How We Built A $360K/Year Marketplace To Buy And Sell Online Businesses
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Kevin Jourdan, I’m French, and I co-founded DotMarket back in 2019 with my associate Mayane Guez, with an official launch in early 2020.
DotMarket is a fully vetted digital assets brokerage platform. If you’re not familiar with the concept, we are some sort of digital real estate agent! Auditing and selling digital assets & businesses such as content websites, e-commerce sites, SaaS businesses, or newsletters.
We work with a wide range of customers:
On the one hand sellers! They come from all sorts of horizons. Website editors, entrepreneurs, and small or bigger media groups, who at some point, are looking at exiting their current business and work with us to get a valuation of their assets and sell to the “best” buyers.
Buyers on the other hand fall into 6 pretty specific groups:
- Small / beginner investors looking to start a business online
- Website editors looking to expand
- Small to big media groups mostly acquire audiences
- Entrepreneurs looking to invest in a new project
- “Institutional buyers” usually come in to acquire competing businesses
- And last but not least: funds. Can be aggregators, PE groups, small funds investing in digital assets, etc.
It’s a booming market in France and Europe in general. Quite advanced in the US, very delayed in the EU by the lack of serious actors on the market and delayed “knowledge” of digital assets owners who are not always aware of the ability to sell this “type” of business.
In our first year (2020) we generated a low $650K volume of sales and ended up close to $2.9M in 2021. Thanks to a recent acquisition of the US market with Duuce, the coming launch of Below50.eu by end of the year, and the opening of new Geo’s on the European market, we aim at passing 5 to $8M in 2022 and break the $10M mark as early as 2023.
As brokers, we get a success fee that’s around 10% overall, allowing us to target $500K in revenue minimum for 2022.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I come from the website editing (Affiliate & SEO) world. Back in 2012, I started my first websites, and by 2014, went all in to make a living as an affiliate marketer. At the time, a platform was starting to slowly change the way you buy and sell websites: Empire Flippers. These guys were doing something special, and doing it well.
It took me years to consider this aspect of the digital business because my first years have been focused only on building from scratch. But inevitably in this line of work, you either grow tired of waiting for your website to get out of the Sandbox, or end up having people reach out to you to buy your “good” sites!
That’s how I got acquainted with the idea that I could also buy to grow faster, and possibly sell some of my assets not performing well enough. In 2017, I reached out to Empire Flippers to introduce the idea of launching a French Franchise of their concept. They refused. 100% focused on the English-speaking market at the time, France was too small of a market to bet on.
Get started, and do it as quickly as possible.
I then decided to do it alone. Took me close to 2 years to realize I couldn't do it alone, and I ended up pitching the idea to my now business partner Mayane. She had all I didn't have to help me build this project!
We quickly launched an MVP, got our first clients through my website edition network, and validated that there WAS a demand. Buyers were hungry for good assets to acquire. Sellers were wary of being scammed here and there on the existing open platforms and forums.
After a few months of MVP, we finally launched what Dotmarket is today if you visit the website. It still will evolve (V2 coming in hot in 2023), but 2020 was the year we started communicating using this brand, and the current website. From there… it all went quite quickly, yet very slowly at the same time!
We very quickly realized that buyers were the most exciting part of our audience. They needed a place to “safely” find great assets to acquire. And because we had this real expertise in building and growing websites (I still own several 6 figures value websites), buyers were confident we knew our sh****!
However, it took us longer than expected to find these GREAT assets. The SEO world is famous for having loads of sites. But not exactly the ones you may wanna purchase with your eyes closed. So, even though we quickly had an audience in that niche, we had to get out of it and start finding assets that were owned by NON-SEO peeps.
That’s where the real work started. Blogging, newsletter, social media, outreach, podcasts. Today still, the biggest challenge remains to find the best possible assets and to filter out the massive amount of biz for sale that doesn't come close to our criteria!
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
We launched the first version, our MVP in June 2019. The funny thing is that we are still working with our MVP even today. There is still no registration for example, and many actions are still manual on our part. But that does not slow down the business and we realized that all the features of V1 were optional and that DotMarket could run without them. So we saved a nice budget by starting with this very simplified version.
We didn't have a CRM but a Typeform and a google sheet. We did not have an emailing tool but a google chrome plugin that did direct mail (Mailmentor).
Describe the process of launching the business.
Our “product” is very simple. Building the website wasn’t complicated. Even though we wanted something clean and a couple of features, even today, our website is mostly here to introduce who we are, and what we do, and publish listings of businesses for sale.
The biggest part of the work was done backstage!
Creating a full due diligence process, and getting the right contracts written, took time, effort, and sweat. It’s a world where you work hard to gain credibility and can quickly lose it if you mess up on things like paperwork or “simple” SEO / financial / tech verifications of a site you push for sale to your customers.
Add to that that we had to train the team. This job, website broker, doesn’t actually “exist” in France. M&A firms exist. Sure. But not “small website brokers”. Not a lot at least. So you can’t just go out there, publish a job offer and hire someone. You have to teach them what the job is about, what the customers are about, and what your vision is about.
I was NOT prepared to become a manager. Had to learn. Quick. The hard way, with my associate! And obviously, we had to finance the launch and the first months. Having my websites on the side helped a lot at the time. DotMarket was 100% financed thanks to my activity as a website editor. No funds raised, no loans. 100% bootstrapped.
Once we got all of this ready, we had most of what we needed to get in front of our customers. The rest is just a LOT of patience, notoriety work, and time spent on the phone hahaha. Cause this market, really, REALLY is a lot about getting to be known and respected.
Step by step, you gotta climb the stairs, prove to the buyers that you’re trustworthy, prove to the sellers that you can sell their business whatever the size, niche, business model, etc… If you haven’t sold a 6 figures business, it’ll be hard to get your first seller. Once you’ve done it, you gotta focus on selling your first 7 figures to unlock the next level. It’s all about being credible and showing you’ve done it. And that you’ve done it right!
Building a team, having an associate, and talking daily to very successful and inspiring people taught me that even though I could be proud of my career, I had PLENTY to learn.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Since launch, our biggest success I’d say has been the growth of our notoriety in the French market. Now, notoriety doesn’t not equal business. It’s not exactly a cause/consequence situation. Growing your notoriety and credibility will end up growing your business, but there’ll be a buffer before that happens.
So, building and growing your image, and your brand, is a day-to-day job. And sometimes, it stinks that all your efforts don’t pay. Right away. But what we’ve learned is that 1 year, 2 years after, you can get tremendous rewards for all of this. DotMarket is what it is today because we never stopped talking to customers, listening to critics, pitching to buyers, outreaching out to people in the industry, etc.
In the process, what has worked well for us in terms of specific channels are the following:
- Twitter! The SEO world is on Twitter. Can’t be missed.
- LinkedIn. Different audiences, investors / big buyers are there!
- Our newsletter (L’investisseur Web) 2 years after its launch still gets 60% OR with a weekly episode.
- Podcasts and guest blogging helped us get in front of audiences we couldn’t reach + feed some juice for our SEO strategy.
Talking about SEO, coming from this world, it’s been a rough trip. Our CMS was poorly chosen on that aspect and it took much longer than expected (based on my supposed SEO skills….) to finally get these needed TOP 1 - TOP 3 positions on Google for our target keywords. And still, a lot of work is to be done on that.
Nowadays, our audience (buyers, and sellers all together) comes pretty much ⅓ from SEO / SEA (Google ads), ⅓ from social media, and ⅓ from…word of mouth! And we’re quite proud of that last part!
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
DotMarket has been profitable since year one. Took us close to 8 months to reach breakeven and have been auto-financed in our growth since then. We’ve been growing the team from 2 of us (Mayane and I) to 7 today, and probably 8 or 9 by early 2023.
We currently still have a lot of work on the French market to become a solid leader in the 50K to 5M range market. That convinced us to delay our European ambitions, but obviously, that’s where we’re headed.
This year, we heavily focused on growing in France, acquired a small US-focused platform to buy and sell newsletters, and will launch a small platform dedicated to businesses below 50K value as we realized we need a special process, special people, and a dedicated brand if we wish to cover it as well. Can’t do it all, can you?
So, in 2023, Below50 will be our “small biz platform” and DotMarket will officially only accept 50K to 5M euros worth of businesses. Once this is on track, we’ll focus on opening other Geo’s in Europe starting with Italy, Spain, Germany, and a few other countries with the same idea of bringing what DotMarket does best to local audiences, with local processes, teams, etc.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I’ve learned humility thanks to that business! Building a team, having an associate, and talking daily to very successful and inspiring people (buyers or sellers) taught me that even though I could be proud of my career as a website editor, I had PLENTY to learn in that field. I had to start from scratch on some aspects, I had to learn to accept that I had to hire people being much better than I am to deliver the promise I wanted DotMarket to live up on. So yeah, humility was a big lesson growing DotMarket :) And still is!
I also got the chance to be surrounded by awesome people. My team obviously, but also partners who believed in us very early on, and didn’t hold on to their advice, critics, or suggestions for us to become better, faster.
Being humble, always being open to learning new things, and improving what I do is key for me to grow a business successfully.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use very basic tools.
Slack, Notion, WordPress, Webflow for our new websites, PipeDrive, and Zapier for our CRM and automation.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
The 4 hour work week has been one of the first very influential books for me!
So was The Lean Startup.
I grew up as a website editor reading Nichepursuits.com and Smartpassiveincome.com, back in the day, these free for all resources could teach you how to get started well!
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Get started, and do it as quickly as possible. But do it surrounded by the right people. These people can be associates, mentors, or just good family/friends there to support you, encourage you, tell you you can do it anytime you need to hear it, yet be honest with you if you derail too!
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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