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About the business

Tell us a little about yourself. What’s your background? How did you start the business?

I’m Daan Tol from the Netherlands. I did not start WPLift – I actually bought WPLift right here on Flippa from the first owner (Oliver Dale from the UK). My background is that I’m an online marketer and as a ‘side-hustle’ I own content websites. Before WPLift I had a website in photography and for the last 6 years I have WPLift as my main ‘side-hustle’.

Is the asset on your listing owner-operated, how much time does it take to run the business, who else is needed on the team, and what is automated?

After the spring of 21, I intensified the collab with my VA. Before that, I was working 8-12 hours per week on the website. For the last 15 +/- months I’ve only been checking in for 1-2 hours a week. My VA is very good – handles the entire inbox of WPLift, does all the editing, and publishing, and does the weekly news as well. She sorts through the Gmail and places a label on what should be read or when I should take action.

What does someone need to do to continue operating the business in its current form?

Keep the current VA on board – then 90% will run on itself. You just have to attend to the emails in the inbox and start planning out the content for the writers. That’s all. If you want to be more hands-on: you can do the writing yourself and win back a lot of the costs.

Growing the business

Can you list a few opportunities for a potential new owner to continue growing the business?

Offpage SEO – I haven’t been great at actively building links with outreach. There are tons of opportunities.

Professionalize the promotion options – start promoting the promotion options of WPLift and expand the options to greater/longer packages. There is definitely money there.

Updating old reviews – offer an update of a review that is older than 2 years for a discounted price. A lot of themes/plugins have new features and would like to mention those in a revised/republished review.

How does this business make money? What are the current revenue streams?

Direct sales: wplift.com/promote – we sell reviews, newsletter adverts, and placements
Affiliate sales: theme, plugin, software, and hosting companies
Placements: we sell placements in listicles for a specific time

What marketing channels are most profitable for the business?

Direct Sales & Affiliate Sales.

How does the business currently acquire customers and what is your breakdown for marketing costs?

We don’t spend anything on marketing

How big is your current team? How many people does it take to run this business?

It’s my VA, 1 permanent writer, and a couple of writers on the bench for reviews (3-4)

What’s the reason for selling your business on Flippa?

This year we’ve launched Aliveandkicking.nl – a creative advertising agency. And it is taking off now. The last couple of months have been quite intense and therefore I need to make choices. I want full focus on the new agency. So I decided to sell WPLift.