Empire Flippers Marketplace Changelog 2024

Feature Update

Share-a-Listing Button for Referral Partners

Did you know that in the Empire Flippers Referral Partners you can refer buyers as well as sellers? For Buyer Referrals, the user is credited to you as soon as they either sign up for an account or make their first unlock. From there, you’ll get the standard 20% referral fee over the next 2 years for any listings that the user purchases.

Given that, to make it even easier to refer buyers you’ll now see a “Share-a-Listing” Button on all Listing pages which with 1-click you can get a link to that Listing page including your referral code for quick sharing to prospective buyers you’d like to refer.

Feature Update

More Clarity into your Empire Flipper Referred Users & Listings

Unlike say, the Amazon Associates Referral Program (where users are quick to buy products after being linked over), with the Empire Flippers Referral Partners it can take months for a referred seller or buyer to go all the way through the sales process and either sell or a buy a business.

To give more clarity and certainty to our referral partners about the specific users they have referred, we now display a semi-censored version of the referred user’s name and email address, along with how far along they are in their buyer or seller journey.

This way, as a referral partner, if you referred a specific person you now can be 100% sure that your referral was correctly tracked.

Feature Update

New Shopify Valuation Tool App Educational Page for Referral Partners

Many of our Referral Partners have been asking how they can promote the Empire Flipper’s Shopify Valuation Tool App while still getting users who install the app to be credited as referrals.

Rather than linking directly to https://apps.shopify.com/empire-flippers-valuation-tool-1 instead Referral Partners can now link to https://empireflippers.com/shopify-valuation-tool/ with their referral codes where prospective users will first get educated about the app, before signing up for Empire Flippers accounts (and being tagged as referrals) after which they’ll automatically be redirected to the Shopify App Store to install the app.

Feature Update

Making it easier to keep your Seller Availability Calendar up-to-date

Buyer/Seller Calls are one of the cornerstones of a successful experience selling your business on the Empire Flippers Marketplace. More calls with prospective buyers leads to more (& better) offers and an increased chance of selling your business.

With buyers all over the world active on the Empire Flippers Marketplace, it’s important to have a wide and varied availability of call slots for buyers to book calls with you. With this feature we’ve now made it much easier to add and/or remove many call slots at once with a click-and-drag-to-add and likewise click-and-drag-to-remove gesture. This will save you time when keeping your calendar up-to-date as your schedule changes from week-to-week.

Feature Update

Sellers can proactively schedule calls

Until now for a Buyer/Seller Call to occur it was up to the buyer to view the seller’s availability calendar and schedule the call. With this update, we are now allowing Sellers to be proactive and create an Empire Flipper’s Zoom Link for an official & recorded Buyer/Seller call.

This is often useful for when Buyers & Sellers are chatting with each other in real-time and want to schedule a short-notice call either immediately or in the next few hours. Now rather than having to go “off platform” using their own communication means (like a regular phone call, Google Meet, etc), both parties can stay on the Empire Flippers Platform and do an official Zoom call.

Feature Update

Letting you know when a Listing's Multiple decreases

One of the most important criteria when evaluating a business to purchase is its “multiple”, which on the Empire Flippers Marketplace represents the Listing Prices divided by the average monthly profit. Over on the EF Scoreboard you can see some stats on average sale multiples on our marketplace.

With this feature, when opted in you will receive an email informing you of any multiple decreases for a Listing you are interested in (via your unlocks, watchlist or a match from your saved filters). When a Seller lowers their multiple that immediately saves you money and also signals that the seller may be open to negotiate to help facilitate a sale.

Feature Update

More data from Semrush

Listing Pages (for users who unlocked the Listing) now show more data from Semrush to help you evaluate the business’s SEO potential. The newly added metrics include:

• Top Keywords

• Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic

• Top Pages by Referring Domains

• Top Pages by Backlinks

• Top Pages by Traffic

Give it a look!

Feature Update

Making Listings eligible for financing more prominent

Did you know that some Listings on the Empire Flippers Marketplace can be purchased via financing from the SBA (US Small Business Administration) and/or private lenders?

Downpayments can be as low as 10% of the purchase price, making this an appealing way to acquire a larger business without sacrificing as much of your hard earned capital.

With this new feature, we’ll be notifying you when any listing you are interested in becomes eligible for financing. Likewise, these listings will be more prominent on the Marketplace via a special badge, filter and explanatory content about the specific lender that has pre-approved the business for acquisition financing.

Feature Update

Scoreboard Refresh

Did you know that Empire Flippers has a public “Scoreboard” showing off many of the key metrics of our business to the public?

Found at Scoreboard – Empire Flippers you can see the average multiple of businesses sold on our marketplace, along with the value of all the businesses we’ve ever sold (over $500M now!) and other stats about the size of our userbase and activity on our website.

With this update we’ve refreshed the page with some new stats to give prospective buyers and sellers even more information about our marketplace.

Feature Update

Join the EF Referral Program with 1-click

The Empire Flippers Referral Program is growing! With over $1.4M paid out to date, we’re now making it even easier for our past buyers and sellers to join the program.

Previously everyone had to fill out an application to join the program, but with this change once you either buy or sell a business with Empire Flippers you can now join the program with just 1 click, skipping the application process.

After all, there’s nobody more qualified than our buyers & sellers to spread the word about Empire Flippers and their experience using the platform.

Feature Update

Browse a Listing's Tech Stack

If you’re a developer interested in purchasing SaaS businesses, you know how important the business’s Tech Stack is. Finding a business whose Tech Stack matches your expertise (or your team’s) is a huge plus and makes improving that business post-acquisition a much easier process.

Starting now Empire Flipper’s tech-heavy businesses (SaaS, Mobile Apps, Shopify Apps, etc.) will list their Tech Stack. Try searching for your favorite tech stack components like “Laravel” or “Vue” using the Marketplace Search to see which listings are a match!

Feature Update

Create your Buyer Profile to Impress our Sellers

Especially for deals with a performance-based Earnout, Sellers really care about who they sell their business to. Two buyers could make the exact same offer and often times the seller will choose the buyer they think will have a better chance of growing the business and succeeding.

Now you can catch a seller’s attention by completing your “Buyer Profile” to showcase your experience and expertise to help convince sellers that you are the best buyer for their business. Your profile might be the difference between them accepting your offer versus that of another buyer!

Feature Update

Get an Edge with the help of our Expert Analysis Section

Empire Flipper’s own Director of Marketing, Greg Elfrink, has personally analyzed some of our bigger listings and come up with an expert analysis for prospective buyers to review. Check it out and learn about the business’s strengths & weaknesses, industry trends and biggest opportunities for growth.

Feature Update

Streamlining Buyer/Seller Communication for Sub-$1M Deals

If you’re a buyer who has looked at a range of different business sizes on the Empire Flippers Marketplace, you might have noticed that the experience is different for sub-$300K deals versus above $300K deals. Above $300K, you wouldn’t directly get to message the seller, instead going through Empire Flippers’ sales & customer service team to facilitate communication with the seller. Based on marketplace feedback, we’ve now decided to directly connect buyers with sellers for all deals below $1M (roughly). Smaller deals tend to move faster, and so by directly connecting buyers and sellers, that fast-style communication can occur as quickly as the two parties are willing to check their messages!

Feature Update

New "Parent ASIN" Stat on Amazon FBA Listings

When it comes to managing an Amazon FBA business, a key piece of the complexity involved is how many different products you’ll need to juggle the supply chains for.

While Empire Flippers has always given the number of SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) for our Amazon FBA Listings, as you’ll see SKUs don’t tell the whole story.

For products with color, size or other variations, each individual variant is its own SKU. Whereas the Parent ASIN count aggregates all those variants and gives you a truer picture of how many different types of products you’ll be managing.

With this latest update, all our Amazon FBA listings will now show both the SKU count and Parent ASIN count.

Feature Update

Watch Videos on the EF Blog at Faster Speeds

Time is money, right? Now, all videos on the Empire Flippers Blog can be watched at whatever speed you’d like, up to 2.5x faster. This should help you consume even more of our online business and M&A content, leveling up your game and making you smarter.

Feature Update

New Shortcut Links in the Messages Area

For especially active buyers with multiple simultaneous unlocks and conversations going with different sellers, it can be cumbersome to refresh your memory on the details of each individual business. Now, we’ve added handy shortcut links directly from the messages page for your Unlock conversations to take you to the business’s Listing page to review that particular business. Give it a try!

Feature Update

New Monetizations for YouTube and Newsletter Businesses

With the growing trend of “Faceless YouTube channels” taking the internet by storm, we figured it was time to give YouTube businesses their own first-class monetization in the Empire Flippers Marketplace. Previously, YouTube businesses sold on the Empire Flippers Marketplace were typically classified as the more general “Display Advertising” or “Affiliate” monetizations, but that made it hard for YouTube-specific buyers to sift through all of our 100+ listings to find just the YouTube businesses. With the new monetization, you can now search the Marketplace for YouTube-specific businesses.

Similarly, in the Newsletter space, with platforms like Substack, Beehiiv, and others growing in importance, we thought it time as well to separate out Newsletter-specific businesses on the Empire Flippers Marketplace.

Feature Update

Introducing Empire Flipper’s Shopify Valuation Tool App

Do you know how much your Shopify store is worth right now?

We’re not talking about guesswork, a gut feeling, or an out-of-date valuation you received months ago.

We’re talking about a real-time valuation that factors in market trends and your business’s current revenue.

If the answer is no, then we’ve got great news for you.

In this video, Greg reveals details about our new Shopify app. The app integrates with your Shopify store to provide you with a rolling valuation that adjusts in real-time as your financial metrics change.

It also uses sales data from more than 2,000 businesses sold on our marketplace to ensure your valuation aligns with market trends.

Download the app to discover your Shopify store’s true value, helping you make informed decisions about your business’s future.

Feature Update

Easier Onboarding for Referral Partners

As you may know, to maintain a high-trust environment, all users of the Empire Flippers Platform must undergo ID verification before doing things like buying or selling a business with us. Similarly, our referral partners also need to get ID verified to be part of our Referral Program (over $1.2M paid out to date). However, with this change, we are now allowing Referral Partners to get started making referrals immediately, and then only have to verify their identity after making a referral where they’ll be due a payment. This should reduce friction upfront and help more Referral Partners get onboarded and make referrals.

Feature Update

Better Listing Titles

#74317, #74894, #74683, these are real listing numbers for businesses for sale on the Empire Flippers Marketplace right now. If you’re a regular user of listings, surely you’ve experienced what we call ‘Listing Number Fatigue’, where all those 5-digit numbers start to blur together and it’s hard to remember which is which.

Well, now after you’ve unlocked a listing and received access to its sensitive data, all around the EF Marketplace you’ll see the listing referred to by its Business / Brand Name rather than the listing number. This should make it easier to keep organized and remember which business is which.

Feature Update

New Marketplace Data: Country of Business Registration

Although the internet is global, things like business legal entities are still registered in a particular country. Starting now, all businesses listed for sale on Empire Flippers will include the ‘Country of Business Registration’ to let you know whether the business was registered in the US, UK, Canada, or somewhere less common like Azerbaijan, Ghana, or Vietnam (all real businesses on our marketplace currently).

Note that on Empire Flippers, listings are typically transferred via “Asset Sales”, meaning the buyer is purchasing the business’s assets but not the actual legal entity. This is simpler to do and protects the buyer from things like debts owed by the original business entity. However, knowing about the legal entity can still be useful in certain circumstances.

Feature Update

Highlighting Business Age on the P&L

The age of a business is a very important criterion for its valuation. Obviously older, more stable businesses will be worth more than a brand-new unproven business. Although the Empire Flippers Listing page has always shown a business’s age, our standard P&L sometimes confused users because it didn’t explicitly show the business’s age and typically only included 2 years’ worth of fully verified financial figures (which we do as part of our vetting process).

This led to some prospective buyers thinking a business was only 2 years old when in fact it might be 5, 10+ years old! To prevent this confusion, all P&Ls on Empire Flippers will now clearly state the business’s age.

Feature Update

Tools for Developers

Our Developers page over at Tools for Developers – Empire Flippers has just had a makeover. As a reminder, Empire Flippers offers two different APIs for other website owners to use to integrate EF data on their own website.

Those APIs are:

The Marketplace API (content for buyers), which allows you to syndicate our listings to your own site or email list to attract interested buyers.

And the Valuation Tool API (content for sellers), which allows you to show your users (who own online businesses) what their business might be worth according to Empire Flippers.

Both of these APIs tie in with our Referral Program, where you can earn cash for referring users to Empire Flippers who then go on to either buy or sell a business with us.

Feature Update

Encouraging Buyers to make more Offers

Although all Listings at Empire Flippers have a “list price” where you can instantly buy the business, buyers also have the ability to “make an offer” at a different price that they think the business is worth.

Now when a buyer goes to close their unlock, we will specifically prompt the user to see if price was the reason why they weren’t interested, as opposed to some other criteria not being a match.

If price was the reason, buyers will be prompted to input what they think the business is worth and if the price given is reasonable they’ll subsequently be encouraged to make an offer at that price.

Feature Update

Migrating from Ahrefs to Semrush

For Empire Flippers Listings, we show our prospective buyers detailed SEO information about the sites they are considering purchasing. In the past, we used Ahrefs to power this section but for a variety of reasons, we have now switched to Semrush.

Feature Update

Your Preferred Name

On the Empire Flippers Platform, all users are required to undergo KYC (Know Your Customer) ID verification both due to money transfer financial regulations and to ensure that the Marketplace is a high-trust environment for everyone involved.

However, for more casual communications by our team, emails, etc, many people prefer to be addressed by a different name than the legal one on their ID document. With the Preferred Name feature (found under My Account –> Profile Settings), you can select a Preferred Name for our team to use when speaking with you.

Feature Update

Use Zoom for Buyer/Seller Calls at all Price Tiers

Until recently, depending on the price of the listing you were unlocking, your experience with Buyer/Seller calls were different. For listings priced at over $300,000 USD, Buyer/Seller calls would occur via a Zoom call hosted by Empire Flippers whereas under $300,000 would require ad-hoc scheduling and coordination between yourself and the seller.

Going forward, Empire Flippers will host Zoom calls for listings of all price tiers, greatly simplifying the process for our users.

Feature Update

More Seller Calendar Availability for Booking Buyer/Seller Calls

Behind the scenes, we’ve made it even easier for Sellers to keep their availability calendar up-to-date, which should result in more time slots being available to book Buyer/Seller Calls and learn the details about the businesses that you are interested in.

Feature Update

Deeper Integration with Google Calendar

The Empire Flippers Platform now has a deeper integration with Google Calendar, staying up-to-date on the latest attendee RSVP status. This way, if someone cannot attend a call and RSVPs “No” in Google Calendar, the EF Platform will facilitate a more streamlined rescheduling process.