Microns - Detected our first scam listings

Ilya Novohatskyi

Hey guys.

This week was pretty crazy. I have two exciting stories for you, but I’ll start with just one today.

We got our first scams yesterday, and I’d like to tell you how we solved the problem.

Besides this, I chatted with one of our early adopters, Tom. We talk about everything like life, politics, investing, etc. But this time, we talked a lot about microns investment fund, where small investors could invest in micro-startups (mostly micro-SaaS, marketplaces, and media companies).

And last but not least, I attended a great podcast with a Canadian entrepreneur Josh. Here is an episode. I told how I started as a front-end dev, became an entrepreneur, and found a partner for my first and second businesses.

P.S. I’m so happy with Ukraine’s gains in the war this week. God bless the armed forces and all those who support them 🇺🇦

Photo by martin bennie on Unsplash

👋 Welcome

Welcome to the 39 new people joining this week.

Let me know what you think of your first issue. Replying helps Google realize it’s not spam.

Prefer Twitter? Drop me a DM here.

Now let’s crack on with the newsletter ☕️

📈 August update

I finally found a time to post an update for August. It was an incredible month regarding revenue and activity in the marketplace. We figured out a few strong distribution channels for us and started doubling our efforts on them. Below you can see the results.

Ilya Novohatskyi 🇺🇦

@ilyanovohatskyi

Monthly update for Microns 🚀 (August)

😊 3,583 subscribers
🎉 166 new subscribers
👀 47.2% average open rate
🎯 10% average click rate
💰 103 premium members
💸 24 new premium members
📌 14 new micro-startups posted
📈 3.1k users visited the website https://t.co/Rx5en5gcRA

3:11 PM - 15 Sep 2022

The marketplace activity increased from 60% to 70%, so sellers got more buyer requests, which resulted in more transactions. Currently, we have three deals that are going to be closed this month. My goal is to get to 80% of active users and a few transactions weekly.

Our search performance is increasing

Previously we had around 5k impressions and 300 clicks from Google. So as you can see, we keep improving this acquisition channel to get more users.

SEO is a long-term job, but I’m pretty satisfied with the results. Slow and steady wins the race :)

😮 Scam prevention

This week we received a reply from one of the buyers that he found a few scam listings that were posted recently.

Boris sent us this message

We did our research on this and found next. Although, at the same time, it is not necessarily a scam to sell on a purchased code base after generating revenue. The asking price makes it a really bad purchase for our premium members - akin to fraud.

We put listings on hold because we realized the tech stack was purchased off the shelf on Codecanyon. We wanted to ensure the seller had all appropriate software licenses in place. So we informed all buyers who contacted the seller.

My response was immediate

I thanked Boris for his proactive position and promised our merch in return. But, of course, every person can make mistakes, even our team.

I appreciate every premium member who cares about the data and content we post and let us know if something is wrong. It’s our common goal to make Microns a better place.

📰 Looking for new owners

AI Pitch Content Generator

Pre-revenue
Business model: Usage based
No customers
Target audience: Freelancers, agencies and entrepreneurs
Built with Next.js and Firebase
Founded in 2022
What I like: no expenses, target niche, one month of support period and usage based business model.
Concerns: no users, so you need to validate the project and grow it from scratch.

🔥 Asking Price: $600

Structured Data Extraction Tool

Pre-revenue
Business model: SaaS
No customers
Target audience: Accountants and office admins
Built with React, Node.js, Java and Python
Founded in 2021
What I like: project is solving a real problem, data industry, usage based business model and post sale support.
Concerns: no paying customers so you need to grow it from the ground up.

🔥 Asking Price: $3,000

Flight Route Calculator

$12,000 in ARR
Business model: SaaS
263 customers
Target audience: Air charter brokers and travellers
Built with PHP, Contao, JS and Bootstrap
Founded in 2016
What I like: low expenses, established customer base, a few sources of revenue, and one month of support.
Concerns: how much time it takes to operate the site, need to redesign it, and improve SEO.

🔥 Asking Price: $50,000

💡 Wisdom from subscriber

Sachin Neravath

@SachinNeravath

I made over $90k from an open-source JavaScript library in less than a year.

8 practical ways to make money with open-source projects.👇 https://t.co/5GI6b6jNt9

7:14 AM - 1 Sep 2022

💌 Share with a friend

If you found value in reading this issue, please share it with your friend.

Stay awesome,

Ilya Novohatskyi

Did you enjoy this issue? Yes No

Ilya Novohatskyi @ilyanovohatskyi

Microns is a newsletter where you will find your next startup to buy.

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Key phrases

AI Pitch Content Generator Structured Data Extraction Tool usage based business model two exciting stories strong distribution channels appropriate software licenses Prerevenue Business model post sale support microns investment fund

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