'Freemium' Model A Triumph For BusinessesForSale.com

Online, March 15, 2011 (Newswire.com) - The world's largest directory of business opportunities has hailed the impact of a recently launched free trial, the first of its kind in the industry.

Given the chance to test the market before committing to a paid-for subscription, the volume of private sellers advertising their businesses on BusinessesForSale.com has quadrupled. And the number of vendors paying for subscriptions has risen appreciably too.

Launched at the turn of the year, the 'freemium model' enables business owners to advertise their business free of charge to a market of one million prospective business buyers. Once they receive their first enquiry they then have 20 days to decide whether to pay for a subscription before the advert expires.

Andrew Markou, chairman and co-founder of BusinessesForSale.com, explains the thinking behind the free trial: "Sellers need not pay a penny until they've begun receiving credible enquiries and they know there's a demand in the market for their business. We're so confident in our ability to generate high quality enquiries - and a registration process for buyers does filter out timewasters and spam - that we're allowing vendors to advertise for free.

"Business owners have nothing to lose, and with 100,000 enquiries generated every single month, adopting a model eschewed by most of our industry was a no-brainer for us."
The steady rise in paid-for subscriptions since the free trial's launch has seemingly vindicated such confidence.

Sellers who receive credible enquiries and decide to upgrade can pay £109 per month for one month, £89 per month for three months, or £59 per month for six months. It's a modest outlay to kick-start a sales process that could ultimately realise tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds from a sale - from which BusinessesForSale.com takes no commission.
As well as attracting more private sellers generally, Markou believes the freemium model has attracted a new type of business owner: "Business owners who are undecided about whether to sell their business are using the free service to test the market. Even entrepreneurs with little interest in selling up immediately are, knowing they have nothing to lose, gauging the saleability of their asset with an exit strategy in mind - and some no doubt receive offers too good to turn down and sell the business after all."

And, he adds: "The free trial has been a boost to prospective business buyers, too, as they have an even wider choice of business opportunities."

Disregarded in the businesses-for-sale market, the freemium model is nevertheless prevalent on the internet generally, employed for example by Flickr, Spotify and Skype. The reticence of BusinessesForSale.com's competitors is all the more puzzling given that a freemium element is considered essential elsewhere in the web classifieds sphere, notably dating sites, because the volume of listings is a critical factor in attracting users.

Meanwhile, BusinessesForSale.com, which was established in 1995, reported its highest ever traffic, enquiries and revenue figures in January. Monthly unique visitors stood at 338,141, a rise of 23.7% on the 273,465 who visited the site 12 months previously.

Page impressions continued rising, but by a comparatively modest 1.2%, from 4.85 million in January 2010 to 4.91 million in January this year. The marked disparity with the 23.7% rise in unique visitors over the same period suggests the free trial has sparked a surge in sellers visiting the site, because buyers tend to scour dozens of pages per visit, whereas sellers more often simply check their enquiries.