previously using pretty much every monetization technique except Adsense, I’m guessing this change means more Adsense and it’s starting to be shown already. Good for pocket change, but the previous owner removed Adsense to enhance the reader experience and still made $1,200 a month. Bringing it back is only going to hurt the site in the long run.

Furthermore, much of the $1,200 was made through paid reviews, and if the new owner is new to these, I’d be hesitant to pay the $150 asking price.

Research, research, research

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh to Adrian, but PayPerPost and ReviewMe are massive earners for many bloggers and it’s hard to not know about them in the “make money online” world.

I think this all just goes to show that you can buy a business, but you can’t buy knowledge.

If you take over a business that sells TVs, you can fumble with the cash register for a while but the customer will still walk happy with the product that they wanted. If you take over a service business like a public speaker provider (which is essentially what a blog is) you need to maintain the level of service or your customers won’t be happy.

As I’ve been writing this post, a new post has been published on NetBusinessBlog that discusses how forums don’t make money. Adrian Cooke has obviously never heard of Shawn Hogan making $10,000 a month from Digital Point forums or Lee Dodd making $600,000 a year from his network that includes forums.

I don’t question the new owner’s business knowledge, but I do wonder how much he knows about running a profitable blog.

What can we learn from all of this on our money making quests?

Do your research. Readers and money are attracted to experts - not novices.