You Can Sell Your Business For Life-Changing Money In 2025. Here’s The Secret.
Updated on July 11, 2025
Transcript
Content websites are dead. That is what everyone is saying. Sales are down, competition is brutal, and nobody's buying these businesses anymore—well, that's what the market sentiment says. But is that true?
So I looked at all the websites that we have sold on the Empire Flippers marketplace for the last three years, analyzing 145 actual individual transactions in the content site business model to see and answer the question: what is actually going on here? Is the market actually dying? Are people still selling these? What's going on?
Well, the good news is, the TL;DR is, yes, the industry is still alive. People are still buying and selling these sites. But what makes an affiliate site sellable today is very different from what it was even just two years ago.
So let's get into it. Let's see what these 145 transactions tell us about the state of content sites today and where it might be going.
Okay, let's address the elephant in the room—the numbers everyone's freaking out about. Here’s what actually happened from 2023 to 2025:
In 2023, we sold right around 70 content websites. In 2024, we sold just about 50. Now, in 2025, roughly 30 of those websites have been sold year to date. I am filming this here towards the end of May—I believe it's May 25th at the moment. So we're approaching almost the midpoint of the year, and we're sitting at about roughly 30 content sites sold.
So, yes, the volume has dropped by more than half, and the trend is obviously going down. If you're thinking, “See, the market is dying,” I totally get it. But this is what the doom and gloom crowd aren’t telling you. It is still very much possible for you to sell an affiliate site and get multiple six figures in your pocket—in fact, that might be the main type of affiliate site that you can sell today. I'll get into what I mean about that in just a second.
So let's look at this: while fewer sites are selling, we can check out what is happening to the actual sales prices of these businesses. In 2023, the average price of a content site that we were selling at the time was right around $175,000. Now, in 2024, that went up to $240,000. In 2025, even though we're only about halfway through the year, that has also gone up pretty significantly. In the 30 transactions or so we've had this year, the average price is sitting at around $325,000.
So while the industry is wounded—and it is a major wound, don't get me wrong, I’m not trying to sugarcoat it—what we're seeing is that sites are still being sold. But the sites being sold today that are monetized through display ads and affiliate sites tend to be on the much larger side. All the stuff that has happened—the majority of the affiliate sites hit the hardest have been these smaller lifestyle sites that used to be really, really popular from basically 2016 all the way up to even 2022.
Affiliate niche sites were a good kind of starter business for people to get into, to build and to flip or even to acquire. Now, most of those smaller businesses have gone to the wayside through Google algorithm updates, AI eating the world—all that kind of stuff. A lot of these smaller sites are sadly no more. But that doesn't mean that transactions aren't happening on the upper end of the scale.
So while the actual average deal size has gone up, even though transaction volume has gone down, what we really need to look at from a seller and really a buyer perspective is: How are the multiples doing? Are their multiples crashing or are they staying roughly the same? Well, if you answered “yes, multiples are crashing,” congratulations, that is true—they are crashing indeed.
What we saw in 2023 was a sales multiple of roughly 30x monthly profit. Now, 2023 is very important to point out—it was towards the tail end of what I've been calling an asset bubble, or asset buying bubble, and that was basically coming right after the pandemic. All the pandemic blues, in terms of the suppression of online traffic—all that kind of stuff is happening here in 2023. But we don’t really see that fully until the end of 2023, and then we get hit much harder in 2024 by that. You can see that in the sales multiples here.
The sales multiples for content sites in 2024 were around 27x. This is what I consider kind of a market correction. The market is reorienting itself from this crazy, overzealous acquisition hype to a much more reasonable and logical type of multiple that these sites are getting. Now, I say transition because in 2025—again, halfway through, but with the data we have—the multiples have fallen again. So this is three years of multiples going down. In 2025, the average multiple for a content site is right around 24x, so two years of annual EBITDA or SD. I believe this is probably pretty rational pricing for sites like these because, remember, these multiples have gone every which way pretty dramatically over the last few years.
Like I said, 2023 was the tail end of what I call an asset investing bubble, and that firmly popped in 2024. So, most of 2024, we’re probably seeing that correction that is really pushing the multiples down. Now, in 2025, the market has become much more logical than it was even the previous year about what you actually value these businesses at. After all, why would anyone pay a similar multiple price for an e-commerce store that has far more growth potential and market risk mitigation than for an affiliate site that is often enslaved to Google traffic, Google's algorithm, and often has a lower overall true earning potential because they're sending all the customers they do get away from the site through affiliate links or display ads or something like that, right?
So that’s what I mean by “more realistic”—these sites have always been more fragile in a lot of ways than other businesses you can go out and acquire. There's just a lot more risk now. You get rewarded for that risk in the sense that these businesses tend to be a lot more hands-off. There aren’t as many moving pieces by any means, which makes them really attractive from a newbie standpoint and even for my friends that are veterans in the space, just popping these out like an assembly line, right? Well, nowadays that is not so much the case. These multiples have fallen, but that doesn't mean that you still can't make money with affiliate sites. Of course, you still can. It is just much, much harder than it used to be.
And while these multiples have fallen, if you have a bigger affiliate site still making money today in 2025, it is still a very decent time to actually sell your business. It is likely you're going to get much above that 24x average monthly profit—because keep in mind, that's average, right? If you're an affiliate site that's doing multiple six figures in revenue per year, then there's a very high chance you're going to be over that 24x. But you do have to realize that this is no longer a seller's market, and buyers are a lot more hesitant about acquiring an affiliate site that has these critical points of failure, such as Google right now and AI eating up info query words.
Another thing that I think is very interesting to look at here is the negotiation game. You can have a business, an affiliate site that is listed for, you know, X, Y, Z—but what does it actually sell for? In 2023, if we look at the actual sales price versus the asking price of the business, we see 90% of the asking price is what the business sold for. So if you had a $100,000 affiliate site, there was a very high chance you were selling it for $90,000.
Now, in 2024, we saw that be 85%, and in 2025 we're seeing 82% of the asking price. This is what I mean—this is a true buyer's market now, because not only are multiples falling, but the actual amount of money you're getting upfront for the business, or the total amount you’re getting for the business, has also fallen. So you're looking at taking an 18% haircut from what most brokers are listing the site for.
If you have a $100,000 affiliate site, you most likely are going to be selling it for 82 grand in this type of market that we're in right now, which is firmly a buyer's market. Now, that's not all doom and gloom. If you're the buyer, hey, an 18% discount sounds pretty nice. But if you're the seller, you need to also go into the deal with that expectation in mind—that you might take a 15-20% haircut just to get the deal done.
Now there's another thing we want to look at here too, and that is the actual deal structure of these businesses. As many of you probably know, if you watch this channel for any length of time, just because you list a business for $500,000 for sale, and say you even sell it for $500,000, that doesn't mean you're going to get $500,000, right? There's always the upfront amount, there's seller financing, there's earn-out—there's a million and one ways for a buyer to do some deal structuring here.
What are the upfront prices content site owners are getting today when they go and sell these assets? In 2023, it was roughly around 94% of the sales price paid upfront. So the vast majority of the money you sold the business for, you're going to just get in your pocket—pretty nice. Now, in 2024, that did drop; it went to 90% paid upfront, and in 2025, there's about 87% paid up front. So more deals are including things like earn-outs and seller financing, which means the sellers are sharing the risk with the buyers. It's a more mature and professional market in that way.
Now, this is actually kind of a surprising amount to me, because with everything going on in the market, you'd expect way more aggressive seller financing or earn-outs attached to these types of businesses. But that's not really what we're seeing happening. Sure, there's more of it, but not a crazy amount more. So while there is a difference in the amount you're getting paid up front, the difference isn't some titanic amount. You're still getting, on average, the vast majority of your business value paid to you at the moment of exit—which is more than what a lot of businesses can say right now in this M&A environment.
So, we see that prices have fallen a bit, there are still businesses being sold, and multiples are down, but the upfront amount is still relatively the same. So whatever you are going to be selling for, you are most likely going to get the vast majority of that money. But there's another thing we need to talk about too, and this adds further context into the general cooling of the market that I've been seeing over the last year, year and a half.
If we look at the average days on market for an affiliate site: back in 2023, you're looking at 55 days on average. That’s relatively quick sales, because that's taking into account all deals, right? So these deals were moving a lot quicker back then than they are today. In 2024, it was roughly about 72 days on market, and in 2025, we're looking at 85 days on market. Basically, you're looking at a quarter now to sell any sizable affiliate site. And that tracks with pretty much all business models, not just affiliate sites—we've seen the average days on market go up pretty much everywhere, regardless of the business model. So that's not a specific affiliate marketing thing, but it's something you should be aware of.
If you have a multiple six-figure affiliate site, you want to go into that sales process with the expectation that you will be pitching, selling, and being on calls with potential buyers for a minimum of 90 days. But that doesn't mean you can't get multiple six figures in your pocket in that 90-day period. Still a pretty worthwhile trade in my view—it’s just going to take a lot longer than it used to.
Now, of course, if you have a really high-quality affiliate site, something really unique going for it, obviously these are just averages. You're probably going to sell your business a lot quicker and for a higher multiple. Again, these are just averages—so these are both businesses that are declining (and right now, with affiliate sites, there's a lot of decline) as well as businesses that are growing that we're selling, averaged out.
So what does this all mean for you if you're thinking about buying or selling a content website? If you are a seller selling in 2025, here's your new reality checklist. You’ve got to realize it's a buyer's market. Buyers are a lot more cautious and they need to justify that acquisition harder, which means you need to help them justify it as well. Tell them why this is such a good deal, and be honest about it—be upfront about the risk. You should be expecting to negotiate down about 15–20% of whatever your asking price is.
A very important caveat here: that 15–20% asking price drop is if you got a professional vetting, a professional valuation like from us at Empire Flippers—not this pie-in-the-sky fake valuation that a lot of sellers get in their head that they're worth. Usually, the rule of thumb is if you think your business is valued at X and you haven't gotten any professional vetting to look at it, you are probably overvaluing your business. In my experience, sellers always overvalue what they've built. It's very, very natural. But if you got a real vetting, a real valuation, you can still expect a 15–20% wiggle room on that actual asking price to the actual sales price.
In addition, you should be planning for about a three-month sales process, not two to three weeks like it used to be back in the glory days. Have all of your documentation ready—operations manual, traffic sources, everything. Be as processed out as possible because there is definitely a new standard. The good news is if you meet these new standards of quality and have a sturdy, durable business, you can still expect to get $300,000+ for a quality site. There are still people out there buying content sites on the higher end, which means a multiple six-figure potential payday for you. And hey, a multiple six-figure payday for working what amounts to kind of like a part-time job for the next 90 days—not a bad deal.
Based on all this data, this is what I think is going to happen next. I think average deal size will continue to go up as buyers see quality over quantity. I also think the general market is going to keep correcting, where only really high-quality affiliate sites are going to survive, to be honest. I think the average transaction volume will go down as more of these smaller content sites become abandoned or just absolutely pummeled by Google and AI changes—they’re hitting everywhere, not just in affiliate sites but across all business models.
I think sell cycles will probably continue to extend, and this is especially true if deal size goes up. Back in 2021–2022, we were selling a seven-figure business almost every single week. Now, in 2025, if we look at all the seven-figure businesses we've sold, the average is closer to nine months. So as the deals go up, I see the sales cycles getting longer and longer, and I think that is also going to become true for affiliate sites.
I think one nice thing is your deal structure will likely still be pretty simple when you go to sell these businesses. I mean, you're going to be looking at collecting the vast majority of whatever your sales price is upfront. So that's really good news from that perspective.
I think many old-school niche site creators—and this isn't strictly data related, but it’s something I believe—will likely transition away from the old school playbook of niche sites on Google and turn more towards faceless YouTube channels. I think faceless YouTube channels are really going to become the replacement—not a perfect one-to-one replacement, but I think those are becoming more of the place to be if you want to do what was a stereotypical SEO affiliate-style strategy. That's what we're seeing on our marketplace at least. I think that trend will continue to grow as time goes on.
So on the flip side: are content sites still even desirable to buy in 2025? My perspective: I would say yes. Of course, I’m biased because I’m trying to get you to buy an affiliate site from me, right? But all the doom and gloom from the seller side that I am talking about is actually a pretty good opportunity for you as a buyer. If they weren’t a good opportunity, Empire Flippers wouldn’t be selling them, right? We've never been one of those guys that just tries to hard-sell someone into buying or selling something with us. We’ve always been pretty proud of saying, “Hey, that’s a pretty bad idea, you shouldn’t do it.” You can go look at our blogs where we talk about Russian hackers scamming us back in the day—we’ve always been very, very honest about all this stuff.
So I still think affiliate sites are a potentially good buy now. The game has become a lot harder than it used to be—it’s a lot more competitive and it is fraught with more risk than ever. All of that is very much true. But that doesn’t mean the risk is so great that you shouldn’t buy one of these businesses.
This means, in my view, I would not go out and build a niche site from scratch in 2025 unless I had some very unique strategy that can set me apart and help future proof me against AI stealing all the info keyword queries. But from a buyer perspective, I think these sites, especially on the larger end of the sales price, can still be a very attractive buy.
The key to acquiring the affiliate site in 2025 and beyond—if that's something you want to buy—is all about figuring out a way you can answer a single question: Can I buy this content site and turn it into something else? Can the traffic be used to seed a SaaS I create, or create some SaaS revenue? Can I build an e-commerce brand around this site? I have friends who have built multiple seven-figure e-commerce stores that started off as an affiliate site, so yes, it can actually be done.
The other question to ask: Maybe this niche site’s in such a niche where it can support digital products, like courses or memberships or checklists, or maybe even a newsletter. That should be a very easy one—in a lot of affiliate site niches, you can build a newsletter around it, one would hope at least.
The closer you are to “yes” for that question—“Yes, I can buy this site and turn it into something else outside of just a pure affiliate site”—then I think the less risk you'll have when acquiring the affiliate site, as long as you move fast to make that happen. There are tons of changes happening right now in the industry. So if you're planning on just buying an affiliate site and keeping it as an affiliate site, I think that plan is very, very risky. Not saying you can't do it—it's not impossible by any means. The fact that we have sites doing just that for sale right now shows you it is 100% possible. But in general, I believe all acquisitions, or even businesses started from scratch, should be considering future risk and do whatever they can to help mitigate those risks.
Either way, the industry is hurting. The multiples are down. There are still transactions happening. The content site market is still alive in 2025. And if you have an affiliate site right now and you're looking for that multiple six-figure payout, then hey, now is actually a pretty good time to do it because we have buyers who are wanting those businesses to do exactly what I just said: transforming them into these satellite sites to help support their other business models.
So if that's you, go ahead, click the links down in the description, get a free valuation, and I'll talk to you soon.
