How Kévin built France’s top digital M&A marketplace (220+ deals / year) 🤝

With 24 000+ investors registered and a highly curated marketplace, Dotmarket is redefining how online businesses are bought and sold.

Feb 16, 2025

Welcome to the 23 new readers ! 👋

Since I started being interested in entrepreneurship and digital assets, I knew about the existence of a marketplace to buy and sell online companies, Dotmarket. But I was always wondering who the people behind it were and how they succeeded in building such a platform.

So recently, I met Kévin to learn more about the story behind Dotmarket 🙌

🕒 If you have : 1 minute

Founder : Kévin Jourdan
Project : Dotmarket - The leading French marketplace for buying and selling digital businesses.
Launch Date : 2020
Current Status : 300+ deals listed per year, 24 000+ investors registered, and 220+ deals closed per year.
Revenue Model : Commissions (6% for marketplace, 12.5% for M&A services), annual buyer access fee, and consulting services.
Unique Features : Closed marketplace with verified listings, expert valuation, and tailored M&A support.
Vision : Make digital acquisitions structured, secure, and accessible to entrepreneurs and investors.

What you will learn in this interview :
The unexpected shift that led Kévin from international marketing to digital acquisitions.
How he built a portfolio of profitable websites and transitioned into buying and selling digital businesses.
Why he co-founded Dotmarket to fill a major gap in the M&A market for smaller digital businesses.
The unique closed marketplace model Dotmarket uses to ensure secure and well-validated business transactions.
How to determine the right valuation for a digital business using financial metrics.
The key lessons Kévin learned about entrepreneurship, investment, and adapting to a rapidly changing digital landscape.

🕒 Reading time : 11 minutes

💬 About the Founder

Kévin pursued a master’s degree in international management and marketing at a business school in Strasbourg. During his studies, he completed two internships, one in Cyprus in the tourism industry and another in the Philippines in video editing. The second internship was more of an unexpected opportunity, but he took the chance and soon found himself integrating into the company’s marketing team.

After completing his studies, Kévin chose to stay in the Philippines, where he spent over five years in Manila, evolving in digital marketing. He started by working on lead generation, banner creation, and email campaigns before moving into affiliate marketing. Over time, he became responsible for the affiliate division and later transitioned into acquisition management.

While working as an affiliate manager, Kévin realized that while his salary remained fixed with occasional bonuses, affiliates who performed well could earn significantly more. The performance-based nature of the affiliate model seduce to him, and he saw an opportunity. After two and a half years in the industry, he began building his own affiliate websites, focusing on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization). He learned that success on the web wasn’t just about traffic volume, it was about knowing how to monetize even a small audience effectively.

For ten years, Kévin operated as a digital nomad, living off his portfolio of websites. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to transition away from his lifestyle. Today, while his primary focus is on his work with Dotmarket, he continues to own and manage websites as a secondary business, leveraging his years of experience in the affiliate space.

🌟 About the Business

Dotmarket is a leading French marketplace specializing in the buying and selling of profitable digital businesses, including content websites, e-commerce stores, and SaaS platforms. With over 300+ deals listed per year, 24 000+ investors registered, and 220+ deals closed per year, the platform provides a secure and transparent environment for entrepreneurs looking to sell or acquire online assets.

Dotmarket’s mission is to simplify digital acquisitions by offering expert valuations, listings, and tailored support for buyers and sellers. The platform serves a wide range of transactions, from 5 000 € to 5 million €, allowing individuals and businesses to invest in side businesses, external growth, or digital business flipping.

💡 Origin of the Idea & Vision

As Kévin built successful websites over the years, he naturally started receiving inquiries, either from people looking to buy his websites or from website owners asking if he’d be interested in purchasing theirs. These organic opportunities led him into the world of buying and selling digital businesses, marking the beginning of his experience in digital acquisitions.

By 2020, Kévin partnered with Mayane Guez to launch Dotmarket with a clear mission : to create a marketplace for digital business transactions. They identified a gap in the market, entrepreneurs with websites valued between 5 000 € and 5 million € needed a platform to buy and sell their businesses efficiently. Whether it was for side business investments, entrepreneurial acquisitions, external growth, or website flipping (buying, improving, and reselling websites), there was a strong demand for structured, accessible transactions.

However, smaller-scale digital entrepreneurs lacked tailored support. Traditional M&A firms typically worked with much larger businesses, leaving independent website owners and buyers without guidance. Dotmarket was created to bridge this gap, providing a specialized platform where entrepreneurs could securely buy, sell, and grow digital businesses with the right tools and support.

🚀 Strategy

Acquiring strong digital skills

Before launching Dotmarket, Kévin built and managed his own websites, refining his expertise in affiliate marketing, SEO, and conversion rate optimization. Over time, he developed two high-performing sites generating 15 000 € to 20 000 € per month, alongside a portfolio of smaller sites earning less than 1 000 € per month. These smaller sites served as experimental spaces where he tested different strategies and learned from mistakes.

While the business model was profitable, it remained highly dependent on Google’s algorithm changes, which could disrupt traffic and revenue overnight. Additionally, competing with established platforms like Quora, Forbes, and other media giants added another layer of difficulty.

Pivoting at the right time : Dotmarket & Duuce

As SEO and affiliate marketing became increasingly competitive with the rise of AI, Reddit, and evolving search engine trends, Kévin decided to transition from website monetization to digital business acquisitions. He launched Dotmarket to focus on buying, selling, and scaling profitable online businesses.

Around the same time, Kévin also acquired Duuce, a specialized marketplace for buying and selling newsletters. The acquisition allowed him to gain traction in the U.S. market, where he quickly learned that breaking into the American ecosystem required extensive preparation. However, after two years, he realized Duuce was diverting attention from Dotmarket, which was experiencing rapid growth in France.

With Duuce often breaking even or operating at a loss, Kévin decided to sell the platform to a U.S. media group, refocusing fully on Dotmarket. The deal was structured with a high earn-out component, meaning a portion of the sale price depended on the buyer’s success in scaling the business, showing confidence in Duuce’s long-term potential.

Identifying a market gap and building value

Kévin noticed that traditional M&A firms overlooked smaller digital businesses, focusing only on high-revenue companies. Meanwhile, there was an increasing demand from entrepreneurs and investors interested in acquiring and scaling smaller online businesses.

Dotmarket was created to bridge this gap, offering a structured marketplace for websites. Unlike traditional M&A firms, which typically handle fewer than 60 large deals per year, Dotmarket executes over 220 deals annually, proving that smaller transactions can be just as profitable when scaled effectively.

Kévin compares his approach to the "long tail" strategy in SEO, where focusing on a high volume of smaller, well-monetized businesses creates long-term sustainability, something traditional M&A firms have largely ignored.

A unique marketplace model

Dotmarket differentiates itself from traditional open marketplaces like Flippa, Acquire, or Leboncoin, which allow anyone to list websites with little to no verification. Instead, Dotmarket operates as a "closed marketplace" meaning only verified, high-quality businesses are listed.

In open marketplaces, sellers set their own prices, leading to unreliable valuations, some assets are undervalued, while others are overpriced. Dotmarket takes the opposite approach, carefully selecting and validating businesses before listing them. This guarantees security for buyers, ensuring that every business featured is worth its asking price. This leaves little room for highly lucrative deals, but on the other hand, it enhances security in the transaction.

Out of 352 listing requests per month, Dotmarket approves only 5 to 7 listings per week, keeping the selection highly curated and ensuring a success rate of around 9% for businesses that apply to be listed.

Valuing a business

Dotmarket uses three key valuation methods depending on the business type and size :

Multiples method : the most commonly used and easiest to explain to buyers and sellers. It applies a multiple to the business's adjusted profits to determine a fair market value.
Comparable sales : for larger deals or markets Dotmarket knows well, they refine valuations by analyzing similar businesses sold in the industry.
Replacement cost approach : applied to non-monetized sites, this method estimates how much it would cost to rebuild the same asset from scratch. If a website has strong SEO history, aged domains, or high traffic but isn’t monetized, Dotmarket highlights its potential revenue opportunities to justify its valuation.

The larger the business, the more complex the valuation, often requiring deeper financial adjustments, similar to traditional M&A firms. However, for smaller websites under 100 000 €, Dotmarket primarily relies on adjusted profit multiples and industry comparables to determine fair pricing.

Building a team, scaling, and financing growth

Kévin co-founded Dotmarket with Mayane, who oversees product, process, and tech, while he focuses on marketing and sales. They bootstrapped the business entirely, reinvesting profits to sustain growth without external funding. Thanks to Kévin’s extensive network in the digital industry, Dotmarket quickly gained traction by attracting buyers and sellers who already knew him as a trusted player.

The team grew strategically, adding experts in auditing, finance, and valuation to ensure in-depth due diligence on every listed business. Initially, they focused only on content sites, but as demand increased, they expanded to e-commerce, SaaS, and company acquisitions.

Despite the rapid growth, they remain selective, choosing not to expand into mobile apps or businesses outside their expertise. Operating as a fully remote team, Dotmarket continues to refine its processes while maintaining a strong, specialized focus.

With this strategy, Dotmarket has positioned itself as the leading digital M&A platform for small and mid-sized online businesses in France, offering a trusted, structured environment for entrepreneurs and investors.

📊 Business Model

Dotmarket operates with two distinct business units, offering different levels of service based on the needs of buyers and sellers :

M&A advisory service : similarly to a traditional M&A firm, where clients receive full support throughout the transaction process. Dotmarket handles everything from initial valuation to due diligence, deal structuring, negotiation assistance, and legal security through their network of specialized lawyers.
Marketplace : a more hands-off model where sellers list their digital businesses, and buyers can browse and make offers.

Each model has its own commission structure :

The M&A advisory service charges a 12.5% commission, with a decreasing fee that adjusts based on the deal size.
The marketplace operates with a 6% commission fee on successful transactions.

Additionally, marketplace buyers pay an annual access fee, though this structure may evolve to accommodate Dotmarket’s growing audience.

Beyond these core revenue streams, Dotmarket also generates additional income through complementary services such as business coaching, deal facilitation, investment thesis drafting, and strategic advisory work. This diversified model allows them to work with a broad range of clients, from independent buyers to institutional investors, while maintaining a strong position in the digital acquisitions market.

📈 Market & Competition

Dotmarket initially aimed to become the European competitor to Empire Flippers, which led them to choose a .eu domain. However, as they scaled, they realized that the French market alone was already substantial. Rather than extending resources across Europe, they made a strategic pivot, focusing on dominating the French market instead of being an average player at the European level.

This shift allowed them to refine their positioning and establish Dotmarket as the go-to platform for buying and selling digital businesses in France. By becoming a market leader locally, they strengthened their brand, improved deal flow, and built a solid foundation for any future expansion. Their priority now is solidifying their reputation as the leading marketplace in France before revisiting broader European ambitions.

🎓 Lessons & Tips

Define your investment thesis. Before acquiring a business, be clear on your skills, learning capacity, budget, available time, etc. Understanding these factors helps determine what kind of business you can realistically buy and manage.
Buying a website isn’t as easy as it seems. While it can be exciting and highly profitable (up to 50% annual ROI), long-term success depends on your ability to actively manage and grow the business. It’s not just an investment, it’s an ongoing commitment.

📝 Conclusion

Kévin’s journey with Dotmarket is an example of strategic adaptation, deep market understanding, and long-term vision. From building and monetizing websites to transitioning into digital acquisitions, he identified a gap in the M&A market and created a structured solution for buying and selling online businesses. Instead of competing in the crowded European market, he and his team focused on dominating the French space, positioning Dotmarket as the leading platform for small to mid-sized digital acquisitions.

Through Dotmarket’s unique closed marketplace model, they have successfully built trust, transparency, and efficiency into a process that was previously fragmented and underserved. Their ability to carefully select listings and provide expert advisory services has made them a go-to choice for entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners looking to buy or sell digital assets.

Looking ahead, the key challenge is educating the market. Digital acquisitions are still a complex and evolving space, with few specialized players and a high barrier to entry. If Dotmarket succeeds in becoming an indispensable reference in this industry, its long-term value will continue to rise. By establishing itself as a trusted, expert-driven player, Dotmarket is building the way for a more structured and accessible market for digital business transactions.

With a strong foundation, an experienced team, and a growing reputation, Dotmarket is well-positioned for long-term success in a space where the right positioning and expertise can make all the difference.

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