2 Off-Market Sites, 3 Broker Sites, 3 Vetted Deals (Nov 19)

This week’s deals feature 3 websites for sale from Empire Flippers and Flippa in the finance, automotive, and hobby niches, 2 websites from our private Facebook group in the home decor and tool niches, and 3 vetted deals from the WebAcquisition.com team.

For vetted deals, we’ve included a brief summary of the due diligence we performed for our deal-sourcing clients, which involved analyzing the technical and financial health of these businesses.

🚀 3 Vetted Market Deals

We’ve included a curated selection of this week’s vetted deals, identified for our clients through our specialized Deal Sourcing service. For more detailed information, please reply to this email or visit our WebAcquisition deal sourcing page.

1️⃣ < $500k Range – Education SaaS Earning $7,827/mo

5 years old — $297,500 asking price

We vetted this deal for an ‘essay mill’ founded during the peak of the COVID remote learning boom. The business operates on a high-margin arbitrage model, connecting students with credentialed freelance ghostwriters. However, the critical issue is AI. This business model faces imminent obsolescence. Consequently, acquiring an asset like this with no clear pivot strategy is likely not the best option.

2️⃣ < $1M Range – SEO Link Building Agency Earning $17,016/mo

3 years old — $667,030 asking price

We recently received an inquiry regarding an SEO link-building agency. It is a well-established agency earning around 17k per month. Since we run a few boutique digital marketing agencies ourselves, we dug a bit deeper into the inner workings of the business. Ultimately, we uncovered some warning signs that resulted in our client passing on the deal. The main issue is that the team behind the agency consists of 16 people. That is way too high for an agency of that size. While the salaries weren’t huge, we performed basic due diligence on the workflow and quickly found issues. Simply put, for a company of that revenue, it makes no financial sense to go through the entire M&A process, especially since the link building niche is so saturated.

3️⃣ > $1M Range – Dropshipping SaaS Earning $18,854/mo

2 years old — $1,150,000 asking price

Occasionally, we encounter businesses, or in this case, SaaS, that we have actually used in the past. Our client was interested in a well-known dropshipping SaaS that frequently appears in ‘top 10’ lists. It is a well-run business with a history spanning over 20 years and boasts more than 500k registered users (mostly non-paying). The biggest drawback is the immense competition in this niche; scaling would require heavy investment in paid traffic acquisition. As most of our clients want quick and easy growth, we always warn them when we think that will not be possible in the next few years. Due to that, and the unreasonable price the seller is asking, our client backed out of the deal.

If you are looking for custom deal sourcing, negotiations & structuring, and advisory to acquire your next business, check our Deal Sourcing Service.

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🚀 3 Websites For Sale From Brokers

1️⃣ 8-year-old Hobby e-commerce Site making $10,837/mo on Empire Flippers

E-commerce — Hobby —39X — $422,643

Subscription businesses selling physical products have been around almost since the inception of the web, with a huge uptick in popularity 10 years ago. This specific business is 8 years old and has been stable over the years. The potential issue is that the seller is currently investing 45 hours per week into design, which will be hard to replace. It is a perfect example for a potential seller financing deal that involves keeping the owner on for at least a year to run the design department. View on Empire Flippers

2️⃣ 6-year-old Automotive FBA Shop making $3,976/mo on Empire Flippers

FBA — Automotive —28X — $111,340

This is an interesting FBA business selling automotive parts, but there are a few warning signs. First, the Seller Central account is locked to China. It is notoriously hard to transfer it to the US, so you will probably need an entity registered in China. Secondly, there are two staff members in China, which helps protect the already thin profit margins. Thirdly, there are tariffs. The asking price reflects some of the risks, but for this business to be a viable purchase, the price needs to be in the 18–20x range. View on Empire Flippers

3️⃣ 3-year-old Finance niche site making $2,129/mo on Flippa

Finance— Live Auction — ($89,000 asking price)

A growing finance blog earning via display ads. The catch? The seller admits the content is 100% AI-written. With almost 250k monthly visits, the site is likely underutilized; there is clear room to grow by adding new income sources. Worth checking out. View on Flippa

🚀 2 Off-Market Sites on Facebook

The Website Flip runs a free Facebook group where sellers can list sites for sale. Here is a selection of a few sites this week:

$60/mo Home Decor Niche Site: This is a simple content site monetized through Ezoic. Traffic is primarily driven by Pinterest, with approximately 8,000 visits per month. The seller is asking for $1,250.

Starter’s Tools Niche Site: A starter site in the tools niche. The seller didn’t provide many details, but the domain ranks for around 70 keywords.

👉 Additional Reading

Make sure to perform due diligence when acquiring any domains or websites. Here are more resources:

2 Off-Market Sites, 3 Broker Sites, 3 Vetted Deals (Nov 26)