The Opportunity 

This is a UK-based International Construction News website that was created in 2017 to be a marketing vehicle to drive leads for construction plants, equipment, materials and contracts. The website has established a credible presence in the global marketplace with the founder focusing on creating content and industry authority to drive the audience. Having doubled the automated monetization income each year in the past three years, the company is now positioned perfectly to go after this huge international market, with many sub-niches and plenty of room to grow the business into a massive income/lead generation tool. The founder is looking to retire and the ideal buyer would have the energy and business acumen to drive monetization of the existing platform further along.

General Highlights

• Automated & growing revenue streams with minimal upkeep

• One of the most credible construction news websites with first-rate reputation

• Lockdown/recession proof as infrastructure projects carry on 

• Immense opportunity to boost existing revenue streams through sales-focused approach

Niche

This business is an International Construction News website that was created to be a marketing vehicle to drive leads for construction plants and equipment, materials and contracts. Launched in 2017, the site quickly grew to become one of the leading construction news websites in the world largely thanks to the founder’s efforts in curating the content and building brand and reputation. Aimed at the Civil Engineering Construction industry, the site covers every subject related to infrastructure construction from equipment, materials, technologies to services, legal and management. Initially the site was targeted at highway construction, but quickly expanded  to provide its audience with news, events and resources on vertical and country specific developments in the industry with many sub-niches (general construction, quarrying, mining, fleet management, logistics, materials handling, and electric vehicle technologies). It is a global platform consisting of 6 vertical-specific websites with one leading domain driving B2B traffic to its pages with a slight focus on faster growing and more competitive developing markets (30% USA / 30% UK / 40% Rest of World).

Customer Base

Trailing twelve months (TTM) traffic of over 205,000 is composed largely of construction professionals engaged in civil construction projects, buyers/sellers/dealers of mobile plants & equipment, suppliers of materials and providers of technology, services and finance. Nearly 50% of the traffic comes from search as each piece of content has been SEO-optimized from day one with Yoast SEO Pro and Yoast News to generate traffic on a long-term basis and at zero cost. The rest of the traffic is originating from social medial channels. Continuous traffic generation from SEO and Social Media depends on daily content generation of news and articles. 100% of traffic is completely organic as the business has never paid for advertising/promoting itself neither in search nor on social media. The LinkedIn account has accumulated over 11,000 industry contacts, including all the CEO’s, key staff, and marketing contacts in the industry – literally a gold-mine. 

Paying clients include small to medium to global brands seeking exposure to the construction professionals through advertisements, paid content and affiliate linking. Advertising customers are very loyal as they need to retain the good-will of the website to keep their news and product updates going out to the targeted audience. While there is a slight focus on the developing world, most advertising enquiries come from the USA. 30% of SEO article business comes from Australia. Going forward the new owner can keep this approach, or focus more on specific areas, such as the US, EU, Asia, or Africa. 

The lead generating component of the website for sourcing of materials & equipment is highly lucrative given the high-value nature of the leads.

Revenue Sources

There are six streams of revenues at the moment with five of them fairly automated. The revenue contacts will be transferred, but the level of sales depends on how active the new owner is promoting ads and sponsored content.

1. Sponsorships - totalling £41,000 in TTM revenues are from agreements with several brands to promote them on the website, publishing their articles and featuring their banners on the website and the newsletter.

2. Advertising - totalling £20,000 in TTM revenues are generated through ads which are limited and placed very mindfully throughout the pages in dedicated spaces with the intent to preserve good reader experience, rather than maximizing revenue potential at the cost of experience. 

3. Sponsored Content - totalling £8,000 in TTM revenues are largely coming from a number of SEO Marketing Companies seeking to publish unique and well-written construction related articles that feature their clients’ backlinks, or to add complimenting links to existing articles published on the platform. 

4. Affiliates - totalling £4,000 in TTM revenues are generated through affiliate agreements with a few companies, which include Business Insurance, Finance, and Software providers.

5. Directory - totalling £2,000 in TTM revenues are the fees companies pay for having their company and contact information displayed in a features a comprehensive directory that includes free and sponsored listings.

6. Lead Generation - totalling US$179,100 in TTM revenues is currently being generated by the owner’s relative who actively pursues the lucrative international procurement leads (sourced from the website) for construction plants, equipment, bitumen, materials, and international project finance. This stream is less automated in its current state and varies greatly depending on conversion success with the maximum commissions earned totalling £400,000 in 2020. In the TTM, leads opportunities totalled US$80 million which could have generated total commissions of US$850,00 given the high-ticket value of the leads. A sample of past leads which have been passed on in the last 12 months (50% are converted or close to being converted) include:

• 2x Asphalt Plants valued at $2M each – commission range 2-3%

• 1x Quarry Crushing Plant valued at $1.5M – commission range 2-3%

• 120,000 tonnes of Bitumen – commission average of $1per tonne

• 260km of Steel Guardrail valued at $5.2M – commission range 2-5%

• Construction equipment – valued at $3M – commission range 2-5%

• 6x Vehicles – valued at $1.2M – commission range 2-5%

• Plant & Equipment Finance valued at $4M  – commission range 2%

Financials

How has revenue been trending and why. Give exact examples of numbers and growth. What is the profit margin and how has it been trending.

Sales (USD)

2020 - 23,928

2021 - 44,743

2022 - 277,132 (including commissions)

Profit (USD)

2020 - 21,024

2021 - 41,839

2022 - 274,228 (including commissions)

Operations

The entire platform is a Wordpress-based collection of websites, which are fairly straightforward to build and operate. The Wordpress skills required are minimal - the founder is not a developer by any means and is able to build & run the platform. 

Although the niche is construction related content, in reality you don’t need experience as almost all the content is from pre-written press releases provided by clients and industry participants. While the owner does 100% of the work himself, a lot of the daily work could be automated with the rest of the duties picked up by a well educated and cost effective virtual assistant.

Team

There are no physical assets or people, 100% of the business is run from a laptop from anywhere in the world. One-person team at the moment.

Marketing & Brand 

While marketing could be a growth opportunity, the founder has never spent money on marketing or advertising the website. Some reciprocal link swaps and cross referencing is an ongoing process with the industry players, particularly for events - both physical and virtual.

The site has developed a first-rate reputation for delivering industry news and insights, and focused only on positive news, championing the global industry. The website won a number of construction and news-related awards.

Partners

Volvo, CAT, John Deere, Komatsu - to name a few prominent ones but also partners include Ammann, Bobcat, Case, Doosan, Hitachi, Hyundai, JCB, Liebherr, Roadtec, Sennebogen, Tadano, Wirtgen, XCMG, Yanmar, and hundreds of other big brands.

All the major construction equipment manufacturers work with the business to publish their latest product news, and the site features pages dedicated to these companies, with their logo’s on the homepage. Some of the industry bellwethers have their content distributed for free to generate readership while smaller players pay for being mentioned.

The owner has established Media Partnerships with the leading conferences, exhibitions, and shows around the world to promote the events in exchange for having the link and logo featured at the event, in show guides, and the show websites. This increases the B2B exposure and gains authority and the credibility of being associated with these major events.

Main Expenses

Hosting and website costs total £200 per month, as mentioned above all the work is done by the founder working approximately 35 hours per week.

Valuation

Given the nature of the revenue streams with five of them largely automated and showing decent growth potential, the business valuation is split up into two components. The automated income component is valued at 4.5x TTM Profit of $97,000 = $435,000. The lead generating component is high lucrative and if realized in its entirety could cover the purchase price in less than a year but given it`s added work requirements and reduced stability, it is valued at 1.5x TTM Profit of $184,000 = $276,000. Purchase price represents a combined multiple of 2.5x TTM Net Profit.

SEO Analysis (SEMRush)

Authority Score: 48

Backlinks: 24,200

Referring Domains: 3,200

Total Keywords: 18,100

Expansion Opportunities for New Owner

• Monetize leads. Lead generation of these procurement leads has never been pursued aggressively, a sales person, a platform or affiliates approach could really turn this piece of the business into $1m+ in annual commissions.

• Grow list of paying brands. Not a lot of time has been put into developing the automated website revenue streams. A dedicated sales person will be able to easily maximize the current revenue streams through building new relationships, particularly with focus on China

• Grow Affiliate Sales. Revenue could be increased by making deals with new suppliers to directly promote products /services.

• Introduce Paywall. While most of the content needs to remain free, launching new premium content (i.e. construction contracts and procurement tenders) could open a new stream of revenue.

• Launch a Newsletter. Only 600 B2B customers but with 11,000 LinkedIn followers, this presents as a low-hanging fruit opportunity to instantly increase exposure for sponsors and advertisers which currently does not generate any revenues. 

• Launch Industry Events coverage. Coverage of industry events can spike up the traffic, for example, covering virtual 2020 CES event boosted traffic to 600,000 for the month given it`s technology and innovation appeal. Coverage of more tech events can drive significant traffic.

• Shift focus to emerging technologies. The shift would include more news and brands from the electric/hydrogen transport and automation as technological developments will continue attracting more interest to this space internationally. This space requires huge investment, which means the suppliers need to compete and promote their innovations to the industry.

• Offer Online Courses. Courses could be offered through in-house or affiliates to build credibility, traffic and add to revenue.

• Launch Industry Events. Organizing own virtual events to build authority and generate revenue.

• The business is now at the point where it must expand, and requires a good effort to take the business forward to the next level.

All Assets Included with Sale 

• Domains(all domains)

• All social media channels, and the database of almost 10,000 SEO optimized articles, LinkedIn (11,000), Facebook (1,000), Twitter (5,000), Instagram (2,000) and YouTube (200)

• Monetization Accounts (where? Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates, etc.) 

• Customer Contracts (how to ensure B2B SaaS revenue stays?)

• Partner contracts (what lead sources need to be transferred to new owner