Website Closers® presents an Equities Trading Community built to provide new and seasoned equity traders education, collaboration, trading tools, and a platform for the discussion of trade ideas. The company operates on a Subscription model resulting in strong recurring revenue.
Operations & Product Offerings
The owner built this company from the ground up by providing quality education, being sincere regarding the expected results, and providing detailed entry and exit trade strategies. This has translated to a strong customer base of over 400 current subscribers with a low average churn rate of 20% and a $325 customer lifetime value.
Customers sign up for a recurring monthly membership and receive a nightly pre-market watch list. A plan is posted, including information such as entry criteria, risk, range on the chart, and what the owner projects will happen the next day.
Two core products are offered. The first costs $49.97 monthly and primarily provides users with watch lists, alerts, live trading views, and basic education. The full access membership, at $69.97 per month, allows access to all those features as well as weekly live classes and more extensive education.
The business has achieved a healthy average order value of $36 with minimal overhead. The company increased its average subscription price by $40 (from $25 to $65) late in 2022. As a result, the average revenue per subscriber has been growing recently and the AOV for new orders is $65. As new customers come on board, a new owner will realize the benefit of this higher average order value. Significant leverage is built-in, and as the top line grows, almost all the incremental revenue will fall to the bottom line.
The owner has also implemented changes in the payment processor, resulting in substantial savings in merchant fees—down from 3% to less than 1%. The new processor will also be adding PayPal as a mechanism in the near future which will be highly beneficial in attracting new subscribers, as it will enable a large number of international customers to sign up.
Sales & Marketing
The marketing strategy has been straightforward. The business was grown without paid advertising. Instead, it garnered a vast and dedicated TikTok following that converted followers into paying customers. Additionally, and largely as a result, word-of-mouth has also been a powerful customer acquisition method. Given the nature of the platform, many friends and family of existing members who have similar interests become customers.
Recently, the owner implemented paid Google advertising, and the business is now seeing new customer interest and return from the advertising.
Notably, the company experiences no seasonality in sales during specific months or seasons. However, there is a correlation with the stock market. Bull markets create interest from traders seeking to capitalize on the rising market, resulting in a peak, while bear markets result in a small fall off in interest. The company has remained steady through the latter part of this bear market and expects a significant uptick in revenue once the bull returns.
The typical customer depends on where marketing efforts are directed but is generally US-based. Initially, the customer was predominantly between 18 and 25 because TikTok is the primary marketing channel, but Google Ads has recently introduced a new demographic between 25 and 36. This development is enticing because it has created an entirely new audience, and older customers have lower churn rates.
Human Resources
The owner has a light workload of around 10 to 15 hours weekly. Primary tasks include the generation of trade ideas and weekly live education. He spends around an hour daily creating the incredibly popular watchlist and much of his remaining time on marketing. A new owner can easily transition social media management to an individual or agency to reduce their workload further.
One contractor works for the company and posts some trade ideas daily.
An individual buyer should have expertise in technical trading and an understanding of the market. If the buyer is a larger group, they can delegate the task of identifying trade opportunities to employees or contractors. Additionally, marketing skills would be beneficial but are not necessary to enjoy continued success and growth.
Summary
The business is a straightforward operation that is easy to transition. There are minimal overhead constraints and enormous scale potential. An ambitious new owner can immediately add niche education for crypto, futures, and forex, expand geographically, and add news and analysis services to boost the top and bottom lines quickly. Furthermore, an aggressive marketing campaign, as the stock market begins rising once again, will enable a buyer to capitalize on the increasing interest of potential customers by leveraging the strong social media following and attracting new prospects to the fortunes that the stock market can generate.
