The Right Way To Leave A Blog After Selling It

I have become completely turned off with some of the blogs out there that I had visited regularly, especially after finding the very person that built the blog and its community left the moment they sold the blog. While I can see some of the reasons for selling a site, there really are some things that site owners forget, especially when they use social networking and connect with people and have establish a strong following. Please do note that I mention ‘well established sites’ meaning that they have great traffic and a multitude of visitors who leave comments and even a healthy size social network following too. Not just a site that is put together on the fly, optimized, and then flipped.

When you build a website and people start associating that site with you, they kind of like the fact that you are there to engage in conversation with. You are the one who has brought in the visitors who may support you. However, when selling it off, it does not work like being fired – you do not disappear immediately.

In doing so, that action tells me:

• Unaware that some people do come because they drawn in by the site owner because they provided engaging content.
• They were only in for the money?
• They did not care.

The right way to leave a blog after selling it is that if you want to eventually leave, you need to do it in gradual steps. And when I mean “gradual”, usually over a couple weeks so the new people can settle in, become wholeheartedly welcomed by the site’s community, and eventually notice that you are no longer in a leading role with the website. Remember, even Google takes a bit of time to catch up on information too, so this gradual change will allow a smooth transition.

Make the announcement, keep engaging with users, and be prepared that if you have loyal readers, assure them that the new owners will be as engaging as you have. After a week of engaging, decrease your involvement in engaging by the day until you are interacting a few times, and then down to nothing after that.

Remember, even if your blog is not a forum, you do have people that regularly visit and you have literally built a community. This should never be taken lightly, especially if you are a person that normally likes to build sites with a strong community before selling them.

This leads to confusion and sometimes, like myself, I go to the website because I met someone I thought was interesting and their content that they provided was engaging. Sometimes when a site owner leaves, the very people that visited to hear what you had to say, are the same people that will leave as well.

What other suggestions do you have for blog owners that are considering to sell their well established and engaging website? How can they make the smoothest transition when exchanging site site over to the new owners?