Groups, Communities, Newsletters, Podcasts - What's the Value chain?
Reddit Group vs. FB Group? Newsletter list vs. Podcast? What's most valuable to you from an acquisitions perspective? For example - is a Reddit group of equal value to a FB Group? Beehiv same as Substack? Does having a Podcast + YT channel add to the value? Trying to prioritize channels to invest in when building out new media brands and want to work backwards from what provides most value in the marketplace. Looking for all you smart buyers' thoughts on what you value and appreciate when buying new web assets.... thank you!
I think it's about building/acquiring assets you can stack together into an overall funnel, whatever channel/platform that makes the most sense / has the most value as a buyer
FB groups seems to be slowly dying, buying subreddits with admin rights is probably a smart thing, especially if some threads are ranking in top 10 which is nowadays almost guaranteed.
Yeah the fact that Reddit threads come up in the top of many of my searches is something I noticed as opposed to FB Groups. FB Groups seem geared toward an older audience too which I guess is a plus or a minus depending on the audience you're trying to cultivate and build.
you right. For anyone choosing the "Building" strategy from the six investment strategies, I strongly recommend carefully considering which platform to use. I'm now discouraging the use of Facebook groups because there are over 5 million groups on the platform, people are leaving Facebook, and I frequently encounter situations where Meta suddenly deletes groups overnight. Not to mention the increasing number of fake profiles and bots flooding the social network with scams. Facebook groups with a solid history are great for acquisition if they have hidden business potential. However, immediately after acquiring one, it's crucial to back up the community and ideally migrate it elsewhere. A great funnel is a Facebook group -> Skool or Circle. I don't recommend Slack or Discord if your target audience is 40+ (they find it challenging), and Telegram/WhatsApp groups are great for quick information sharing, such as in the crypto world or stock trading, where things happen quickly and then go quiet for a while. Skool and Circle are excellent for building communities that generate and manage collective intelligence in an organized way.
For me it all hinges on the content of that group. It’s very easy to differentiate between meme / AI click-bait garbage which will most likely not translate into valuable clicks versus community problem-focused content that users interact with in meaningful ways. Facebook is the place for the former while newsletters and podcasts would lean towards the latter. Reddit could go either way 🤣
interesting take, thanks for mentioning this. You're so right that 'starting a newsletter' is the easiest thing to do these days. Actually building a community on Reddit or FB is a much heavier lift and therefore if you can develop that asset, it will be more in demand. Though I guess by that metric an actual newsletter list would also be valuable, but those are harder to build in the earlier days as you don't have the natural 'traction' you can get from Reddit or similar where their algorithms and recommendation engines can help power your audience building. Great food for thought...thank you!
, but I'm going to do a little promo for my niche here.
The community market is an area I've been involved in since 2014. On Wednesday, I successfully transformed our agency, which primarily built communities (mainly FB/Slack groups) on demand, into an investment group. About three years ago, I discovered a gap in the market - no one knows how to properly value communities, even though some Community M&A transactions were already happening.
Personally, I have:
1) Acquired an established group with 90,000 members that generates 30-40 posts daily with 20 comments each for an RV marketplace. Without any additional investment or intervention, this group organically doubled in size within a year. We purchased it for its collective intelligence.
2) Sold my own Facebook group for Czech Facebook group admins, which I founded in 2016.
3) Secured €40,000 from an annual sponsor for a 17-year-old owner of a Facebook group with 9,000 beginner programmers to transform the community into a hybrid model.
Today, I focus solely on acquiring and simplifying the pre-acquisition process through our marketplace. We still have a long way to go before it looks like Flippa or Acquire, but we're monitoring 70+ community platforms. We can already estimate the value and the potential price after scaling.
Personally, I'm currently seeking communities for investors and startup founders.
The first picture is a showcase of our marketplace. The second is a little taste of our calculations. The third is a glimpse of my classroom in Acquire Community, and also you can check out the Community Investment Portfolio of our company.
Membership in Acquire Community is designed for philanthropists, investors, and multipreneurs with experience in at least one exit, as well as startup founders who have reached Series A and beyond. It’s for those who need to skip the community development phase (the most expensive and time-consuming stage) and dive straight into post-acquisition processes after purchasing established communities with business potential.
The membership costs $99 per month. I offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you let me know within 30 days that the community isn't providing any benefits.
a friction I have seen with Skool is that the creator admin can't be changed / transferred, so no official way to buy/sell, would have to just give logins
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Groups, Communities, Newsletters, Podcasts - What's the Value chain?
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