Boosting Ecommerce Business with Content Sites with Shlomo Freund

In this episode, we chat with Shlomo about a unique strategy for ecommerce brand owners—investing in affiliate content sites. We explore how this approach can diversify revenue, the ideal seller size to get started, team requirements, and structuring options. Plus, Shlomo shares real-life case studies and actionable insights to help you integrate content sites into your ecommerce business.

√ Shlomo’s VIP Page
√ Shlomo’s YouTube Channel – Free Financial Self
√ Related Podcast: Matt Diggity on Marrying an Affiliate Site with an Ecommerce Business
√ Shlomo’s Service for Finding Content Sites: AssetBolt

Thank you Shlomo for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode 456 of Global from Asia. We are talking about growing your e-commerce business, buying and merging a content website. Let’s tune in today. Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

And now your host, Michael Micheli. Thank you so much for watching. I’m standing up. I feel different. [00:00:30] When I’m standing up recording in the home studio or the studio getting more professional every . Day is the real me, not the Ai me recording this. I am experimenting so much with ai. Some of you notice some of my content’s becoming Ai, me, Mike ai, but this is real me.

But who knows if we’ll know the difference in here’s to come. So today’s show, we have another interview in-person. Interview I have my friend and business . [00:01:00] Associates Shlomo on the show talking about investing in content websites. He helps a lot of businesses find good investments for their content business, and he approached me saying, Hey, e-commerce businesses have the best opportunity to buy content sites now.

E-commerce is the future. I’ve heard that with our AI content too. People saying E-commerce is the future for business in general. So he’s saying like, it’s a great opportunity to buy these kind of maybe . Content sites that [00:01:30] need a little bit of e-commerce and merge ’em together. So today’s show, it’s a fascinating conversation.

I got a bunch of hacks and tips. He, he doesn’t hold back. He gives great value. You can also contact him. If you wanna work with him, he’ll share at the end. But even without that, you’re gonna get amazing strategies. Insights on today’s show. Let’s tune in. Do you enjoy the podcast, global community? Do you enjoy all the community events that we do?

The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com [00:02:00] in Chang Mai this November 3rd, fourth, and fifth, 20, 25. I have amazing speakers, amazing people getting together. We’re pushing the limits. We’re making things happen. This is where the movers and shakers and the deal makers come.

It’s a limited supply of attendees and tickets, and we have been selling out every year, so I recommend checking out earlier, cross border summit.com. Alright, thanks for tuning us on a global from Asia. We have an old friend and [00:02:30] business colleague, Shlomo. Hey, how’s it going? How It’s been great. Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting.

My pleasure, man. We’re here in Shanghai, Thailand, and you’ve been here, , longer than I, I thought, which is happy with your family. Actually left and came back. Oh, you did? So you weren’t always here. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no, you’re wrong. You’re not wrong. We left and then we said, oh, why not? We’ll just come back again.

Perfect. So we’re here for another month. Great, happy, happy to be back together with you and yeah, we’ve done business together with China Business Cast and [00:03:00] we’ve done, , projects and you’ve, you’ve supported, you’ve attended a cross border summit and you’re coming again this year, which is really great news.

Yeah. So, hope to see you all there. Mm-hmm . So today we’re talking about, , bringing together affiliate content sites with e-commerce businesses or brands. So, , I, I. Of course anybody could watch this, but I think most of our people are more on the e-commerce brand side, and they’re not as strong on the affiliate like content side.

Mm-hmm . So it’s always been fascinating to bring these [00:03:30] together. What, what are your, , I think it’s even more important now than, than probably ever right? In 2025. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So here’s a big thing I learned about e-commerce brand going to Cross Border Summit this year. Oh, sure. The level that.

It’s not that they don’t know about affiliate sites, it’s just that the mindset is so different in running an e-commerce business versus thinking about it. So I think the best thing would be to explain [00:04:00] why it’s so, so important, and also with the last . Changes in the market with Google helpful updates crashing.

Many of those websites, actually e-commerce can come and lift those sites up, back up. Interesting. So everything comes together at this period of time for e-commerce brands to buy content websites. Also other affiliate also other digital assets can be newsletters and other stuff, but content websites also makes a lot of sense, but that’s one of them I want to say.

So [00:04:30] this sounds great. So yeah, maybe, maybe definitions to, to start e-commerce sites would be defined as selling a physical product that’s delivered, right. So the, the kind of conversion of the business website would be someone to purchase a product. It could be digital, but let’s just say physical.

Yeah. For today, sometimes you see people saying e-commerce about digital products, but somehow it doesn’t make sense to me as much. It does. E-commerce for me is like physical. Yes. Physical. I feel the same. And then content sites, [00:05:00] I mean there’s such a wide range, but are we focusing more on like say Amazon Associates or like, , review sites?

Probably mostly would be Amazon Associates would be the category. So it doesn’t matter so much. What I mean, what these affiliate sites making money from, as long as they are making the money, and I’m not saying not important in a way that of course it’s important that they’re making money. Just the channels are less important because these sites, I [00:05:30] don’t call them affiliate site, by the way.

I call them content websites. Okay. Because what’s, what’s bringing the audience in, and the traffic is the content that is there. Then the outcome. Is the affiliate, the, the, the money we’re making from, we’re making from it is from the affiliate sales. So this can be Amazon Associates, it can be other affiliate offers, but it can also be newsletter within that asset, or it can be ads, it can be any of that.

But these are cash flow, um, [00:06:00] basically cashflow channels for that cashflow streams. Okay. From that asset from the digital asset and . The idea is buying that asset and with that audience you have as an e-commerce business owner. Okay? Good example would be, let’s say let’s say a fashion brand.

Okay? You’re selling fancy hats, . Okay. Fancy hats. Cool. Maybe a better example. That’s cool. I like fancy hat fashion. And [00:06:30] then . You’re saying, okay, I am spending money all the time on those ads to bring, keep bringing people into my business, into my store. And then you have the margin, and that’s the way this works.

You keep spending on ads. You, you have inventory, and this is how the business works. Now think about buying in this example, if that’s fancy hats would be maybe . A fashion blog. A lifestyle blog, something, maybe a hats blog. Mm-hmm . Okay. [00:07:00] You need to find that. Yep. The audience who loves the hats already there.

What you need to do is buy that and funnel those people already in that in that asset, in the digital asset, in your store, your offer, whatever that is. Now, you might ask then, yeah, how would I fund this? So. As I mentioned, the digital asset is already making money. Yeah. From those different channels. So you [00:07:30] can use that money of the asset you just bought to maintain that asset, and basically then theoretically you’re holding that audience forever so you can reduce the, OR in addition, but maybe reduce the ad spend because now you have the assets and you have the audience and.

Just, just keeps going with that. Got it. That’s the, that’s kind, that’s the model. Got it. That’s the model there. Okay. So, , I like to kind of, at least I think I’m advanced, but I’m [00:08:00] going to, maybe I, I hope I’m not jumping some of the basics, but I feel like it’s kind of more interesting to go kind of into the, some of the details.

I would still keep that revenue generating from the affiliate, or would I just turn that into like my own e-commerce, or does it depend? It really depends because at least at. First stage, you probably wanna keep that, that cash flow coming from that to maintain the website, to maintain that asset, you’d need to either have some, a, a, a team member in-house to do that.[00:08:30]

You can use an agency to run that, to run that asset. Or a third thing would be maybe to . A partner with an op, a website a digital asset operator, a website operator, and do some kind of a partnership that will work, will work for both sides. Okay. These are the three options. I’d like to hear more about the third, but I don’t know that I think my gut feeling from the Cross Border Summit and most people I know and myself included [00:09:00] were, were very busy

Yep. So I think the operator one, I don’t know, . , if you, I, I think the, the, the simplest one is, is the agency actually, or agency, maybe agency you pay and presume you forget. But of course it’s not, it’s not a hundred percent hands off, but pretty close. You can get to that. You can get to that. Okay.

You’d wanna find an agency that at least can keep the level of, of the traffic of what you bought. Sure. Okay. Would that, I guess that [00:09:30] would be pro, that would still be covering the profits that we could pay them with the profits of that bus. I guess it depends how big the business is. Let, let’s talk about numbers right now.

Yeah. You’re what’s, what’s going on the market? So the multipliers right now at the market are probably 20, not probably, they’re 20 to 25 x monthly profit. Okay. So example, a website making . $1,000 would cost to buy [00:10:00] between 20 to 25. They’re, of course, extreme to each size, but that, that’s kind of the average right now.

Okay. So these kind of, so for an agency, you probably looking at two, three, $3,000, let’s say a month. So with this multi, these multipliers, three times 20, or three times 25. 60 to 75, 60 to $80,000 for to buy, to buy that digital asset. Okay. [00:10:30] That’s around the numbers right now. Now it’s important to say that the opportunities now, because what SEO people are talking about, that a lot of these content websites that were hit about a year ago from Google, helpful updates.

And also some from AI is adding them. A store and e-commerce that you have is reviving some of those assets. Mm-hmm . So it’s kind of really comes nicely together of [00:11:00] you’re buying something that will probably lift that content website back up. You’ll even make more money. You have more traffic. Can we break that down so we could improve it by making an e-commerce site itself?

Or Yes, yes. You’d basically add e shopping cart store with a shopping cart and, and on, on the content site itself. Yes. You need to look at a case by case basis, I guess. You need to do some redirects and, and things like that. So it’s a case by case basis. Can give any [00:11:30] thing general with that. But the, the, the talk right now is that add some kind of an e-commerce function to a content site.

Mm. And that will, will . I can say for sure. Okay. It’s, it’s still Google might help the asset. So if I could just dig in a little bit more, and, and I understand it’s all, it depends, but would I still keep those affiliate content pages or would I have to convert those to like a shopping cart internal sale process?[00:12:00]

Hmm. It’s a good question. So I don’t know what content will be there. I mean, whatever the content is there, let’s say if that will be . , let’s say all those blog posts of I dunno, 10 best hats to wear. in 2025. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you probably wanna put 10 different ones. Yeah. So you probably didn’t put yours at the top one.

Okay. That, that makes total sense. And then if it makes sense in terms of traffic to that specific website, then you probably should do some kind of an AB testing. [00:12:30] But , not every tweak on the content websites is worth the effort. Mm-hmm . So if that brings in, I don’t know, 50% of the revenue, yes. If that brings 1% of revenue, they’re probably better places where you can optimize that content website.

That’s the thing. Got it. I, I, by the way, I would also not buy a content website where they have . A page where more than 15% of the traffic, or [00:13:00] 25% of the three largest pages are, are from. Okay. Yeah. Because you also want that there. Diversity. Yes. Yeah. For keywords and then certain traffic. Good tip.

Thanks for that tip. . So I’m wondering, yeah, I think case studies are examples is, is helpful. So we have, I’m selling hats. Well, of course there’s different kinds of e-commerce sellers. So as , there’s Amazon or marketplace sellers that have their own website, but a lot of times their own website doesn’t even matter [00:13:30] because all the traffic goes through Amazon because it’s their traffic Is Amazon.

Even me, honestly, I, I feel like. hypocritical. ’cause back in the day I was all about my own website, my own traffic, which I still believe in, but lately I’ve been even sending it to Amazon, my own website. ’cause the buyers are there that that’s their main selling point. So that’s kind of where it is now.

And I wonder, is there a different thought process or is it a similar thought, same thought process if you’re like a Shopify or your own website, D two C or Amazon, or is, is your [00:14:00] mindset probably the same? Right? If you’re selling hats on your Amazon store or you’re selling hats on your Shopify store? I, I would use the asset to move, to move the sales from Amazon Yeah.

To store, because you make better margin. True. That, that, that’s the first thing you should do with, with that digital asset that that can be a, a flywheel for mm-hmm . For your website, and I’m not sure if you have an opinion or a thought, but some sellers, even myself, are afraid to be an affiliate [00:14:30] and a seller.

So maybe you have to have a different affiliate. You wouldn’t wanna use the same Amazon account as the Amazon seller and Amazon affiliate. So, ah, so you’re saying that when you are buying that asset and that asset has an associates Amazon associate. Would you, you probably wouldn’t want to use your Amazon account of your seller account to be I haven’t thought of that.

I don’t know. What? I think normally we talk about this and we would make a separate account. Why is that? We’re all paranoid about Amazon, but we don’t wanna, like, I think there’s some risks of TOS potentially of Okay. [00:15:00] Making money off your own product. You’re not supposed to be an affiliate of your own product.

What happens if you’re affiliate of other products? I think that’s okay, but Okay. But if you’re gonna start to change it, to send it for your product on Amazon, so, so just don’t send, I mean, if you have, let’s say, let’s take that again, that 10 best hats, 2025. Okay. And yours is first, and you’re sending from there not your Amazon store.

To your website. To your website. And then [00:15:30] number two to 10 are affiliates. Of different products, which you also make money from. I, I think that’s okay. Why not? Yes, you are strengthening, strengthening your competition, but you also want to still be a reliable, um, digital assets. Okay. Like, kind of on the other hand what I’m also seeing is that

Google [00:16:00] would also look at websites, at content websites and give them more credit once they see it’s a real business. So one thing is making an e-commerce. Mm-hmm . And the second thing is maybe even do some kind of a, maybe a rebranding to that asset and also probably have a PR announcement. We acquired this and this, so Google will see this one, but this thing.

And now it makes sense and that’s a real business. [00:16:30] So on that example of, of 10 best hats, I don’t know. It’s, again, it’s a case by case to think what the best strategy with each, with each page and what would maximize your revenue and profit Understand. I don’t wanna say I’m shady, but I feel like SEU in their marketing is somewhat, some can be gray, but I don’t know if I’d really want to, even if I bought the asset, I don’t know if I really want to stay a hundred percent on the, this e-commerce seller and this affiliate site publicly.[00:17:00]

What do you wanna do? What would you want? I would like it to look like it’s just look separate. I don’t know if that’s bad or not. That’s okay. That’s okay. One more thing that you can do with the digital asset is that it’s easier to build a, a mailing list. Yeah. ’cause you have the traffic with Amazon, you can’t mm-hmm

With Shopify. I’m not sure Shopify can. Yeah, you can. So, so that’s all, again, strengthening your brand and, and , selling to them and getting to know your clients [00:17:30] and creating those conversation community that you like very much. Yeah. . Yeah. I enjoy, and it’s, it’s it’s also another cash, it’s diversification, which I think any business.

Should have, you’re talking about diversifying traffic, but , for e-commerce and content, you’re diversifying, like you said, you can maybe diversify to Shopify. If you’re on Amazon only, you can also get affiliate income from other products that is promoting. Right. So, , my thought of using this [00:18:00] personally is probably do both.

Like buy an affiliate site that has the top 10 hats, but maybe start to make authority pages that are more relevant to my specific product. And I don’t wanna sound too disingenuous, but I’ve seen this happen where you talk about your competitors from the affiliate site and not really be so negative, but just to kind of control a little bit their traffic.

You mean the traffic from the, that content website into the, the brand of the brand. So sometimes people are searching, [00:18:30] my favorite content site strategy is versus, or alternatives. Uhhuh. . So if you have a really, I actually did this with the previous brand. I’m not owner of actually the coffee pot. I don’t know if you.

I our, the biggest competitor was ti which maybe you even know. Okay. And if you, nobody knew my brand, which is called Ano. So what we did is people with Google search Ti Alternatives, alternatives, ti, exer. [00:19:00] So we wrote blogs about that. Mm-hmm . To then send them to buy from us. But we didn’t also do it only from our, our brand system, our

Brand domain. We did it from coffee content, coffee block sites. I see. So it looked not like us and you, but in that case you build it from scratch. Those other sites? Yeah, there was many sites, but they would rank. Okay. Okay. But yeah, we didn’t buy traffic coffee site, but we, it’s harder these days.

Yeah. You want to, you want to buy something [00:19:30] that’s already running for a while and has a. Some Google authority and got it in the sandbox and out there and proven. Mm-hmm . So thinking, , I hope this is helping people think, but yeah, like you said, it’s hard to kind of give an exact template, but maybe we start to talk about how you do it.

I know you help people. What are some of the first steps they should. Do when you’re saying, okay, this sounds like interesting. I got an established [00:20:00] Amazon seller, maybe what size should I be and what budget should I have? Mm-hmm . So correct me if I’m wrong, but the whole talk in the e-commerce world is how much CAC is cost per acquisition for a client is Yeah.

So what I’ve done is I run ransom models. Showing how much you can cut, cut your cock within x amount of time when you’re buying a business at that, and [00:20:30] that with that conversion and you can pretty easily show that you’re getting to the break even point around three to five months or four to six, something like that.

I don’t remember exactly the graph, but. Around that and eventually, because you are basically paying just one time for the website, yeah. It means that the CAC would keep lowering and lowering. You can get to half of that within a year of what you’re paying right now. Okay. So [00:21:00] the idea is to look for a website at the right niche, of course, with a client and find the one with the right traffic.

I can’t know what the conversion will be, but if you are being conservative enough, then you have enough margin of mistake there. Mm-hmm . So this is how you start that calculation. So it’s a matter of speaking to the client and understand what niche [00:21:30] they are and what’s their right target audience. And then getting a list of assets that can be from either open marketplaces, Facebook groups.

Or private deals. Wow. Once people know that you buy, I get offers for private deals. ’cause you’re Yeah. People are coming to you. Yeah. So these are the main sources. And then going through the due diligence process, I mean, you need to first speak with the client and see, okay, that makes sense. This doesn’t make sense.

[00:22:00] Then we have a process of negotiation of whatever. Mm-hmm . You want, you wanna buy, oh, sorry. Before that we do some due diligence. I would also prefer to go with an external service for due diligence. Because I prefer another I going on the asset. Yeah, that’s true. And also, I don’t want to be biased.

I think it’s fair for the client. Yes. It costs more money. But for whatever you’re going to invest in that asset, it’s probably worth it. Yeah, makes sense. So you do that and after that it’s going through [00:22:30] due due diligence negotiation. At this point in time you can probably also offer and get a nice seller financing.

Yeah, I was gonna say , I didn’t wanna put you on the spot, but of course these things, yeah. Seller financing you can get now because again sellers, . Sell people selling their business. Yeah. They want to sell. They want to sell. It’s definitely a buyer’s market right now. I want to hear, I don’t know, I think that gets my ears perked up.

 Maybe even after it record. I don’t dunno. Maybe even during the recording you tell me, [00:23:00] but what, what would that, because of course that sounds really tempting ’cause there’s not too much upfront risk. What would kind of a normal financing deal look like? Or is it com How common is it? Or, , I’m even interested in that to be honest.

Yeah, I, I, I hear about these kind of deals. I don’t remember which deal, but I think I hooked only one, which was a hundred percent. It’s very rare for a hundred percent. Wow. Okay. But I think the norm is around [00:23:30] 20, 30% seller financing. So 70% or so would be paid upfront, 60, 60, 60, 70% upfront, and the rest, but it’s all negotiable.

Okay? Let, let, let’s be honest here, okay. Whatever your pos, your positioning, whatever the seller’s position you probably then also need to pay some kind of interest on that money that basically the seller is financing. So that makes sense. So you can get to kind of a, a package or how you structure the deal.

For that to work. [00:24:00] Got it. And if you’re talking about the same numbers as before, we’re talking, I’d say 60,000, still a little bit a little too low. I’d go for like probably 70, 80, 9000. Okay. Something like that. Okay. And then it’s a matter of finding that the right asset and, and, negotiation, building the

Start you with the deal and then migration, handover, support, support, time, whatever. Whatever you, you, you’ve done the, the contract with the seller. Okay. And that’s it. [00:24:30] Go with your strategy, whatever you planned. Great. Basically that I think we’ve, , I think we’ve covered major parts and I think probably the magic is like the deal flow, which, , you’ve been working on this, so, so, so probably one advantage to work.

with you as you have some deal flow, you of course experience. I don’t know how much you wanna share on the show, but how, how does your service kind of, how does it work generally? So I’ve seen because it’s a, it’s, it’s something that [00:25:00] takes probably a few months to, to find and build for two reasons.

One, I don’t know what’s will come in the market. Market changes all the time. And second thing I don’t know if the . Buyer would want. If the e-commerce owner would want that specific asset, it could be that I think it’s okay, but that, so it can take some time. So several months. So I usually work on a returner base retainer basis.

However, there’s also an option to work with me in a package of hours [00:25:30] if you need something very specific. Okay. So you get kind of, , maybe looking at a few deals that you already have. And then wanna understand if that makes sense or not, or thinking of the strategy for your e-commerce business.

Great. Things like that. Got it. Okay. That’s a thing. Great. I think. Well, of course. How can people find your, your sites or your information? So two main sources. One is I have a YouTube channel where I cover deals publicly. So you can, . [00:26:00] See how this is done. Nice, nice. The channel is called Free Financial Self.

Yeah. Remember you can find that one. And also my service for e-Commerce brand is called Asset Bolt, asset bolt.com. You can basically get in touch with assets there. Asset Bolt, B-O-B-O-L-T, bolt, like okay, got it. Yes, bolt. Got it. Asset bolt. Perfect. Dot com. And that’s it. Thank you so much.

It’s been a pleasure, man. . All right. Thanks everybody, and definitely thank you. Be creative, like basically, I think there are other summaries, right? We [00:26:30] can’t be comfortable in our old ways. It seems like there’s some deals with the, these content sites need us. If you’re e-commerce seller. So , put your ears out, keep your eyes open, and and be creative.

So, thanks for watching. Do you enjoy the podcast, global community? Do you enjoy all the community events that we do? The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com in Chang Mai this November 3rd, fourth, and fifth, 2025. I have amazing speakers, amazing people getting together.[00:27:00]

We’re pushing the limits. We’re making things happen. This is where the movers and shakers and the deal makers come. It’s a limited supply of attendees and tickets, and we have been selling out every year. So I recommend checking out earlier cross border summit.com. Thank you so much, slowmo, and I hope you got some ideas.

Maybe you can reach out to him if you got some. Motivation and you want to invest your e-commerce business to start to acquire some content sites. I feel like that is the future. [00:27:30] That’s what I feel like I have been doing is content sites and e-commerce sites and putting together makes a lot of sense.

So I. I believe this is a great strategy. If you have a successful e-commerce business and you’re looking to grow, it takes a lot of time to build out e content sites and they are looking to marry or merge with e-comm sites. So I hope we can get some deals. I’d love to hear from you if you found some in, in, in interest in this.

I’m getting a lot [00:28:00] of questions from the AI one we did and the Trump one we did. We’re trying to be on the trends and I think content sites and eCommerce sites coming together is a great one. We’re also gonna have a lot of these sessions at Cross-Border Summit. Shlomo is gonna be there. A lot of the people we talked to will be there, are, are helping us with the Cross-Border Summit November, same dates as last year, third, fourth, and fifth, where a locking in.

A lot of cool stuff for you. And I would love to see you at our, so I’m in person with the real me, not the AI me, but I might have an AI with, with [00:28:30] me next to me. We’ll see you. Take care. Bye-bye. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com.

That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.