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Success story: $55,000,000 (38)

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As many of you already know, I do email, and in my daytime job I worked in media. A few years ago, I joined a small group of people who were forming a tiny startup and we built a company in online media and sold it. I am not going to reveal the niche, but I'll use finance as an example.

We built a platform like www.marketwatch.com, and we made it a requirement to create a user profile, and hundreds of thousands of business people signed up because our content was amazing. We were able to email them every day and drive super high-quality targeted traffic and sell advertising, products, conferences, downloads, and other things.

We just sold the company this week for $55 million, all cash, to a much larger media company who was interested in adding our platform to their portfolio. I got a decent seven figure payout, not complaining.

This is a pretty serious operation, the company has over 50 employees, and about half of them were writers/content producers.

I don't want to share the name of the company, but I shared details with Mr Green and stackman, they can confirm, they saw articles about the deal in the New York Times. (Please don't ask them, just be inspired and know there's a lot of money to be made if you work for it.)

I get a lot of pms asking 'how can I do email', please don't. I'll tell you right here: master some niche, then figure out how to make people sign up, then you've got a media company of your own. I've never done affiliate offers, so I can't help with that. Look at other media companies and figure out what they're doing. There really are no secrets.

I don't recommend jumping into this just because there's money in it. Hedge fund managers make $100 million, doesn't mean you should start a hedge fund. Follow the steps of affiliate mastery, and when you have expertise in a niche and capital to spend and know what you're doing, you can explore things like this.

Another interesting thing is that we grew organically, but it took several years. We were too busy to run campaigns on facebook etc. We just made sure we had high-quality, shareable content.

The systems we used for email were all enterprise level, $100,000+/year, and later we simply developed our own so we could have more control.

I guess the lesson to take away from all this remains the same: Pick ONE THING, and master it. There are people killing it in email, PPC, mobile, pops, native, etc. Usually the ones I see struggle are those who keep chasing the new hot thing and never master anything.

Good luck!

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_mcr_ really helped create an amazing email monetisation operation at this company ... congratulations on a great payout!

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oh snap!

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Congrats! 55 million is an incredible amount of money!

Would you say your high quality content was the "core drive" of this business? (i.e. focusing on quality instead of quantity)

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Yes, content is king, at least in this scenario. The high-quality content is why people open our emails, click on them, go to our site, and remain subscribed. If you can make people love you, the rest is easy.

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Congrats once again MCR!

High quality content + the right niche + email = easy 8 figure buy out.

It's that easy right MCR? :P

P.S. I can verify the buy the $55,000,000 buyout.

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Pretty much! It helps if you pick a niche or industry where there's a lot of money sloshing around, like finance, etc. If you pick a niche like say, bass fishing, you're probably not gonna make as much.

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Inspirational. Thank you for sharing the story _mcr_! What is next on your agenda?


p.s Just noticed you became a moderator too, congrats!

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I'm gonna stick to the things I know and do new things in the same field. If you just pick one thing and master it, good things will happen. This seems to be the secret more than anything else.

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Congrats _mcr_, thats an amazing success you guys achieved there, kudos to you

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Amazing. Congrats man. I really agree with what you said above about having a good way to collect emails before thinking about the rest of the process..

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How many years it takes to build the website?

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like 8

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Congrats MCR!

This makes me thing of the hundred thousands I've spent on buy traffic and having not captured any email.

I've been thinking of making a small digital product in a niche I'm expert of and I like to start building a list and giving something of value for free at the same time.

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Amazing work dude!

Reaffirms why building an asset and getting out of the cat-and-mouse affiliate game is really the next step up.

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congrats on the sale

well deserved for your hard and good work!!

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Congrats, man. Well deserved.

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C * o * n * g * r * a * t * s

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Congrats

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Congratulations, I hope lot of people get inspired by this and start taking actions and focus on one thing.

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Congrats on the success! I guess the next venture is gonna be in the 9-10 figures start up

Very inspiring and thanks for sharing!

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Congratulations on your success. It's nice to see that hard work pays off.

A few questions out of curiosity if you don't mind:

Are you remaining with the company, or are you done for good?

Were you guys actively trying to sell, or did you get approached by the buyer?

What made you decide to sell, vs keeping the company and growing it further?

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- Done for good, focusing on other things.

- Selling a company is an art, you have to actively look for a buyer while giving the impression that you're not for sale. If you look for a buyer aggressively and the whole market knows you're for sale, the value of the company drops. You want to look like a desirable asset that's in demand, a prize to be won.

- There comes a time when it's best to exit, especially as you approach the 10-year mark. People with equity want to cash out, you don't want to face another possible recession, etc. This is pretty standard. Even companies that have investors cannot go over 10 years without either selling the company or going public.

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What I love about this is when you think you doing well BAM $55m..... great motivation! thanks bro!

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If you could go back 10 years, what would you do differently?

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I would negotiate a much higher amount of equity. I could have gotten myself a much bigger piece of the pie.

In life, you don't get what you deserve, you only get what you negotiate.

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Hey mcr

Amazing! Congrats man!

having just hit the xxxx per day mark (me and my partner), its great to know that there is always bigger and better

So now that you are all sold - what is next for you?

PS - I agree with the ONE THING approach. its only when you focus do you really get there.

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I'll just do more of the same stuff.

x,xxx per day is a ton of money!

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Awesome work MCR! Congratulations!

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Congrats!@#

i've been in high traffic niches and never dived into email submits and marketing like I wanted to.
Although I agree with "Pick ONE THING, and master it." sometimes it's worthwhile to open you eyes and act different and / or long term strategies, like your case.

Creating a following is hard but a great long term exit strategy.

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Thanks so much for sharing all this!

(I nearly "thanked" every post you made

Do you mind sharing what revenue and/or profit range the company you built was achieving for the $55/million sale price?

I ask, because I've seen multiple ways that companies are valued ... example: some are multiples of the revenue, many small businesses are multiples of the profit (something like 4x/gross profit = sale price)

(If you want to PM me back for privacy, that's fine too)

I also ask because the LIST is an entirely different asset that would increase the value of the company. Example: avg $XX (lifetime value) per subscriber email name x # of subscribers = sale price or added to the sale price?

I know that it would vary depending on vertical -- using the example you've used -- a financial niche email/name could easily be worth $XX while a name/subscriber to your bass fishing example business might only be worth $0.XX ... so I know that plays a part.

I'm just wondering for some guidance in all that.

Finally, I ask because I have an info product business with XXX,XXX email subscribers + XX,XXX paid customer email subscribers and I'm building the company with a future sale in mind like you did -- so always wondered how the various assets (like the email list) were valued/could be valued.

Thanks so much!

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Thanks a lot for the informative post, _mcr_!

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just saw this

- multiples are determined by industry. for a tech company, the multiple is usually 10x. one method for valuation is multiple x EBITDA. there are other methods.
- a company usually must be big enough to attract an offer, it's usually harder for companies doing only $1M or $2M in EBITDA. the bigger the better. but if you can attract a buyer in your niche/industry, that's all that matters.
- the list will normally be what attracts a buyer; the EBITDA will determine the price. will you get a premium on top of your valuation for your list? i don't know. it depends on your industry, and how bad they want to acquire you. it's negotiation.
- it all depends. if you have a list of bass fishermen who spend $500/yr, it probably will be more valuable than a list of financial news readers who buy nothing. you need to know your industry well.
- i recommend learning key business concepts. it will also depend on things like growth trajectory and projections etc

good luck.

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Very inspiring. It really opens my mind. Can your idea work well in a specific country, not international such as Vietnam

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Of course!

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Can't speak from direct experience with such a project but in general, countries with good population are good for this sort of idea.

That's the reason countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, India, etc. were and are popular for many of the mobile campaigns. Lower payouts but very high volume - you can achieve great things there for sure!

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Congrats
thanks for sharing!

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I wish more people understood the depth of this particular statement. This along with too much focusing on technical things rather than creative testing, is like the 90% reason people fail even before they could fail. Great tips man, appreciate it.

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