How AIM Group pivoted into a $60 billion niche

The founder of AIM Group, Peter Zollman, started his business in 1998 as a two-page newsletter, Classified Intelligence, sold to newspaper executives.

But over the next two decades, the company pivoted to focus on marketplaces instead of newspaper classifieds, dominating the niche and building a seven-figure global enterprise.

This case study shows how entrepreneurial publishers can:

• Transition a client base, in this case away from newspapers with classifieds to marketplace pure-plays
• Develop a global market
• Build a team of 50 contractors with no employees
• Tier and package subscription prices with consulting that sell for thousands of dollars

Today, AIM Group provides reports, consulting, and events to 200 marketplace clients worldwide.

How they did it

In its early years, AIM Group newspaper clients were moving classifieds online and facing an onslaught of competitors.  AIM benefited from an early foothold in Europe where newspapers wanted to know how U.S. newspapers responded to the changes.

 “Newspaper companies paid me millions of dollars to help them understand what they needed to do to preserve their classified advertising franchises,” Zollman recalls. 

“I would tell the folks in Europe, here’s what’s happening across the pond with what was then called New Media. They were very concerned, and at the time, the US was perceived as the leader in what was then called new media,” he said.

“Unfortunately, they just couldn’t evolve successfully.”

As classifieds moved away from newspapers, Zollman did, too.  The group began to provide intelligence to emerging marketplace powerhouses, including an emerging international marketplace industry, and their investors.

Craigslist, the original classified killer, ultimately lost its luster as marketplaces facilitated transactions in more sophisticated ways.

Today, “you can buy the car, finance it, pay for things you bought from someone else across the country, put the money in escrow, and have it shipped,” Zollman wrote in a company blog on its 25-year anniversary.

By that time, AIM Group was solidly entrenched in the marketplace niche.

Innovations: No employees, only contractors

AIM Group is like many niche media punching above its weight for a company its size.  It has no employees, just 50 contractors – many of them long-term – who create 27 reports running from 50 to 100 pages.

Since clients are “in every continent except Antarctica,”  the team of 30 writers is, too.

“There is a writer in Italy covering Italian issues; two in the Middle East and one in Poland covering European countries,” he said.

They have covered how Headhunter launched a LinkedIn-style network in Russia and how marketplaces around the world adjusted to changes in sales tax reporting laws.  When Google dropped its job listings, AIM Group was there to report how it would affect large marketplaces.

The stability and coherence of the team are factors when workers are not only remote but also on contract and located all over the world.  The editorial “department” is organized around a traditional hierarchy, with a single editor and two managing editors (See how he does it here).

Zollman relies on LinkedIn to find professionals such as writers and salespeople and uses Upwork and Fiverr to find designers and marketers.

Innovations: The Business Model

Aim Group uses a three-tiered revenue model: Intelligence Reports, Consulting, and Events. The latter are held in three countries: AutosBuzz in Portugal or Spain, RecBuzz in Germany or Austria, and the Global Online Marketplaces Summit in Miami. 

They do not sell advertising.

The intelligence reports, however, are sold in tiers that top out at several thousand per month.

The first subscription tiers include a monthly paid newsletter, such as  “AIM Group Recruitment Intelligence” and “AIM Group Real Estate Intelligence,” and access to the vertical’s archive, ranging from $199 to $249 monthly.

One level up is the AIM Group Marketplaces Report, which includes all 27 reports and “a certain level of consulting” that starts in the thousands for four seats and goes up from there. One client bought 70 seats.  For top customers and some public companies, the highest levels packaged with consulting and events can run into the tens of thousands.

 “We have a renewal rate better than 90%, so I guess we’re doing something right.”

One last note to niche publishers – Zollman sees opportunities for more niche marketplaces for anything bought and sold, from tractors to insurance.