This week, ChartMogul released Launch, a new free subscription plan for businesses that earns less than $10,000 MRR. The plan includes most of the standard features and existing customers who qualify can transfer from their paid plan to Launch. Read more about the details in the News Briefs section below.
Featured in listings this week is an $800K SaaS business for B2B eBook publishing and fulfillment with low customer churn and high LTV, and an e-commerce business selling smartphone parts and equipment with strong earnings and high visitor conversion rates.
In event news, FE will be sponsoring Midwest E-Commerce Conference in Minneapolis next weekend, July 21-22. At the conference, you can see Founder Thomas Smale speak on the 22nd about “How to Build an E-Commerce Business You Can Sell.” Be sure to attend his talk and stop by our booth, where you can meet Thomas and FE team members. If you prefer a one-on-one meeting with Thomas, let us know and we will make arrangements.
Keep reading for more information on the ChartMogul Launch plan, messenger display ads and LinkedIn native ads.
Deal Highlights
E-Commerce – Cell Phone/Smartphone Parts and Equipment – $42K gross/mo
- Strong earnings, grossing over $500,000 in the last 12 months
- Revenues diversified over 150+ SKUs, with no single SKU accounting for more than 5% of sales
- Strong traffic profile, with c.1,000,000 page views from c.250,000 unique users in the last 12 months
- High visitor conversion rates of 5.37%
- Almost two decades of operations, leading to a well-known and trustworthy brand
Yearly net profit: $118,000
Asking price: $280,000
SaaS – B2B eBook Publishing & Fulfillment – $25K gross/month
- Low customer churn rate of c.3.48% with a high customer lifetime value of $3,607
- 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
Sold:
Amazon Store – Drop Ship, FBA & Private Label – $117K gross/mo
In the News…
ChartMogul Launch
Chart Mogul announced a new free plan for early stage startups known as the ChartMogul Launch plan. The plan will include all subscription and cash flow metrics, segmentation, lead and trial tracking, multiple data sources, full API access and many other features you can check out here.
If your subscription business has under $10,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), then you qualify for the free plan. Anything over will require a paid plan with ChartMogul. If you’re already subscribed to ChartMogul, but you qualify for Launch, you can transfer your plan.
Messenger Display Ads
Facebook Messenger is beta testing display ads between chat threads. A small percentage of users will experience seeing ads in the Messenger home tab. Depending on how many threads a user has, the size of their phone screen and pixel density of the display, will determine where ads will appear.
Advertisers will be able to create ads through Ads Manager or Power Editor, as Messenger is now one of the automatic placements for Facebook ads. Targeting will work the same, since users will not be targeted based on what they write in messages.
This is one way that Facebook is trying to monetize Messenger, since it is running out of ad real estate in the News Feed. Last year, Facebook started testing Sponsored Messages from brands, directly in message threads. If you’re leveraging Facebook for ads and sales, Messenger users will be more exposed to the ads you place.
LinkedIn Native Videos
LinkedIn is now allowing users to natively upload videos through its mobile app. The videos will auto-play when users scroll through their feeds. According to a LinkedIn spokesperson, it plans to roll out the entire feature in the next coming months. Last year, LinkedIn released a separate app for its top influencers to post short videos.
What differentiates LinkedIn videos from other platforms is that LinkedIn will be giving users information about what companies, work and job titles their viewers represent. All job titles and companies will not be given for all viewers, but the top ones.
If you’re trying to explore different types of content and want to target certain types of companies and job experience, these LinkedIn native videos could be extremely useful.