October 2022: $5,196.19 + plans for selling the blog

Colorado travel blog income report for 10/2022 - month 42 update

Hey fellow blogger,

I don’t know exactly how, but it’s the first week of November. This year is flying by and I hope you’re planning to end the year strong.

Which means it’s time for another monthly revenue update for my travel blog.

If you’re new here, I hope you find this monthly update useful and helpful for growing (and selling!) your own site.

But if you’re a current subscriber, you’ll see that this one’s going to be a little different.

Starting in 2023 (January’s income report) these monthly updates will be featured on Substack and will cost $7 per month.

I will be sharing additional updates and sending more in-depth emails over the next 12-18 months as I chronicle my plan to sell my blog for $500k

TL;DR the monthly emails will no longer be free and if you want to get all of the best content you’ll need to subscribe for just $7 per month.

But until January 2023 you can still watch all of my video updates and get the monthly newsletter for FREE.

Now, let’s dive into this month’s blogging income report.

October 2022 Travel Blog Income Report

Click the image below to the video as I talk about what happened in October and big changes for future income updates.

Some of the biggest updates include:

• Earning affiliate revenue from Google Web Stories

• Publishing twice as many blog posts in 2023

• Deep diving into our affiliate revenue for travel tours

How to Get a Website Valuation

One of the first things to do when you’re curious if your site is worth selling is to get a website valuation. Or rather, how much can it sell for right now?

Usually a website valuation is free and you’ll find out how much your blog is worth in less than a week.

I am a member of Chelsea Clarke’s Blogging Society so I submitted my travel blog for a free website valuation last week.

You can do this whether or not your site is currently earning revenue, or not earning anything. When filling out a valuation form, you’ll need to know a few things about your blog.

• Average income your site earns each month (take your total yearly income and divide it by 12).

• Monthly business expenses

• The different ways your business is monetized

• Total monthly pageviews

• Everything that is included in the sale (Facebook group, email list, Instagram account, digital products, etc.)

• How many articles are published on your blog to date

• How many followers you have combined on your social media accounts

You may also be asked why you’re selling your site as well as provide proof of income reports and screenshots of sales.

What Hashtag Colorado Life is Worth

While I was submitting my blog for a valuation, I actually received an email from a potential buyer asking if I was interested in selling the site.

I basically said “no” but that I was open to hearing what he’d pay for it. He said he would give us 36x monthly revenue based on the average of the last 12 months of revenue.

Currently, the average monthly income for HCL over the past 12 months is around $4,200 which gives the website a valuation of $151,000.

After about a week, I received an email back from the BlogsForSale team with a suggested listing price of $110,000 - $160,000.

With both of these offers I feel confident in saying that the site is worth around $150,000 which is a great start. But obviously I am hoping to TRIPLE this number in the next year or two before actually putting it up for sale.

How am going to do this? Well, that will be detailed out in next month’s update. So be sure to subscribe!

Thanks and have a great week.

- Carrie

And don’t forget, you can comment on this post or reply to this email. I read/reply to all of the comments and messages I receive. :)