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Tiny Acquisitions

tinyacquisitions.com

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Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#121

Post by muzani »

runako wrote: post #111
alex_g wrote: post #68

If you're interested in buying and/or selling small projects, you can typically expect to pay more than $5k for something that's making any consistent amount of money. You're also unlikely to find a great deal on a really special project on a marketplace. People who post on marketplaces like Flippa or MicroAcquire or SideProjectors (there're dozens of them) have either: 1. Realized the time it takes to maintain is no…

There are a lot of reasonable reasons people would list a sub-scale business on a site like those. Some examples: Take an app that makes $500 net monthly and requires 1-2 hours per week of work. Solid hourly rate, why sell? Except: - Sudden change in family responsibilities leaves founder without the small amount of time needed. - The business might net $5k in a sale, and the founder has an urgent need for cash (for…

I sold an app with good traction for $20k. Part of the reason was we hated the users. We built a diet community and that community was literally toxic - they'd encourage people to follow crazy diet approaches that would make them pass out and they'd group attack anyone who brought up medical evidence that this was a misinterpretation (including me, our suppliers & our dietitian).

The company that bought it got sick of the users within a few weeks but unfortunately their attempts to pivot and rebrand didn't work.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#122

Post by zebnyc »

prawn wrote: post #120
rlayton2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I sold a website making about $150/mo in ad revenue for $5k. I knew the site could make more, but had other things on the go and I couldn't spend the time on the site to improve it. The person that bought it from me did make those changes and did make more money, but I just didn't have the time to get there. Win-win for me

Anyone with time for SEO/content work, general outreach and so on, could definitely capitalise on these opportunities. Many people building these projects don't have the time or interest in the more social side of it.

I know web development and my wife has been hankering to learn SEO / web analytics on her own. I would definitely buy spend 5-10k even if it is just so she can get some real world experience learning SEO in the real world.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#123

Post by nodesocket »

alex_g wrote: post #68

If you're interested in buying and/or selling small projects, you can typically expect to pay more than $5k for something that's making any consistent amount of money. You're also unlikely to find a great deal on a really special project on a marketplace. People who post on marketplaces like Flippa or MicroAcquire or SideProjectors (there're dozens of them) have either: 1. Realized the time it takes to maintain is no…

Agree, but love this idea. Just change the maximum sale price to something like $25,000.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#124

Post by sail0rm00n »

IgorPartola wrote: post #114
runako wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasonable reasons people would list a sub-scale business on a site like those. Some examples: Take an app that makes $500 net monthly and requires 1-2 hours per week of work. Solid hourly rate, why sell? Except: - Sudden change in family responsibilities leaves founder without the small amount of time needed. - The business might net $5k in a sale, and the founder has an urgent need for cash (for…

I am in that last category myself. I had a really nice and useful budget app that had thousands of daily users and cost all of $20/month to keep going, if that. Was making some money off it too with ads and sales of the ad-free version. Except I built it using Ionic back when it was based on Angular 1. Fast forward to now and that code simply doesn’t compile anymore against modern iOS and Android and I don’t have the…

Want to sell it? :)

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#126

Post by shard »

iaw wrote: post #85
alex_g wrote: post #68

If you're interested in buying and/or selling small projects, you can typically expect to pay more than $5k for something that's making any consistent amount of money. You're also unlikely to find a great deal on a really special project on a marketplace. People who post on marketplaces like Flippa or MicroAcquire or SideProjectors (there're dozens of them) have either: 1. Realized the time it takes to maintain is no…

Just to echo this, I recently had a lovely conversation with a guy building a business he knew would be irrelevant in 10 years with the goal of selling in 3 years to someone who didn't realize that. I will never buy a business, real estate is a much safer bet.

Real estate comes with its own set of problems.

First is the large capital outlay as compared with a small web project, which means many more eggs are in that one basket.

Second is the slow turnover, which means that you may be waiting for years for a good property (since if it's a good property, there are only a few situations where the owner would sell), and if you choose poorly, you will be stuck with the poor property for many years (as no one would want to buy it).

Third is you will still have to watch out for your property becoming irrelevant, for example for a retail store, either due a downturn in the trendiness of the neighborhood driving out business, or perhaps undesirable construction in the area (e.g. a mall across the street that takes all your foot traffic).

Really the safest way to invest in real estate is through REITs, where the risk is spread across many properties.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#127

Post by Quequau »

I have been seriously considering doing a tiny acquisition myself as a gambit to get back into tech after a very long period away.

Frankly, it's been hard to find something that seemed serious or at least real and somehow worthy of existing in the world (I get that this is my own internal value judgement). I left with the impression that this sort of thing is like the tech version of /r/CrackheadCraigslist.

Also, it didn't help that at least one of these sorts of sites demands users link to their LinkdIn account to even see the projects that are for sale. I think LinkdIn is creepy enough on its own and that really put me off.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#128

Post by bemmu »

Nalta wrote: post #11

I'm curious if there's a market for people who want to buy small projects like this. I imagine there's a lot of projects that are already on GitHub with a small following with owners that would like to cash out, but I'm not sure there's a market of buyers looking to pick up repos?

I bought a subscription box business once because I was In the same business and figured I could cross-promote it and already had the experience to run another one.

In the end I shut it, because I realized that with a newborn in the house I didn’t actually have the time/energy to run another one. Also prev. owner had priced it such that it was impossible to source legit good quality products.

I did run it for a bit and just about got the investment back (it only cost $3k) before shutting it down.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#129

Post by ehnto »

muzani wrote: post #121
runako wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasonable reasons people would list a sub-scale business on a site like those. Some examples: Take an app that makes $500 net monthly and requires 1-2 hours per week of work. Solid hourly rate, why sell? Except: - Sudden change in family responsibilities leaves founder without the small amount of time needed. - The business might net $5k in a sale, and the founder has an urgent need for cash (for…

I sold an app with good traction for $20k. Part of the reason was we hated the users. We built a diet community and that community was literally toxic - they'd encourage people to follow crazy diet approaches that would make them pass out and they'd group attack anyone who brought up medical evidence that this was a misinterpretation (including me, our suppliers & our dietitian). The company that bought it got sick o…

I'm very sorry you had that experience and I respect your morales. I shy away from community style projects for similar reasons, and a lack of safe-harbour laws makes them extra risky.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#130

Post by bemmu »

alasdair_ wrote: post #88

Assuming I wanted to buy a few of these, what's the best way to get the cash out at the end of it all? Create an LLC, have the LLC buy the sites, then just do dividends or something? I'm kind of hazy on how to fund such an LLC to buy stuff in the first place - do most people structure the initial money as a loan so it's tax free? I'd love to hear practically-speaking how to do this on a small scale.

I’m not in the US, but can’t you be a sole proprietor and add the income to your tax return?
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