I hope April started out with a bang. For us it definitely did.
For months now, we’ve been super busy working on many changes and improvements to our marketplace. There are quite a few, so let’s start with a summary:
- We’re listing e-commerce sites!
- We’ve updated our membership tiers to two tiers – guests & premium members
- Version 3 of our due diligence is now live
- We’ve updated our fee structure for sellers
So, let’s unpack everything I mentioned above.
1) We’re now listing e-commerce sites!
The day has come. From now on, you can buy and sell e-commerce sites on the Investors Club marketplace.
This has been a long time in the making but we wanted to perfect our due diligence process for e-commerce sites.
Now, we are sure you can find the most thorough and detailed information and reports on every e-commerce site listed on our platform.
What makes our e-commerce listings different from other marketplaces?
Currently, no other marketplace or broker provides the greatest level of data and due diligence on e-commerce businesses that are for sale. We’re officially the first.
What information is included in an e-commerce listing?
Here’s what data you can expect to find from an e-commerce listing:
- Average order values (AOV)
- Cost of goods sold (CoGs)
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Gross profit per transaction (average)
- Gross profit margin (%)
- Marketing ROI
- Refund rates (%)
- Chargeback rates (%)
- Fully downloadable P&L report
- Niche Analysis
- Competitor analysis including the top 3-5 competitors
- Risk analysis scoring out of 10
- Growth potential analysis
- Workload analysis (hours/week)
- Marketplace analysis including:
- Which platforms (Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, etc)
- Markets (US, UK, etc)
- Seller performance and health scores
- Percentage of sales by markets/marketplaces
- Product analysis including:
- No. of SKUs
- Average product cost
- Average shipping cost
- Average delivery timeframes
- Location of manufacturers
- Total inventory cost/value
- Average number of days stock available (days)
- Supplier lead times (days)
Check out our sample report for an e-commerce business.
What is the acceptance criteria for e-commerce sellers?
In an effort to ensure the integrity of our marketplace, here is what potential e-commerce sellers need to know if they want to list with us:
- Businesses need to be trading and generating sales for a minimum of 12 months.
- Businesses need to be generating a minimum of $1,000 per month in average net profit over the last 12 months
- We accept Amazon FBA, Walmart, eBay or other marketplace business or;
- E-commerce brands selling on their own stores (i.e. Shopify, Bigcommerce, etc) and with their own or 3rd party fulfillment
- We accept KDP and information product businesses
- We also accept selected dropshipping sites (only where products aren’t being shipped solely on Alibaba manufacturers)
- All deals are 100% equity sales (no partials, investments or earn-outs, etc)
- The sites must not be in the gambling, adult niches or other illegal and dubious niches (like firearms, etc)
With that said, let’s move on to the next update…
Valuation tool for e-commerce sellers
We’ve updated our valuation tool to for e-commerce too. Check how much your e-commerce business is worth here.
2) We’ve restructured our memberships
After careful consideration, we’ve decided it’s time to update our membership plans to help better protect our sellers and offer our buyers more.
Up until now, our membership tiers looked a little something like this:
- Guest — minimal access;
- Approved Buyer — limited access;
- VIPs — full access.
Going forward, we’re simplifying things and moving to a two-tier system;
- Guest — Restricted access to listings data and no due diligence reports
- Premium Members (formerly known as VIP) — Full access to listing data with full due diligence reports
Why the change?
Well, our team of analysts has been pouring over the data and discovered that 70% of our transactions were completed by VIP (now rebranded to PREMIUM) members. And when we reached out to find out why, all feedback led us back to our detailed due diligence reports, and their ability to help investors make much more informed buying decisions.
At the same time, we had a large chunk of members who weren’t leveraging our reports to help them make smart investment decisions. So we took it upon ourselves to address this.
By moving to a two-tiered system. Guests will have access to general information with certain limitations. This means:
- URL and business names will be redacted
- Contacting the seller will be disabled
- Large chunk of the due diligence report also redacted
- You will need a premium membership to submit offers
To unlock the above, you will need to sign up for a premium membership.
To find out more about what the memberships entail, check our comparison table:
To learn more or sign up for a premium membership, click here.
3) Due diligence 3.0 on content sites
You already know we have the best and most detailed due diligence in the industry.
But what if I told you that they’re getting even better?
We’ve gone ahead and made significant improvements to our due diligence reports. Concise and easily digestible reports tailored to your needs thanks to your feedback. This is now accessible for Premium members.
What we added
- Improved traffic analysis with a focus on trends:
- How content sites have reacted to the last 2 year’s worth of Google updates
- Seasonality analysis
- Global traffic movements
- Catching up with upcoming GA4 implementation
- Improved content analysis:
- Content breakdown (focus on the type of content, buying intent vs educational vs commercial)
- Display ads analysis (if it is the primary revenue method)
- Obsolete content
- Improved SEO analysis:
- Added competition SEO analysis to our report
- More comprehensive and in-depth backlink analysis
- Analysis of internal linking practices
- Other listing updates:
- Deeper analysis on how sites have been affected (whether positively or negatively) by algorithm updates
- Additional metrics related to a site’s Core Web Vitals Assessment (Largest Contentful Paint, First Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, etc)
- Workload analysis now has a cosmetic change that highlights the number of hours per week
- Risk analysis scoring of 1-10 scale which indicates potential issues running the site
- Competitive analysis now includes top competitors
Check out our sample report with the new version for content sites.
4) Our seller success fee has now changed to 7%
Up until now, our success fee has been 5% of the selling price for all sites. And since we’ve decided on that number, a lot has changed.
Our team grew by more than 50%, our workload is getting bigger by the day, and, unfortunately, we’re not immune to the ever-present inflation affecting our business.
To be able to provide world-class service and keep the bar as high as you are used to with us, from now on, we’re changing our success fees to 7%, with a minimum of $1000.
But one thing that has not changed; is that we still have the lowest fees in the industry and will always do more to help you sell your site.
What’s next?
This is only just the beginning. We’ve got more things in the pipeline and I can’t tell you how excited I am to announce them when the time comes.
So watch this space!
What do you think about the latest changes? Your feedback is what drives us. So let us know in the comments below.
Interested in buying an online business? Then sign up to view our latest listings.
Interested in selling your online business? Then try our valuation tool or submit your business.
Senior Digital Marketing Specialist
Full-Stack Growth Marketer & Consultant | Marketplaces, Lead Gen & E-com | ex Growth Director @ Investors.club (Scaled 0-20k users in 2.5yrs).
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