Exit Strategies – For Blogs? (And Five Examples)
This may seem strange: after all, bloggers start up blogs with the aim of continuing blogging for a long time, or forever. We all did, right?
An ‘exit strategy’ is what you plan to do with a particular job or project when you decide to end pursuing it. It’s like retiring: how will you support your family after retiring? Pensions? Bank savings? And so on.
But for Bloggers?
Understandably, exit strategies seem more logical and practical for real world jobs (like the retiring example above), and may not seem sensible for blogs. Why should you have an exit strategy for your blog? :
- Loss of interest – After months (or even years) of regular blogging about a particular topic, it may seem boring and monotonous to you (perfectly reasonable, giving the long time period). What if you decide to quit blogging altogether? How will you manage?
- Financial issues – What if, say in two years time, your blog generates lesser money than it costs to manage (server costs, your time). How will you cope with these problems? Sell the blog? Or continue blogging?
If you come to think of it, there could be multitudes of causes that could force you to shut your blog immediately (I’m not trying to scare you here: just to make you prepared). A blog exit strategy defines beforehand what happens in such a situation.
Your Options
Before finalising your exit strategy, you should know your options too:
Let it Rot
The easiest way to go: Just let your blog rust to death (until the hosting period is over). Forget about it (and the readers and community), and it’ll die a silent death. This route is the most common.
Sell it off
Another reasonable option, and a profitable one at that. If your blog is pretty big, with impressive traffic and readership numbers, why not sell it, and utilize the money?
Well established blogs can bring in quite a lot of money, but if your blog is not that well built up, you might be disappointed.
A very good place to sell (and buy) blogs is the Sitepoint Marketplace.
Hire Bloggers
If you’ve lost interest in the particular niche of your blog, instead of letting it rot to death, you can hire bloggers to regularly write for the blog, and help it grow.
This will help the blog grow too, and not force you to write about something you don’t love any more (and therefore worsen the situation by writing crap 
)
But do note, that hiring bloggers costs money, and you’ll have to be ready for that. If you’re looking for a place to advertise for open blogging positions and find freelance bloggers, consult this list of blogger job boards.
Update less often, but consistently
Another common strategy employed by many bloggers: blog less often, but consistently. If you write, say 4 posts a week, and are feeling you can’t take the heat anymore, why not drop to about a single post a week? This way, you’ll have more time to relax, and think up new ideas for posts.
But the key here is to do it consistently (or regularly). Don’t stop blogging altogether. Maki from DoshDosh (which is a famous blog) updates only about once a week (or even less), but consistently, and his readership is growing.
Turn It Into Something You Love
Really, if your blog’s current niche bores you out, change it!
For example, you’ve been blogging for years on soccer, and it has become monotonous. Instead, tennis is your ‘thang’ right now. Instead of letting the blog rot, why not convert it’s niche to tennis? Easy, huh?
Warning, though: It doesn’t always work. Loyal (and other) readers, might be annoyed at your ‘change of niche’, and leave the blog altogether, and you cannot really stop them. Also, if your blog’s domain name is specific to your blog’s niche, it could damage your search rankings too. So, for this method: use with caution
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One great tip could be to remove dates on the posts too, if you’re going to post less often (or let it “die), but continue to “market” the best posts.
Or you could also turn it into something else… like a forum on your niche, or a community website… It could make it more interesting/different and you’ll don’t have to write big articles.
Hi great post.Just flew in from the mixx
One main thing is never quit.
It is disappointing at times and frustrating
but I step back take a breath and move on
I would really love it if you considered looking
at bloganese.com and submitting your profile.
Thanks see you around Stumbled
Peace
Yes, the key is to “begin with the end in mind” in the words of Stephen Covey.
For many blogging is a business. I work with business owners and help them both plan & execute their exit strategy.
Unfortunately, too many times by the time we connect, it’s often too late to do much better than liquidate, if this is even possible.
Most of us don’t think about our exit strategy until it’s too late – when the once vital business is dying, when we’re sick – either / both literally & figuratively, and so on.
The time to get out is when you don’t need to do so, but that’s not what most of us do. We wait and wait.. because, hey, we’re having fun blogging. This must go on forever, right?
By taking the time to at least consider what outcome we’d like to achive, we can begin to take steps in that direction, ranging from simple actions like organizing records to more complex ones such as getting advisors – folks who have been successful at the outcomes we’d like to achieve ourselves.
I am always searching for online resources that can help me. Thank you!