May of 2013 was a life-changing month for me. My bank account grew by $400,000 (with another $100,000 to come a year later), and the effort that I had put in for several years to grow my blog all paid off.

Six years earlier I had started my first blog, not knowing anything about blogging or WordPress. In 2007 and 2008 I worked on the blog in the evenings and on weekends, around the schedule of my full-time job. Late in 2008 I was able to quit my job to run my blog full-time.

In 2010, I had my first year of six-figure income from blogging, and I continued to manage and grow that blog until I eventually sold it for $500,000 in 2013.

When I started my first blog, I don’t think the idea of selling it for half a million dollars ever crossed my mind. But going through the process of building and selling that blog taught me a lot of valuable lessons.

Thanks to those lessons, I’ve been able to sell other blogs for six figures since then. In 2016, I sold another blog for $500,000 and in 2018 I sold one for $216,000.

The cool thing about blogging is that once you know how to do it, you can repeat the same process.

When I sold my blog in 2013 I did a few things right, and I also made several mistakes. Fortunately, the mistakes taught me valuable lessons, and each time I’ve gone through the process since then I’ve been able to avoid the same mistakes.

In this article I’d like to cover some of the most valuable lessons I learned about selling a blog, and hopefully this will help you to avoid some mistakes and make your own blog as valuable as possible.

15 valuable lessons I learned about selling a blog

1. Money-making blogs are legitimate businesses with value

I’ve been running my own blogs full-time for 10 years, but I’ve never referred to myself as a blogger (unless I’m talking to other bloggers).

Although there are plenty of bloggers who’ve made a great income, I think most people still assume that a full-time blogger lives in his/her parents’ basement and is socially awkward.

The truth is, a profitable blog is a legitimate business, and any legitimate business has value if it is making money.

There are a lot of different ways to make money with a blog, including ad revenue, affiliate marketing, creating and selling your own products, premium content, and publishing sponsored content.