Blog flipping is the latest craze to hit the Blogosphere. Right now, it is still a fairly new trend; so new that not even Wikipedia has an entry for it yet. So, some of you may be unsure what blog flipping is.

Blog flipping works much like the real estate flipping market. A blog site is purchased, value is added, and then the site is sold at a higher price. Essentially, the premise is buying and selling blog property. Blog flipping generally takes three courses:

Fixer Upper Flip

You buy a blog that is fully functioning, but needs to be enhanced. Buyers will look for potential to increase traffic, profitability, etc.. and then sell the blog to another buyer at a higher price.

Creator Flip

The initial creator of the blog establishes the blog, and then sells it for profit. Although technically not flipping, per se, this sell is still considered flipping a blog.

Long Term Investment

This would be much like a house flipper buying a house, and then renting it out. The long term blog flipper buys an established web site for it"s generated income. After making the investment back through the blog, the owner will then sell the blog for a pure profit.

New bloggers are probably foaming at the mouth right now, and expecting the rest of this article to be about how wonderful blog flipping is. Sorry, wrong article! While very, and I do mean very, experienced bloggers can make some money with buying and selling a flipped blog, most buyers and sellers of flipped blogs end up staunchly disappointed. Blog flipping is estimated to be fastest growing trend in monetization blogging. However, it just as rapidly becoming host to a number of scams. Take a look at why buying a flipped blog is not a good online business:

Manipulation Of Data

There are some blog flippers that do not have any interest in running a blog. They really just want to establish a quality site for someone else to use, and be paid for it. However, most people selling blogs are not creating a quality site, they are just manipulating data to make the site appear appealing.

A frustrated blogger and green blogger are usually the most prone to being victimized by these scam flips. For example, you have spent month after month trying to establish traffic, credibility, revenue, sells, etc.. but nothing is working. You head over to SitePoint auctions page, and see that a 20,000 page view per month blog, in your niche, is for sale. Wow easy answer to all of your problems, right? Not so fast! A flipped blog will typically list this eye catching selling data:

Page Views Per Month
Revenue Per Month
Google Page Rank
Unique Visits Per Month

The data in these categories is often manipulated. Older data programs like, AWStats, is commonly used, and is highly inaccurate. Another common way the stats can be manipulated is social networks. Sites like, StumbleUpon, can make a blog look as though it is booming with traffic. However, these social visitors are often not the people that subscribe, or act as patrons to the blog. Income can grossly be manipulated with ad sales, paid blog review posts, etc.. The misrepresentation of data will mean that the blog is being valued/priced substantially higher than it"s actual worth.

High Gamble

Let"s assume the data on a flipped blog is accurate. Still, that dsn"t mean that you are going to have the same stats. Are you really ready to gamble money on a flipped blog? Most of these flipped blogs will cost you at least $500, but many are selling for upwards of $10,000. That cost alone can ruin a startup, if the blog dsn"t produce results.

Too Good To Be TrueIs Too Good To Be True

Ask yourself this- if someone is really making whopping amounts of money with a blog, then why would they be selling it? Common sense dictates that someone making $1,200 a month on a blog is not going to sell it for $5,000.

Blog Flipping - Not A Good Business

Now for the flip side of the coin. Of course, selling a flipped blog ds not incur the above risks. However, selling a flipped blog is not a particularly good business idea either. Here is why:

Flooded Market

The auction sites are saturated with blogs boosting unrealistic stats and data. Unless you are willing to venture to the dark side, and scam your buyers, then you probably are not going to be competitive at selling your blog.

Stable Income

If your blog truly is profitable, or has the potential to be profitable, why would you want to sell it? That is stable income in your pocket each month. Once you sell the blog, you could potentially miss out on a lot of generated income.

Blog Building

It takes months of prep and ground work to make a blog active. Anyone that says building a blog is easy, obviously hasn"t ever done it. However, once you have that established traffic, the work becomes much easier. Traffic generates traffic. Do you really want to do all the hard work over.. and over.and overand over again? Repetitive flipping is the only honest way to make serious money from the average flip.

There is a lot that is wrong with blog flipping, and very little that is right. To sum it up, it just has too many if"s and room for manipulation to ever be a viable market. I would wager that blog flipping will be to blogging what envelope stuffing is to the work at home business.