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Episode 72Jun 13, 2025· 33:58

Make Money Selling Blogs with Andy of Empire Flippers

▸ Show notes from the creator
Wanna know the real secrets to making money by selling blogs and online businesses? Get insider tips from Andy at Empire Flippers. If you’ve ever wondered how bloggers cash in big or how a single referral earned someone $80,000, you won’t want to miss this episode! Sell or buy a blog here: https://famousashleygrant.com/empireflippers Find Andy here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyallaway/ https://www.youtube.com/@theleadersip More Show Notes From This Episode: What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/ Be sure to follow me on social: Facebook | Instagram | X | LinkedIn | TikTok | YouTube ------------------------------------------------------------------- This podcast is supported by affiliate partnerships. Please check out a few of our partners below: – Start a podcast today here: https://rss.com?via=famous – Create content from your own voice with Castmagic's Suite of AI Tools: https://get.castmagic.io/dcjy15cirnts – Want to help support our show? Buy a girl a drink perhaps? https://ko-fi.com/famousashleygrant – Need content for your podcast or blog? Check out Tools for Motivation! The links above are affiliate links. This means my podcast will receive a small commission if you order through any of them at no additional cost to you. Affiliate commissions are one of the ways my podcast makes money so that I can create episodes free of charge. If you do purchase anything from my links, I sincerely would like to thank you for your support!
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About this episode
Wanna know the real secrets to making money by selling blogs and online businesses? Get insider tips from Andy at Empire Flippers. If you’ve ever wondered how bloggers cash in big or how a single referral earned someone $80,000, you won’t want to miss this episode! Sell or buy a blog here: https://famousashleygrant.com/empireflippers Find Andy…
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Full transcript
00:02
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends Show. What's up, my Bloggy friends? Famous Ashley Grant here, and I just want to welcome you to the Bloggy Friends Show. We're so excited to have you join us on this journey of sharing our knowledge and experiences with you. Whether you're a blogger, a content creator, or just someone who's interested in learning more about the digital world, we've got something for you. So grab your notebook and a pen to take some notes, or just sit back and take in all the amazing information and ideas we're about to share with you. Let's get into it. I am super stoked to have you here, Andy.
00:50
We have Andy with Empire Flippers, and he's going to be talking to us all about what it is that Empire Flippers is and how you can actually use it to make money. So, Andy, welcome to the show. Cool. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. So give me the Reader's Digest version. What is Empire Flippers? Cool. Empire Flippers, we're a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. So we sell anything from e -commerce stores, Amazon businesses, SaaS. agencies, all kinds of things. And so we have a vetted marketplace of about like 150 or so listings normally that have been through our vetting process. We try and plug sellers into buyers, hopefully get listings sold. And then we have some support to migrate the assets and stuff like that. But effectively, we're a marketplace for online businesses. Awesome.
01:39
Now, at some point, was it mainly like niche websites and blogs or was it always all those things? Yeah, so definitely our heritage was on like niche websites and small content sites. And we have two US founders and they were originally were like kind of building out small sites themselves and basically kind of built Empire Flippers or actually it was originally called AdSense Flippers because they were kind of AdSense sites. And they built out the marketplace initially to sell their own. little sites that they were building.
02:09
And then it kind of like snowballed from there. They had people asking them, hey, can I sell my site on your marketplace as well? And that's probably 11, 12 years ago now. And we've just kind of grown from there. Wow. So if someone decides that they do want to sell their website, what's the first steps that they take with Empire Flippers? So if somebody wants to sell their site or their online business, then they would submit their, well, first of all, they could get a valuation on our website. We have a valuation tool. And then they would effectively submit their business to our vetting process. So everything that goes on our marketplace goes through our vetting process first. We actually only list somewhere around like 5 % of the businesses that get submitted to us. And basically, you know, we obviously have a bunch of kind of checks and things that are quality checks. And we'll also only kind of list the business if we think we
02:56
can get it sold at a price which like makes sense for the seller as well. Now, how does the vetting process work? Like, is it really extensive or is there like a lot of things that someone would have to have ready to go in order to go through that vetting process? So it's pretty extensive. You know, we probably have the most stringent vetting in the industry, but we also have like a pretty big vetting team and we give a lot of support and guidance through the process. So there's not really too much that anyone needs to have ahead of time because... For example, we'll, you know, via API, we connect to a lot of the main platforms like Amazon, Shopify, these kind of things. We'll help build out the P &L and we kind of guide through the process with Q &As and stuff like that. So like it is some work, I won't lie, but our team will kind of guide people through each step. I'm curious, what kind of numbers are you looking for in order
03:44
to actually have someone be willing or not willing, but able to put their website on your marketplace? Yeah, so we have like a pretty wide range. So our kind of minimum profit requirement is $2,000 a month, right? You know, so at an average valuation, which obviously depends on a lot of things, but that's probably somewhere in the 50 to 70, 80K list price, depending on the business. So we have kind of like those high five figure sites and we go kind of right up to seven and sometimes eight figure sales as well. So you said that your roots are in AdSense. So how would you evaluate if someone was getting 2K a month, let's say from service sales or something like that? Yeah, I mean, well, that is quite a long time ago now that kind of our heritage was in niche sites. You know, so we have a evaluation tool, which is kind of specific to each monetization and our vetting team. You know, these days they
04:39
probably see more e -commerce businesses or SaaS or things like that than they do niche sites because, you know, kind of. Google crushed a lot of those sites in the last couple of years. So it's not quite as big as it was. Yes, I like to call it the anything but helpful content update because it's definitely hurt a lot of websites. So are you seeing like an uptick in people wanting to sell their websites because of Google or it just happens to be, you know, anybody could sell at any time? Yeah, I mean, I think, well, initially kind of after that, which I think was kind of September 2023. I mean, to be honest, a lot of the sites were just not sellable because some of the drops were so crazy. And so, you know, that's a very difficult time to sell a site, particularly for kind of a number that makes sense for the seller. But, you know, if things did steady out a little bit like that, and then
05:29
some kind of got their traffic back through last year to a certain point. Yeah, we probably did see an uptick in sellers wanting to sell, but not necessarily with assets that were at that point sellable. Now, you mentioned that some were trying to get traffic back. Did you guys coach anyone on how to get their traffic back? Or it was just kind of like, hey, do your best. Yeah, I mean, you know, we obviously will when it comes to exit planning and give advice on how to prepare businesses for sale. But, you know, we don't pretend to know the whims of Google and there are, you know, SEO experts, much better kind of position to do that. So when it comes to like specific how to get your traffic back, that's not really our bag. But we do do a lot of calls with sellers, even like one year, two years out from selling, where we'll kind of give advice on how to maximize valuation, stuff like that. That makes complete sense. Yeah, I know
06:21
a lot of people that are trying to get that traffic back. I mean, one of my blogger friends, she was getting a million views a month and she went down to 10 ,000 views a month. And it's like these crushing blows that you're like, OK, what do I do now? And I've built all of this. But that's not why we're here to talk today. I just was kind of curious on your take on things. But what got my attention and what actually prompted me to ask you to be on the show is I received an email early in April that said we paid $80,000 for one click. Want in? And I was like, what is this? And of course, it talks about a referral program. Tell me about this referral program and how in the world people can use it to monetize their own efforts. Cool. Yeah. So in a nutshell, our referral program is that if somebody refers a buyer or a seller to Empire Flippers and that person either sells their business or buys a business, then we will pay a portion
07:14
of our fee to the person that referred them. So we've been running it for quite a few years now. And yeah, we've paid out some big amounts. That one, definitely one of the biggest. The fun thing about that deal actually was that both the seller and the buyer came through a referral partner. So we did pay that person $80 ,000 for one click. I forget exactly how the buyer came through to us, but we pay somebody $80 ,000 on the other side of that deal as well. So that was a good one all around. Yeah. And of course, that's something that people dream about is like getting that kind of money from one click. So if someone were to want to be part of this referral program, I know you said your vetting process is kind of wild for selling a website, but what's your vetting process look like for someone who wants to join the referral program? Yeah, I mean, we're kind of. Pretty open to people signing
08:02
up. And, you know, obviously the people that do best with the program typically are people that have either like some sort of audience or community or are creating content somewhere. And, you know, we obviously want to a little bit have some safety checks on our message. You know, we don't want people signed up that are just like spamming stuff or over -promising stuff that we won't do. But as long as that isn't happening and we think like the person has a viable path to kind of, you know, drive some traffic, then we're generally pretty open to accepting. Now, I know you said the 80 ,000 was kind of like a bigger number. What do most people in your referral program, like what do you see in terms of like averages of what people can actually earn? Yeah, I mean, so, you know, as I say, we sell everything from kind of 50K businesses on the low end. You know, we're going to typically take about a 15 % fee on that up to like seven
08:55
and eight figure businesses. You know, our typical kind of average deal size is probably like in the mid six figures somewhere. And so, yeah, I mean, off the back of that, never do public maths. But, you know, we're probably in the average payout is probably somewhere in the like. high four, low five figures, something like that. It varies a lot, obviously. That's obviously nothing to sneeze at. It's still not bad, right?
09:21
Yeah, it's not bad at all. So what would your advice be if someone wants to sign up for the referral program? What would your advice be in order to actually start converting those into actual clicks that would be helpful for someone? Yeah, so I think there's a couple of ways that work really well. So obviously, anybody that's creating content, especially kind of content related to online business, and has some sort of eyeballs on what they're doing is generally got kind of a really good fit there. We make some tools available, you know, things like public facing versions of our valuation tool and our marketplace and like things that people can embed in their site, which works pretty nicely as well.
09:59
And then the other way that... um probably people successfully generate stuff for our referral program it's just through relationships as well you know so like one of the things we always try to do is make sure that somebody buys or sells a business with us we try and get them to sign up for the referral program because typically those people are in communities with others who are you know building businesses or buying businesses um so yeah i'd say it's either like the the wider audience route can be good. Or if you just have a network where you have like good one -on -one relationships with people, then that can kind of work really well as well. Once someone sells a site, what happens next? Once somebody sells a site, so we have a business listed on our marketplace, we get an offer accepted, then basically what we'll do is the money will kind of go into escrow.
10:46
And then we have a migration team as well. So we have a team who all day, every day, they are like moving domains. merchant accounts and stuff like this. So basically the funds will be held. All of the assets will be transferred from the seller to the buyer. We do things like financial reconciliation. And then, you know, once the buyer kind of safely has everything, that's the point that the seller gets paid out, basically, and hopefully goes on to their next fund project.
11:14
That makes complete sense. I mean, since you're seeing so many of these websites, you're seeing like all kinds of different types of websites. I have to ask you in the age of AI, do you think that blogging is completely dying or do you think there's still a way that people can build up a blog that could make it valuable to possibly one day? So, I mean, I think. I think it'll definitely continue to change shape probably over the next couple of years. You know, I think the kind of the 10 blue links on Google is probably going to continue to become less prevalent. You know, we even see it now, we get a lot of traffic through SEO still, but we now get a decent amount of traffic through like ChatGPT and other kind of AI interfaces as well. You know, it's seen in the last week or so, the open AI, you know, kind of integrating shopping carts directly into their UI. So I don't know exactly what it looks like,
12:13
but I still think in some way, you know, there's going to be money in content being generated. I just don't know if it looks like traditional blogging like it does right now. But I don't think that whole kind of like monetization is going to die anytime soon, is my guess. Let's hope not, because people like me, we rely on that. So I'm curious, if someone came to you and they're like, hey, I don't even have a website yet, but I want to ultimately set it up to have an exit strategy. How would you suggest they begin? Like, what is the best first step to create a site that they intend to sell? Yeah, I think when someone's really, really starting, it's kind of like just get started somehow and probably don't worry too much about that. But I think once someone has a little bit of traction and is thinking, okay, I do want to kind of build this to sell, some things that we normally advise people are things like don't be the single point
13:11
of failure in your business. an owner operator and you're working 40 hours a week and you're kind of doing everything from the content to the ads to what have you like that's very difficult to sell because the number one question a buyer asks when they look at a business is like what happens if i take the seller out of this business right um so like a real good example you know this is maybe a few years old this trend now but like there's a big trend of drop shipping stores right and some of these stores made money hand over fist But really, that was because the seller was like an expert at Facebook ads or meta ads. And that was kind of like the magic in the business. And so for a buyer buying that, they're immediately like, okay, well, if I can't replicate the success that the seller has with the ads, then I have doubts over to what I can do with this business. So I think having a team in place, having processes documented, they're
14:09
kind of the main things. The funny thing is... A lot of the advice to like make your business as sellable as possible is actually just the advice to like run and grow a really great business. Right. There tends to be a lot of parallels between those things. Is there a lot of difficulty with like trying to transition it from I own the domain to I'm giving it to someone else? Like how does how does all that as well as how does like moving social media accounts and things like that? Because I'm sure that once you sell it, you sell all the assets that are related to it. How does something like that work? I'm very curious. I mean, most of it is kind of relatively straightforward.
14:43
Any of like the domain stuff is pretty easy. You know, where our team add a lot of value is there are some particularities when it comes to like transferring certain Amazon accounts or, you know, display ad accounts. They all kind of have their own way. They like things to be done. But we've done so many of them at this point that our team know, oh, okay, this one's a media buy -in. We have to walk through this process or this one's something else. You know, there are one or two platforms that have some peculiarities, but for the most part, it's relatively straightforward with experience. Can you spill what the peculiar ones are? I mean, there are just some, you know, because most, particularly when it comes to blogs, most like display ad providers and stuff like that, they totally get the sites change hand. They're very, very happy to kind of work with us to make it happen. You know, there are some platforms that just like,
15:36
to just strictly prohibit transfer of accounts. So like one that always causes some pain is Etsy because they're like very, very explicit and we don't want to do things which is against terms of service. So, you know, when it comes to Etsy. There are a few different things we do. Like we might just like carve out that revenue if it's a small part of the business. Sometimes buyers are just experienced and they're kind of like happy to take the risk. And we just kind of be upfront about the risks involved. But yeah, it's kind of niche ones like that, which can be a bit unusual. Yeah. And I know a lot of people in the blogging world are annoyed with Etsy right now anyway. So, yeah, I mean, you've shared a lot of awesome information, but I'm kind of curious.
16:18
Other than the referral program. Is there anything else that you guys offer bloggers that they can use in order to kind of boost their business or make it better? Because I know your blog has a lot of amazing stuff on it. So I'm curious about like knowledge bases and tutorials and things like that. What all do you have? yeah i mean we have we have a lot of content on our site um and our director of marketing greg who who kind of um who's responsible for that i mean he's an seo nerd a niche site nerd so there's like lots and lots of content to do with that on there um so i definitely say check that out and you can filter our blog kind of specifically to content about blogging and stuff like that um so that would probably be the first port of call yeah In your list of all the niches that you've been working with, what are the most profitable ones you're seeing right now? I mean, you know, I think there are certain niches that always
17:13
kind of do well and they are like the stereotypical ones that everybody says, right? Kind of like the ones that address a pain rather than a want. Anything to do with like babies and pets always do well. Supplements always seem to do well. Um, you know, I think on the flip side, the ones which are tougher are kind of businesses, particularly e -commerce to do with apparel. Um, anything which like has a concrete obsolete date, like electronics, those things can be kind of tough.
17:42
Um, but yeah, I mean, generalizing a little bit, but that's kind of that. And I wouldn't even say that's like a right now thing. That's just kind of what we see in perpetuity a little bit. Yeah, that makes sense, because I know that a lot of people say that, like, if you start a health and wellness blog, no matter what year you start it, people are always going to be searching. So. So, yeah. So out of all the things that you guys have sold, what is the biggest and wildest deal you've done? I know you probably can't share specifics on names and that's totally fine, but I have to know. The biggest and wildest. I mean, I think we've done a couple of eight figure deals.
18:16
They are they're always interesting on a couple of fronts. I mean, you know. On the one hand, obviously, our fee is big on an eight -figure deal, so that's nice. And obviously, the seller gets paid a... I mean, plenty of our sellers get life -changing money, but obviously, an eight -figure amount is a pretty insane amount of money. I think what's most interesting with deals that size is the length and the depth of the due diligence period. So I'm thinking of one... Um, that we closed kind of towards the end of, of 2023, that was probably like the best part of nine months in due diligence. Um, and, and, you know, like that's, it's a rollercoaster and an emotional rollercoaster for the seller as well, as you can imagine. And so, um, yeah, that's, that's probably the most interesting part. That makes a lot of sense. So that, that kind of begs the question, if it took about nine months for a
19:04
deal of that size. What does your typical time frame usually look like for someone that has a much smaller, like your 2K a month site? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So like a good amount of those smaller deals, I mean, they will often have like no exclusive due diligence period. So, you know, we will kind of list it on the marketplace. And then we operate a process where like buyers have to have verified their ID and that they have the appropriate amount of liquidity to view a listing. And there'll be multiple buyers like who fulfill that criteria, who will be looking at the listing at the same time and doing their due diligence. And, you know, sometimes those sell in days or in a couple of weeks. Buyer just kind of sends us the cash and we move straight to migration. I think once you get maybe now into the mid six figure range and up into the seven figure range, most of those deals are going
19:58
to have some period of exclusive due diligence where the seller kind of like effectively takes the business off the market and commits to one buyer. They kind of agree an offer. And like average is probably 30 to 45 days in that kind of exclusive period. How often do you have people that are like, oh, no, I don't I changed my mind. I don't want to sell it. Well, sometimes, yeah. And to be honest, they're always the... It's one thing if we go into exclusive due diligence and a buyer finds something they don't like and changes their mind. But when the buyer is hot for the deal and it's the seller that changes their mind, it's always a bit like, oh, I wish we kind of figured this out before we got to this stage. It's relatively rare. But I think where sellers maybe... pull out the deal is uh when they don't have the trust with a buyer right and i think like you know it's you would think that like oh seller gets the amount of money
20:54
they want and that's it they don't care who they sell it to but actually like that couldn't be further from the truth and you know for for a lot of sellers this business is their baby that they've worked on for like multiple years and like they really really care about the person that's being handed over to so like normally when it's the seller that pulls out of the deal it's typically because like something has gone wrong in the relationship part OK, that actually makes a lot of sense. So with with the fact that, you know, you said some of this is life changing money and everybody's trying to make money from what they're doing. Do you find that it's mostly like retired age people that are ready to get rid of their sites or is it just runs the gamut of all ages? Yeah, no, I'd say definitely all ages. And, you know, I know in kind of like offline businesses, there's the silver tsunami of retirees
21:42
looking to exit businesses. But I would say that's kind of less relevant in the kind of strictly online business realm. You know, normally people are, I think there's a couple of reasons why people sell businesses like this. And it's obviously a question that buyers ask a lot. Like if the business is so good, why do you want to sell it? And I think there's a couple of things. You know, I think one is. People just kind of like to stair step up into bigger and bigger projects and they might build an e -com site or a small blog or something like that. And that like release of capital all at one time can be exactly what they need to kind of take that next step into the next thing. So I think that's part of it.
22:18
And then probably like the other most common reason is some version of like, either they've just taken the business as far as they think they can personally, or they're just kind of burnt out of the business or, you know, tired of it. And some of the best deals we've done are like where the seller, let's say the seller is a Facebook ads expert to kind of go back to my example. And they've like, they think they've tapped the business out. Like this business can't be operating any better on paid ads than it is at the moment. So they think they're getting a great deal, but maybe they've like built a decent sized email list, but done nothing with it. And maybe the buyer is an email marketing expert. And so they think they're like getting a nugget of gold because they're like, oh, this guy hasn't even scratched the surface of the email list. So I think it's just like, it's kind of those things. It's yeah. Cause sometimes someone's
23:05
skillset can kind of think they've taken it as far as it can, but there's more in there for someone else. Well, you've actually mentioned two different assets. You've mentioned Facebook ads and you've mentioned an email list. How many assets would you recommend that someone has in order to make their website more profitable? Like, do they need to be on all the social medias? Do they need to be on TikTok and the YouTube and the podcasts and all the things? What do you think about that? So I think it's a balance with anything, which is if you kind of run off in 100 different directions, then it's kind of tough to excel at anything. But again, to kind of tie this back to your what does blogging kind of look like in the future question, I think now more than ever, any kind of owned asset you have is more valuable than ever. So I do think email list is probably still the most important.
23:55
Because you obviously, you know, they say that the gold is in the list, right? And I think with good reason. So I think buyers like to see that. And then, you know, you don't necessarily have to be crazy active on all of the social platforms. But I think if you can kind of in a low maintenance way, just start to build an audience on some of them, then it only helps. You know, it's probably not as impactful as the email list, but like it all helps at the moment. So do you... I mean, you mentioned that the email list is kind of important. If someone was starting their email list, finally, because I'm definitely in this boat. I've been blogging since 2009 and I still don't have an email list. What would you recommend to a person who is just starting their email list that they've already had their website forever and they want to begin it? Do you have any advice that you can share on that? I mean, I think the
24:42
advice would be just to build it. I don't think just having it is obviously better than not having it. And you could even having it running on relatively on a maintenance mode where maybe it doesn't have to be emailed to every day. And you probably want some sort of touch points to kind of keep it. active. And so particularly when it comes to discussing with a potential buyer, they can see that it's not just like a stale list that was built several years ago. But in a way, when it comes to selling, you maybe don't want the list to be completely tapped out because that's an opportunity for a buyer then to kind of do something with it. So with an email list, I imagine the asset goes to the buyer, like that list.
25:26
I don't know if this question is going to make sense, so please humor me. Does the person who sells that list still gain access to those names or are they expected to just once you've sold it, you let it go, man? Yeah, definitely the latter. They're expected to kind of like hand it over and then they're kind of done with it. And, you know, a typical non -compete that a seller agrees to when they sell a business through us is three years. And I think like any use of the list would for sure be a breach of that kind of non -compete agreement. OK, so that's interesting to note. So when someone sells their website, they're not supposed to basically start in that same niche for three years. Yeah, that's right.
26:06
What if they already have other assets in that niche? Like, does that then how does that work? Yeah. So there's a couple of ways that we can go about it. You know, one is either we can kind of roll it up into one big listing if the seller's open to doing that. You know, if not, then what they have to do is just kind of be upfront with that about potential buyers. And then it will be down to like whether it's kind of buyers comfort levels with that. And we do do deals sometimes where. The the non -compete will be like slightly elaborated to like carve out specific things and like can do this, can't do this. So, yeah, that can happen. OK, yeah, I was curious because I have a friend. She just sold a keto blog and now she's selling a yoga blog. But they're both technically speaking in the health and wellness space. So I was curious if like those would trigger your non -compete or not. I mean, it's one of
26:59
those things that's open to interpretation. And really, it comes down to what the buyer is or isn't comfortable with. And I think to avoid surprises for either party in the future, it's just best to be upfront between each other about that. And then buyers can say, yep, I'm comfortable with that. Or no, I'm not. And they can do specific carve outs or whatever. So yeah, basically, it sounds like with all things selling, transparency is key. A hundred percent. And yeah, I mean, nothing tanks a deal faster than like one side or the other thinking that the deal is all based on trust, right? Well, it's based on contracts, but when it comes to closing the deal is like trust is a huge factor. And like, you know, a thing on that, when it comes to like due diligence, obviously buyers are poking the business and kind of trying to see if everything is on the level. And sellers initial. kind of uh thought
27:52
is to like you know let's say there is something wrong in the business or they tried something that didn't work sometimes their like initial reaction is to try and cover that up or to like not be forthcoming with it and it's actually like the exact opposite of what you want to do because like buyers are looking for that stuff and if a seller says like oh i tried this but it didn't work or actually there's this specific problem with the site it can be a huge trust building moment and more often than not it actually like helps the deal rather than hinders it So in other words, let's not hide the gaps that are in the wall. Let's tell them they were there.
28:23
A hundred percent. Yeah. I like it. I like it a lot. Well, I mean, you've shared a lot of amazing knowledge with me. I'm very curious, though. You mentioned that some people, they're selling their sites because they're wanting to get the capital to start something else. Do you have a lot of repeat sellers and buyers from that perspective? Yeah, we do both. So for sure, we have a good amount of people who will sell something and then either start something else and sell it or maybe buy something else and build it up and sell it. We've got a listing on our marketplace at the moment. I forget the, I'm going to screw the numbers up a little bit, but this is directionally true that like the guy bought it from us two years ago or so for like 150, 200K and it's on the market now for $1 .7 million. Um, so we, like, we, I mean, we love seeing stuff like that, obviously, when, uh, when we see buyer success
29:16
stories like that, we do have sellers that kind of do that or flip. Um, and then with buyers as well, I mean, kind of the same thing, uh, but we also have, there's a lot more kind of, uh, professional institutional money in the space now. So we will often have the same, um, kind of institutional buyer that will buy several businesses from us over a period of time. So yeah, we do, we see repeat on both sides. Yeah. Well, I mean, something you mentioned kind of triggered a question in me. So do you have mainly like bigger businesses or is it more individuals that are trying to sell their sites? I think the majority of sellers are still individuals and buyers is a bit more of a mix these days.
29:58
You know, we still do have plenty of. individuals, whether it's kind of like high net worth people buying a side hustle or wanting to quit the nine to five, like that's still definitely a part of our business. But yeah, particularly when it comes to the higher end now, kind of, you know, rolling up a few of these businesses or buying them for the long term has kind of professionalized a lot. And we do have a lot of like institutional investor money buying these businesses these days. Yeah. Before we got on the call, I was reading an article about digital real estate and how people are purchasing websites so that they can build like a portfolio of sites that they're making money in all these different ways.
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Do you think that this is something that is still going to be around for a while, that people can create their own portfolio of sites? I think so. We see it on websites. We see it on e -commerce businesses. So, yeah, I mean, I still think if you have the skill set to kind of buy these and do something with them, then that can be a really good way to kind of run a portfolio. And then, you know, when a portfolio gets to a certain size, then potentially there's a higher multiple that could be applied for that when it comes to exiting as well. So, yeah, I think that probably is around to stay. With exiting, do people sell like a package of websites or do they usually typically like put them one at a time? It really depends. So we definitely sell site packages.
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And particularly if they're in same similar niches, that can make a lot of sense. And if they're a bit more unrelated, then depending on size, we might split them up. Yeah, it depends, but any and all of the above. Well, we'll definitely be linking the valuation tool that you mentioned in the show notes and any other links that you can think of. We'll talk about that after the call and let me know what you think I should link to for people to learn more. But before I let you go, is there any bit of advice that you haven't shared yet that I didn't ask about that you think that we should really make sure people are hearing? I think the... We talked about it a little bit, but I think the probably the main thing is that, you know, you really can build a business to sell. And it might mean that you do some things differently than if you didn't have that in mind. And we're super happy to talk to people, even if they're like relatively
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early stage in their journey of building. And so, yeah, like you say, be great to link to our valuation tool. And if anybody off the back of that. would like to talk to one of our team about um you know specifics of things they could be doing even if they're two three years out from exiting they're like very happy to facilitate that and we kind of love having those conversations well in order to have those conversations where can people find you online yeah so obviously empireflippers .com is the main place uh i am mostly active on linkedin so maybe we could like link to there as well um and uh yeah they're the main places Well, I appreciate all the things that you've shared here today. Everything that you shared kind of makes me want to start another website and get it ready to sell. So I hope that people will listen to this and be inspired at the possibilities. Because, I mean, let's face
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it, even though Google is causing a bunch of havoc, there's still so many opportunities, like you said, in content. So, Andy, thank you for being here and chatting with me. Pleasure. I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks, Ashley. Well, my bloggy friends, I hope you enjoyed all the insights our guests had to share with you. To get the show notes for this and all episodes, go over to famousashleygrant .com backslash podcast. And until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate be low.