I’ve never bought a five-figure website before but have been wanting to for the past year or so. I have simply been waiting for the right opportunity, and I finally found it two weeks ago. The problem was that it was a little big bigger than what I anticipated jumping into for my first “big” deal.
The site is a chat room for active day traders and swing traders, with a few other features. It’s been around since 2016 and closed out 2018 on approx. $37k of revenues and $30k of profits. Subscriber churn had been a bit of an issue but the owner hadn’t touched the site in 6 months and it was still hanging in right at $2k profit over the past 3 months.
(If anyone here is an active trader, I would love to run this site by you and get your feedback and thoughts)
I have a technical finance background and have always wanted a SaaS business, plus my roommate used to day trade (free employee 😀 ), so it was the perfect opportunity.
I went in at a $30k offer and ended up settling at $40k.
The issue is I didn’t have a liquid $40k. I’m a rather illiquid guy, I’ve only been accumulating wealth (working) for 1.5 years now and I bought about $12k of websites in 2018, so most of my wealth is tied up in non-liquid websites. Fortunately, my day job pays well and I have good credit.
Most people hate debt, but I love it.
I liquidated $12k from my eTrade account, and then borrowed $8k on margin. My other positions in my account are the stock of the company I work for and we’re in a no-trade period due to earnings season, so I borrowed against it instead.
I still needed $20k so I went down the hassle-some road of getting an unsecured line of credit from a bank. This was a PITA, so I got on Marcus, Goldman Sachs personal lending platform, to see what I could get there. In a matter of 5 minutes I had the $20k on its way to my bank. Didn’t have to talk to anyone, didn’t have to submit any additional info or verification….I only had to sign one loan agreement. It blew my mind how easy this was. 3 days later it was in my account.
Overall cap structure:
-$12k of equity
-$8k margin loan, 9.75%
-$20k Marcus unsecured loan, 54 months at 11.99% (personal recourse of course)
The site currently has about 30 active/paying subscribers. It used to have ~150 back when the owner was focusing a lot of effort on it. The goal is to get it back up into the triple digits for subscribers by the end of the year, and double profitability within first 6 months.
Not a huge site in comparison to some others around here, but a huge move for me at this point in life. Hoping I can be like @biophase and write my “how to buy a lamborgihini (or mp4-12c) for $40k” next.
The site is a chat room for active day traders and swing traders, with a few other features. It’s been around since 2016 and closed out 2018 on approx. $37k of revenues and $30k of profits. Subscriber churn had been a bit of an issue but the owner hadn’t touched the site in 6 months and it was still hanging in right at $2k profit over the past 3 months.
(If anyone here is an active trader, I would love to run this site by you and get your feedback and thoughts)
I have a technical finance background and have always wanted a SaaS business, plus my roommate used to day trade (free employee 😀 ), so it was the perfect opportunity.
I went in at a $30k offer and ended up settling at $40k.
The issue is I didn’t have a liquid $40k. I’m a rather illiquid guy, I’ve only been accumulating wealth (working) for 1.5 years now and I bought about $12k of websites in 2018, so most of my wealth is tied up in non-liquid websites. Fortunately, my day job pays well and I have good credit.
Most people hate debt, but I love it.
I liquidated $12k from my eTrade account, and then borrowed $8k on margin. My other positions in my account are the stock of the company I work for and we’re in a no-trade period due to earnings season, so I borrowed against it instead.
I still needed $20k so I went down the hassle-some road of getting an unsecured line of credit from a bank. This was a PITA, so I got on Marcus, Goldman Sachs personal lending platform, to see what I could get there. In a matter of 5 minutes I had the $20k on its way to my bank. Didn’t have to talk to anyone, didn’t have to submit any additional info or verification….I only had to sign one loan agreement. It blew my mind how easy this was. 3 days later it was in my account.
Overall cap structure:
-$12k of equity
-$8k margin loan, 9.75%
-$20k Marcus unsecured loan, 54 months at 11.99% (personal recourse of course)
The site currently has about 30 active/paying subscribers. It used to have ~150 back when the owner was focusing a lot of effort on it. The goal is to get it back up into the triple digits for subscribers by the end of the year, and double profitability within first 6 months.
Not a huge site in comparison to some others around here, but a huge move for me at this point in life. Hoping I can be like @biophase and write my “how to buy a lamborgihini (or mp4-12c) for $40k” next.
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