How Kevin Jourdan Acquired Duuce and is transforming it into the best newsletter-focused marketplace
What he’s got planned for Duuce V3 and how you can benefit as a newsletter owner
I’m privileged to get the opportunity to talk to Kévin Jourdan from Duuce. Duuce is the first marketplace dedicated to selling and buying newsletters.
Kévin is also the CEO of DotMarket.eu, a marketplace dedicated to buying and selling websites focused on the french marketplace.
He recently acquired Duuce from Jonas Sluijs, the previous owner and founder of Duuce. This article will dive into some sweet details for you on the current state and future of the platform.
Also, if you’re a newsletter article this isn’t an article to read thoroughly. You’re gonna devour this one line by line. So, add it to your list here on Medium, bookmark it, or save it for later because Kévin has shared action-packed tips to help you grow and sell your newsletter.
The man who originally started by contacting Empire Flippers to offer to launch a franchise in France, and it led to a dead end so started his own platform, and is now on track to sell over $1 million worth of websites on DotMarket.
And now I bring you Kévin Jourdan from Duuce.
Based on everything you’ve learned growing DotMarket, what are the top 3 things newsletter owners must consider for their listings?
It’s the same yet very different to sell a website or a newsletter! But it all comes down to one thing: making sure you get the best possible asset in your hands and making sure it’ll look great for potential buyers.
Top 3 dedicated to newsletters would be, according to me:
- To keep track of your finances. A nice, organized, easy to understand and verify accounting book / file of invoices is always a must for us, brokers, and for the interested buyers who will feel more confident with an organized seller than a messy one. :)
- To keep … writing your newsletter! I’ve seen owners stop or reduce their writing pace before selling. When you wish to sell an active asset, you HAVE TO keep it active! Each week / month without sending your newsletter is a drop in engagement and final perceived value.
- To document everything and anything that might help someone take over the newsletter: how do you curate ideas or contents? How long does it take to write? Who writes? How do you engage with advertisers if you have sponsors? What are your “secret” ingredients? You need to make it once again easy to understand for any potential buyer and make them feel confident in their capacity to take over once you’re gone!
What’s the average time you’ve seen for an asset to get sold on Duuce or DotMarket.eu?
That one is a bit too early for me to answer. Our take over is too recent and we’re working hard on changing a LOT in the due diligence, listing and selling processes. It will impact many statistics about the platform… And I believe, to reduce the average time between listing and selling obviously.
It all comes down to one thing: making sure you get the best possible asset in your hands and making sure it’ll look great for potential buyers.
Can you give us a sneak peek into Duuce V3? What can newsletter owners look forward to?
We basically wish to bring on Duuce everything we’ve learnt on DotMarket.eu, with obviously a “touch” to:
- Adjust to the specific asset that a newsletter is.
- Adjust to the new audience (English newsletter buyers are NOT French website buyers!).
Here are a few elements we are currently working on for the V3:
A new valuation tool and model. Our current one is too basic, and we wish to be the first platform to offer an advanced valuation tool, capable of giving you a fair value of your newsletter based on its monetization, niche, number of active subscribers and a few other KPI.
New due diligence process! Obviously. We’ll clean up the current marketplace from all newsletters that don’t pass our criteria. Size, quality, history… Our goal is to make sure that you only find on Duuce newsletters that our team would personally consider buying. That means refusing many listings in the future, but as we learnt with DotMarket, we believe it’s better to focus on quality than quantity. There are enough platforms out there doing the opposite not to try and play that game. :)
Change the business model. We might decide to keep the premium subscription for buyers, BUT with more benefits to it. I believe paying to “simply” access listings in advance does not make sense. It works at first, when you have a good number of listings and a few dozen buyers. But once you reach 500 or 1 000 buyers, it loses its main benefit. Why pay X dollars to get access to something at the same time that hundreds or thousands of other people do? Nah, if you pay a premium you need a full premium package. So, we’re working on identifying what that would / could be. In the meantime, we’ll start taking a % on sales over a certain amount. Here as well, we’ll be bringing more value to justify that. Due diligence, documentation, contracts, escrow…. Our % has to come with value being delivered.
Additionally, we’ll revamp some of the pages on the site. Improve the member area, add some features to get better alerts, add some features to the directory to make it more interesting for NL editors to add their NL, and a few other things we’re still thinking about.
You need to make it once again easy to understand for any potential buyer and make them feel confident in their capacity to take over once you’re gone!
Duuce is the first marketplaces dedicated specifically to newsletters. What motivated you to move forward and integrate it into the DotMarket family?
I’ve been considering adding a newsletter section on DotMarket since year 1 of our business. But newsletters are not yet big enough in France to consider selling some. It’s too early! So when I discovered Duuce, I had to talk to Jonas, its founder.
We had a good fit, and decided to study ways to work together. We came close to finding a deal to grow together Duuce, by providing some resources, but eventually, Jonas took the decision to sell and reached out to inform me about his decision.
The discussion was very fast and efficient. We had had enough talks to know that DotMarket was a good fit to take over, and I didn’t need anything or anybody to convince me. Newsletters are only going to be a growing asset worldwide.
Deal was done quickly in direct. And that’s how Duuce joined our family :)!
What separates a top newsletter/asset that gets sold fast versus one that takes much longer to get sold? Is it purely based on the numbers, or is there more to it?
Numbers always matter! But there are different “levels” of analysis.
One number that we consider critical is the number of ACTIVE subscribers. You can have the biggest newsletter, if nobody opens your emails, it’s worth … nothing. Period.
For that reason, we’re working on finding “accurate” ways of valuing newsletters, by putting the most value on the engagement rate, rather than the actual size of the database. The better OR / Active subscriber ratio you have, the easier it is to sell and the more expensive it goes for.
Simply because we apply a cost per active subscribers in our valuation process, and not a cost per subscribers. This way, a newsletter with 10 000 users can actually be more expensive or around the same price as a bigger one that no one reads :) .
That obviously is if a newsletter does not generate any revenues. If it does, then we can easily go back to basic multiple applied to the monthly profit. And in the end, we analyze and validate if it’s more interesting to value the revenues or focus on a replacement cost.
So, to sum this up, yeah, numbers matter. As with websites, some niches are more looked for than others, but it usually comes down to how active a newsletter is and how many people actually read it!
Newsletters are only going to be a growing asset worldwide.
What essential questions did you ask Jonas during the acquisition, and in general, are these questions that all buyers will ask when acquiring a newsletter?
Hahaha good question! Most questions I asked Jonas have nothing to do with newsletters. I knew Jonas had started working on some due diligence processes, etc… We did ask him how he was proceeding, but we also had in mind that we wanted to come up with something “new” and adapted to the market.
So, to be honest, most of my questions to Jonas were answered during all the calls we had over the months before the acquisition. I had a very precise overview of the business, the vision, the potential. My main questions back then were about the platform itself! Built on Bubble, a tech i didn’t know, and i def had a LOT of questions on how to use it!
Besides listing on Duuce and other marketplaces, what are some recommendations that you have for newsletter owners that they can do to market their newsletter and reach even more potential buyers?
I’ve seen a LOT of great success happen on Twitter or “closed” communities. When you become an expert in a field (and newsletter quickly make you appear like one to your audience), it often is very easy to find the best buyer directly among your existing audience!
People who have been reading you, who have been commenting, etc… know your field, and might be interested in taking over at some point. Platforms like Duuce or others, are mostly a way for people to be accompanied in a process that they don’t know much about.
But when it comes to finding an audience of buyers, I’d say that the biggest difference between sites and newsletters, is that you can simply add a note in your next episode stating you’re open to selling that asset, and I’m sure you’ll get a couple great offers as is!
Thank you Kevin for sharing with us the future of Duuce V3 and also insightful tips on selling and growing your newsletter.
To learn more about Kevin here’s another interview of him by Website Planet.
Secondly, to keep up with Kevin and what’s happening over at Duuce, make sure to follow him on Twitter.
Are you a newsletter owner looking to grow or sell?
Hi, I’m Derick Sozo Ruiz. I’ve built and sold two newsletters: RemoteLeads and Freelancer’s Handbook, for a very good amount.
I’m also humbled and deeply honored to be featured on Duuce’s home page alongside greats like Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt and Andrew Gazdecki of MicroAcquire.
I want to help you avoid all the confusion, and most importantly, I want to help you be next and grow or sell your newsletter.
That’s why I’m very excited to announce my new venture, Lettersell.com, and I hope you’ll join me on this new journey.
Subscribe here to join the beta and get notified on launch very soon.
Derick Sozo Ruiz is a writer and newsletter owner. He built and sold RemoteLeads and Freelancer’s Handbook. He’s @dericksozo on Twitter.; follow him here to get updates sent directly to your inbox.
