N95blog.com in retrospect: The Rise and Sale of a blog

jan van iperen • 1st Mar 2008 • net • blog sale, n-series, n95, nokia, sitepoint

What started as a possible way to learn to know the Nokia N95 a bit better, took off and became serious business.
With the huge rise in readers/visitors and sometimes being picked up by big sites, came more interactivity, a bigger responsibility as well as a higher pressure to keep publishing qualitative posts. At the same time, all this was the basis for a solid blog.

For the past months, N95blog has taken up most of my free time and a little bit more. In a situation where the number of hours I consider free time are being reduced (I am taking over a business), it was obvious that I had to cut somewhere and set priorities. Hence the decision to step out of the mobile madness and sell N95blog…

N95blog

Find all information on the Nokia N95!

N95blog grew very steadily in the past year from a small to above average readership. Not only its daily visitors and pageviews, but differently important, its feed-readership grew to about 2K. The rise of that particular and loyal group of readers is nicely depicted here:

Another very pleasant aside of this blogging experience was getting in touch with some more established mobile bloggers, like James Burland (nokiacreative) and Pseudofinn (nokiausers).

Besides its exposure, readership and loyal visitors, N95blog increased also its monthly revenues from different streams of income, so it had all the ingredients for a good sale.

Selling through SitePoint

I had bought through SitePoint before, but never actually sold a site or anything through this medium.

The simplicity and possibilities SitePoint offers while configuring your auction are making it a very easy process. To make sure I would not receive too many questions for additional information, I prepared myself well:

1. I read numerous of other auctions and its comments to distill what information buyers really look for
2. I prepared a bundled a file of all information on the site as well as proof of income (screenshots for all different sources of revenue)
3. I made a draft of the auction-text which I edited while I was doing my research

So, then the auction was published, I wrote a post on N95blog to announce the sale as well as a small banner to push potential buyers in the right direction.

The contact with possbile buyers went smoothly, I could answer all questions as well as provide them with the needed information and proof. The possibility to let people check out all traffic details by adding them to your Google Analytics account really eases how you provide detailed info.

So after some bids and closer to the end of the auction, I decided to set a BIN and was pleased to see that it was taken…

Dealing with doubting buyers

… so then you have a buyer and start up the escrow procedures, to find out the buyer is actually doubting his decision. Ah!

While right after the sale everything looked okay and I IM\’d with a very enthusiastic buyer, one day later the buyer showed huge doubt and decided to back out of the deal.
We came to an agreement to do this in good harmony, but my feelings of a smooth sale and transfer were kinda shattered.

Thankfully I managed to quickly move on and get in touch with another buyer, re-negotiate and conclude the deal (unfortunately but understandable at a somewhat lower price).

New owner of N95blog.com

So with the new buyer everything went well. The blog suffered a bit of down-time during the change of DNS servers, but right now, it is up and running again and back to its usual quantity of visitors and pageviews.

The buyer of N95blog.com is Ahmed:

My name is Ahmed, I\’m a 25 years old doctor from Egypt but I work on the internet part time.

I hope I can provide valuable information and assistance to all Nokia N95 users through this quality blog and continue what jan has done over the last year.

I wish Ahmed luck and enthusiasm as new owner of N95blog and where needed, will assist him in his position.

Saying \”Thank You\” to all N95blog visitors / readers

I need to say that building a blog like N95blog would not have been possible without the pleasant visitors and readers of the blog and foremost their contributions in comments and direct messages.

A BIG \”Thank You\” to al of you for your direct or indirect contributions! Both positive and negative feedback have taught me a lot and have fuelled my enthusiasm for this blog.

Further blogging by yours truly

In case you thought this is the end of my blogging career, you are wrong. Actually, I see my blogging for N95blog more as a different path I have walked for while and right now I am stepping back to my own, main road again.

My work and the whole process of taking over a family business will be my main focus, blogging will become more of a hobby again with less pressure.

Enough for the future available though: I have quite some drafts that still need modification and updating, but will be both interesting and useful to many bloggers out there. Furthermore, I picked up a Canon 40D a few weeks ago, so I will publish some hands-on experiences and pictures also.

So if you want to see where this road leads to, click the RSS button or this link to subscribe to my feed and you will be automatically notified.

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