Empire Flippers Review: 7 Pros & Cons of Selling My Website via Their Brokerage

In September 2021, I sold the shivarweb.com website on the Empire Flippers marketplace. Shivarweb.com was a website that not only had my name in the domain but also had more than 10,000+ hours of my work and obsession built in.

Since then, there has been a groundswell of people creating websites, YouTube channels, social accounts, Amazon FBA companies, software services, Shopify stores, WooCommerce stores, and other digital businesses.

But! There still aren’t many brokerages out there to sell digital businesses. Empire Flippers is one. I’ve used a couple others, and I even attempted to sell a website on my own (like a For Sale by Owner house). Based on my experience, here are a few pros and cons of using Empire Flippers.

Pros of Using Empire Flippers

There are many reasons why Empire Flippers is such a big presence in the industry, but here are a few that stood out to me.

Website Valuation Tool

Most website brokerages and basic calculators can provide a ballpark valuation (usually monthly cash flow X 20 to 40). However, Empire Flipper’s website valuation tool not only provides a more nuanced valuation but also valuations based on business models. I found it helpful for both selling and for deciding what to focus on with my other website to maximize future valuation. You can use their valuation tool below –

Deep Buyer & Listing Pool

I really liked that Empire Flippers had a deep and varied buyer pool. They don’t just have private equity buyers, they also have industry types, solo buyers, agencies, other brokers, aggregators, etc – who are all buying for different reasons with different budgets.

For my listing, I had interviews with close competitors who I deeply respect and private equity trying to do roll-ups, first time buyers, a buyer who wanted to merge my site with his.

I ended up selling to an industry veteran who had a big exit and wanted to buy mine for financial diversification. It was a great mix and made the final sale feel good for everyone.*

* This pro was especially resonant for me since I had previously attempted a solo for sale by the owner to a private equity firm the year before. It was a difficult process that ended up falling through.

Defined Process & Documents

Empire Flippers has been around for a while. They’ve basically seen it all. They know the roadblocks. They know what buyers want. They know what sellers want. They know what lawyers want. And they have the processes and documents to cover everyone.

Again, as I found out in my previous direct for sale by owner attempt, process and documents are everything when you’re working with a large, tricky asset. Digital real estate is so similar to physical real estate in this way. Sure, you can have standard forms, but every asset is going to be slightly different.

There are going to be all sorts of licenses, risks, intellectual property, etc., that can trip up and stop the sale. The details matter, and Empire Flippers either has it all worked out already or knows how to fix the details that matter on the fly.

Active Sales Reps

Empire Flippers has achieved its scale with its large marketplace. As with any online marketplace, the big lift is getting enough buyers & sellers together to make it convenient and to offer scale. But Empire Flippers goes further with active sales reps who are actively matchmaking buyers & sellers. They understand the needs of each buyer and the unique opportunities of each sales listing. And like a good real estate agent, they can put them together much faster than just browsing or shopping around the marketplace can.

Post-Sale Transition

Empire Flippers really excelled in the tricky post-sale period when I had to actually transfer all of the assets to the successful buyer. This period (like during a house sale) is scary and vulnerable for everyone involved.

And even though you aren’t changing physical keys like you would on a house, it can be just as (if not more) tricky. From Facebook logins to Amazon APIs to software sublicenses to Google logins, everything is weird and behind two-factor authentication.

Empire Flippers’ transition team alone was worth every bit of the fee that they charged. Like the valuation & sales teams, the transition team has seen it all. And what they haven’t seen, they can figure out. They were fast, reassuring, and guided me & the buyer through a process that got us to closing very quickly.

Tidy Documentation

The Empire Flippers team is fully remote. So they are not only working around the clock, but their written documentation and processes are A++. Everything happens in Google’s product suite. There are no document versions getting printed & passed around.

Everything is visible, accessible, and easy to keep up with. Three years after the sale, I can still pull up every piece of sale documentation in my email or Google Drive. It’s great and such a competitive advantage compared to other brokerages.

Cons of Using Empire Flippers

Empire Flippers is certainly not the only game in town. Digital assets of all types have exploded in valuation and liquidity in the past 5 years, so the competition to market them has also exploded. Here are a few of the tradeoffs to consider with Empire Flippers.

Fees

Yup, Empire Flippers’s services cost money. They charge a success fee as a percent of the sales prices on a sliding scale. Check out their fee schedule here.

Under $700,000
Commission will be a flat 15% on the sale price.

The value of the business between $700,000 and $5M
Commission will be reduced to 8% on the amount above $700,000 and below $5,000,000.

The value of a business above $5 million
Commission will further be reduced to 2.5% on the amount above $5,000,000.

For example, if a business is listed for $1 million:
$700,000 of the value will have a commission of 15% = $105,000
Plus 8% commission on the remaining $300,000 value = $24,000
Total = $105,000 + $24,000 = $129,000 commission

If a business is listed at $5 million:
$700,000 of the value will have a commission of 15% = $105,000
Plus 8% commission on the remaining $4,300,000 value = $344,000
Total = $105,000 + $344,000 = $449,000 commission

Remember, the same rule applies as you move above $5M, the remaining value would have a low commission rate of 2.5%.

Empire Flippers’ Commission Calculator

The short version is that they are competitive…but more expensive than much of their competition. And just like with real estate agents, every dollar in their pocket is a dollar less for you. That’s always going to be a downside of using a broker.

That said, the real question is the amount of value delivered for the fee. And for me, there were two separate value segments. First, could Empire Flippers’ deliver a higher sales price compared to DIY or another brokerage?

Second, were Empire Flippers’ services worth the potential fees, especially compared to my hourly fees and the risk of failure? In other words, am I better off just paying a fair price to someone who knows what they are doing?

For me, especially after going through a failed DIY sale, the answer to both was wholeheartedly yes. Now, are there exceptions? Of course!

I’ve sold smaller sites on other brokerages because they are simple transactions that do not have major consequences if the sales fall through. But the key part is major consequences. That all depends on the person buying or selling. Everyone has different metrics, talents, and appetites for risk.

Marketplace Commodification

Every marketplace has a “feel/vibe” that affects product pricing. Craigslist has a very different feel/vibe than Airbnb. The same holds for website brokerages.

Now, Empire Flippers maintains a premium vibe. They aren’t like some (e.g., Flippa) that have struggled for years to lift the bad vibe from their marketplace. Empire Flippers is classy.

The con isn’t the vibe—the con is that your listing is part of the vibe. Your website will never be a special white-glove snowflake butterfly on the Empire Flippers’ marketplace. That’s what places like Quiet Light and others are for.

The marketplace also puts your website in the same context as other properties, forcing you to compete with buyers on “spreadsheets rather than stories” – that’s not a bad thing. But it’s also not a good thing, especially if you see a special intangible in your asset that buyers / sellers just don’t understand.

I’m not sure how to get around this con, except to just own it for what it is.

Broad Asset Focus

Even though “digital assets” is a very niche financial asset niche…there is still a huge variety of types. And Empire Flippers does them all. They do everything from Amazon FBA accounts to content sites on the open web to Shopify ecommerce stores to newsletter to SaaS and more.

They offer a wide range of digital asset types and business models within each asset type (e.g., subscription websites, ad-supported websites, etc.).

For buyers, they even offer funds that you can buy into that buy and manage a portfolio of digital assets for a fee. So even though Empire Flippers has a focus, they are stretched a bit into other lines of business. That brings a lot of opportunity, but it might also be something to think about depending on your asset.

Final Takeaways

Empire Flippers was the right choice for me and my marketing education website. They have the right combination of buyer pool, sales expertise, and hands-on customer service that made their fees more than worth it for me.

I’ll be back with more sites to sell (and hopefully buy) in the future. They aren’t for everyone, but are definitely the “starting point” for anyone with a digital asset to sell.

And if you are in the market – congrats! And all the best on your sale or purchase!

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