Ramon Van Meer

Romance MVP made hundreds in subscriptions in 3 days

Sam helped his friend Ramon test a 'true romance' subscription idea: a free 1,000-word romance story plus audio (narrator paid $50), with part 2 gated behind signup. The test collected hundreds of dollars of subscription revenue in three days.

“I actually ran tests with him and we collected hundreds of dollars of subscription revenue in a matter of 3 days doing this test. I helped them set it up. And, uh, what you would get is, you know, a first story of a romance, 1,000 words of a romance story that was also audio. And we paid someone $50 to do it. We said for part 2, sign up.”

Steal thisTest a content subscription by giving away part 1 free and gating part 2 behind signup.

Ramon climbed from a $200K exit to $400K to a $9M sale

Valley recounts how Ramon Van Meer (the soap-opera blog founder) didn't start with the $9M sale. He sold a $200K business first, then a $400K one, learning each time before hitting the big exit.

“He actually sold a $200,000 business first, right? And learned from that and built another. And the next one that he sold through Quiet Light was $400,000. Right. And then hit the motherlode and jumped up to, to $9 million. So I don't want anyone to think, oh my gosh, that's amazing. I'll never get to that. People start where they start and they just keep going forward and fighting and ramping and succeeding.”

Soap-opera fan pages to a $9M sale

Shaan recounts how their friend Ramon built Facebook fan pages about soap operas, turned them into a soap-opera blog, and sold it for $9 million. The same content-first-then-commerce playbook could work for the hunting and fishing lifestyle.

“he's got an episode 2 I think where he talks about how he built fan pages about soap operas, then built a blog about soap operas, and then sold that for $9 million. Same sort of thing you could do here. You could build fan pages around the hunting and fishing lifestyle, and then start to sell products into that group.”

Ramon built a soap opera blog on WordPress and sold it for $9M

Shaan's favorite guest, Ramon, resonated because his path was relatable: no coding skill, started a WordPress blog about soap operas, grew it with Facebook traffic, and sold it for $9 million to a regular buyer, not via an investment bank.

“I started a blog. I used WordPress. I don't know how to code. I used, you know, kind of Facebook traffic to build it up. And, you know, the net result was he built a blog about soap operas and sold it for $9 million. And he sold it like to just a guy, not like, oh, I then had this investment bank that sold it to, you know, Amazon or whatever it was. Like it was just very relatable.”

He built the top soap opera blog without watching a single episode

Ramon started a soap opera news blog despite never having watched an episode, can't code, and writing in a second language. He picked the niche purely from Facebook engagement data, not passion.

“Nobody will guess this and nobody believes it when I tell them. I started a blog about soap operas. It's a news blog that will write about the running soap operas.”

Soap opera blog sold for $8.75M cash, bootstrapped

Ramon Van Meer sold his soap opera news blog for $8.75 million, all cash, after building it from scratch in about three years with no outside investors.

“A little bit, uh, below $9 million, $8.75 million.”

Test 10+ niches with cheap Facebook pages, double down on the engaged one

Ramon spun up 10-12 Facebook fan pages on different topics (pets, marijuana, soaps, politics), drove cheap likes, and posted to measure engagement. Soaps and politics stood out; he dropped politics and built around soaps.

“I started 10, 11, 12, I forgot, different fan pages about different topics. So one was about pets, marijuana, soaps, politics. And I would just drive some traffic to it or build some likes paid and then post some random pictures and then see the engagement. So some fan pages really bomb. I had 10,000 fans, I post a picture and I get 2 likes or whatever, right? Okay, horrible engagement. But there were 2 topics that really stood out. One was soaps, the other one was politics.”

Steal thisSpin up a dozen cheap topic pages, measure engagement, and only build the business around the niche that overperforms.

Don't overthink pre-launch: ugly WordPress site in a couple hours

Ramon's playbook is to launch fast and ugly rather than perfect the pre-launch. He bought a WordPress theme, slapped on a simple logo, and shipped in a couple hours instead of spending months designing a business card and site that might fail anyway.

“this website I built in a couple hours was a WordPress theme, a very simple logo, because I'm a, I'm just a believer, like, trying a lot of different things fast, fast, and then see if something works. Then you, you know, optimize or make it better or make it look better or faster, things like that. But, you know, I try to prevent spending too much time in the pre-launch phase where, like, I made those mistakes too when I was younger.”

Steal thisShip an ugly v1 in hours and optimize only after you see traction; don't burn months perfecting a pre-launch.

If the incumbent's website looks like a PDF, attack that market

Ramon's market-selection heuristic: the dominant soap competitor, Soap Opera Digest, was a 40-50 year old print magazine whose website felt like a static PDF. A web-native operator can dominate a niche still run by slow print incumbents.

“So, you know, when you see that the website reminds you of a PDF, it's like, this is a good market to go.”

Steal thisHunt for niches whose biggest player is a legacy print brand with a PDF-like website; go web-native and win.

Pick content niches with infinite daily content, not 6-episode seasons

Soaps work as a content business because new episodes air five days a week, 52 weeks a year, generating endless things to write about. Ramon contrasts this with a Game of Thrones blog limited to a handful of episodes a year.

“when you write about the topic or you think about, you know, starting a content site, you also want to think, okay, is there going to be enough content to write about? So for example, if you do a Game of Thrones blog, you're kind of limited because it only airs 2, 3 months”

Steal thisBefore building a content site, confirm the topic produces fresh material constantly so you never run dry.

Spoilers drove 80% of traffic; quizzes captured 350K emails

About 80% of the blog's traffic came from spoiler articles about what happens next. 'What character are you' quizzes were used as an email-capture tool, building a list of nearly 350,000 emails.

“Like, I think 80% of our traffic came from spoiler or spoiler-related articles. Unbelievable.”

Steal thisFigure out the single content format your audience craves most and pump out more of it.

First 30-40K Facebook likes cost under 1 cent each

Ramon bought only the first 30,000-40,000 fan page likes at below one cent per like; after that the page grew organically and he didn't pay for traffic again until a year later.

“I only bought 30, the first 30, 40,000 likes at below 1 cent per like, so it was very cheap. After that was all organic.”

Reverse-engineer competitors and steal what works

Ramon's idea-generation method: study direct competitors to see what they do well and poorly, then study top non-competitor content sites and copy their tactics (push notifications, quizzes) adapted to his niche.

“So I like to reverse engineer shit, right? So I always look at first at the direct competitors. So if you want to do something, look at the market, the competitors that are out there, and then see what they're doing doing right and what are they, you know, not doing so well and just pick ideas from that.”

Steal thisReverse-engineer winners in and adjacent to your niche, then port their working tactics to your audience.

Browse website marketplaces to find proven, undervalued niches

Ramon scans website brokerages like Quiet Light and Flippa to read P&Ls and summaries, treating them like a real estate broker. A $100K Flippa listing for a soap site validated demand, so he built his own from scratch instead of buying.

“in that same period when I was building those fan pages, I saw a listing on Flippa about soap operas and read the summary and I thought, this is interesting. And, you know, but the price was way too high, was $100,000. So I said, okay, let's just, you know, see and just build it from scratch ourselves, right?”

Steal thisMine website marketplaces for proven niches and P&Ls; if a listing is too pricey, build the same thing yourself.

Soap blog printed $400K-$500K/month on a 4-person team

At its peak the soap opera blog pulled in $400,000 to $500,000 in monthly revenue against roughly $100,000 in overhead, run by an in-house team of just four plus a handful of writers.

“in content, you, with a very small team, very low overhead, you can make good revenue. And we're talking monthly, you're pulling in between $400,000 and $500,000 in revenue, and overhead was, you know, $100,000 something”

Pulling the listing accidentally triggered a bidding war from $5M to higher

Ramon's broker priced the blog at a $5M multiple, but during the months-long sale process his revenue skyrocketed. He delisted to wait for a higher valuation, which made interested buyers want it more and sparked a bidding war that pushed offers up from $5M to $6M and beyond.

“So what happened by me pulling the listing, whoever was already interested in it now wanted more, even more, right? Like, I wish this was a genius plan of mine. Yeah, this was pure like just happened. So a couple days later, whoever first offered $5 million, they say, okay, I wanna, uh, I offer $6 million, and then another. So it was a bidding war, right, between initially 3 bidders and then 2, and eventually I had to choose was one of them.”

The $8.75M wire was anticlimactic: back to work in 15 minutes

When the money hit, Ramon and the team refreshed the bank account, took a screenshot, toasted with champagne, then were back answering emails 15 minutes later. Because the business was already profitable, the sale changed little day to day.

“I remember when the money came in the bank and, you know, we were just hitting refresh over and over again. That I did. I was looking for it. And of course I took a screenshot, but I, you know, I got some champagne for the office. We did the toast and then literally like 15 minutes later, we all were back to work.”

Novoly: a Netflix-style app for short romance novels

Ramon and Sam Parr built Novoly, an app where people read or listen to short romantic stories. They validated it by putting an ugly WordPress site with a few stories in front of soap opera readers and saw fans begging for the next chapter.

“Novoly is actually a platform where where people can read short romantic stories, short romantic novels, books, on their iPhone or tablet, either read it or listen to it. So it's a book but also an audio version. Me and Sam came up with the idea, we were back and forth, we are really good friends, we always come up with weird and crazy ideas, and we came up with this idea when I still had the soap opera website and I still had access to all these readers.”

Steal thisValidate a new content product by funneling an existing audience to a bare-bones page and watching for organic demand.

Romance readers devour a book every two weeks vs. 5/year average

The average American reads about 5 books a year, but the average romance novel reader reads roughly one book every two weeks. That frequency plus a huge audience is why Ramon and Sam built Novoly around romance fiction.

“on average in America, a person reads 5 books a year. The average romantic novel reader reads every one book every 2 weeks.”

Buy vs. build: be a scaler, not a builder

Ramon argues buying a business beats building if your skill is scaling (1-to-10) rather than creating (0-to-1). Buying gives you speed, history, and data, like buying a fixer-upper house in a good neighborhood.

“Some people are really good at going from 0 to 1, are really builders. Others are really good at going from 1 to 10, and those are, you know, scalers. I'm not really good at building. I'm better at scaling. And so I like to buy versus build because it gives you a lot more speed. It gives you history and data. And it's similar like real estate where I try to find crappy houses that you need to fix up, but in a good up-and-coming neighborhood”

Steal thisIf you're a scaler not a builder, buy an underoptimized business in a good market instead of starting from scratch.

Don't buy businesses from other internet marketers

Ramon avoids buying websites from other internet marketers because they've already done all the optimizations he would do, leaving no room for growth. He targets under-optimized assets with obvious unused levers.

“I'm not looking for websites that are overly optimized. So I tend to not buy websites from other internet marketers because they already did all the things that I probably would do for it. So it's not really room for growth.”

Steal thisBuy businesses run by non-marketers so the obvious growth levers (ads, email, branding) are still untouched.

Why the dog ramp business was a perfect acquisition

When Ramon bought the dog ramp business it solved a real niche problem, had little competition, a crappy convertible website, no Facebook ads, and an un-emailed customer database. Every growth lever was sitting untouched.

“This case, the two founders were not doing any Facebook ads. There was no paid acquisition happening at all. And even though they had a decent-sized customer database, they were not emailing even existing customers, let alone trying to capture, you know, a cart abandonment.”

SoapHub sold for $8.75M in all cash

Ramon van Meer sold his soap opera blog SoapHub for just under $9 million, all cash, after building it in about three years with no outside investors.

“Little bit, uh, below $9 million, $8.75.”

Crossword-helper site: $3.5M revenue, ~$3M profit, asking $9M

Ramon describes a Scrabble/Words-with-Friends word-finder website for sale at $9M. Started in 2017, it does $3.5M in revenue with almost no team, leaving roughly $3M in profit.

“So for example, there's one for sale now for $9 million. They started it in 2017, does $3.5 million in revenue. And because there's no really team needed, it's like, it's almost all profit. It's like $3, around $3 million of profit. And it's just, you know, printing money basically.”

Test 10+ niches with cheap Facebook fan pages, double down on engagement

Ramon launched 10-12 Facebook fan pages across different topics (pets, marijuana, soaps, politics), bought a few likes, posted random content, and measured engagement. Soaps and politics stood out; he killed politics and went all-in on soaps.

“I started 10, 11, 12, I forgot, different fan pages about different topics. So one was about pets, marijuana, soaps, politics, and I would just drive some traffic to it or build some likes paid and then post some random pictures and then see see the engagement.”

Steal thisBefore committing to a niche, spin up several cheap fan pages, post test content, and let engagement data pick the winner.

Built the biggest soap blog without coding, writing, or watching soaps

Ramon couldn't code, wasn't a strong English writer, and had never seen a soap opera, so he bought a $49 WordPress theme and hired freelance writers. He built the most popular soap opera blog anyway by just doing the simple things.

“So I built a simple WordPress site. I bought a theme from ThemeForest, put it on WordPress, used photos.”

Piñata site flip: $5K to $22K in ~3.5 months

Ramon's early Flippa flips taught him the game: he bought a custom piñata website for $5,000, improved its traffic, made his money back in 2.5 months, then sold it a month later for $22,000.

“So I bought that for $5,000, that's escrowed together, improved the website traffic and made my money back in 2.5 months and then sold it a month later for $22,000. So it's not huge numbers, but those really helped me to grow a little bit and really get a lot of experience.”

Pick a niche with daily, never-ending content

Ramon argues a content site needs a topic with a constant supply of new material. Soap operas air new episodes every weekday for 52 weeks, unlike Game of Thrones which only runs a few weeks a year and runs out of things to write about.

“I did see an opportunity, okay, there's not a lot of competition, the fans are super engaged, it's content that is every day. Like, soap operas are aired every single day for 52 weeks straight.”

Steal thisChoose a content niche with an endless, daily supply of new events to write about, not one that runs dry between seasons.

Small passionate niches sell the product for you

Ramon likes products with small but rabid niches (goat milk soap, keto) because the passion turns customers into evangelists who spread the word for free.

“This could probably be a product that people that use this are very passionate about it, same like, you know, people that are into keto are super passionate, or, you know, there's tons of these examples where it's a pretty small niche, but people are so passionate that they will spread the word for you.”

What assets to value when buying an online business

Ramon's diligence checklist: verify the product solves a real problem, check search volume (Google Trends), Amazon sales (Helium 10), whether traffic channels are diversified vs. all paid Facebook, profit margins, and included assets like email/SMS lists, trademarks, and patents.

“What is important are the traffic channels diversified. Is 100 or 90% coming from just Facebook, or is it just emails, or is it just, um, SEO? That could be a little bit, you know, risky, especially if it's all paid traffic from Facebook”

Steal thisBefore buying an online business, check that traffic is diversified across channels, not 90% dependent on paid Facebook.

Quizzes captured ~350,000 emails; spoilers drove 80% of traffic

About 80% of SoapHub's traffic came from spoiler articles. 'What character are you' quizzes were used purely as an email-capture tool, building a list of close to 350,000 emails.

“Like, I think 80% of our traffic came from spoiler or spoiler-related articles. Unbelievable. Then of course we did you know, to get more content out because the more content you put out, the more traffic you get, you know, more traffic, more revenue.”

Use SBA loans to buy an online business with 10% down

SBA loans now fund internet businesses, letting you borrow up to 90% at 5-7% interest. Ramon also structures deals with 60-80% cash at closing and the rest as a seller's note or earnout, which keeps the seller invested in helping.

“you can use SBA loans to buy internet businesses. SBA loan is basically a business loan, small business loan that I don't know when they started, a few years ago, where they now also fund internet businesses. And you can borrow up to 90%. So technically you can buy something that is for sale for $400,000 and you only have to put down $40,000.”

Steal thisBuy a cash-flowing online business with an SBA loan, putting just 10% down, and use seller financing for part of the rest.

Under $1,000 spent to build a ~$9M asset

Ramon bought his first 30,000-40,000 Facebook page likes at under a penny each and spent under $1,000 total before the page grew organically, then sold the resulting site for nearly $9 million.

“You spent under $1,000 total unpaid for this website, built that asset up into something that you were able to sell for almost $9 million. So that's a tremendous, tremendous type of return.”

$200K down turned into a ~$4M return via SBA loan

Ramon relays a story from Quiet Light's Joe Valley: a woman bought a business for $1.25M with an SBA loan, putting only 10% (~$125K) down, and sold it two years later for around $5.5M.

“There was a woman, she bought bought a business for $1.25 million with an SBA loan 2 years ago and just closed and sold the same business for $5.5, I believe. It was in the 5 range, but put only 10% down. So, she didn't even put $200K down, but her return was—”

Reinvest revenue early; hire before you can afford it

While only making about $5,000 a month, Ramon hired his first full-time employee. He knew it wasn't financially smart yet, but it freed him to focus on growth while someone else handled day-to-day operations.

“I was only making maybe $5,000 a month and then I hired a full-time person because I knew, okay, even though business-wise it's probably not smart, like you don't make enough to afford that, but I just, I just did it because I knew I can then focus on growth and then that person can focus on the day-to-day things.”

Steal thisHire your first operations person early so you can spend all your time on growth, even before the numbers say you can afford it.

Hire Centurica for acquisition due diligence

Ramon recommends Centurica.com as a well-known due-diligence firm that vets a target's traffic, revenue, and claims for as little as a few hundred dollars, and can tell you if a $1.2M-listed business is really worth $900K.

“you can hire a due diligence company. Centurica.com is one. I think those are the biggest, well-known. You pay— you know, it depends on the listing price, but it's as cheap as a couple hundred dollars and it goes up from there. But they do all the due diligence for you.”

Reverse-engineer competitors and non-competitors for tactics

Ramon's idea engine was to reverse-engineer: study direct competitors for what they do well and poorly, then study top content sites in other niches and copy their tactics (push notifications, personality quizzes) into his own.

“So I like to reverse engineer shit, right? So I always look at first at the direct competitors. So if you want to do something, look at the market, the competitors that are out there, and then see what they're doing right and what are they, you know, not doing so well, and just pick ideas from”

Steal thisCopy what already works elsewhere instead of inventing; adapt a proven tactic from another niche into yours.

Browse website-for-sale marketplaces to find proven business models

Ramon studies website brokerages like Quiet Light and Flippa, reading listing summaries and P&Ls, to learn what business models are working and find inspiration to build or buy.

“So still to now, I always like to look at these marketplaces where people buy and sell websites. I think you can learn a lot. They write a whole summary and give access to the P&Ls.”

Steal thisRead business-for-sale listings and their P&Ls as free market research on what's actually profitable.

A $100K Flippa listing was the green light to build it himself

Ramon saw a soap opera site listed on Flippa for $100,000. Too broke to buy it, he took the asking price as proof the niche had value and built his own from scratch instead.

“I saw a listing on Flippa about soap operas and read the summary, and I thought, this is interesting. And, you know, but the price was way too high. It was $100,000. So I said, okay, let's just, you know, see and just build it from scratch ourselves.”

Steal thisBrowse website marketplaces; a high asking price for a site in a niche is a signal that the niche is worth entering.

Faking it as a clueless 20-year-old construction founder

Ramon started a construction company at 20 with zero skills, showed up to an electrical job he couldn't do, waited and confessed he knew nothing. The entrepreneur client laughed, paid him anyway, and gave him the key tip: just win projects and outsource the work to freelancers.

“He said, in order to own a construction company, you don't have to know everything or do it yourself. If I were you, find freelancers. You focus on getting the projects, and then you outsource it to freelancers. So that's what I did, and found an electrician freelancer, plumber, you know, everything you need, a whole crew that you need.”

Steal thisYou don't need to do the work yourself; win the projects and outsource delivery to freelancers.

Don't put all your traffic eggs in one basket

After Facebook crushed publisher reach, Ramon made traffic diversification a core principle. He never wants to be 100% dependent on Google, email, or push; email is the most reliable channel but everything can change overnight.

“Don't put all your eggs in one basket. And, and, and Yeah, still to today, like when I buy or sell or buy, start a site, it's like I want a diverse traffic. Traffic, yeah. I don't want to be 100% depending on Google, 100% even email, or 100%, you know, a push notification. From all these, the email is still the best bet”

Steal thisDiversify traffic across Facebook, Google, email, and push so one algorithm change can't kill your business.

Only 4 US soap operas left, down from ~13

Ramon notes there are only 4 soap operas still airing in the US, down from around 12-13 a decade earlier. Cancellation risk was a real threat to his content supply and his company's value, especially around contract-renewal time.

“soap operas are the only 4 airing, like only 4 in the United States. 10, 12 years ago, there were like 12 or 13, like, you know, the soap opera get canceled. So I was also, you know, thinking, oh man, what happens if 2 soap operas get canceled? Then I don't have content to write about or less content.”

Stalking a mentor for 4 months to land a coding job

As a teen, Ramon respectfully stalked a software entrepreneur for 3-4 months until the man made a deal: pass a programming exam Friday or leave him alone forever. Ramon studied a Microsoft Access book like his life depended on it, passed, and got a 6-month developer training program.

“Let's make a deal. If I'm going to give you a book on Friday, we have an internal exam for programmers. If you pass that exam, I will hire you. The company will hire you and give you a 6-month internal program to become a Microsoft, uh, developer. "but you have to promise me if you fail this exam on Friday, you have to leave me alone for the rest of your life."”

The business is just moving traffic A to B as cheaply as possible

Ramon's core mental model: the product (content, paper clips, anything) doesn't matter. The game is driving traffic or customers from point A to point B as cheaply as possible. That's the entrepreneurship he's passionate about, not the topic.

“you have a product, a service, or content, a soap opera content site, whatever it is, and then you have traffic that you need to drive there. So for me, it's like figuring out, okay, how can we get as much traffic for as cheap as possible from point A to point B, right? And that's for me the game that I like to—”

Steal thisTreat any business as a traffic-routing problem: get customers from A to B as cheaply as possible, regardless of the product.

$400K-$500K monthly revenue on ~$100K overhead

At its peak SoapHub pulled in $400,000 to $500,000 a month in revenue with roughly $100,000 in monthly overhead, run by a team of four in-house plus a handful of freelance writers.

“And we're talking monthly, you're pulling in between $400,000 and $500,000 in revenue and overhead was, you know, $100-something, $100, you know, depending on the month. But we were a very small team. In-house were— was me and 3 others, and then a handful of writers.”

Pulling the listing turned a $5M deal into a bidding war

The broker first valued SoapHub at $5M, but revenue skyrocketed during the months-long sale process. Ramon called to delist; the act of pulling the listing made existing bidders raise their offers, sparking a bidding war that pushed the price far higher.

“So what happened by me pulling the listing, whoever was already interested in it now wanted more, even more, right? Like, I wish this was a genius friend of mine. Yeah, this was a pure, like, just happened. So a couple days later whoever first offered $5 million to say, okay, I want to, uh, I offer $6 million, and then another. So there was a bidding war, right, between initially 3 bidders and then 2, and eventually I had to choose one of them.”

Novely: a 'push a button, get an emotion' romance fiction app

Ramon and Sam built Novely, an app for short romantic stories readable or listenable on phone. They validated it cheaply by putting up an ugly WordPress site, commissioning a few stories, and seeing readers beg for the next chapter in the comments.

“So same story, put a really ugly, simple WordPress site up, had somebody write a couple short romantic stories, and drove traffic to it, see the engagement, see if people like it or not. And the engagement was crazy. People were literally like begging in the comments, like, oh, we love this chapter, when is the next chapter, things like bad.”

Steal thisValidate a content product cheaply with an ugly landing page and a few sample pieces; let comment demand prove the market.

Romance readers devour a book every 2 weeks vs 5/year average

For his new app Novely, Ramon points out the average American reads 5 books a year, but the average romance novel reader reads one book every two weeks, making them an unusually frequent and valuable audience.

“meaning on average in America, a person reads 5 books a year. The average romantic novel reader reads every one book every 2 weeks.”

Ramon's dog ramp business: $40M a year

Sam cites a business he participates in that sells dog ramps (small ramps so short-legged dogs can climb onto beds) and is on track to do $40 million in revenue, sometimes tens of thousands per day.

“That company is going to do $40 million this year, by the way. That's the update. How's that? Holy moly.”

Bought a SaaS, doubled the price, revenue doubled

Sam and Ramon bought a ~$30K/month SaaS company and their only change was doubling the price. Revenue doubled with the same number of daily signups, illustrating how badly most companies underprice.

“Most people don't price their stuff effectively. We bought a company. Literally all that was done was double the price. And revenue doubled. Same amount of people sign up every day. It's super simple. I love it.”

Steal thisAcquire underpriced subscription businesses and raise prices; demand is often far less elastic than owners fear.