-
I started a blog in 2015 before Google had their own Material Design website. It hit 100k/mo, I sold it, the buyer vanished. I just got the domain back.
Posted by on March 2, 2026 at 11:42 amHere is a story. In 2015 I started a blog Material Design Blog com (I wasn't very creative with the name 😀 ). This was the time when Google first released the Material Design language and back then they didn't even have their own website dedicated to it.
At its peak it was one of the top web design and development blogs in the niche thousands of social media shares, thousands of backlinks from the highest DA domains possible: Entrepreneur com, Engadget, The Next Web, Smashing Magazine and thousands of others highest DA websites.
DA is currently sitting at 45-50, something that would be very hard to achieve starting from scratch. Domain is 11-12 years old. No spam no other bs. All links organic. If I remember correctly, the website had more than 100k visitors per month at its peak. I sold the website on Flippa in 2016-2017 and the buyer did nothing with it. He just bought it and didn't touch it for years. Because it was my ex project, I checked in from time to time, but the website never changed. I tried reaching out to the buyer on LinkedIn and other channels but he never responded and just vanished. Hope he's doing okay.
Anyway, the domain naturally expired and went to auction. I won it and got it back. I still have the full content XML file and the original WordPress theme which, as strange as it sounds, still looks modern to this day (everything was custom developed at that time).
Here's my question I've moved on to different ventures and I'm honestly not sure if I have the energy to restore the entire project and start blogging again. What would you suggest? Just list it as a domain for sale? Or is the only real option to restore it and build some value first before selling?
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks a lot!
-
1 Reply
-
I would put everything back on, see how it goes and than decide if you should continue. If the revenue is high enough you can hire some people to help you with it.
-
Would you consider partnering with someone who could push it forward for a %?
-
[removed]
-
I am also under the same predicament. I launched my first blog in 2015. It took be almost 2 years to reach $100 on Adsense. When I sold it in 2021, it was generating $100 per month through Adsense. A few months later, when I checked the blog, it was vanished. I continued to look for blog but it never came back. I now have a couple of blogs but still think about my old blog. The domain is still available.
-
Hey
I d say the best option is to put the website back on and see if it gets traction again.
If so, Flippa or Partening up with someone are both good options.
-
How much commission did Flippa take at the time?
-
Great story!
It shouldn’t take that long to get he website up and running and after a few weeks you will see if any of that traffic from before – that would then fuel your next steps I guess
-
When you sold the site on Flippa, did you sell the domain only, or did you sell it as a complete website? If you sold it as a website, even though the domain registration lapsed and you legally own the domain, the content and website design still belongs to the person who bought it from you. May be worth getting legal advice before relaunching the site if that is the case.
-
I’m not familiar with the “Material Design” ecosphere, but my first thought would be how much have things changed in the 10+ years since there was any meaningful update to the content on the old blog you now have returned to your possession. If it’s very outdated, it seems like a huge effort just to get it back to a new starting point. Don’t know how to assess “huge”, but it someone who was seriously researching and/or involved in it found the page, would they decide this is “ancient” within seconds or so?
I’d also want to assess the level of competition now in 2026 for that information. Clearly, upon Google’s launch 1 years ago SERP competition was perhaps low.
-
I’d restore it, let it sit for 5-6 months, then sell it again
-
“What tools are you using?”
-
that’s a genuinely rare situation – DA 45-50, 11-year-old domain, organic links from Engadget and Smashing Magazine, and you still have the original content and theme. Most people hunting expired domains would kill for this.
My honest take: don’t sell it cold. A domain with that history but no live site gets maybe $2-5k on Flippa or Sedo. Restore it for 30-60 days, republish the content, fix broken links, let Google re-crawl it and you’re looking at a completely different conversation. The authority is still there, it just needs a pulse.
-
Here is a screenshot of one of my competitors. DR 69, were getting around 600k monthly visits then for some reason their site went completely down. They restored it in may 2025 (4 years later) and now barely get 300 monthly visits.
If you can get it up and running without investing too much time do it, otherwise I wouldnt waste my time with blogging in 2026
-
That domain is an asset, but right now it’s dormant value.
If you sell it as-is, buyers will heavily discount it because there’s no current traffic or revenue.
A lightweight restore with key posts and some ranking recovery could dramatically increase its resale value.
You don’t need to rebuild it fully, just prove it can rank again.
Revive first, then decide whether to operate or sell.
Log in to reply.