What a Content Site Actually Sells For

Empire Flippers will not list a business unless it clears at least $2,000 a month in net profit, averaged over the last 12 months. That is the only monthly profit floor any of the three marketplaces in this piece puts in writing. Motion Invest and Flippa name no dollar figure at all, which sounds like an open door and is really just an unmarked one, and whether your site clears the single published number decides whether selling is a plan or a wish.

Every figure below is read off the marketplace's own page on the date recorded beside it.

Who will take your site, and who will not

Empire Flippers is the strict door. At least $2,000 a month in net profit averaged over 12 months, a minimum of 12 months of revenue history, and Google Analytics or Clicky tracking for at least 3 months before you apply. A site earning $400 a month is not a small Empire Flippers listing. It is not a listing.

Motion Invest publishes no threshold on its sell page, its list-asset page or its terms. Listing there is by approval after a 10-step due diligence review, so the answer for any particular site is whatever that review decides. There is no number you can hold your own figures up against before you apply, which makes the application itself the only way to find out.

Flippa is the mixed case. Its pricing page does publish a fit test, but only for the broker-led track: a minimum 12 month trading history, and 12 months of consistent monthly net profit. No dollar amount is attached to either, and the page says outright that not every business is a fit for brokerage. On the self-service side there is no test at all, because Flippa sells the listing rather than the outcome, so anyone can pay the entry fee and put a site in front of buyers. That split shows up again in how the fees work and in what actually closes.

What the sale costs you

Fees are where the three diverge hardest, and where the arithmetic turns uncomfortable at the small end.

Flippa charges from $29 flat for a 60-day Entry listing in the sub-$10K bracket, plus a 10% success fee. That 10% does not shrink as your price climbs. It is the same 10% at $10K to $49.9K and the same 10% at $50K and above, and it only begins to taper on the broker-led tiers far higher up the scale, reaching 5% above $50M. Larger brackets cost more before anything sells: $49 Standard for $10K to $49.9K, $129 Standard for $50K and up, with the Premium and Ultimate packages running to $699 per 6 months.

Motion Invest charges $0 to list, then a commission tiered by sale price: 20% under $20,000, then 15%, 10%, 7%, down to 5% over $500,000.

Empire Flippers charges nothing to list and nothing if the business does not sell, then a flat $10,000 commission on any sale up to $66,666.66, and a flat 15% from there to $700,000.

Read that last one with a calculator. A flat $10,000 is a percentage in disguise, and the percentage is worst exactly where their own floor sits. A business earning $2,000 a month, valued at the bottom of their published multiple, sells for roughly $40,800, and the $10,000 is close to a quarter of it. The commission only settles down to 15% once the price reaches $66,666.66. Their fee schedule is built around businesses much larger than the smallest one they will accept.

What the multiple actually is

Empire Flippers publishes its formula outright: 12 months of total net profit multiplied by a multiple, typically 1.7 to 5 or higher. What it does not publish is what moves the multiple inside that range. The page gives the arithmetic and stops, saying only that the company keeps refining how it values businesses. So the gap between 1.7 and 5 is exactly the part you cannot work out in advance, and anyone who tells you which end you land on is guessing from something other than that page.

Notice it is annual, not monthly. Most advice you will read quotes multiples of monthly profit instead, and 1.7 to 5 times a year is roughly 20 to 60 times a month. The two conventions describe the same market. The trap is mixing them, because a broker saying 40x and a forum post saying 3.5x can be quoting an identical price.

Flippa publishes no formula. Its sell page says assets are benchmarked against similar ones, and its free valuation tool says it is based on 100k+ comparable business sales across 100+ countries, with no multiple stated.

So the sum you can do tonight is monthly net profit, times twelve, times something between 1.7 and 5. A site clearing $500 a month is a $10,200 to $30,000 asset, and it sits well below the door at the one broker that publishes the range.

How long it takes, when it happens at all

Flippa publishes medians by size, and attaches a year to them: for businesses sold in 2023, 15 days under $50K, 49 days for $50K-$250K, 73 days above $250K. Motion Invest says the average time from listing to sale is just 12 days, with due diligence taking 3 to 7 days, the listing built in 1 to 2 days and the transfer another 3 to 7.

Read those numbers for what they measure, and for when they were measured. A median time to close is calculated across deals that closed, and Flippa's were calculated on a year that closed three years ago. It says nothing about what share of listings ever find a buyer, and none of the three publishes that figure. Empire Flippers publishes no median at all; its seller FAQ offers anecdotes instead, that businesses under $100K tend to go quickly and that a $40K site has taken a month or more. It also asks for a minimum 2 month exclusivity period, so a listing there is a two month commitment before you can try anywhere else.

Then the money moves on its own clock. Motion Invest pays by wire transfer 3-6 business days after the transfer is confirmed. Empire Flippers pays a reasonable time after a completed migration, and migration alone typically runs 2 to 8 weeks.

What you are selling is not what you think

The asset is the domain, the content, the traffic and the list. The accounts that turn those into money are usually not included, whatever the buyer assumes.

An AdSense account cannot be sold at all; the terms permit name and address corrections, not a transfer of ownership. An Amazon Associates account cannot be assigned or transferred, by operation of law or otherwise, without Amazon's prior written approval. A Mediavine site is sellable while the Mediavine account is not, so the buyer applies from scratch and the seller's loyalty bonus does not travel. Ezoic requires prior written consent that it may withhold, and calls any assignment without it null and void. Substack bars assignment without consent, and Gumroad lists handing over your account and username as prohibited conduct. Ghost is the outlier that says yes: rights under its agreement may be assigned to anyone who accepts the terms in writing.

That pattern is the real reason a valuation is a multiple of profit rather than a price for a login. What survives the handover is the thing you built, not the permissions somebody else granted you.

Two more clauses deserve a read before you list. Empire Flippers takes a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide licence over any content you submit to its platform. Motion Invest can terminate or suspend an account immediately, without notice, for policy breaches or for any other reason, with no cure period stated. Flippa, for its part, hands you the Letter of Intent and Asset Purchase Agreement templates and lets the two parties do the transfer themselves.

Do this tonight

Add up your last 12 months of net profit. Multiply by 1.7, then by 5. That range is what the only published formula in this market says your site is worth, before commission and before anyone has agreed to buy anything.

Then subtract the fee that would apply at that price. If the answer is smaller than the number in your head, you now know it early, which is the whole point of running it before you need the money rather than after.