The last few years have seen a boom in online business marketplaces and brokers. There are increasingly more websites for sale and more buyers in the market.
However, with the increased ease of starting and buying online businesses, the amount of noise in the market has also increased exponentially.
With that in mind, I decided to try Microns Premium. I was intrigued by their business model, where buyers pay an annual fee to access the platform’s deal flow.
Surely, this platform should offer a higher-quality deal flow than the “free” platforms, right?
Well, that’s what I set out to discover in today’s article.
Table of Contents
Cost and Commission
Microns operates in a dual commission system: Buyers pay to access deal flow and sellers pay a commission upon a successful sale. This hybrid models works well in weeding out buyers with no intent and also results in lower commissions for sellers.
For the buyer:
A premium subscription currently costs 299$ per year, which comes to about 24,9$/month. This makes it more suitable for active buyers with bigger budgets. If you’re looking for websites under 5 000$, it might not make sense to fork out 299$ on this subscription, as this will represent a 6%+ cost on your buy. Not to mention the 10% extra on the seller.
There is no monthly subscription option.
For the seller:
Sellers also pay a commission, that depends on the size of the deal:
- 10% for projects starting at $1K
- 8% for projects starting at $10K
- 6% for projects sold for $100K and above
Requirements
The only requirement Microns lists is that the business must be profitable. They accept businesses valued at anywhere from 1 000$ to 1 000 000$.
There is no mention of an exclusivity requirement, and this seems to be confirmed by the fact that some of the websites listed can be found on other online business marketplaces.
Features
Microns offers:
- Ability to close deals within the platform (new)
- Deal flow
- Information on URL, traffic, revenue, profit.
- Revenue, traffic screenshots
Deal Flow
At the time of writing, Microns has 166 listings available for sale with prices ranging from 600$ to 850 000$.
From my experience following their newsletter, a few listings, about 3 or 4, get added per week. They seem to be mostly apps and SaaS businesses generating anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month.
The businesses are, at first glance, quite good with solid user bases and metrics and decent valuations.
Let’s have a look at a random business for sale on offer on Microns. This is the first business that appears when I login:
Type: SaaS AI tool
Asking Price: 18 000$
Profit: 7500$ per year (625$/month)
Multiple: 2.4x (annual), 28.8x (monthly)
Quality score: 3.8 out of 5.
My verdict: Overall, a good business priced well. The biggest risk is the recent improvements in image rendering of ChatGPT and other models, which could mean higher churn and increasing customer acquisition costs, but this can be mitigated by adding new features.
The site gets decent organic traffic, and the tool is well-built. It would get a better score if the outlook for this kind of tool was better, but unfortunately, it’s competing with some big players. It’s a great buy for somebody who has a vision to niche down this tool.
The Verdict: How Does Microns Stack Up to Competitors
The most obvious competitor for microns is acquire.com. They offer a very similar business model, where buyer subscriptions start at 390$/year and seller commissions start at 8% for smaller sites and 6% for smaller sites.
Microns therefore charges less to buyers and slightly more to sellers. This makes sense: Microns offers less deal flow for buyers, so it seems fair to charge less for dealfow. It also offers a more concentrated pool of buyers for sellers, which would justify the slightly higher selling commission.
Overall, the pricing and services offered seem fair. If you are in the market long-term, we recommend buying their premium subscription. This gives you access to their new dealflow, which is of high quality.
If you’re a one time beginner buyer, we’d recommend looking at other brokers and marketplaces, such as flippa and acquire.com, as these offer more deal flow and, in the case of flippa, free browsing.
My verdict is that Microns is worth the investment. Given the good quality of their deal flow, if you’re in the market for long periods of time in the lower range of the market (5 to 6 figures), there’s a good chance you will eventually a good deal through the platform.
The platform could improve with an exclusivity requirement and improved deal flow, but I am quite content with its current quality.
