We’re Switching to Annual Multiples
September 8, 2026
The only constant in both business and life is change (our multiples included).
In the beginning, when we were AdSense Flippers, we were known as the “20x Guys.” The small AdSense sites we flipped typically sold for around 20 times their monthly net profit, and since most of those sites only earned about $20 per month and were just a few months old, valuing them against a year of profit they didn’t have yet was never really an option.
Monthly multiples were the honest format for businesses that measured their lifespans in months, and they served us well.
We rebranded to Empire Flippers in February 2013, moved steadily upmarket, and kept the monthly multiple the whole way.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve now sold over $590 million worth of online businesses across 2,600+ completed deals, including multiple 8-figure ($10M+) exits. Behind the marketplace sits more than $15 billion in Verified Buyer Liquidity from over 325,000 registered buyers and sellers, and on our larger deals we regularly work with private equity firms, family offices, and high-net-worth investors.
It’s truly great to see how far this marketplace has come.
Now, we’re updating how we display multiples to reflect that.
As of September 8, 2026, every multiple you see on Empire Flippers is an annual multiple. To be clear, nothing about our valuations or listing prices has changed. A business priced at $500,000 yesterday is priced at $500,000 today. The only thing that changed is the format.
How Do Annual Multiples Work?
An annual multiple is the listing price divided by the business’s annual net profit.
For example, if a business earns $10,000 per month in net profit and is listed at $360,000:
- Annual net profit = $10,000 x 12 = $120,000
- Annual multiple = $360,000 ÷ $120,000 = 3.0x
Under our old format, that same listing would have displayed a 36x monthly multiple. Same business, same price, different math.
That also means converting any historical Empire Flippers multiple takes one step: divide it by 12. Using the average listing multiples from our 2026 State of the Industry Report:
- Distressed businesses: 13.7x monthly becomes 1.1x annual
- Typical businesses: 27.8x monthly becomes 2.3x annual
- Premium businesses: 31.1x monthly becomes 2.6x annual
- 7-figure premium businesses: 41x monthly becomes 3.4x annual
(And yes, by today’s math, the 20x Guys would have been the 1.7x Guys.)
Why Did We Change to Annual Multiples?
The broader M&A industry, from main street business brokers to private equity, values businesses in annual terms. Whether a business is online or offline, most small businesses trade between 1x and 5x their annual SDE or EBITDA, and buyers operating at scale build their financial models around annual figures.
Monthly multiples made sense when our average deal was a young site earning a few hundred dollars per month. However, with nearly 100 seven-figure sales behind us, worth close to a quarter of a billion dollars combined, we felt it was time for our format to match the caliber of businesses on the marketplace and the buyers evaluating them.
We reviewed how deals are priced and compared across the industry, and the conclusion was simple: adopting the standard makes our listings directly comparable. A buyer can now place an Empire Flippers listing next to any other opportunity on their desk and read the numbers the same way, with no conversion required. Sellers get the same benefit in reverse, since their listing now speaks the language every serious acquirer already uses.
What hasn’t changed is who we serve. At any given time, about half of the listings on our marketplace are priced below $300K, and they are overwhelmingly purchased by individual buyers, often making their first acquisition. Helping first-time buyers make that first deal safely has been our specialty since the AdSense Flippers days, and it still is. Many of those buyers start small, learn the ropes as an operator, and come back for a larger deal later, often with financing behind them.
We’ve moved upmarket over the years, but we haven’t moved away from the entrepreneurs who got us here.
Ready to see the new multiples in action? Browse the marketplace.
Curious what your business is worth in annual terms? Run it through our valuation tool.
