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Together With:

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Hi there, 👋

This is it.
Your last newsletter for 2021. Phew!
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As the majority of you tidy your desks and wind down for the year, we wish you health, happiness, and peace during the holiday season.
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​In this issue:

• How to Buy Into the European Ecommerce Boom
• A Content Site Deal
• You Have To Make a Choice

The snippets section is stuffed full of more goodies than your grandma's cookie jar.
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​The highlights:

• 10k to launch a startup
• Automated crypto investing
• Digital detox
• SEO news roundup
• NFTs explained
• 2021 European tech

That should keep you going through the holidays:)
Once again, thanks for joining us on our journey in 2021. We appreciate each and every one of you.
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Happy Holidays!

And, as always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
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​P.S. We'll be back in your inbox on the 10th January, 2022.
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​P.P.S. Need to unwind? Head to Berlin where the public transport operator is offering hemp-oil laced edible metro tickets for stressed commuters.
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How to Buy Into European Ecommerce

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Ecommerce across Europe is currently a $600BN industry, but it's still an overlooked and underdeveloped market.

In comparison to the 10% increase between 2015 and 2019, the current forecast places growth at 10% per year going forward.

Why?:

• Brick and mortar stores are moving online
• Logistics partnerships are increasing
• More than 80,000 businesses joined FBA in 2020

You need to understand that Amazon isn't the biggest player in Europe. They don't rule the roost here.
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The largest marketplaces in Europe are companies like El Corte Inglés, CDiscount, and Esselunga.
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It's difficult for Amazon to break into an ecosystem with already-established names and around 24 official languages.
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But, it's possible to buy into the European ecommerce boom by targeting DTC brands. It simply takes an understanding of the market, the European supply chain, and VAT.
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Empire Flippers dive into what you need to know about the EU Market and its opportunities for investors.
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Intelligent Templates

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​Crove allows you to convert your office documents into intelligent templates.
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You can create smart templates using variables and IF/Else conditions to generate repetitive business documents.
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For example, you would use only one form to produce offer letters for any employee. Crove handles the preferred pronouns in the generated offer letter with the IF/Else conditions.
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If you currently edit word or Google doc templates to create offer letters, contracts, quotes, invoices, lease agreements, etc., this app will make your life easier.
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Crove provides an extensive template gallery where you will find professionally designed templates for sectors like HR, Real Estate, and Legal.
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​Free plan available.​
We found a lifetime deal here.
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Together With MicroAcquire

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✈️ Top destination in 2022: MicroAcquire

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MicroAcquire announced they raised an additional $5 million in funding from the startup community to accelerate building the world’s most founder-friendly startup acquisition marketplace.
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Their mission is to bring the startup acquisition market together, with trust, transparency, and ease of use. This brings their total funding to $11.3 million.
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​MicroAcquire plans to invest the latest round in new product and engineering talent to help make MicroAcquire the easiest online solution to buy and sell startups of all types and sizes.
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As the founder of MicroAcquire, Andrew Gazdecki, puts it:
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​“There’s a 1% chance of becoming a unicorn and for the other 99% of startups there's MicroAcquire.”​
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Create a free buyer account today and find your next great acquisition opportunity at MicroAcquire.
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👉 Read the exclusive fundraise details on Axios.
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You Have To Make a Choice

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At least one of you will find inspiration for 2022 in this short message from Gary Vee.
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​Warning: Offensive language. NSFW. (like you didn't know that Gary swears - a lot).

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Deal of the Day: Content Site

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Listing URL: https://app.microacquire.com/startup/q7EfT43TwkYDfqcbizyMTJZLCqI3/nTEZjYHBS46pr3kAFVqn​

Price: $315,000 (55x L12M Profit)

Earnings: $5,890 L12M Revenue$5,715 L12M Profit

Niche: Tech

Monetization: Mediavine, Amazon Affiliate

Ahrefs:

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​Our Thoughts:
​Although this site isn’t extraordinary for a content site, it is better than most. With quality content and consistent rankings across a number of topics, it seems fairly stable for this type of site.

With enough content topics to produce for years and plenty of work to be done to update the existing 400+ articles, this business will be most attractive for those looking to take a long approach.
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Short-term flippers should look elsewhere as there aren’t any quick wins for an easy flip. Rather, it’ll require some blood, sweat, and tears to get the most out of this large site, but a dedicated worker can certainly get there.

It’s a solid choice for people relatively new to website investing given the straight forward path for growth and relatively easy business model.

Our Valuation:
​36x L12M Profit = $205,740
The current valuation is far too high given the business model and trajectory.

What we like:

• 743 keywords ranking 11-20 with 200+ search volume, many with high buying intent
• 400+ articles to optimize, prune, etc
• Solid EAT - solid about pages and design
• Strong link profile
• Good page traffic diversity - the top page gets 13% of the site’s traffic, with #2 getting 4% according to Ahrefs
• Increasing revenue and traffic trajectory

What we don’t like:

• 301 redirect from geekwithlaptop.com (but very well done 301 redirect)
• Tech niche can require a lot of content updates
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Our Verdict: ★★★★☆ 4.25/5.0 Solid site with a good foundation and lots of topics to target for the long term.
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Just for Fun: Keeping Secrets

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Do you remember writing coded messages to your friends at school? Not even the teacher could decipher those.
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Because none of us is a cryptographer, Cryptojii created a tool that lets you create simple coded messages.
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All you need to do is type a message and send it. It's best to enter a secret key, otherwise your message can be read by anyone who has a copy of the Cryptoji.
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Your secret message is composed entirely of emojis - like this one from us:

😇😯😝😒😥🤓😓😰😳🤩😓😗🤨😦😞🤓😝😅😰😐😴😛🤫😘😞😥😱😡😢😶😳😦😀😃🤬🤔😯😟🤧😨🤨😴🤮🤪🤔🥰😚🤭🥰😕😯🙄😶🤣🤔😃😝😤😨😱😣😅😄🤨😔😶🤠🤥🤥😟🤤😖😒😳🤬😶🤭😷🤧😝😨🤬😢😤😤🤤😓😚😶😵😦😤🤭😡😆🤣😖😡🥱😇😷😑😃😆😕😴😟🥰😢🤪😦😁😗😚🤢🤢😙😆😂🤨🥱🤡🤮😚😂😷😐🤧😷🤔😦😘😣🤣🤕🤢😠🤯🤮🤣😢🤡🤤😨😅🤓😦😑😳😤😑😦😳🤓😦😄😢😲😏🤧😘😛🥰😟🤪😨😐😳😇😛🥱😦😣😣😳😆😝😘😧😃🤨😓😇🤩😀😣😛😂🤪😧😕🤢😕😐😴😜🤥🤮🥰🤨🤣🤧🤣😵😋😋
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Your secret key to decrypt the above message is: rudolf the red nosed reindeer.

​Try it now.​
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Brought to You by Smash Digital​
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🦄 SEOs with Skin in the Game

​Smash Digital - a growth agency, filled to the brim with unicorn images and SEO memes.
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A team of SEOs with actual skin in the game, ranking their own portfolio of profitable businesses, and offering the exact same services to clients.
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An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.​

​Check. Them. Out.
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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

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🔷 SEO news roundup: Matt Diggity posted his December SEO roundup. See guides that show off the SEOs latest tricks, case studies, and important statements about product reviews, mobile indexing, and crawl bugs.
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🔷 2021 crypto heists: More than 20 different times in the last 12 months, at least $10 million was stolen from a cryptocurrency exchange or project. In at least six cases, hackers stole more than $100 million. And, there's little anyone can do about it.
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🔷 10K to launch a crypto startup: Z Fellows offers a one-week accelerator program to aspiring founders that comes with a $10,000 check in optional equity, at a $1 billion cap. (Just when you were planning a vacation).
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🔷 Digital detox: If apps abuse your privacy, cost too much money, or make you unhappy, give ‘em the boot. These are the 20+ smartphone apps you should delete before 2022. (We dare you to do it).
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🔷 Fighting tech with…tech: We all know that the best way to overcome a tech addiction is with the right technology. From Dave Pell: A Guide to Restoring Your Sanity in the Age of Technology with More Technology.
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🔷 MicroStrategy's crypto lending strategy: MicroStrategy Inc. - the enterprise software company that made waves by issuing debt to buy Bitcoin - is looking for ways to generate yield on its massive digital-coin holdings. The company now owns more than 122,000 tokens, worth in excess of $5.6 billion at current prices. (definitely one of the 10,000 hodlers below).
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🔷 2021 in European tech: A quick look back at European money flows, fintech, aggregators, big fines for big tech, and more.
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🔷 Bitcoin's 1%: Less than 1% of the biggest Bitcoin (BTC) hodlers allegedly control more than a quarter of all BTC in circulation. 10,000 Bitcoin investors, or 0.01% of all BTC holders, own 5 million BTC, or 27% of all 18.9 million coins in circulation.
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🔷 Simple plans: If you want people to invest in your idea, then the best advice is "first write a business plan, and keep it simple." Here are 10 tips for crafting an investment grade plan. (You're not writing a novel people).
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🔷 NFTs explained: Why people are spending millions on JPEGs. Regardless of how weird it seems, people are spending that money for a reason. (yeah - because they can).
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🔷 Automated crypto investing for all: Trading crypto isn’t a great experience for the average person, and most people have no idea what to invest in. Stacked just raised over $35 million to automate the management of crypto assets via pre-built portfolios and strategies.
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😂 A child’s drawings recreated:

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