Why I Sold PluginID (& Bought it Back)

Glen / 28 Comments / November 26th, 2008 / Subscribe via RSS

It’s true, PluginID wasn’t mine. The project I started around 3 months ago was in the hands of a new owner, somebody ready to start pumping out blog posts and excited for the road ahead. It’s not that I wanted to sell the site, it’s just that I was in a little bit of a financial crisis and didn’t know where else to turn.

Thankfully, that’s all sorted now.

Photo Credit

Selling Up

For those of you that never followed my old twitter account, I wrote a few requests for cheap internet marketing work because I was looking to raise some funds, in fact I urgently wanted to raise some funds. It always seems to happen doesn’t it, one bad thing happens then lots more roll in straight after it.

My issues:

• Over $1000 in medical bills (I spent a week in hospital a few months ago)
• Money owed to friends who lent me cash when my credit card was stolen
• Taxes due in the UK for the company I run which I didn’t handle very well
• Family coming over to visit that I wanted to go traveling with

In all honesty, some of this was my fault, others I simply didn’t understand how they had came about. I sold the site in case things got worse and with the cash I was more than able to cover the payments I was about to make. But, just like how all bad things come through at once, so did all the good things…

• My medical aid eventually took care of my medical bill
• My tax issues in the UK were not as bad as I thought
• I received my credit card back with no hassle and sorted my payments

Before all this I was doing very well, although spending quite a bit because I’m building my ‘online empire’ and preparing for a new direction in the very near future. Now? Well, I’m doing very well again and certainly won’t slip back into a potential crisis, one that I probably over exaggerated at the time.

Getting the site back

Once I realised everything was going to be OK, I knew I had to try to get the site back. I was absolutely gutted about selling up but it was one of my web properties that I knew would sell well, and more importantl y at the time, would sell quickly. Every single day for about a week I sent a message to the new owner begging for my site back, to no response; I was getting worried and stressed.

Had I lost something I’ve spent so much time and energy on?

Luckily, it turned out the owner was on holiday at the time, and had received my messages and decided to think about my offer. My offer was that I would help him build up his own websites if he would sell PluginID back to me, I even told him I would work for him for a year if I had to, that’s how badly I wanted this site back. In the end, we agreed on a deal and here we are now; I’m back in almost full-control and ready to get rolling again.

Trust me, I’ll never risk this project again. It’s funny, I don’t even know what to call ‘this’. In reality, the site is just a website. However, to me it is a mission, a mission to spread my message to those that want to hear it. A place to share my thoughts without anyone telling me what to say or do. An avenue to share unique ideas that some people might find interesting, you other bloggers know exactly what I mean.

Photo Credit

Lessons Learned

Like all hard things that we go through, there’s a lesson (or a few of them) to be learned, and this was no exception. I’ll run through a few of them now:

Take time in your decisions – If you aren’t a blogger, it can look like it is the easiest thing in the world; posting a few times a week, leaving a few comments and then getting site visitors. Well, blogging is never what it looks like from the outside, I spend a lot of time:

• Writing posts, this can take can take me 4 – 6 hours
• Leaving comments, I leave a lot of these as I believe in being social
• Tweaking the website colours or testing ads
• Building up my profiles in popular social media sites

What I’m saying is that I’ve spent so many hours on this project and I was far too quick to pick it as a source for financial safety. If I had have gone through everything properly and taken my time, I wouldn’t have gone through all the stress I’ve gone through in the last 2 weeks.

Keep on top of things – If I had of been better prepared I would have checked with my medical aid company as soon as I left hospital that my bills would be covered. If I had of been better prepared I would have checked my tax deadlines for my company and kept available funds to cover the expenses.

If you can set-up some sort of system to know what is going on whether it be your bills, relationships, assets or anything like that then I urge you to do so. Having a plan in place and basically being more all-round organised would have stopped me from getting in this situation. By the way, I couldn’t live without ToDoist, I just need to add more things to it ;).

Accept what is – giving up something you have worked hard for can be very difficult, but don’t make things harder on yourself. Don’t resist what is. You can try your very best to get something back, but things won’t always go your way, sometimes you have to move on (I almost had).

When I wrote the last blog post, ‘How to Die a Miserable Death‘, I didn’t own the site. I didn’t even have permission from the owner to write the post, I just went ahead and did it. I couldn’t accept that the site was no longer mine so I just carried on writing. I guess the situation I was in was good inspiration for the post.

If I hadn’t of gotten the site back my life wouldn’t be over, I would have either started up something new or focused more on the other projects that I’m running. I wouldn’t hate myself or go crazy because of the decision I made, I simply accept the one I made at the time. However, as I say, this isn’t a project to me, it’s much more than that…

Thanks to all of you for following me on this journey, I’m excited and look forward to the future with more energy than ever!