Should my next project be a blog?

I posted last month that after selling my poker discussion forums I wasn’t sure what to call myself as the websites which I have left are nearly all blogs (apart from a few forums and article sites which still make me a little cash every month).

At the moment my main site is probably BloggingTips however I am looking to establish a UK tech blog and a joke blog. I don’t want to place all my eggs in one basket so I’ve been thinking of a non-blog website I could start. I’ve looked at various scripts and I’ve looked at a lot of other sites for inspiration however blogs still continue to sell very easily on SitePoint so I’m tempted to stick to blogs for the moment.

For example, JohnCow is currently for sale on SitePoint with a buy it now of $50k. Someone quickly offered the ‘Buy It Now’ price but it turned out to be a timewaster. Still, I reckon it will still sell for about $30k which is fantastic for a blog with 1600 subscribers.

Mark Wielgus wrote a post yesterday discussing this phenomemom and worked out that making money online blogs have been selling for an average of $18.42 per subscriber. I’m confused why these making money blogs are selling for thousands after just a month or two of posting. For example, RyanShamus.com had only 90 subscribers and sold for $2,500 and with only 200 subscribers, BloggingFingers managed to sell for $6,000. Have the buyers of these blogs wondered how they will break even with the site?

The reason this has surprised me is that some of these blogs were not even making any money. Also, it surprises me that people are paying more for this type of site than an online niche with higher commission levels (eg gambling). For example, I sold my poker discussion community for $40,000. It was making between $2,500-$3,000 a month and it had 17,000 members. It was an active community which had been established for around 4 years. Is a making online blog with 2,000 members worth the same amount? Personally I don’t think it is however the market tells a different story.

As someone with a blogging related website maybe I should be really happy with all these overinflated prices however I paid over the odds for a few websites in the past so I can’t help but feel for the people making the same mistakes I did. I have no intention to sell my blogging site in the next few years but no doubt if I did the market would collapse and this post will come back to haunt me!!! ;)

Do you think these blogs are worth the money? What’s the most you would pay for a blog with 200 subscribers?

:)

I am an experienced blogger who has been working on the internet since 2000. On this blog, I talk about WordPress, internet marketing, YouTube, technology and travelling.
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