Tobold's Blog
Saturday, December 23, 2017
 
How much are readers worth?

I received a mail from an MMO website that it was for sale. I didn’t even know that there were auction sites for websites. Probably because I never considered my site as a business. I feel honored that people come to my site to read my thoughts. The idea was never to attract a maximum number of readers and then somehow monetize them. (And if I had wanted to do that I should have cashed out a decade ago, when this was still a popular blog.)

The site on sale boasts 30,000 YouTube subscribers, 9,000 Facebook fans, and 4,000 Twitter followers. And you can “buy” all these fans for $1,000 or best offer. That suggests that one fan is worth between 20 and 30 cents. However the site hasn’t had much content in the past few weeks, and those “fans” might be long gone, never to return. Especially if the new owner of the site creates little new content, or somehow changes the scope. So at best buying an existing website is a starting boost that gets the word out faster than if you created the same new content on a brand new site. Websites are dynamic and the real number of readers / subscribers / fans / followers depends very much on the current quality and quantity of content created.

Not only is buying a web site possibly a bad deal for the buyer. I would also consider it somewhat dishonest towards the fans. Imagine buying tickets to a concert and on going there finding out that the band you liked sold their name to another band, whose music you don’t like!

In summary, this blog is unlikely to be sold. I’m sticking to an earlier promise that I can’t be bought for less than $100,000. And as this site was never worth this much, you can be pretty confident that as long as there is somebody writing here, it will be me.

Comments:
Happy Holidays Tobold!

I might not have 100000$ to buy your blog but even if i did i wouldnt, i like coming here everyday to check if there is something new posted and i dont think i ever missed a post or didnt read one since i started to follow you.

Happy Holidays for you and your family and take a well deserved rest from us :)
 
No, you see, your writing is ~priceless~. Thanks for another year, Tobold.
 
Happy holidays Tobold. Enjoy your switch!
 
Not other content creators buy sites. Advertisers do, who just make advertisement content. For example a DnD miniature printing company could buy your site to post nothing else as "tobold", but how awesome are their miniatures and how much you love them.
 
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