A Unique Deal Teaches Me the Benefits of Humility in Business & The Financially Sweet Taste of Humble Pie

I had an experience over the last couple weeks that I hope by me sharing others will be able to learn from.

With my focus on selling my FBA business other unique sales opportunities have presented themselves.

Let me tell you a story about what happened with one (eventual six figure deal)…

An opportunity came up to sell one of my affiliate sites strategically with the idea that they(startup company) would improve the site and based on the strategic nature of the purchase would be able to increase the value of their business significantly.

After some initial discussions it was clear the amount of cash available in the business was too low to be able to acquire the site at market value (let alone the premium that usually goes with strategic acquisitions).

Deal Dead?​

It would have been had I not been recently working with some clever private equity types who had been looking to creatively structure FBA acquisitions.

So what deal can we strike when the business will be worth more in the hands of the acquiring company but the acquiring company doesn’t have funds to purchase the site?

Our clever solution was…A domain/website lease agreement which included a modest % of any increased earnings paid to me with the purchase of an option to buy the site in 1 year for a premium price, along with an agreement on minimum standards for the site and a few rules about what they couldn’t do to the site. The domain and website stay in my control until the option to purchase is exercised.

Benefits to Me:

  • Premium purchase price for an affiliate site (30x)
  • If option isn’t exercised I will still own an improved website
  • Upside % during lease agreement

Benefits to Purchaser

  • Use their knowledge and connections to greatly improve monetization of site
  • Able to show revenue growth with minimal capital outlay (increase value of their business greatly & raise funds at a greater valuation)
  • Able to grow total size of business (increase value of their business greatly)

How Not Being Humble Almost Cost Me Six Figures!

I GREATLY overestimated my skills! With this site I spent minimal time on it but thought it had been reasonably well set up from a monetization standpoint.

The one way the deal wouldn’t make sense to do is if they were unable to improve its earnings then I would get none of the upside and it would take away their incentive to exercise the option to purchase the site.

I contemplated not doing this deal because I doubted if the improvements would make a meaningful difference – I WAS WRONG!

How Did They Improve The Site?

  • Better looking layout
  • More focused on the primary offer
  • Pop-Up to take visitors to the primary offer
  • Improved usefulness of the content

Bottom line – nothing crazy was done and I had to eat some humble pie that even with some pretty straightforward changes they were able to make substantial improvements to the click through rate and eventual earnings of the site!

Why Share This Story?

I think it was a unique deal and the more times people can read about unique solutions to problems the more likely they will be to recognize when a unique solution may exist.

Plus, I like to share all my failures and wins…although this is certainly a win it is very clear I had failed at monetizing this site to the best of its ability!

What Did I Learn from This Deal:

  • Creative deal structuring can make deals happen when simple deals aren’t possible
  • Strategic sales make the pie bigger!
  • Being humble and knowing that no matter what you think you know everyone has something they can do better than you and learn from them.
  • There are areas in my business if I spent more time would result in substantial earning improvements!
  • I need to improve my monetization skill set

Hopefully me sharing this deal will help you consider different solutions on problems in the future.

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January Income Report and 2016 Goals

The first income post of a new year is my favourite as I get to share both my new goals for the year and the direction of my business.

NOTE – If you have an Amazon Affiliate site and are interested in selling please let me know ASAP as I could potentially pay competitively for it – Contact me at jonhaver11 (at) gmail (dot) com or  here 

 

2015 was a great year highlighted early on in January with the birth of my Daughter and overall a record-setting year for my business, in 2016 I will continue to grow my business to new levels.

My “why” for this business continues to be clearer and clearer and that is to provide financial security for my family, allow me to spend more time with them and give me an outlet for my need to build interesting/useful teams & systems.

The business ended the year strong with record months in Nov and Dec I was excited to try and keep the momentum going into the New Year.

My new monthly report format will focus on my 4 main business “divisions”…

  1. Passive Income Website Portfolio
  2. AuthorityWebsiteIncome Blog
  3. SEO & Expired Domain Services:
  4. Amazon FBA Business

(more…)

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3 Step Authority Website Traffic Growth Plan – SIMPLE

Not everything about growing website traffic and building a profitable authority site needs to be complicated! (even though I often do a good job of making things complicated – see my attack plan document).

If you are looking to grow traffic to a website and you execute this simple 3 step process without wavering from it for a few months I would guarantee you will increase your search traffic 99% of the time! (more…)

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Selling my FBA Business – Interested?

Today for the first time I am putting my unique entire FBA business including all authority affiliates websites that drive the sales up for sale!

For those of you that have been following my Journey with FBA (all posts here) you have seen this unique business strategy on a very steady upward trend!

 

Unique Opportunity:

Purchase this $11k+/month net income highly diversified, stable and growing business…

Diversified Business (not simply 1 website)

  • 2 affiliate sites with stable history of driving sales
  • FBA product line and brand generating solid sales on Amazon

Growth:

  • Upward trend for business
  • Growing market (see Google Trends data below)
  • Peak season in May but steady all year long (not a holiday rush product)

Opportunities:

  • No PPC being used to date
  • Ecommerce drop shipping option at Affiliate Sites to increase margin
  • Product Line Expansion (several great options)
  • Value multiple growth (with more data the business/brand value should be 3x annual net income)

 

Validated Unique Amazon FBA Business Model:

The business model of using an Amazon Affiliate site to drive sales to launch an FBA private label product line has certainly proven itself as you can see in the graphs below. This lower risk online business model when compared to simply purchasing a single website provides both risk mitigation along with more opportunities for growth.

 

Simply Buying & Holding Will Result in Upside Plus Lower Risk with Diversified Traffic

The business model I am setting my team up to execute is a higher risk process involving the acquisition of several affiliate sites and the creation of brands around them. This model requires capital and I will look to use the funds of this sale to rinse and repeat the model.

Currently the value I can continue to add to this business is less than growing a new affiliate site and FBA brand.

As a result I know I am walking away from a potential 3x annual income sales multiple if I were willing to simply hold (even without additional growth).

Lower Risk vs Website Purchase – Most online business purchases are a single website that the downside of the investment is a complete $0. In this case with the diversified traffic streams of Amazon Organic, Google Organic to multiple sites there is no single point of failure.

 

By The Numbers:

Income

Nov & Dec Average Net Income = $10,983 USD

The business will be valued based on the numbers from November, December and January…

FBA-Business-Metrics

(sale valuation will be based on Nov, Dec and Jan numbers)

Affiliate Site 1 Weekly Traffic

tcc-traffic

Affiliate Site 2 Weekly Traffic (Purchased Website)

bwc-traffic

 

High-Season Approaching, Steady All Year in a Growing Market

With both the high-season coming (May) for this market and the market growing at a steady rate over the last 5 years shows that the sales are not only holiday seasonally driven.

(17.5% year over year growth from 2006 – 2016 and very stable interest around the entire calendar year)

What Is For Sale?

  • FBA Business & Brand
    • Inventory at Amazon
    • Brand & Brands Website
    • Social Accounts
    • All procedures and marketing plans
  • Affiliate Website 1
  • Affiliate Website 2
  • 600 person email list (growing at a rat of 5-10/day) (30% open rate with 15% click through rate)

 

Effort of Work to Run:

  • 4-8posts per month published (1hr/week – if using a VA)
  • Track inventory & Re-Order From Supplier (2hrs/week)
  • Monitor Listing (7hrs/week)

 

Timeline for the Sales Process:

  • Determine if there is interest in the sale from my audience (Jan 18)
  • Qualify interested parties (Jan 18 – 31)
  • Discuss via Skype with potential buyers (Jan 18 – 31)
  • Determine if private sale will be possible (Jan 18 – 31)
  • Complete private sale (Feb 7)
  • If no sale in the first week in February list on EmpireFlippers.com (first week in February)

For Myself – Rinse & Repeat

For the Buyer – Grow (PPC, Ecommerce Side, Product Line & in 1 year value business at 3x Annual Earnings ideally)

 

Next Steps:

If you are interested I look forward to discussing the sales process with you…

  1. Please simply email me (jonhaver11 (at) gmail (dot) com) including…
    1. Your initial questions
    2. Proof of ability to pay (numbers or recent examples – need to filter out tire-kickers)
    3. Basic information about you/why you are looking to buy
    4. Potential times to get on Skype to discuss the sales process
  2. If interest is significant I will select ~10 qualified buyers to work with and send the due-diligence packages to
  3. Filter number of potential buyers down to 3-4 buyers and find the best fit
  4. If no private sale is in place by early February I will list at EmpireFlippers.com

Depending on the seller and their wishes I look forward to sharing the results of this process for everyone reading AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com

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One Year Six Figure Challenge Update – Systems Saved My Ass

This post will include an update on my website for my six figure challenge I launched last year, the process I used to build up the site and my

  1. The Six Figure Challenge History
  2. Results
    1. Traffic
    2. Income
  3. My Activities
    1. Month by Month (posts, guest posts, PBN, 301 Building Blocks,
  4. How You Can Follow The Same Formula

Although I certainly failed on turning this site into a six figure business I did manage to “achieve” the goal of building a six figure business after starting in September!

 

Six Figure Challenge History

Reason Why:

This website was founded as a case study for me building up an authority site in the student loan space which has continued to make thousands of dollars a month since 2012. Building and sharing the journey is a lot of fun and the reason AuthorityWebsiteIncome.com exists. For that reason I made the goal of building a six figure value website within the year in 2015…meaning if it was making $5k/month it would be worth $100k.

The Idea:

My plan was going to be a little unique and that was to have a group of people with the same goal work through the process with me.

The Team:

Having over 80 applicants in under 48hrs was impressive! But even more impressive was the quality of the applicants! Many with exceptional experience and success to date.

The team I selected had a great mix!

It was a lot of fun working with this group of impressive individuals, many of whom went on to have huge successes in 2015!

Our Process:

We met a couple times a week on Google+ hangout at the start and then weekly after that. We went through my Authority Site Attack plan document (sign up in the opt in box on the side to access it).

Meetings Died Off:

100% my fault but after a few months I got into a very busy period at my day job and both the additional work I was putting into the site and our weekly meeting started to die off. Many of the people continued to meet and help each other through the process.

For me I really enjoyed the mastermind format as a group working together to build something. I was certainly not comfortable anytime I was to be the “authority” and “teach” something. But in general the group made the experience fun and held everyone accountable to progress.

VERY BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE IN THE GROUP!!

 

Six Figure Challenge – Results

The nice thing about this project was that although it did not achieve the goals I was after with it, it certainly achieved success!

Traffic Results:

As you can see from the curve below the site was on a very steady climb week over week for much of the sites existence with the highest traffic week being just last week!

6figre-traffic-weekly

Income Results:

Definitely an area for improvement both in terms of actual results and my effort in this area to improve the monetization!

  • Jan – (-$855) net income
  • Feb – (-$964) net income
  • Mar – (-$130) net income
  • April – $107 net income
  • May – $158 net income
  • June – $162 net income
  • July – $142 net income
  • Aug – $258 net income
  • Sep – $453 net income
  • Oct – $521 net income
  • Nov – $554 net income
  • Dec – $612 net income

Growth & Other Stats

  • The first six months the growth average over 100% each month
  • The second six months the growth of the site averaged over 20% each month
  • Value of the site now should be in the $10k ballpark with lots of opportunity to improve conversions (I really need to get on!)
  • Net Income over the year positive by only $1,050
  • Growth trajectory stable and promising

Six Figure Challenge – How Did I Build & Promote The Site

So what was the strategy I used to start building out my site? Well you can signup to see the exact attack plan I have used for this and other sites in the sidebar opt-in, however I quickly adjusted my plans when I had to re-prioritize my hours in March.

To show you exactly what I did and when I did it to build up this moderately successful authority site have a look below.

I believe you will be surprised at how few items I focused on and how few hrs I worked on this project…

6figure-sequence 6figure-stats

Notes about stats & the sites activity:

  • Positive growth in every month except Dec (with the last two weeks being holidays!)
  • Expenses were a little lower for me since I already had a moderately relevant PBN to generate some of the links from
  • 301 building block strategy was used extensively at the start to get the site moving well!
    • 301 Building Block details here & here
  • Revenue has not grown at the same rate as the traffic to the site (more work needed)
  • Lots and lots of quality posts were created!
  • Consistency with the strategy of keyword research, content creation and quality link creation was key to sustaining momentum
  • Invested only 96hrs in the project (working on the site) more with the weekly meetings at the start
  • My hours dropped off to 0 at times
  • Assuming the business is worth 20x at $500/month my hrly rate of return was $114.47/hr (20x $500 + sum of net income to date)

 

#1 Most Important Take Away – Have a plan and consistently execute the plan!

Although the results are not what I wanted they do show the value of a system.  Often we struggle with too many unfinished projects when a competing priority takes over some of our time. This project had all the makings of a project that could follow that path…in Jan/Feb I put in good effort and then in March when my time got a little too stretched I dropped this project like a bag of bricks!

If it had not been for my system of ongoing content creation and automatic link generation my site would have died a slow all to common death!

Although my systems are what kept the site moving the key reason I believe I didn’t achieve larger success and meet my goal was my inability to get the right people in place to execute the higher level outreach work! White hat links are great however they take a higher level skill set that involves more hands on involvement usually from myself…so far I have been unable to systematize higher level outreach/link building beyond simple blog commenting and guest posting.

If anyone has figured out a way to perform high level outreach as part of building an authority site that doesn’t involve their own input please share in the comments!!

 

How Can You Follow The Same Formula?

Even if you want to have a much greater success you can still use the same strategy easily using the six figure attack plan spreadsheet I share by signing up to the email form below…

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