FOR SALE: High-AOV Dropship eCommerce Store Selling Outdoor Gear - Stellar Rankings

Listing Overview

Up for sale is a 2+ year old dropship eCommerce website that sells a niche product line within the outdoor sporting goods market. 100% of the store's traffic is free organic traffic driven by the site's 2,272 "top 10" Google rankings (which get an astounding 405,530 searches per month). The owner currently doesn't do any paid advertising. The store is incredibly easy to run, requiring only 3-4 hours per week. Over the past year (2022), the store generated $292,494 in revenue and $41,312 in net profit (after all expenses). Sales peak in the summer and early fall, making now the perfect time to acquire this business.

The owner is selling the business because a) he recently started a SaaS business and wants to devote all of his time and attention on it (plus needs more capital to develop it), and b) he is located outside the United States and isn't able to maximize the store's potential due to his limitations with providing "real-time" customer support.

Key Information

• Niche: High-ticket outdoor sporting goods (please sign the NDA to see the domain name)
• Store Model: 100% drop-shipped by US-based suppliers
• P&L Period: Jan - Dec 2022
• Business Age: ~2.25 years (launched in Oct 2020)
• Avg. Monthly Gross Revenue: $24,375
• Avg. Monthly Net Profit: $3,443
• Avg. Order Value (AOV): $1,689
• Avg. Profit Per Order: $294
• Gross Profit Margin: 17.4% of revenue
• Net Profit Margin: 14.1% of revenue
• Top 3 Keyword Phrases: 1,149 (195,770 searches/month)
• Top 10 Keyword Phrases: 2,272 (405,530 searches/month)
• Orders Per Month: ~14
• Owner Time Requirement: 3-4 hours per week

Asking Price: $140,000

The seller's $140,000 asking price was calculated as follows...

P&L and Financial Information

Here is the P&L Statement for the calendar year 2022. Click on the image to see a larger version of the P&L in a new tab.

Following are a few key takeaways:

• Due to the nature of the products the site sells, revenue peaks in June through September. Now is the perfect time to buy this business.
  
  
• There's no 'Advertising Expense' line item in the P&L because the owner hasn't been doing any paid advertising. 100% of revenue is driven from the site's free organic rankings in Google and other search engines.
  
  
• The store's gross profit margin (after cost of goods sold, including shipping) is 17.4%. With an Average Order Value (AOV) of $1,689, this means the average sale generates $294 of profit.
  
  
• The net profit margin (after all expenses) is 14.1%.

Following is a screenshot of the Shopify 'Finances Summary' report for the year 2022...

The 'Total Sales' figure from this Shopify report is just a few hundred dollars off from the revenue figure shown in the P&L above, which is attributable to a handful of small post-sale changes and adjustments processed outside of Shopify's system. It's also worth noting that the store has very few actual returns. The 'Returns' number shown above reflects pre-shipment refunds due to a) items being out of stock or b) customers deciding to change their order to another product.

Following is the 'Sales Over Time' report from Shopify, which shows the revenue trend over the past year (as well as Jan 2023, which far exceeds the revenue in Jan 2022 that is included in the P&L and therefore brings affects the valuation/asking price of the business)...

Finally, below is the 'Sales Over Time' report from Shopify, which shows that the 'Average Order Value' in 2022 was $1,689. Given that the store's average gross profit percentage is 17.4%, that means the average order brings in about $294 of profit.

The current owner will of course give the eventual buyer the opportunity to conduct extensive due diligence, including a live "screen-share" web meeting (or two) where you’ll be able to view reports and transactions in the Shopify admin panel, payment accounts, Google Analytics, etc. to verify and confirm all of the figures shown in the P&L above.

About the Market & Products

As noted above, the site sells a couple lines of products in the outdoor gear niche. The specific product lines (along with the domain name of the website) will be disclosed once you have signed the NDA below.

Here is a Google Trends screenshot showing the demand for the product (as measured by Google search volume) over the past 5 years in the USA...

As you can see, search volume has remained very steady over the past 5 years, with interest peaking each year during the warmer summer months, making right now the perfect time to snatch up this little eCommerce store.

The store has right around 300 products, sourced from around a dozen suppliers (though the vast majority of sales come from 3 suppliers) that are all based in the United States and ship directly from their facilities in the United States.

Dropshipping is an ideal store model that requires virtually zero working capital. You don't pay your suppliers for products until after a customer has placed an order on your site and paid you for it. For this store, the average transaction look like this... 1) A customer places an order on your site and pays you $1,689. 2) You forward the order information on to the supplier and pay them $1,395 (meaning that you keep $294 of profit). 3) The supplier ships the order from their warehouse directly to the customer.

Traffic & Marketing

The vast majority (about 93.2%) of the site's total traffic is either free, organic traffic (84.3%) or direct traffic (8.9%) from prior visitors who know the site's domain name and come directly to it, as you can see from this Google Analytics screenshot for the calendar year 2022...

As you can see, the site averages 489 users (640 sessions) per day with virtually all of that traffic being free organic traffic driven by Google keyword rankings. (Calculations are based on 251 days of Google Analytics tracking data, beginning Apr 25, 2022.)

The following screenshot shows just the 'Organic Search' traffic for the same period (which represents free organic traffic from Google and other search engines)...

Here is the 'Ecommerce Overview' report from Google Analytics for that same period (Jan - Dec 2022)...

Finally, here is the 'Audience Overview' report from Google Analytics (also for the period Jan - Dec 2022)...

As you can see from the above screenshots, free organic traffic is what drives this website. In fact, according to ahrefs.com (one of the most widely-used tools for analyzing organic rankings and keyword data), the site currently gets around $12,700 worth of free, organic traffic each month thanks to its high keyword rankings (see the 'Value: $12.7k' amount shown in the top 'Organic search' section of this screenshot taken from ahrefs.com in mid-February 2022)...

As of mid-February 2023, ahrefs.com reports that the site has the following keyword rankings in Google.com (USA)...

Google Rank	# of Keywords	Searches/Month
#1	630	114,010
2	252	38,390
3	267	43,370
4-5	361	55,810
6-7	301	65,360
8-10	461	88,590

In total, that's 2,272 "top 10" keyword rankings that get a combined 405,530 searches per month on Google.com (USA).

Top Growth Opportunities

Following are the site's top growth opportunities:

• Start doing Pay-Per-Click advertising - The seller has focused 100% of his time and efforts on organic rankings (which has clearly paid off in a big way) and hasn't done any paid advertising whatsoever. With the average profit per order being $294, there's plenty of margin for Pay-Per-Click advertising to generate additional sales and profits (particularly during the months of June - September when more people are buying these products).
  
  
• Work on boosting the store's conversion rate - For most ecommerce websites, getting traffic to the site (particularly free organic traffic) is the biggest hurdle. That's not a problem for this site! Thanks to its stellar keyword rankings, the store is getting plenty of traffic. If you (as the new owner) were able to double or triple the store's conversion rate (which is currently sitting at just 0.11%), you would double or triple revenue and profit. While the website is nice-looking and professional, there are many improvements you could make to boost the conversion rate.
  
  
• Provide "real-time" customer service - Though the site targets and sells to the US market, the owner/seller lives outside the USA (many time zones away). Therefore, he isn't able to provide any "real-time" customer service to customers. He simply replies to emails the next day, which is obviously not particularly effective. If you were to provide real-time customer service options (i.e. live chat and taking/immediately returning phone calls), sales would no-doubt increase.

Included with the Sale

The sale includes all of the following...

• The domain name and website, including all textual and graphical content of the site
• All supplier accounts
• All customer lists and email lists associated with the business (around 1,500 people/emails)
• All social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• 30 days of support to train you/your team on how to run the business, process orders, manage the website, and pursue growth opportunities
• Note: The seller will of course sign a non-compete as part of the Asset Purchase Agreement.

Buying Process

You can make an offer for this online business here. We will immediately present your offer to the seller. If he accepts your offer, we'll notify you immediately and update this page to let other interested parties know that an offer has been accepted.

Once your offer is accepted, a 10-day due diligence period will begin (during which time other interested parties may place a "back-up offer" in case the sale falls through for whatever reason). During this 10-day due diligence period, we'll work closely with you and the seller to help you complete due diligence. Among other things, this will include doing a live screen-share web meeting so you can review financial information, the store admin panel, payment accounts, Google Analytics, etc. We'll also send you the Asset Purchase Agreement (APA) for you to review.

Once the APA is signed and the sale is completed, we will update this page to let other interested parties know that the sale has been finalized and remove this listing from the Store Coach Website Marketplace.