You may have been pressured before to switch your website from HTTP to HTTPS, however some sources have found that this may be impacting your traffic from Bing. It is commonly known that Google gives secured sites a boost in ranking. If you have migrated to HTTPS using an extension of transport layer security (TLS ), a security protocol necessary for HTTPS called sever name indication (SNI), then Search Engine Land says that you may have noticed a drop in Bing ranking and that this is caused by Bing’s inability to crawl sites with this type of site security implementation. To learn more about how your site may have been affected, check out this article.
If you’ve been contemplating selling your online business, we have a couple of resources that you might find useful. Founder Thomas Smale was recently featured on Baremetrics Academy, contributing a post about “How to Value a SaaS Business.” If you’re wondering how much your SaaS business is worth, this article is definitely something you should check out. If you’re looking for more case studies and learning about other online business owners selling their business, you should read about one of our recent deals – how Payfunnels was acquired by Imtiyaz Momin of iAstute on Yahoo! Finance.
Outside of the press release, the sellers shared with us how selling the business was one of the best decisions they have ever made. They’ve stopped being distracted with multiple projects and have managed to double down on another project without the need for external funding. This is a common comment we hear at FE International – running multiple businesses can be a distraction and selling part of your portfolio to a motivated buyer can be good for the business you sell and allow you to free up time and resources to work on your main business.
This week in listing updates, there is a wide selection of new SaaS and affiliate businesses to choose from. If you’re looking for a SaaS business, there is an $800K B2B e-book publishing and fulfillment business, $690K Amazon reselling software, and a $356K B2B e-commerce wholesale and inventory management business. Also newly listed is an advertising business in the travel and leisure space and an affiliate business in the home appliance industry with 110,000 unique visitors in the past year. There are quite a few new listings this week, so be sure to carefully look through them in the Deal Highlights section below. You can also browse through all listings here.
In event news, Founder Thomas Smale and Christopher Wong were in Chicago from June 7th-8th for IRCE, one of the biggest e-commerce events of the year. You can re-live all the highlights from the event on our Twitter and Facebook.
Read on for more on Amazon Lending and Google ad blocking.
Deal Highlights
New:
SaaS – Amazon Reselling Software – $23K MRR
- Rapidly growing MRR with a c.5.5% compound monthly growth rate of over the trailing 12 months
- Average net margin of c.77% over the trailing 12 months
- Proprietary ISBN database holding over 20 million book titles
- Growing customer base with hundreds of paying customers
- Low owner involvement
Yearly net profit: $216,000
Asking price: $690,000
SaaS – B2B eBook Publishing & Fulfillment – $25K gross/month
- Low customer churn rate of c.3.5% with a high customer lifetime value of $3.6K
- High value add product with strong feature differentiation compared to competitors
- Authoritative position in a rapidly growing niche with an expanding customer base
- Low owner involvement
Yearly net profit: $231,000
Asking price: $800,000
Advertising – Travel & Leisure – $1K gross/month
- Long and proven business history
- Strong backlink profile
- Diversified revenues
- Low owner involvement
- Established presence in a stable niche
Yearly net profit: $9,200
Asking price: $27,000
Affiliate – Home Appliances – $4.8K gross/month
- Ranks for over 6,000 keywords
- Strong traffic with over 110,000 unique users in the last 12 months
- Rapid revenue growth
- High commissions due to majority of sales in “home” niche
- Low owner involvement
Yearly net profit: $57,100
Asking price: $139,000
SaaS – B2B E-Commerce Wholesale & Inventory Management – $9K MRR
- Low customer churn of c.3.1%
- High customer lifetime value of over $1,900
- Rapid year over year MRR growth for the period 2014 – 2016 with a c.14% CAGR
- Established and proven business history
- Low owner involvement
Yearly net profit: $104,000
Asking price: $356,000
In the News…
Amazon Supports SMBs
Amazon announced that in the past year, it has loaned more than $1 billion to around 20,000 merchants on its platform. In 2011, Amazon launched its lending program, Amazon Lending, and is only available through an invite-only basis to small businesses that sell on Amazon. Earlier this year, Amazon filed a financial statement with the SEC that revealed its lending program had doubled from $337 million to $661 million from 2015 to 2016.
VP for Amazon Marketplace Peeyush Nhar said, “Small businesses are in our DNA. Amazon is providing capital to small businesses to help them expand inventory and operations at a critical period of their growth.”
Businesses selling on Amazon can apply for funding ranging from $1,000 to $75,000. Other companies with lending programs include PayPal and Square. Great news if you’re looking to expand your e-commerce business and need cash to help fund further growth!
Google Hates Intrusive Ads
Google strikes again against intrusive ads. Last week, it had announced that it is trying to “build a better web for everyone” and that it has joined the Coalition for Better Ads. The community is an industry group dedicated to improving online ads. Through Better Ads Standards, the industry can standardize improvements to ads for consumers. Google is taking these standards seriously with a new Ad Experience Report that helps you understand how the standards apply to your website. The report will identify “annoying” ad experiences, so you can easily find and fix them.
Chrome will also continue to focus on providing a better experience for users. For example, it currently prevents pop-ups in new tabs. Google plans to have Chrome stop showing ads, including ones sponsored by Google, on sites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards beginning in 2018.
It’s important to keep your visitors’ experience on your website in mind, when creating ads. Google’s algorithm can often cause stress for webmasters and online business owners concerned with how to avoid penalties and improve a site’s ranking. The experts at HubSpot have kindly provided a guide on what is new in Google ad blocking and how to make sure you’re abiding by the rules. Check out the guide here.