Is Selling Your Amazon FBA Still Worth It In 2025? Here’s The TRUTH
Updated on June 6, 2025
Transcript
It's been a while since we talked about the Amazon FBA market here on this YouTube channel, and at Empire Flippers, we sell pretty much more Amazon FBA businesses than anyone else. Like, I don't know anyone that even comes close to how many deals we've done in this particular business model. So I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if we compared what happened in 2024 versus what happened in 2023 and kind of where the market seems to be heading?
So whether you're an Amazon FBA seller looking to exit your business, or you're wondering, "Are people still buying these things?" this is a good video for you. Because there's good news on both sides, whether you're a buyer or a seller. So let's get into it.
First, let's talk a bit about some of the quick-hit stats from our own marketplace. We did see some pretty interesting increases in 2024 over 2023. First off, the average listing price increased. That increase was right around 23%. So we went from an average list price of $397,000 to $489,000. Now, that average list price, of course, leads to an average sales price increase as well, which we saw—a flat 20% or so increase in the actual sales price of these businesses. So that goes from a 2023 average of $329,000 to what it was in 2024, which is $394,000—really $395,000 if you round up.
Now, despite those increases, there were some decreases that happened here, and I'm going to explain a bit of what I mean by that. But these multiples—the actual multiples, both the list multiple and the sales multiple—for Amazon FBA businesses did decrease in 2024 by a decently significant amount. So in 2023, we were selling or listing these businesses at 37.3x as their multiple, and in 2024, that came down to 32.3x of a multiple of the monthly net profit of these FBA businesses. Now, the sales price went down from 31.8x in 2023 to just 26.6x in 2024. So these are pretty significant decreases in your valuations.
Now why is that? Why did that happen? Well, personally, I think this is more of a return to reality that we're seeing versus some kind of catastrophic collapse in the Amazon FBA market. As anyone knows who's been around this niche in particular for a while, they are probably familiar with the crazy bubble that happened with the FBA aggregators in 2020 and 2021 and started fizzling out towards the end of 2022 and the start of 2023. So these multiple decreases are actually in alignment there, and it's nowhere near as catastrophic a collapse as it was in 2023, say, versus 2022, or 2023 versus 2021 when the aggregators were going nuts—just throwing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions in many cases, at these brands.
So while there is a significant multiple decrease, that to me isn't that concerning versus what I have seen in the past. To me, this is the market returning to normal instead of the insanity that it used to be, which is a good thing for both buyers and sellers. Because at the end of the bubble popping, sellers were in this weird position where they were basically like, "No, I would never sell it for this low of a multiple," and buyers at this point—they were no longer the institutional investors that a lot of FBA sellers had come to rely upon for cash. Now they're just, you know, an entrepreneur like the seller is, and they would just flat-out refuse to pay those insane multiples. And good for them, because by paying those insane multiples, that's what led to the bubble that eventually killed all those aggregators.
So at the end of 2022 and 2023, a lot of sellers were basically fighting against the trend of the market, where these businesses are no longer overvalued. And they truly were basically overvalued in 2021, right? So this is not so much of a catastrophic collapse as more of a coming back to reality.
Why that is good news for sellers is, unlike in 2023, sellers now also understand that reality. The aggregators are not coming back. Those guys are pretty much dead in the water. So now they are coming back down to reality, right? And by coming back down to reality, this means they can actually make significant exits in their business.
So, like, what is better: the dream of a false reality where you sell your business for this insane multiple, or where you can actually sell your business and make life-changing wealth at that exit? To me personally, I prefer the second—one is a lot more concrete than a dream. And we're starting to see that happen. So activity is picking back up and these businesses in general are stronger. Like, their profit is up, right? So that means they've been growing. And that tells us that the COVID bump, which was a big thing we used to have to price into our valuations after the COVID bump fell—because no buyer would be like, "Oh, I want to buy this business based on the last 12 months when the entire world is locked inside their house buying things on the Internet." Like, no one wanted to do that, right? So we had to price in the fall of the COVID bump into a lot of the valuations that we did through 2022 and 2023 as people were no longer locked down in their apartments.
What this shows me now, after a full year has passed with 2024, is that these businesses are now making more money on average on our marketplace than they used to. This tells me that growth is coming back after that big fall off from the COVID bump. Now we're seeing real growth instead of artificial growth. So this is organic growth versus that artificial growth that led to the entire toxic overvaluations of these businesses.
And one more thing to speak on the multiples: I've talked to many sellers, and they're like, "Oh, well, you know, the market has crashed. I'm never going to sell my FBA business now, right?" And I would tell you, and I have the data to show you, that it is still an amazing time to sell your business today. In fact, this is the second-best time I have ever seen to sell your Amazon FBA business. It's way better than 2019. The reason why people don't feel it's a good time to sell is primarily because of that overvaluation asset bubble that, I keep talking about, just ruined people's expectations—distorted the reality of the value of the business. But now that is gone and away.
If we look at the actual multiples, multiples that these businesses are selling at today are still actually much, much better than, say, 2019 or 2018 levels.
So speaking of profitability, how do they do? How profitable are these new slew FBA businesses that we sold in 2024 versus 2023? Well, you can probably guess based on some of the earlier metrics that they're doing pretty well. The average monthly profit jumped up in 2024 from 2023 by 31%. So the average FBA business we were selling in 2023 was making right around $10,500, and now the average FBA business we sell today is making an average of $13,700 or $13,800. So that is pretty good.
And because the multiples are now lower, this opens up a very interesting opportunity for a buyer, which, excuse me, also opens up an opportunity for you as a seller to actually sell the deal, right? As I mentioned, the financial buyers are basically dead in the water. Most of them are bankrupt, or they have pivoted where they're just not acquiring anything after they paid sky-high multiples for their portfolio, right? But now that multiples have fallen, this is opening up an opportunity for what I would consider the classic buyers of businesses at Empire Flippers, which are other entrepreneurs.
So during the bubble, there's just like no way an Amazon FBA buyer could ever hope to compete with an aggregator. They were doing crazy stuff—like, I had to compete getting sellers to me versus a seller going just direct to an aggregator, who was going to give a referral partner a Tesla. Like, how do I do this, right? So those guys were just throwing money around, heavyweights in the room. But now that they're gone, this actually opens up a very good opportunity for a more normal buyer—another entrepreneur—to come in and acquire a business at a multiple that they can actually afford based on the profitability of the business, rather than some pie-in-the-sky, Silicon Valley rollup exit dream, right? So this is actually very good news in my view, in that normal buyers can now again come in and look at these Amazon FBA businesses and have a real shot at acquiring a good, profitable brand.
Now, when an old buyer leaves the pool and a new buyer comes in, obviously the deal structuring that goes on is going to change. Most of this deal structuring actually started changing in 2023, but the fact that they're pretty stable between 2023 and 2024 shows me that the new cohort of buyers actually acquiring these businesses is pretty much here to stay. And unlike the previous cohort, I don't think these ones are propped up—at least nothing that I foresee yet—by any kind of bubble or disaster that's going to take them out of the game anytime soon.
So, if you were going to sell your FBA business, this is probably the type of deal structuring you're going to get for your FBA business in 2025 and for the foreseeable future. Let's talk upfront payment. So, let's say you have a million-dollar business—a $1 million FBA business—you could expect in 2023 to get 89% of the cash upfront. Now, in 2024, you can expect to get 86.4%. Now, obviously, for a million-dollar business, that percentage is probably going to be lower, but say you had a $500,000 business, then these metrics would be right in line with what you can expect. So the upfront amount did drop in 2024 versus 2023, but not by a crazy amount. You're still getting very much of your money upfront, right.
And sellers are receiving less than their asking price. Right, so that's kind of bad news for you. But the good news is that the deals are getting done. Overall, it's kind of a wash. The differences in terms of the deal structure are about the same.
Now, there is one thing that is a little bit worrying from a selling perspective, and that is that buyer interest has fallen by a significant amount. Not, again, a catastrophic amount, but it is moderately significant here. That means buyer interest per FBA listing that we had dropped right around by 11%. And by buyer interest, what I mean is buyers are going onto our marketplace, they register an account, verify their liquidity, and then they start browsing for the FBA businesses they want to buy, and they unlock it—which is Empire Flippers’ version of signing an NDA to start doing a little bit deeper due diligence on the business. Right. So we saw the unlocks on FBA businesses in particular drop right around 11%.
Which tells me a few things. One thing I know—and this is not just an Amazon FBA thing, but it's across the board—is buyers are a lot more conservative today than they were even three years ago. They're just a lot more shaken by the market, right? So they want to make sure they're making the right decision. Acquisition is still a major part of their growth plan, but they are a lot more conservative in what they're looking at—a lot more selective. Which means for you as a seller, you really need to focus on a high-quality business. There are too many entrepreneurs that come to Empire Flippers like, "Hey, I'm ready to sell this business." Like, great. And we look at their P&L, and the business is declining. Like, yeah, we can sell it, but it's not going to be easy and you're probably not going to like it.
So if you really want to exit and stand a chance of getting that now much smaller interest in the FBA buyer pool looking at your brand, you really need to be focusing on a quality business that is showing good, consistent growth year over year. Obviously, the COVID thing is going to do an interesting bump on your P&L, but now enough time has passed to again show stable, organic growth that is unlikely to change, barring another crazy black swan event—which, hey, we live in a crazy time, so who knows, maybe that'll happen—knock on wood, hopefully not.
In terms of average age of these businesses, so if you're curious, "I'm starting an FBA business today, Greg, when could I expect to sell it?" Well, based on this data—67 months. So in 2023, the average FBA business we sold was right around 65 months old. In 2024, that number jumped up just by a little bit. I mean, so they're basically the same. It jumped up from 65 to 67 months. And in general, I tell people all the time, if you want to buy a business that is less risky, buy older businesses because they have more data and more historical track record of working, and these businesses are actually decently old at this point. They're basically five plus years old, right? That is a really, really good sign from a buyer's perspective. Like, hey, this business is going to be around for the long haul. It's already been around half a decade, so therefore I think it could be around for another half a decade relatively easily.
So, what was our market size distribution like? What kind of deals were we doing in 2023 and 2024? So the vast majority of the deals we did in 2023 and 2024 were actually below the $250,000 asking price—or $250,000 valuation price, I should say. So in 2023, 40% of our deals were right around there. And in 2024, that shot up pretty massively to 67% of our transactions were in that "underneath $250,000" level.
Now, on the mid-market—$250,000 to $1 million in terms of the valuation range—we saw 54% of our deals in 2023 done at that price point. And that fell pretty dramatically in 2024 to just 19.6%. So what's going on here? That's pretty interesting that there is this orphan range that is happening. And I think what I'm about to say next will kind of explain it, because it's not as doom and gloom as it might appear at first.
Let's keep moving up and then I'll explain what I mean. So, large deals—in Empire Flippers jargon, a large deal is $1 million and up. In 2023, we only sold 6% of our deals over that seven-figure mark. In 2024, we saw that increase to right around 13%. And what this is telling me is the market is polarizing towards entry-level and larger businesses.
Now, that's not that weird. I've been with Empire Flippers for close to a decade, and we have always said—and our data for the most part almost always backs it up—that the orphan range for selling a business of pretty much any model out there is usually between the $500,000 and $1,000,000 range. This range is often too big for someone who wants to acquire a side hustle; it represents too much capital risk for them to really do it. And on the flip side, for bigger buyers and more institutional buyers, or just more affluent entrepreneurs, it often is too small. They want something that's bigger because buying a business for $500k versus a business for $2 million is, a lot of times, the same amount of effort for less amount of money.
So this is, again, a return to form rather than something that's new that's cropping up. The reason why this is relatively new for FBA is because, again, during the hype bubble with the aggregators—all that kind of stuff—these guys were competing so hard against each other that they actually had to go downmarket from their target, which was above $1 million in valuation price, to the $600,000, $500,000, $750,000 range, just so that they didn't have to compete with the bigger funds that were putting all their effort into the seven-figure and up businesses. Right. So again, this is a return to normal. This isn't anything that's crazy in my view. The $500k to $1 million range has almost always played out this way on Empire Flippers. It's just a really hard segment to sell your business in. And I think we're seeing that again as the FBA market returns to what I consider a more normal M&A environment.
Now, onto niches, because everyone always wants to know, right? "What's the niche? What's the garlic press I need to sell to become an Amazon FBA millionaire?" And unfortunately for you, the data shows me—again, I must give you a disappointing answer. If you watch my YouTube channel, I also gave—or my video on YouTube channels—you'll see I gave almost the exact same answer I'm about to give here.
So in home products, that remains our top category on Empire Flippers for the type of FBA businesses we're selling. In 2023, we had roughly around 38% of the FBA businesses we sold in the home products niche, and that fell decently well down to 28%. Other niches that we're seeing emerging are personal care and beauty, but these were always pretty big anyway. One thing that is declining by a bit is equipment, children’s products, and health and fitness. But health and fitness is also one of the three golden niches that are almost always going to do well, whether it’s a down market or upmarket or whatever, right?
The reason why I say that is because niches—like, focusing your whole business around just finding the perfect niche—is almost always the wrong move. Because as long as the niche has products in it, has demand in it, any niche can be good. It's less about the niche and more about how your business uses systemization, how it does monetization, and your go-to-market strategy. Those almost always beat out anything over, like, "I'm looking for the perfect niche." You know, it's not as important as people tend to think. Are there times where niche does matter? Absolutely. But usually those are going to be fads anyway. So if you're planning on building a sustainable business like these—like, most of them are over five years old—then maybe don't really focus too much on just a trending niche. Focus on an industry that's growing, but not one that's going away, right? Like, don't start an FBA business where you sell newspapers or something weird like that. But really, it's still open game, open season in terms of whatever niche you want to pursue.
So what would I recommend for an Amazon FBA seller today to do in their business, like if you wanted to exit your business? Well, first of all, you should expect that you are probably going to come up against these lower multiples. Right. But just because they're lower multiples doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad time to exit. Like I said, right now is the second-best time for you to exit your business, and still higher multiples than what they were in 2019 or 2018 by a lot. So it's still a great opportunity for you to sell your business. And now, those sales multiples at, say, 26x I mentioned earlier—you've got to also remember most of those are related to the sub-$1 million business. And if you get above a million dollars, those multiples still go up pretty high, even though the buyer profile has changed dramatically from those more institutional buyers to more affluent entrepreneurs.
All right, and what about if you're an Amazon FBA buyer? Well, if you are looking to acquire an FBA business, now is actually an incredible time. So depending on how long you've been buying FBA businesses, you experienced a great desert right from 2020 to 2022—you got squeezed out of the market pretty hard. At least if you were making logical decisions, you did. Like, why would you go and pay Silicon Valley–style exits that would be applied to a publicly traded SaaS company to buy an Amazon FBA business, which, by the way, is what the aggregators were doing—which obviously is unsustainable. So you were probably squeezed out of the market for at least a couple of years. Now sellers' expectations have been reset, multiples are lower, the businesses are growing organically—not through some artificial means because of a worldwide cultural shock going through the globe. Now is actually a pretty good time for you to go and acquire an FBA business, if that's the thing you want to do. Because of these lower sales multiples, even though the actual price is higher in 2024 versus 2023, the actual price is higher, the multiple is lower—which means your return on investment is much, much higher in absolute terms, which is really, really good.
And now, if you want to save some capital as an Amazon FBA buyer, you do the opposite, basically, of my advice to the sellers. Right. For my sellers, if you want to sell for the maximum amount, get your business over that million-dollar valuation, as you will get a pretty decent-sized sales multiple there. And you want to avoid that $500,000 to $1 million range because of how tricky it is to sell the business. But if you're a buyer, you really want to focus in that $500,000 to $1 million range because it's tricky for a seller to sell, which inherently means the seller is going to be a lot more open to more favorable deal structuring for you—where you can do a bigger seller financing or bigger earnout or do a lot more creative financing—because there's just a lot less buyer competition going on in that $500,000 to $1 million range.
So, what do I think the future is for Amazon FBA businesses? Well, I think they are going to become kind of a stable blue chip in anyone's portfolio, in a way. Amazon gets a lot of great traffic still, and it's all buyer-intent traffic. It's hard to beat Amazon traffic in terms of buyer intent, so I think overall the business model is in a decently okay place right now.
Now, with announcements of tariffs and all that kind of stuff, who knows what's going to happen there? That's not just an FBA thing; that's an e-commerce thing in general, right? But with FBA in particular, I think there are still a lot of really strong brands. I think if you can buy one of these businesses and lower your dependency on Amazon—like, really get that customer data, maybe you have a Shopify store that you use your profits from the FBA brand to slowly grow that DTC side—I think these can be fantastic opportunities, right?
What I believe is, no one is going to just stop going to Amazon and not buy anything anymore, right? Like, we know Amazon is going to be around. No matter what happens in the economy, up or down, Amazon is going to be a mainstay as one of the main marketplaces for you to sell and buy products. So from that standpoint, I think FBA businesses are quite stable.
I do worry about platform risk. And that's not just an Amazon FBA thing. I've told this to my niche site friends as well, who rely too much on Google, or friends who rely 100% on TikTok Shop, or people who are like 100% of their business is Facebook ads. I'm always ringing the bell like, "You should really diversify so you don't have that platform risk."
But in general, I think Amazon FBA businesses are in a pretty solid place if you're looking to acquire them. And if you're a seller, don't be too blue. I promise you there's still a lot of opportunity as long as you have a quality FBA business, and you can sell it and become a millionaire.
So if that sounds interesting to you, go ahead, click the link down below to get a free valuation on your Amazon FBA business. Or click the other link if you're a buyer to register an account with Empire Flippers and start looking for your next acquisition. Talk to you soon.
