There are scammers out there who create blogs with the intention of beefing up the stats and selling them for outrageous prices to poor unsuspecting noobs. Now if you are reading this and you already make money online, just try to put yourself in a newbie's frame of mind. You've created a blog and filled it with your best content, you've been commenting on other peoples blogs trying to establish credibility. You've been trying to build your list of email subscribers in the hopes of one day spamming their mailboxes with $47 ebooks. But you are not making any money.

This is the road most newbies take and at some point the frustration can mount. Then you see a blog for sale. It has RSS readers and it's making a lot of money, it was maybe owned by a name blogger...sounds like the easy way out. Someone else has done all the work, and you just have to buy the blog and the money will roll in.

Sadly, unsuspecting noobs fall for this all the time. They have no idea what really makes a blog valuable. They think it's about RSS readers and traffic from Stumble. Here is a case in point: This Poor Noob Got Suckered

Mark from One Mans Goal spent $10,000 on this blog. He is a total noob and is still learning to use Wordpress yet he spent ten grand on this blog. Who sold him this blog? Bryan Clark was the previous owner and Mark is the second person he has sold this blog to. I really feel bad for this kid being scammed like this and I hope he gets lucky and succeeds...but it's unlikely. He's too inexperienced. He doesn't know how to make money online and he's in the make money online niche. This is where the sharks swim and he's never going to make it.

Let's look at some of his stats to see what the purchase was based on and how he stands two months later.

This was posted on One Mans Goal in his income report:

"Traffic
4/5/08-4/10/08 - 1,135

Alexa - 83,114
Technorati - 16,847
Earnings (As quoted by Bryan for past month) $1,150
Posts - 230
Comments - 3,535
Rss feed - 616 (This is low because Bryan only recently coverted to feedburner) Real Est. - 1000, but will will use the 616.
Inbound links - Google - 165 Yahoo - 7,226
Page Rank -4
45n5 ranking - 50
Aweber Newsletter Subscribers- 396"

Mark had purchased the blog early in April, I think April 4th. The first thing I noticed was the monthly income of $1,150 (I love how it says, "As quoted by Bryan.") So in ten months, Mark was probably expecting to make all of his money back and then some. We'll look at his current earning in a minute.

The next thing I noticed was the traffic. From 4/5 to 4/10 there were 1,135 visitors. Looks like a hot blog right? Where was this traffic coming from? We'll take a look at his current traffic stats too. Now here's the big one. The almighty RSS count. It registers at 616 and this is of the utmost importance to the A-lister type. They figure each RSS subscriber is worth about $30. Why? I don't know. The feed count doesn't mean a darn thing when it comes to really making money online. Feed readers don't click your ads and affiliate links. They have the same ads and affiliate links on their blogs!

OK, next we see the page rank is pretty good. A PR4 is just high enough to make some decent money selling links on your blog or doing pay per post reviews. This blog is built like a house of cards. Wait until you see what happened to his PR.

This report has no mention of search engine traffic and that is by far the most important factor to consider if you are going to buy a blog. What keywords does it rank for and how much adsense money is coming in every month.

Let's now take a look at how poor Mark is making out with his TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR BLOG. This except was taken from One Mans Goal:

"Traffic

- 4/5/08-4/30/08 - 5,606 (215/Day)
- 5/1/08-5/31/08 - 3,908 (126/Day)

Where did the traffic come from?

Direct - April - 1,671 (% 29.81)/May - 1,190 (% 30.45)
Search Engines - April - 1,156 (% 20.55)/May - 1,094 (% 27.99)
Referals - April - 2,783 (% 49.64)/May - 1,624 (% 41.56)

Alexa - 138,851
- was 123,509

Technorati - 30,790
- was 21,635

Posts - 255
- was 246

Comments - 4,021
- was 3,781

RSS Feed - 738
- was 661

Inbound Links
- Google - 130
- was 129
- Yahoo - 7,231
- was 6,650

Page Rank - 2
- was 2

45n5 ranking - 126
- was 43

Income $171"

OK folks, look at his bottom line...$171 for the month of May. This is in stark contrast to the figure that Bryan had reported in the above report. Mark is going to realize that it's not easy to monetize non search engine traffic. The page rank has dropped to a PR2 probably because of some fishy links. His RSS count went up but his earnings went from $1,150 to $171. He got scammed.

What this kid didn't know was that search engine traffic is the traffic that pays. It's not the RSS count and the page rank. It's not the ranking at 45n5. Mark could have had a blog with this kind of traffic and income in 4 months. The problem with buying a blog is that the readers have an affinity for the previous owner and not you. However, if the blog was getting a constant and significant flow of search traffic then it's a different story. It won't matter who the owner is...you'll still get new visitors everyday.

He's not making any money ($171 a month!) because his traffic is lousy. They might be nice folks but they are all just other bloggers. They are just interested in seeing what happens to the kid with the ten thousand dollar blog. These readers obviously aren't clicking ads. Once the spectacle of the $10,000 scam wears off he may even make less money. A lot of his traffic is coming from referrals from other popular blogs. Once it dies down he's going to need search engine traffic in order to make any money. But since this blog was not built on proper seo and is not optimized for search engine traffic, he is unlikely to succeed.

So, would you spend ten grand to make $171 in a month? If you would then please contact me as I can easily fabricate this kind of a fake blog. Just look at what happened in the One Mans Goal case. An enthusiastic noob who has been reading all of the A-lister blogs was impressed with the RSS count and the traffic stats and spent ten grand on a worthless blog. Mark could have been making real money already if he had kept his ten grand in his pocket and found a sound online business model (a ten part series that you should go and read) to replicate.

You have another A-lister in Bryan Clark, who has once again scammed another noob by showing off what are supposed to be meaningful stats in the A-list clique. Now, in June, Mark is scratching his head wondering why he's not making any money.

The lesson here is there's no silver bullet. There's no secret trick, and if you think someone is going to sell a blog that makes a thousand dollars a month for ten grand you're crazy.

Don't fall for this scam and beware of the scammers. A successful blog is built off of search engine traffic and has some keyword authority.