Key Takeaways From The Current Online Business Market

Cutting through the BS

People love to pop off on X or YouTube about what’s going on in the wifi money world, but the best and most honest indicator is to look at what the market is rewarding.

Unlike the info(tainment) provided by content creator cringlelords who will say or do anything for more clicks (they’ll even degrade themselves by uploading soy face thumbnail pics ffs), the actual market doesn’t lie.

When large amounts of money change hands it serves as a crystal clear filter that cuts through any and all BS.

“Omg X type of business model is dying!”

Really? Then why are people buying those businesses?

“X source of traffic doesn’t matter, it’s all about Y.”

If that’s true then why is the market rewarding X?

You get the point.

Now let’s take a look at the current Empire Flippers listings and see what the market is telling us today. The findings may (or may not) surprise you.

You don’t need a huge amount of profit to sell a site

You don’t need to be some type of massive sizelord to get an exit.

There are tons of small sites with monthly profit numbers in the low thousands sell for $50k-$75k.

This Amazon Associates/display advertising biz in the kitchenware niche only makes $2,165/mo. in profit but is listed for over $60k.

People buy smol sites too

Here’s another affiliate biz selling for $74,254 with average monthly profit only at $2,475.

The point? Everyone thinks that you have to shoot for the moon and land a massive 7-figure exit or the whole thing was a waste of time.

I’m not 100% here to crush anyone’s dreams or anything…

…buuuuuuuuut I’ll do it anyway.

The chances of you selling your very first wifi money biz for anything significant are slim-to-none.

Sometimes it’s best to take a few chips off the table and start over. Get your first baby steps and stupid beginner mistakes out of the way and begin with a fresh slate.

Fun fact: the first site I ever sold way back in the day when I was just a young guppy trying to make my way in the world was for exactly $50k and Look At Me Now, bitches.

(4 words to choke upon, millennials will get the reference)

Don’t sleep on humble beginnings.

Waking up and seeing and extra $50-$75k in your bank account isn’t that exciting, but it is semi-cool at minimum and also makes you feel like you aren’t a complete worthless failure in life (underrated feeling).

Multiple monetization methods/traffic sources = higher multiple

This business is selling for $1,198,492 with profit at $46,096/mo. That’s a 26x multiple.

This other business is selling for $1,168,608 with profit at $27,825/mo (a 42x multiple).

What gives?

The first one only uses one monetization method: advertising (click images to expand/read).

The second has multiple monetization methods: advertising, affiliate, and Amazon Associates.

The first business is leaving money on the table by not diversifying their revenue.

Of course that isn’t the only reason for the price discrepancy. The gaming niche site relies on paid traffic so of course it’s not as valuable as one that gets all their traffic organically.

The culinary niche site also gets a decent chunk of traffic from social.

The gaming niche site doesn’t mention how much of its traffic comes from social (just says “organic” instead of dividing into “organic search” and “organic social”) but since it’s not mentioned it’s probably not significant.

If you’re a solid operator with money to spend you could easily buy that site and flip it for much more 1-2 years later just by building out additional sources of revenue (affiliate, e-com, etc.) and additional traffic sources (social).

The best multiples are for businesses that are growing

When I look at the top 10 highest multiples (ranging from 45x to 59x) only ONE has declining profit and revenue over the last 12 months.

One other business saw their traffic decline but profit and revenue still grew so the decline is semi-meaningless.

For everything else in the top 10 their stats are green across the board.

You get the point.

Now let’s look at the 10 lowest multiples (ranging from 18x to 24x).

Eight have seen revenue and profit declines over the past 12 months.

Here are a few examples:

It pays to be a winner.

Buyers want to see a track record of success and they’ll reward you if you have it.

BUT from a buyer’s POV these declining assets CAN be a bargain if you’re confident in your abilities as an operator.

A lot of times people just give up when their site takes a shit and will sell their sites for much lower than even the extremely low multiples that are publicly listed.

Affiliate content sites are still a very lucrative business model

Tons of SEO people are crying and making apocalyptic predictions about how “content sites are dead”.

But the market (the most honest indicator) says otherwise.

The two highest listing prices are both for content sites monetized through affiliate revenue.

The #1 listing price on Empire Flippers is for a DR42 WordPress content site monetized via affiliate, Amazon Associates, display advertising, and digital products.

“But ser a listing price doesn’t mean that it’s ACTUALLY going to sell, the seller could be delusional!”

Look at the listing. It’s “pending sold”. So people really are still buying seven-figure content sites.

There are eight total content sites listed for over $1,000,000.

The Content Site Apocalypse is BS.

Ignore all doomers and carry on.

Conclusion

You can learn a ton about what business models are working and where you should put your efforts based on what the market is rewarding.

It’s worth creating an account on Empire Flippers and looking through the marketplace.

Some sites are selling for more than others. Analyze why. Some sites have high multiples and others have low multiples. Anaylze why.

This is a treasure trove of information that can only help you when deciding how to run your own site.

If all goes according to plan then one day your site will be one of the ones listed and you’ll make bank with a fat exit.