Monday, January 23, 2012

What to do with someone's blog when they die

Well, here I am, back on my dad's blog after nearly a year, updating it once again.

On September 29, 2011, God and Jesus must've found it the perfect time for my dad to "go to glory" -- as he put it in emails we'd exchange before his death.

Both his death and my recent wisdom tooth removal complications scare had me thinking about what my family would do with all my many websites after I die.

Thankfully, my husband has the passwords to many of my accounts, and since he's done some blogging himself in the past, he could figure out how to put up a goodbye message on PaulaNealMooney.com if he wanted.

Other than that, he knows how to get to my PayPal account and other places -- but I gotta admit, I don't necessarily have all my website hosting passwords and logins and stuff printed out and in a safe place for him to find like I should. Perhaps this post will prompt me to do that.

Should you sell someone's blog after they die? Should you update it?

The answers to those questions could be yes and yes or no and no, depending on how organized and internet savvy those left behind are -- or other factors.

I've seen folks who've battled cancer blog about their journey, and then after they die, their family and loved ones have updated the readers about the person's death.

I smiled to myself when I saw that my dad had me start this blog back in 2007 -- two years after I'd put up my first blog post, and how even in his 80s he taught me about pay per click advertising and stuff.

"Don't be afraid to spend money on advertising," he'd tell me -- and I'd hustle off to Google Adwords, trying to get his blog traffic and stuff, not knowing what I was doing, but figuring it out along the way.

I wouldn't want to sell his blog for sentimental reasons. Plus, he actually willed it to me in the Legal Zoom will that he had done.

But Flippa.com is a hot place for people selling websites right now, so I could see how other folks may want to do that --- especially if the person they love who died had a profitable blog and if they need the money, and if they don't plan on updating the blog themselves, or don't know how.

In that case, they'd still need some basic information, like:

Where was the blog hosted? 
Simply plopping the dot com name into a site like Who.Is will tell you some basic info about the website, like I did here with my main website, which you can see is hosted at DreamHost.

(Some main web hosting companies are DreamHost, HostGator, Blue Host, GoDaddy and others...)

Then you'd just have to go to DreamHost.com, for example, and plop in that person's email address that they likely used and choose their "forgot password" option to get a new one sent to you, only if you know the deceased person's email info and can access their email.

At least that might set you on the road towards finding the data you'd need to transfer over to someone who wants to buy the blog.

This is why insurance is a good thing...

All this complicated techie talk might be a lot for a less techie person to have to try to deal with during a stressful time of death -- and it's pricked me to get myself more organized in my self-employed business in case I leave this earth any time soon.

There has been talk of blogger's insurance and stuff like that I remember reading on Darren Rowse's ProBlogger.net -- so look more into it there.

The truth is that people making good, 6-figure livings online has changed the game and the way we think about this little profitable "hobby" that has transformed into a real career.

Either way, I felt good that my family would get $500k in the wake of my death because of insurance purchased years ago and continually paid for each month -- so even if they didn't want to try and continue any of the online endeavors I started, they'd be secure and able to replace my salary anyway.

And God would keep blessing them with all the rest...


Small business news - FORTUNE Small Business

Monday, January 23, 2012

What to do with someone's blog when they die

Well, here I am, back on my dad's blog after nearly a year, updating it once again.

On September 29, 2011, God and Jesus must've found it the perfect time for my dad to "go to glory" -- as he put it in emails we'd exchange before his death.

Both his death and my recent wisdom tooth removal complications scare had me thinking about what my family would do with all my many websites after I die.

Thankfully, my husband has the passwords to many of my accounts, and since he's done some blogging himself in the past, he could figure out how to put up a goodbye message on PaulaNealMooney.com if he wanted.

Other than that, he knows how to get to my PayPal account and other places -- but I gotta admit, I don't necessarily have all my website hosting passwords and logins and stuff printed out and in a safe place for him to find like I should. Perhaps this post will prompt me to do that.

Should you sell someone's blog after they die? Should you update it?

The answers to those questions could be yes and yes or no and no, depending on how organized and internet savvy those left behind are -- or other factors.

I've seen folks who've battled cancer blog about their journey, and then after they die, their family and loved ones have updated the readers about the person's death.

I smiled to myself when I saw that my dad had me start this blog back in 2007 -- two years after I'd put up my first blog post, and how even in his 80s he taught me about pay per click advertising and stuff.

"Don't be afraid to spend money on advertising," he'd tell me -- and I'd hustle off to Google Adwords, trying to get his blog traffic and stuff, not knowing what I was doing, but figuring it out along the way.

I wouldn't want to sell his blog for sentimental reasons. Plus, he actually willed it to me in the Legal Zoom will that he had done.

But Flippa.com is a hot place for people selling websites right now, so I could see how other folks may want to do that --- especially if the person they love who died had a profitable blog and if they need the money, and if they don't plan on updating the blog themselves, or don't know how.

In that case, they'd still need some basic information, like:

Where was the blog hosted? 
Simply plopping the dot com name into a site like Who.Is will tell you some basic info about the website, like I did here with my main website, which you can see is hosted at DreamHost.

(Some main web hosting companies are DreamHost, HostGator, Blue Host, GoDaddy and others...)

Then you'd just have to go to DreamHost.com, for example, and plop in that person's email address that they likely used and choose their "forgot password" option to get a new one sent to you, only if you know the deceased person's email info and can access their email.

At least that might set you on the road towards finding the data you'd need to transfer over to someone who wants to buy the blog.

This is why insurance is a good thing...

All this complicated techie talk might be a lot for a less techie person to have to try to deal with during a stressful time of death -- and it's pricked me to get myself more organized in my self-employed business in case I leave this earth any time soon.

There has been talk of blogger's insurance and stuff like that I remember reading on Darren Rowse's ProBlogger.net -- so look more into it there.

The truth is that people making good, 6-figure livings online has changed the game and the way we think about this little profitable "hobby" that has transformed into a real career.

Either way, I felt good that my family would get $500k in the wake of my death because of insurance purchased years ago and continually paid for each month -- so even if they didn't want to try and continue any of the online endeavors I started, they'd be secure and able to replace my salary anyway.

And God would keep blessing them with all the rest...