The Business Inquirer #017
In this week's issue I highlight a WordPress plugin, a digital product, an ecommerce store, and what I learned last week.
Every week I highlight interesting online businesses which are for sale adding my own commentary. This newsletter is for those who are interested in business, finance, and entrepreneurship. Subscribe below to receive it directly in your inbox.
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Hello Friends!
A few subscribers have asked about the results of the due diligence questionnaire. I have 20 responses so far. I want to wait another week or two and see if I can get to 30. I’ll share the list once I reach out to each of the respondents and get their written permission.
In this week’s issue:
Plugin - WordPress
Digital Product - Startup Idea Validation
eCommerce - Personalized Bible
What I Learned Last Week
Plugin - Add-on for WordPress (Asking: $150k)
Description
For sale is a profitable add-on for Elementor for WordPress. This add-on helps you manage global site styles without re-creating the styles on every page. The product also includes a few templates, Style Kits, and blocks. There are free and paid versions.
Details
Founded Feb 2020
3 person team
Built on WordPress, PHP, MySQL, React
Bootstrapped. No marketing has been done
TTM: $15k recurring revenue; $52k total revenue; $49.5k profit
Margin: 95%
Asking: $150,000 (Open to Offers)
Multiple: 2.88x
🤓 Why I’m Highlighting This Business
As I highlighted in my last newsletter, WordPress continues to be the dominant website content management system with a 3rd of all websites built on top of it. Within WordPress, Elementor is the dominant page builder add-on which is a platform in itself. Personally, most of my websites have been built using Elementor.
✅ What I Like:
Add-ons are typically sticky businesses
High margin business model
Opportunity for a lot of upsells
❌ What I Don’t Like:
Elementor could add this feature themselves in a future release
Requires a tech team to update
Marketing could be capital intensive
🚀 How I Would Grow This:
Affiliate & content marketing is key in this space
Add additional value-add features to create a moat
You can view the listing on MicroAcquire.
Digital Product - Idea Validation (Asking: $50k)
Description
For sale is Startup Builder, a profitable digital product which helps first-time founders validate their business ideas and quickly get their first sale. The framework breaks down validation models into 5 steps: market, problem, value proposition, channels, willingness to pay/demand.
Details
Founded Nov 2020
165 customers
Digital product priced at one-time $49
Built on Notion, getdrip, integromat, paddle, gumroad
Relationship with a university
Last Month: Rev of $1,740; Profit of $1,640
Competitors: Cuttles, IndiHackers, Unsolved
Asking: $50k (Open to Offers)
🤓 Why I’m Highlighting This Business
Record numbers of entrepreneurs are validating their ideas prior to launching. This product can be morphed into a SaaS with a community and cohort learning. Purchase price here would be really important as you’d have to do a decent amount of work to take this to the next level. I know the seller is motivated to sell.
✅ What I Like:
Product has some market validation since 165 people purchased it over last 3-months
There’s an existing, profitable relationship with a university. This could be a good distribution model going forward.
Seller is a business builder and can provide support
Asking price can be negotiated
❌ What I Don’t Like:
There’s some competition in this space. YC and other incubators have plenty of free and paid guides.
Business is relatively new and unclear the long-term earning potential
A lot of work required to develop a marketing strategy with content, affiliates, paid, etc.
🚀 How I Would Grow This:
Increase pricing. $49 is too low
Transform the product into a SaaS
License the product to startup studios, incubators, universities
You can view the listing on MicroAcquire.
eCommerce - Personalized Bibles (Asking: $10k)
Description
For sale is Personalized Bibles which is an ecommerce store. The store has been around for 7-years and sells personalized bibles which are produced and shipped by manufacturing partners in the US.
Details
7-year old store
Fulfillment by US manufacturing partners
77% visitors from paid and 16% from organic search
AOV: $87
Avg Net Profit Margin: 14%
TTM Profit: $30,842
Asking: $10,000; BIN: $88,000
Multiple: 2.85x
🤓 Why I’m Highlighting This Business
I’ll highlight any business which is religious or political. Engaged audience, easy to target, higher spending power.
✅ What I Like
Religious niche
Aged store with a great domain
Steady traffic trends
High AOV
❌ What I Don’t Like
Only 16% of traffic is organic
Only sells bibles - not a repeat purchase (as far as I know)
7% refund rate seems a bit high for such a simple product
Website design needs to be updated
🚀 How I Would Grow This
Rationalize the inventory. They have >1k skews but only 100 of the bibles are driving the most revenue
Add additional items with religious relevance like bookmarks, calendars, book binders.
Add some sort of subscription - maybe monthly bookmarks or calendars.
Engage in e-mail and affiliate marketing
Redesign the website to make it modern, clean, conversion focused
You can view the listing on Flippa.
🧐 What I Learned Last Week
Can you help me by answering this question?
This section of the newsletter is where I share some interesting links, random thoughts, and other things that I hope are relevant to entrepreneurs. I’ve been thinking of spinning this “What I Learned Last Week” section out into a separate newsletter that would come out Friday or Saturday. It would simply be an aggregation of links and perhaps some minimal commentary. What do you think? Should I create a separate What I Learned Last Week newsletter?
😐 I have no opinion. Maybe interesting but most likely waste of time.
👎 No! My inbox is already full and I can't read another newsletter.
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Free access to Product Explorer
Andrew Gazdecki of MicroAcquire recently acquired Product Explorer and is giving everyone free access. Product Explorer is a tool that gives you data on 50k+ products ranging from Shopify stores, extensions, plugins, Hacker News, Product Hunt, and more. It’s a great tool to find your next acquisition target.
Use coupon code “@microacquire” for free access to Product Explorer.
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First industrial revolution from home
Brianne Kimmel lays out the case that the next wave of entrepreneurs will form and build their businesses from kitchen tables and home offices.
It’s hard to imagine that workers will ever resign themselves to “extreme commuting” again. Instead, we’re entering a new era where individuals have more power than institutions: the corporate era is over and anyone can start the business of their dreams.
Some trends we’ll see in the new Industrial Revolution from home…
You can start your dream job from your kitchen table
Home matters more and so do the neighborhoods
SMB’s will build local and sell global
People will choose creativity over corporate culture
Hard to argue that WFH allows for greater creativity and frees up time for entrepreneurship - for some people. Having said that, it’s not some magic bullet. It’s easy to get lost in the narrative that everyone is creative and has entrepreneurial drive and ambitions. I’m just not sure that’s 100% true.
Either way, check out this post on Brianne’s WFH newsletter.
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US money supply is exploding higher
Small changes in economic indicators generally don’t have much real-world implications but when you see some serious dislocations then it may be time to start thinking about how to react.
35% of all US dollars in existence has been printed in the last 10-months…
We’re just getting started with the debt bonanza here in the US…
Raw commodity prices are surging…
I think these powerful dislocations are worth paying attention to and reacting accordingly in your business and personal life.
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Good time to be in ecommerce
Rebound in consumer spending is mostly in consumer goods and not in services. Not a surprising statistic but I did not think the delta would be so drastic.
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That’s all for this issue of The Business Inquirer!
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Important Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided for informational & educational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. This newsletter may link to other websites and certain information contained herein has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, it has not been independently verified. The Business Inquirer makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. References to any companies, securities, or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any business, tax, or investment decisions. Content in this newsletter speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.