As an online business owner, you might wonder whether you could sell your business, for how much, and what are some actions you can take to make sure your business is sold for as high an amount as possible. Also we

Well, today's episode is exactly on those topics, and it will answer all your questions. My guest today is the CEO of Flippa.com, Blake Hutchison.

Blake Hutchison is the CEO of Flippa.com, the world's largest marketplace to buy & sell online businesses. Blake leads the team as they build out a product empowering exit and ownership for business owners and entrepreneurs globally.

Website: https://flippa.com/

Blake's LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/blakehutchison

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Today I have a special guest for you. He is a treat to listen and his knowledge is unlimited when it comes to selling your businesses. With me today is Blake Hutchinson, CEO of Flippa. Welcome Blake.

Thanks, Mariam. Thanks for having me. I appreciate that.

You're very welcome. And before we get started, I want everybody to get to know you a little bit better. So I'm going to read a short bio of yours. This is by no means an entire biography or what the skill set of Blake are. But here we are. Blake Hutchinson is the CEO of flip it.com, the world's largest marketplace to buy and sell online businesses. Blake leads the team as they build out a product powering exit and ownership for business owners and entrepreneurs globally. So this sounds pretty amazing, Blake, a global marketplace for online sales. How did this idea come about?

Yeah, thanks, Mariam. So Flip has been around for a while and it was originally started off the back of a business called site point.com. Side point was a developer community and that community had a forum and within the forum, there were lots of people talking about trading source code, trading templates, trading domains, anything that related to websites. And so a long time ago, some 13 years ago, the founders were savvy enough to

that there was in fact a market for people who wanted to trade websites. And over time, that's obviously shifted quite substantially into bigger and bigger online businesses. Uh, but that was its origination. And as a function of that, we have a very large community of, uh, developers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, e-commerce experts, and so many others.

So exclusively online businesses for Flippa.

exclusively online businesses and part of that is because that's our background. The other part of that is that it tends to be that digital businesses are global and so the buying and selling universe, so those buyers as well as those business owners representing those businesses can operate their businesses from anywhere. They can acquire customers anywhere and as a function of that, they tend to have global adaptability. So buyers are interested in

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

a local or from anywhere else.

Interesting. Would you say there are some type of online businesses that you tend to have more for sale and purchase over others?

Yes. I mean, it's really four major categories. So we have websites, which are typically blogs. And the biggest blog we sold last year was a $5.2 million blog. We sell e-commerce. And the biggest business we sold last year was just in excess of $10 million. We sell apps.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Wow, okay.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

sell very big apps up to $35 million. And we also sell SAS. So software as a service, and certainly have sold those up to about $10 million to so from very low value up to very high value, site stores, apps, and generally speaking, online businesses as a whole. We are slowly evolving into communities. So newsletters, podcasts, Instagram channels, those types of digital assets where

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

No.

Thank you. Bye.

are communities and those communities are therefore valuable for potential acquirers. But yes, content, e-com, SaaS and apps, and it tends to be that, you know, they're either making money through advertising and or direct sale. And of course, in the case of SaaS, it typically is subscription.

Wow. So you gave like two really extreme examples, like $5 million blog and a $10 million e-commerce. I'm assuming it's most likely confidential to know like which blog and e-commerce shop it was that sold for that much.

Yeah, well, I can certainly give you some examples of businesses that have sold and use their names and their details. At that level, the buyer and seller tends to want them to be confidential, but I can give you some general details. So the blog that was sold was a GDPR compliance blog. So all of the content related to compliance and governance, and it was 13 pages of content.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Wow.

And it was backed by AdSense, so it was earning its revenue through the AdSense platform. It was serving tens of millions of page views. It had hundreds of thousands of really, really reputable backlinks and referral partners. It was all organic traffic. They weren't acquiring, paying to acquire the customer. It was highly credible traffic. It was predominantly North American traffic.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

worse.

of that business was a Florida based publisher. And that publisher had sales team. So I have no doubt that what they were looking for was a bolt-on opportunity where they could leverage their existing operational expertise to get even more out of the business. And so, yes, well, without revealing the actual name, hopefully that gives people a sense.

Mm.

I wish I could say it was me, but it's not. I lost my opportunity there. I did talk about the GDPR all the time. Now I wish I came up with that site.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, you know, it is interesting because blogs can get acquired of all sizes and all topics. So, you know, we had a blog about crochet. That crochet blog sold within 48 hours for about $90,000. We had blogs about dog beds and pet accessories and those types of things where people are earning money through affiliate revenue. So as you know, you know, bloggers can exist across any number of different categories

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Wow.

topics and then the ways in which they make money are particularly interesting too. You can have a direct ad sales team, you can use AdSense, you can use Zoic or Mediavine, you can use the Amazon Associates program. So there's so many different ways you can make money from a blog and as a result of that there's a really savvy network of buyers, acquirers out there universally who are looking for well run blogs that they continue to, that they can buy and optimize.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, you know, this is amazing. Karen, you talk because I personally know a lot of bloggers. In fact, my audience started as an audience of bloggers right now. It's kind of branching out, expanding more into, you know, entrepreneurs and other business owners and coaches, but my base following started from bloggers. And I love them. Like I, I really love them. I'm loyal to my bloggers because they are what kind of gave me my start in the business as well. Um, it's great to hear that.

passion project, which is what most blogs are initially, they are passion projects. And then they turn into businesses can actually make this much money from their businesses. But like, I want you to discuss, I guess, because we talked about prices and how much these blogs are selling, what determines the price? What are some factors that you'll look at when evaluating a business?

Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, the really obvious one is its financial performance. And so there's a few things that come into consideration there. One, obviously revenue. Second, and I'm talking in obviously very basic terms, the expense base or the cost base. And then finally, it's net profit performance. And so the way that a buyer will assess a blog does ultimately come down to its financial performance.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

but secondarily to that, or secondary to that, I should say, there's also a large amount of value placed on the traffic, the audience, and ultimately the community. And so buyers will look at traffic and whether it's predominantly organic, whether there's a brand and maybe it's coming in through direct, or perhaps it's coming in through a long tail keyword strategy. So for example, you know, that particular

a crochet blog I was alluding to before, perhaps it's got a community of people that really love its content and go back to it regularly. So that would be direct traffic where someone is searching for crochetkim.com, which happened to be the name of the blog, or perhaps they're coming in through long tail keywords, they're typing in crochet or crochet patterns or those types of things. So that gets looked upon. And of course, there's a premium paid for businesses

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

the traffic is negligible, almost nothing, and that's direct or organic. Versus paid, you will tend to get penalized on multiple just a little bit because there is a cost to acquire the customer and the buyer needs to take that into consideration. The third thing that they look at is really consistency of performance. And so it's unlikely that a buyer is interested in a blog that has been around for less than one year and

Thank you. Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

unlikely they're willing to pay a premium for that because it doesn't have an established operating rhythm that the buyers can trust. And so a little bit like when you buy real estate, like an apartment or home, and location matters a lot. In blog land, what matters a lot is that I am well established. So years of operating or operating history does give you a premium. And so

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

I think it was 13 or 15 years old. I can't remember which one, but it had been around for a long time. And so I'd had a huge amount of credibility. And as a function of that, its traffic was very stable and its revenue base was equally very stable. And so they're probably the three things that a buyer will look at when they consider a blog to acquire.

Okay. And when it comes to, let's say a website, whether it's a blog or something else, that generates money through ads, organic traffic and ads, affiliate marketing, and a website that maybe generates money by selling digital products or courses or, you know, other downloadable materials. Do this to get priced or valued equally based on the amount of money they're making or is one preferred over the other?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a great question. No, one will be preferred over the other, and that's simply a function of the operating margins. So if I am using the Amazon Associates Program, which essentially is an affiliate program, then I'm having to pay a portion of my proceeds, obviously Amazon takes out theirs, and I'm left with whatever it is, and each category is different, right? So you might have,

Hmm?

Mm-hmm.

Hmm, absolutely.

And certainly the fact that the affiliate program is less valued than perhaps Google AdSense where I can tend to be valued on a revenue per page view basis. In this case, I'll tend to be valued based on the revenue that I'm earning through the affiliate program. Not only that, different categories within the Amazon Associates Program pay more or less.

Mm-hmm, absolutely.

of that, that gets taken into consideration too. However, I mean, it does tend to just be a simple function of, is the business consistently performing at the same level? Because then I've got a trusted asset. A trusted asset will always earn a premium on something that is either declining or is lumpy

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

blog land that can be considered a bit of a risk. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well. And so, yes, that will tend to be considered as well.

Okay, thank you. I'm sure my listeners will find this very helpful because several of them are in a process of currently selling their businesses or they're preparing their businesses for sale. I'm actually reviewing several of their contracts for that. Blake, let's talk about a little bit about your background. I wanna get back to this topic and talk about this a little bit more in a little bit, but first I wanna find out about your background. How did you get into this field?

qualifications for this particular niche.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, there's probably a couple of things. I mean, one, I've worked in lots of fast growth businesses across different business models. So cloud accounting, publishing, e-commerce, marketplaces. And then I also sold my business on Flipper. So when I came to learn about the Flipper opportunity, the fact that I had actually been a customer of Flipper and could empathize with that customer experience, that card for a lot. So I guess I've been a combination of operator as well as founder and that, that,

Mm-hmm.

Thank you. Bye.

Were you a customer before you were a CEO? Okay. Okay.

Yes.

So that tends to help because you can tend to empathize with the customer. You obviously understand the customer experience. You've lived through it yourself and therefore you can kind of architect a pathway to a better user experience on the marketplace. So that hopefully gives you a sense of my background at least at a very high level. But as a function of that, I think that we tend to focus on what the customer's problems are and build around that. And that's pretty obvious.

very hypersensitive to that.

That's great. That's great. And generally speaking, um, I guess on any given day, what's the, I don't know how to ask this question for it not to come off bad, but I want to say what's the like a percentage of businesses that you have who are listing for sale and then the percentage who are, I guess, getting listed to buy. Do you have one more than the other, more businesses selling or more people buying?

That's a great question. So, you know, we're a marketplace. So we look at that from a supply and demand standpoint, for sure. And certainly, you have far more buyers than you do have sellers. That's probably a good thing. Whilst we acknowledge we would always like more suppliers, we would love for more business owners to join the Flipper platform and use this as a pathway to exit. Absolutely. It's probably a good thing because what you're trying to do is drive a little bit of competitive tension and get a

Mm-hmm.

Thank you. Bye.

get to a position where a seller can be dealing with multiple parties, can have an engaged dialogue and ultimately a negotiation and find the price that suits the buyer as well as them. And sometimes you're better off doing that with multiple buyers than you are one. But the short answer to the question is yes, we have far more buyers globally than we do so. The numbers on average, we pick up around 3,000 to 5,000 valuations and or businesses

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

But on the flip side, on the demand side, we pick up nearly 30,000 buyers a month. So that's a, what is that, five times, five, the volume of sellers in buy side demand. So that's really impressive and very big and something we're proud of and we look to deal with.

But yeah.

interesting. I would have never thought that I actually have more buyers than sellers. Since we're talking about selling businesses and whatnot, is there a right time to exit or prepare an exit strategy for a business?

Yes and no. So sometimes the right time is tough to recognise. But generally speaking, there are two reasons why someone wants to sell. They've either taken their business or their blogging in this particular case, given the community that we're talking to today, or a level that is as good as they can do.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

In which case that opportunity, that time, when you recognize that, that your ability to grow it above and beyond where it is today is limited, that's often a good time to consider selling. On the flip side, sometimes the best time to sell is when you need to sell. And so you are looking to do something else with your money. You might be putting your son or daughter through college. You might want to buy a property.

might need to, you might be going into a different job. You might have more than one business and you want to focus more of time on one business for versus another. What is more important is preparing for a sale regardless of when that time might be. And so the timing is important. Obviously you want your business in a good shape. You want it to be not declining. When your business is declining, that's the worst possible time to try and sell a business.

Mm.

looking for turnarounds. Buyers are looking for good quality, cashflow generating assets. So therefore preparedness is most important. And preparedness comes down to a few things. One, do you have standard operating procedures in place that you understand and that a prospective buyer can therefore understand? So for instance, how do you produce your content? What is your highest performing content pieces? That type of understanding around the operational, official

Mm-hmm.

efficiency of your business is really important. Two, do you have clean books? So do you use cloud accounting software? Have you had a bookkeeper organize your expenses and reconcile those expenses to different categories and line items of your profit and loss statement? Because a buyer ultimately wants to know not only how the business operates, but how the business spends its money, earns its money. And then probably the third thing is

Mm-hmm.

self-redundant. So a buyer is always a bit concerned about how founder dependent the business is. And so as a function of that, if you're writing all of the content for your blog, you might want to think about how you can diversify and get content in from third party contributors. So there's less dependency on you. If you're doing all of the ad sales yourself,

good, but perhaps think about integrating an Isoa, a Comediavine or a Google AdSense so that you've got some programmatic acquisition of advertising partners and therefore revenue. And so they're probably the three things that I would talk about when I reference preparedness to sale. Interesting.

Interesting. So, eventually, we want to remove ourselves as the business owner or the person who runs it from that particular business when selling so that somebody can take over and we want the efficiency there and SOPs there so that they can just hit the ground running.

never would have thought that SOPs would be part of this. I'm a huge fan of SOPs for any business, but I never thought that it would be something that sellers would look at when selling and buying a business.

That's correct.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a really critical piece, right? Because the first thing a buyer says is, okay, you're making $50,000. I want to know how you make that $50,000. How do you produce the content? What is good content? What is bad content? How does the content get edited? Is the content generated by you? Is it generated by a third party? Is it generated by guest authors? Is it AI generated? These are all things that operationally, you need to have a really good grasp of, but you actually need to have

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and have clear evidence of how that process happens because buyers will want to know that, otherwise it's tough for them to buy the asset and run with the asset.

Interesting. Is the process for preparing for an exit the same for any type of business? For example, if there is an e-commerce business out there, is the process of optimizing that e-commerce business for an exit the same as we just described for, let's say, bloggers?

Yes, it is the same, but the metrics that a buyer looks at are different by business model. And so as a function of that, you will tend to need to merchandise your asset. And of course, our team is there to help you with that. And our onboarding functionality also talks you through that. But the reality is, sellers are less good at understanding how to merchandise.

because they kind of assume that their business is easy to understand when in reality all businesses are nuanced. And so whilst they are all similar, the metrics change and the way you describe your SOPs change. And so ultimately, I would like to know what is the business. I am a blog, or we are a blog,

on the pet niche writing reviews of dog beds, toys, and accessories. That's what is the business. How does the business make money? We make two thirds of our revenue through direct sales and one third of our revenue through Google AdSense. Our total revenue is X. Our cost base is Y.

Mm.

So that's common and every business owner will need to have a very similar structure to the way they present their business for sale. What is different, of course, are the metrics. So for an e-commerce business, I'm probably more interested in your average order value, your refund rate, your inventory levels, your landed cost for your inventory, your suppliers, your supplier agreements. All of those types of things are going to be different to SaaS.

Mm-hmm.

And SAS is going to be things like your MRR or your ARR, your LTV, that's lifetime value, your churn rate. So whilst the merchandising of the asset is similar, the metrics that matter to a buyer are different.

Okay. Interesting. Thank you for that. I do have one question that kind of, uh, I have because of my personal business experience. So there was a time I was considering selling, uh, the site business that I have. I have a law firm, but, you know, aside from that, I have the site business with which now I'm doing my podcast and, you know, I'm taking it in a whole different direction. But basically what it was at the time is me talking about a lot of legal topics.

two bloggers at the time and other online business owners in like simple terms, like I would explain the law, what it is that they need to do. And you know, but obviously I was running that site. I'm an attorney, therefore I'm qualified to talk about legal topics. I'm qualified to explain illegal topics. And I was considering selling it at some point because once I opened my law firm for like two years, I wasn't doing anything to this business anymore. But you know, it, I started thinking that, okay,

who's going to buy this? Uh, another attorney has to buy this or a law firm needs to buy this in order to keep it running because if a regular business owner decides to buy this, how are they going to continue running this kind of a business? So do you have like super niche, I guess businesses that would require somebody with a particular skill set or education level to buy that and run it? And how does that process work?

Yeah, it's a really great question. I mean, the short answer is yes, because it tends to be that savvy buyers are looking for inorganic pathways to growth. And so they acquire businesses for that purpose. They acquire eyeballs. They acquire revenue. They acquire communities. They acquire inventory. So it's a pathway to inorganic growth. As a function of that, it will tend to be that they acquire things within

industry that they are already operating in. So for example, we have had a

Someone who a tattoo parlor which acquired a tattooing blog the blog was called tattooing 101 and They buy that blog because they want to acquire the community so that they can use that community as a form of promotion for their other business But on the flip side you also get buyers who buy things purely on business model They don't care about the category or the niche what they care about is how it makes money and whether they've got the expertise to help It make more money

Where something is highly dependent on the owner, the founder, or the influencer, that does become a little difficult. But where it is a specific subject matter, there tends to be a lot of people who also have interest in that subject matter. So for example, let's say you are a trademark lawyer and you had people discussing the value of trademarks, talking about trademarks, buying and selling trademarks, well, that would be

position for a trademark lawyer. It's more likely that a trademark lawyer buys that asset than it is anyone else. But I will say it's not to say that they're the only buyer for that type of asset because lots of things will come into play there. But certainly, you will find that someone who is an e-commerce operator of vitamins businesses will be searching

If you have a lawyer who has great content related to legal orientated topics, yes, they're most likely to be looking for blogs that also orientated to legal related topics. And so there's synergy there. I guess that's the simplest answer to the question. It's not a dependency, but there's synergy.

Hmm. Perfect. Perfect. Well, um, Blake, thank you so much. Like what you're saying right now is going to be incredibly relevant and helpful for the listeners, uh, for my immediate, um, audience, because a lot of them are interested in this. There are several websites, um, that do something similar that flip it does. Obviously on a much smaller scale, flip it is the largest marketplace right now. And it does business globally. I guess what I want to know.

my audience is sick. Let's say after today's episode, a few of them get, you know, empowered and they want to start listing their businesses for sale, their blogs or their websites, whatever it may be, e-commerce shops. Tell me how easy it is to list the business on Flipa for sale.

Yeah, super simple. As you said, we're number one, where the world's largest. And so that is hugely beneficial to business owners. They get access to a huge buyer base with a diverse need and want. We have that buyer base available to our customers globally. We match them up

Thank you. Thank you.

buyers, that all happens seamlessly. The similar easiest pathway is to get a valuation, because that's what everyone's first interested in. What is my business worth? And so if you jump on Flippa, there's a free valuation tool. No obligation. It's a couple of minutes, and you'll have an indicative valuation for your business. That is a great starting point because it helps you

you can then choose to list. When you list, you are given the opportunity to connect to different data sources to make that merchandising process a lot easier for you and a lot quicker than you would have to go through elsewhere. And so you can connect your Google Analytics. You can connect your Stripe and your PayPal. If you're e-commerce, you can connect to eBay, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magenta, Amazon and a network of others. You can connect your cloud accounting, your Xero, your QuickBooks online.

automates that process a lot.

And so that makes it really, really simple. Once it automates the process, it populates and plots your revenue and financial data there so that you can expose that and buyers can consume that. And then after that, you'll go through, depending on the size of the asset, you'll go through a verification process, and you'll ultimately be assigned an account manager who will assist you through the process. The valuation is quick, literally minutes. The onboarding process.

will typically take people an hour or two to get through end to end because that is type of information that we know buyers want. Once you're on sale, so you're on the marketplace, it will typically be, depending on the size of the asset, that we can find you a buyer within weeks. Of course, end to end once the buyer has completed their due diligence. It typically is a month or two before you have completed the exit.

interesting. And how so it might take a couple of months, according to you from the time you listen until the buyer does the due diligence and decides to buy. And how soon after that do the sellers have access to their finances?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So let's assume that we're talking about a five figure blog. It will tend to be that that's quite a straightforward sale. So once the buyer has decided to purchase, completed their due diligence, signed an asset purchase agreement, we will then utilize our integrated escrow and or trust payment, trust account solution. And at that point in time, so long as the asset transfer has occurred, the money is sitting in escrow

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

to be released. The minute the assets are transferred, the release of the capital is provided to the seller. So it typically is within days, hours of the assets being completed, the transfer of those being completed in accordance with the asset purchase agreement that the money is accessible.

Thank you for that. That was a very clear response. Um, so if you're listening out there and you are thinking about selling your business, make sure to head to flip a.com, get your business valuation first and foremost. It only takes a few minutes. So do that to find out approximately how much you can sell your business for, and then you can decide whether to actually list it or not. Uh, Blake, thank you so much for your presence today. Thank you for answering my questions. Uh,

I let you go. I do have one last question and I aim to ask this to all of my guest interviewees. So if you don't mind, I want you to conclude today's episode with one actionable tip, one thing that our listeners can get from this episode and they can take it and apply it towards their businesses today. What is one tip that you can give to our listeners?

Thank you. Bye.

Well, given we've already talked about it a little bit, Mary, I'm going to go with SOPs. So get your standard operating procedures in place. Document what you do, how your business works, because two things will occur as a result. The first thing is you'll end up picking out things that work well for you and things that work less well for you. And you'll be able to execute on those changes and come up with a better operational plan.

plan, but secondly, in the event that you do sell, you will find that those SOPs hold you in good stead. Buyers like that and buyers will value your business over others as a function of having them.

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Blake. I appreciate your time. Thank you for spending your valuable time here with us, with our listeners, and providing us with all of this knowledge. With you today was Blake Hutchinson, CEO of Flippa.com, the world's largest marketplace for selling and purchasing online businesses. You were listening to the Not So Risky Business Podcast with Merriam. Thank you for your time today, and I'll

Have a great one.