Ask YC: market for small-ish profitable projects?

[petervandijck]

The recent 37sigs post made me think. I know there's a market for projects that are making, say, 1 or 2K a month, you can sell them for say, 10-30K.

But if you are making 20K, or even 5K a month with a project, is there a market for those? Are there people with deep enough pockets to buy those? I'm assuming you'd want at least 20 times monthly revenue, so a minimum price of 5*20=100K. At these prices, does it make sense for people to buy your projects?

Or is your best alternative to just keep running these yourself? (I suspect the answer is 2, but I'm not sure).

I can think of few people (none, really) who would spend 100K on buying a profitable Saas product. Am I mistaken?

[DuckPaddle]

Not enough meat to cover the legal, accounting, and other costs. Hey, lifestyle businesses can be fun and good to the developer. If it isn't fun then there are some hidden costs and hassles that would make it even less attractive. Maybe someone could bundle a bunch of these and sell it like mortgages ;>}

[Flippa_com]

Hi. As per @geekfactor, we do sell a considerable number of premium sites on Flippa. We work to attract more qualified high-end buyers to these listings via tools such as our weekly premium A-List newsletter (see https://flippa.com/a-list). These sites tend to sell from $10K through to over $300K. Hope that helps. Do not hesitate to let our support team know if you need any help with a specific listing.

[dieselz]

I wonder if a valid business model in this case would be to get someone involved via profit sharing. I wouldn't find $Xk/month worth while to devote the time needed to improve the product (otherwise I'd be doing freelance), but if I was offered 50% of the profit above what the current profit levels are, then that might be a fun project to take on on the side that would incentivize me to make the product as profitable as possible.

[lemma]

I would definitely be interested in buying something like this, or even smaller as long as it was something of decent quality. There should be a marketplace for lifestyle- midsize businesses that wasn't full of junk like flippa.

[inovica]

I think this is a good idea and I'm not aware of anything. I have a number of projects which are in the region of $5000-$6000 per month and selling would be of interest. Sometimes fresh blood might also accelerate the project.

[noodle]

5-20k/mo is enough to hire someone else to run a site like this full-time so that you don't have to. (assuming "yourself" really does mean one person)

[geekfactor]

Flippa has listing in that price range. Click on "High End" on the home page.