TL;DR. The three largest marketplaces that publish deal data price small online businesses as a few years of profit, not as a growth story. Empire Flippers’ live scoreboard shows an average sale multiple of 2.2x trailing-twelve-month annual net profit for typical businesses and 1.2x for distressed ones. Flippa’s H1 2026 report shows average profit multiples from 1.43x (services) to 3.33x (marketplaces), with SaaS at 2.47x and content sites at 2.32x. Acquire.com reports a 3.9x median net income multiple for SaaS in both 2024 and 2025, across 136 reporting deals in 2025. Publicly listed system and application software companies, by contrast, traded at 24.48x EBITDA in NYU Stern’s January 2026 dataset. Every marketplace figure here is self-reported by a platform that earns fees on the deals. The CEO move: build the business so a stranger could run it from your documents, because the gap between an average and a top-quartile multiple was 1.6x to 2.7x in Flippa’s H1 2026 data. The student move: learn to read your own profit and loss statement the way a buyer does, line by line, before anyone asks.
Valuation is the last chapter of decisions made much earlier. If you are still choosing a model, our analysis of micro-SaaS unit economics and the comparison of recurring revenue models for solo operators show which revenue lines a buyer will later pay for. If your income depends on search traffic, read affiliate income after AI search alongside this piece.
Why are micro-acquisition multiples so hard to compare?
Three problems make the published numbers look more contradictory than they are.
Problem 1: monthly versus annual. Until 8 September 2026, Empire Flippers quoted every multiple against average monthly net profit. A business earning $10,000 a month and listed at $360,000 showed as 36x. On the annual basis now standard across the industry, the same deal is 3.0x. Empire Flippers announced the switch itself and said that valuations did not change, only the format. Any historical Empire Flippers figure converts by dividing by 12.
Problem 2: what counts as “profit”. Empire Flippers uses a version of net profit in which the owner’s own salary and one-off growth spending are added back, which is close to what main-street brokers call seller’s discretionary earnings. Acquire.com reports confirmed purchase price divided by net income. Flippa labels its tables “profit multiples from historical sold deals” without a narrower definition in the reports reviewed here. Public market data uses EBITDA or revenue against enterprise value. These are related but not identical measures, so small differences between sources should not be over-read.
Problem 3: listing versus sale, and average versus median. Asking prices sit above closing prices. Averages are pulled up by a few large outliers; medians are not. Flippa publishes averages and top-quartile figures; Acquire.com publishes a median in its blog summary; Empire Flippers publishes averages and states that renegotiated deals and outliers were excluded from its 2022 sale averages.
A fourth problem is about the sample. None of these marketplaces reports “one-person businesses” as a category. They report small online businesses, many of them owner-operated. Empire Flippers says about half of its listings at any time are priced below $300K and are mostly bought by individual buyers, often on a first acquisition. That is the closest published description of the solo-operator segment, and it is why this article uses these sources.
What are the published multiples, exactly as the sources print them?
The table below keeps each figure on its own basis. Nothing in it has been converted.
| Source (type) | Period | Basis as printed | Figures as printed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empire Flippers scoreboard (broker, self-reported) | Live page, read 8 Oct 2026 | Sale price / TTM annual net profit, average | Typical 2.2x; Premium 2.4x; $1M+ premium 3.1x; Distressed 1.2x |
| Empire Flippers 2026 State of the Industry, as quoted in its annual-multiples post (broker) | 2026 report | Average listing multiple, monthly, with EF’s annual conversion | Distressed 13.7x (1.1x); Typical 27.8x (2.3x); Premium 31.1x (2.6x); 7-figure premium 41x (3.4x) |
| Empire Flippers State of the Industry 2023 (broker) | 2022 sales | Average sale multiple, monthly TTM net profit | Content 37.7x; Ecommerce 34.35x; All other models 33.19x |
| Flippa H1 2026 Insights Report (marketplace, self-reported) | H1 2026 | Profit multiple, average / top quartile | Marketplace 3.33x / n/a; App 2.62x / 5.46x; SaaS 2.47x / 4.06x; Content site 2.32x / 4.68x; Media and community 1.63x / 3.89x; YouTube 1.57x / 2.65x; Ecommerce 1.55x / 2.75x; Service 1.43x / 2.31x |
| Flippa 2025 M&A insights (marketplace) | Jan-Dec 2025 | Average profit multiple / top quartile | SaaS 2.7x / 5.8x; Premium content 2.6x / 5.5x; Marketplaces 2.5x / 4.5x; Apps 2.4x / 5.4x; YouTube 1.8x / 3.9x; Ecommerce 1.4x / 2.7x; Services 1.2x / 2.1x |
| Acquire.com Multiples Report 2025 (marketplace, customer-provided data) | 2025 deals | Confirmed purchase price / net income | SaaS median 3.9x in 2024 and 2025; by band: under $100k 3.7x, $100k-$1M 3.9x; 136 deals reporting |
| Acquire.com Multiples Report 2025 | 2023-2025 | Confirmed SaaS net income multiple | 2023 4.3x (145 deals); 2024 3.9x (205); 2025 3.9x (129); the report’s other 2025 charts cite 136 reporting deals |
| NYU Stern, Damodaran dataset (academic) | January 2026 | Public US companies, EV/EBITDA and EV/Sales | Software (System and Application): EV/EBITDA 24.48 (positive-EBITDA firms), EV/Sales 11.41, 309 firms |
Sources: Empire Flippers scoreboard and “We’re Switching to Annual Multiples” (8 Sep 2026); Empire Flippers State of the Industry Report 2023; Flippa, “The New Era of Digital M&A: Flippa’s H1 2026 Insights Report” (15 Jul 2026); Flippa, “2025 Online Business M&A Insights” (19 Dec 2025); Acquire.com Multiples Report 2025 PDF and blog summary (Feb 2026); Damodaran, Price to Sales and Value to EBITDA datasets, January 2026. Broker and marketplace figures are commercial, self-reported, and not independently audited.
Two inconsistencies inside the sources deserve a flag. Flippa’s 2025 post describes SaaS premiums as “up to 5.8x revenue” in its narrative, while its own table labels 5.8x as a top-quartile profit multiple; this article uses the table. Acquire.com’s webinar recap describes the fall in public SaaS valuations as “around 5.5x net income”, while the report itself labels the same series as public SaaS revenue multiples; this article uses the report’s label.
What do the numbers look like on one annual basis?
Converting Empire Flippers’ monthly figures by dividing by 12 is mathematically valid, because Empire Flippers defines its monthly multiple as price over average monthly net profit across a twelve-month window. That puts its 2022 data next to the 2025-2026 figures from Flippa and Acquire.com. The table is a CEOtudent analysis; the source figures are unchanged, only the unit is.
CEOtudent analysis of Empire Flippers, Flippa and Acquire.com published data: annual profit multiples by business model
| Business model | Empire Flippers 2022 avg sale (monthly / 12) | Flippa H1 2026 avg | Flippa H1 2026 top quartile | Acquire.com 2025 median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content / affiliate | 3.14x | 2.32x | 4.68x | not reported |
| Ecommerce (incl. Amazon FBA) | 2.86x | 1.55x | 2.75x | not reported |
| SaaS | 2.77x (pooled with “all other models”) | 2.47x | 4.06x | 3.9x |
| Apps | pooled in “all other” | 2.62x | 5.46x | not reported |
| Media, community, newsletters | not reported separately | 1.63x | 3.89x | not reported |
| YouTube | not reported separately | 1.57x | 2.65x | not reported |
| Services / agency | not reported separately | 1.43x | 2.31x | not reported |
Basis notes: Empire Flippers net profit includes add-backs such as owner salary; Acquire.com uses net income; Flippa uses “profit” without further definition in the reports reviewed. Empire Flippers excludes renegotiated deals and outliers from its 2022 averages. Calculations in calc.py.
Three readings follow from the table.
First, the solo-business range is narrow and low. In the 2025-2026 figures from all three sources, average or median multiples for small online businesses sit between 1.2x and 3.9x annual profit. A business earning $48,000 a year in profit is, on these numbers, typically a $58,000 to $187,000 asset, not a million-dollar one.
Second, the 2022 peak is visible. Empire Flippers’ 2022 content average converts to 3.14x; Flippa’s H1 2026 content average is 2.32x, a difference of 0.82 turns. For ecommerce the difference is 1.31 turns (2.86x against 1.55x). Different marketplaces, buyer pools and definitions mean this is not a clean time series, but the direction matches what Empire Flippers itself wrote in 2023: that 2021 was a peak and the market was normalising.
Third, SaaS is priced highest where the data is SaaS-only. Acquire.com’s 3.9x median sits 1.43 turns above Flippa’s 2.47x SaaS average. Part of that gap is the median-versus-average and net-income-versus-profit difference; part is that Acquire.com reports that profitable SaaS listings on its platform averaged a 71% profit margin in 2024 and 2025, a high-quality pool by construction.
How far apart are average and top-quartile businesses?
This is the most useful number for a solo operator, because it is the part you control. Flippa’s H1 2026 report says top-quartile assets sold at roughly 1.6x to 2.7x the category average. Recomputing each ratio from Flippa’s printed figures confirms that range.
CEOtudent analysis of Flippa H1 2026 data: top-quartile multiple divided by average multiple
| Segment | Average | Top quartile | Top quartile / average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media and community | 1.63x | 3.89x | 2.39 |
| App | 2.62x | 5.46x | 2.08 |
| Content site | 2.32x | 4.68x | 2.02 |
| Ecommerce | 1.55x | 2.75x | 1.77 |
| YouTube | 1.57x | 2.65x | 1.69 |
| SaaS | 2.47x | 4.06x | 1.64 |
| Service | 1.43x | 2.31x | 1.62 |
| Deal size $10K-$100K | 2.24x | 5.96x | 2.66 |
| Deal size $100K-$250K | 1.85x | 3.82x | 2.06 |
| Deal size $250K-$1M | 1.82x | 2.84x | 1.56 |
| Deal size $1M+ | 2.50x | 5.42x | 2.17 |
Source figures: Flippa H1 2026 Insights Report (self-reported marketplace data). Marketplace top quartile not published by Flippa due to insufficient data. Ratios computed in calc.py.
In plain terms: within the same category, the best quarter of businesses sold for roughly double the typical one. The category you are in matters less than where you sit inside it. Flippa’s own summary of what separates the two is short: clean financials, documented operations, revenue a buyer can forecast, and an honest account of AI exposure.
The smallest band ($10K-$100K) shows the widest spread. Flippa attributes the elevated sub-$100K multiples to a wider mix of high-growth, early-stage assets. For a solo operator this cuts both ways: small deals can price well, but the variance is highest exactly where most one-person businesses trade.
Why are most one-person businesses not sellable at all?
The marketplace data describes businesses that reached a marketplace and closed. Official data shows how few one-person businesses are large enough to get there.
The US Census Bureau’s Nonemployer Statistics count businesses with no paid employees that file federal taxes and have at least $1,000 in receipts. Its 2023 file counts 30,427,808 nonemployer establishments with combined receipts of about $1.75 trillion. Dividing the two gives mean receipts of about $57,611 per establishment. That is revenue, before any costs.
CEOtudent analysis of US Census Bureau Nonemployer Statistics 2023: establishments by receipts size class
| Receipts size class | All sectors | Share | Information sector (NAICS 51) share | Professional services (NAICS 54) share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $25,000 | 18,439,574 | 60.6% | 67.1% | 59.4% |
| Under $50,000 | 22,971,578 | 75.5% | 80.4% | 74.1% |
| $100,000 and over | 4,030,422 | 13.2% | 9.8% | 13.7% |
| All establishments | 30,427,808 | 100% | 399,440 total | 4,075,717 total |
Source: US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2023, US file (nonemp23us), receipts size class codes per the Census US record layout. Some Information-sector size cells are suppressed, so its shares are computed on the published total. Calculations in calc.py.
Put the two datasets side by side. Three in four US nonemployer businesses take in less than $50,000 a year in revenue. Profit is lower still. At Flippa’s 2.32x content average, a business needs about $43,103 in annual profit to reach a $100,000 sale price. Even at an impossible 100% margin, that requires revenue that only 39.4% of nonemployers reach ($25,000 or more), and the next size class up ($50,000 or more) holds just 24.5%. The pool is also growing: the Census Bureau reports that nonemployers grew an average 2.7% a year from 2012 to 2023, against 1.1% for employer businesses. Most one-person businesses are income, not assets. That is not a failure; it is a design decision that is usually made by default.
The second barrier is owner dependence. Flippa’s valuation guide lists owner time above 40 hours a week as a key-person risk and notes that smaller listings tend to be owner-dependent and less systematised, which narrows the buyer set. Flippa’s 2025 data shows services, the most people-dependent model, at the lowest average multiple of any category (1.2x). If the business is mostly the owner’s skill, a buyer is not buying a business; they are buying a job they would have to do themselves.
The passive income maintenance cost analysis is relevant here: the hours a stream really needs each week are exactly what a buyer will price in.
What does it cost to sell, and how does that change the number you keep?
The multiple is the gross number. Fees and deal structure decide the net.
Empire Flippers publishes a blended commission: a flat $10,000 up to a $66,666.66 sale price, 15% of the price up to $700,000, 8% on the amount between $700,000 and $5 million, and 2.5% above $5 million.
Flippa’s seller pricing page lists listing packages starting at $29 and states that success fees start from 5%; the success fees displayed across its asking-price tiers range from 5% to 10%.
CEOtudent analysis of Empire Flippers’ published commission schedule: effective commission at selected sale prices
| Sale price | Commission | Effective rate | Seller receives (before tax and other costs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $50,000 | $10,000 | 20.0% | $40,000 |
| $105,600 | $15,840 | 15.0% | $89,760 |
| $300,000 | $45,000 | 15.0% | $255,000 |
| $1,000,000 | $129,000 | 12.9% | $871,000 |
| $3,000,000 | $289,000 | 9.6% | $2,711,000 |
Calculated in calc.py from the schedule on the Empire Flippers scoreboard page. Escrow, legal, migration and tax costs are excluded.
The fixed minimum makes the smallest deals proportionally the most expensive. A $50,000 sale through this schedule gives up a fifth of the price.
Two more points shape the net figure. Empire Flippers reports that businesses on its marketplace sold, on average, for 86% of their listing price. And Acquire.com’s 2025 report shows how sharply pricing affects demand: listings at fair market value drew serious interest from 60% of buyers, against 30% at 5% above and 2% at 10% above; at 5% and 10% below, serious interest rose to 80% and 92%. Acquire.com also reports an average of 81 days on market across 185 reporting deals. Empire Flippers’ scoreboard shows an average sale duration of 129 days.
A worked example: what is a $4,000-a-month business worth?
Take a hypothetical one-person business with $4,000 in monthly net profit after add-backs, so $48,000 a year. Applying the published averages, not a valuation of any real company:
CEOtudent analysis: illustrative value of $48,000 annual profit at published multiples
| Multiple applied | Source | Implied price |
|---|---|---|
| 1.43x | Flippa H1 2026, service average | $68,640 |
| 1.55x | Flippa H1 2026, ecommerce average | $74,400 |
| 2.2x | Empire Flippers, typical sale average | $105,600 |
| 2.32x | Flippa H1 2026, content average | $111,360 |
| 2.47x | Flippa H1 2026, SaaS average | $118,560 |
| 3.9x | Acquire.com 2025, SaaS median | $187,200 |
| 4.68x | Flippa H1 2026, content top quartile | $224,640 |
At the Empire Flippers typical multiple, the $15,840 commission leaves $89,760, which is 1.87 years of profit. Sold as an average content site on Flippa, the 5% to 10% success fee range leaves between $100,224 and $105,792. The spread inside a single row, from average to top quartile, is larger than the spread between most categories. Same profit, very different asset.
This is also the honest answer to a common founder question. The salary-replacement timeline analysis estimates how long it takes to build independent income; this table shows that selling that income usually returns two to four years of it, once. An exit is a balance-sheet event, not a retirement plan.
What raises or lowers the multiple? A buyer’s scorecard
Each line below is tied to what a source published. The weights and the scoring are a CEOtudent editorial framework, not a pricing model.
CEOtudent editorial framework: the micro-acquisition readiness scorecard
| Driver | Pushes the multiple up | Pushes it down | Source signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner time | Under 10 hours a week; documented and delegable | Over 40 hours a week; key-person risk | Flippa valuation guide (adjustment of 0.5x-1.5x) |
| Revenue type | Over 70% recurring (MRR/ARR) | Mostly transactional | Flippa guide (1.5x-3.0x) |
| Concentration | Largest customer under 5%; under 40% from one platform | Largest customer over 20%; over 70% from one platform | Flippa guide (0.8x-1.2x) |
| Traffic sources | Four or more diversified sources | One paid source or one algorithm | Flippa guide (0.5x-1.0x); EF lists traffic diversity |
| Churn (SaaS) | Under 5% a month | Over 10% a month | Flippa guide (1.0x-2.0x); Acquire.com lists churn and net revenue retention |
| Profitability | High margins; profit proven over 12 months | Thin or volatile profit; under 12 months of history | Acquire.com (more offers at higher margins); EF 2021 (shorter history lowers valuation) |
| Age and durability | Survived several algorithm cycles | Young, untested by platform change | Flippa H1 2026 (sold content sites averaged over 10 years old); EF lists age |
| Documentation | Clean P&L, SOPs, verified data | Mixed personal and business books | Flippa H1 2026 (“proof” over demand) |
| Pricing discipline | Listed at or near fair market value | Listed 10% or more above fair value | Acquire.com 2025 (buyer interest 60% at FMV vs 2% at +10%) |
Adjustment ranges are Flippa’s published guidance for its own marketplace, not universal rules. Score each driver 0 (down column), 1 (neither) or 2 (up column); a total under 9 of 18 suggests fixing the business before listing it.
The documentation row is the cheapest to move. Our piece on the SOP renaissance covers how to write operating procedures that another person, or an agent, can follow. A single-offer business can be easier to document and transfer than a sprawling one, a trade-off examined in the one-product business.
How should a solo operator use this? A 10-point exit-readiness test
- Separate the books. Twelve months of business-only accounts. Flippa quotes a regional director saying buyers want twelve months of clean financials before they will book a call.
- Compute your own add-backs. List owner salary and one-off spending separately so a buyer can see true earnings.
- Time yourself. Log owner hours for four weeks. Over 40 a week is a priced risk.
- Map concentration. Share of revenue from the largest customer and the largest platform.
- Map traffic. Count independent traffic sources. One algorithm is one point of failure.
- Write the SOPs. Every recurring task, written so a new owner could run a normal week from the document.
- Assess AI exposure honestly. Flippa reports content-business sales fell 39% in H1 2026 while YouTube sales rose 23%. If your traffic is answerable by an AI summary, say what protects it.
- Benchmark on the right basis. Annual profit multiple, same definition of profit, same deal-size band.
- Net out the fees. Use the published schedule for the platform you would actually use.
- Price near fair value. On Acquire.com’s 2025 data, overpricing by 10% removed almost all serious interest.
The CEO reading of this list is ownership of the asset: every item turns the business from a job into something transferable. The student reading is literacy: each item is a skill, learnable in an afternoon, that most founders only learn during due diligence, which is the most expensive classroom available.
What this does not mean
- It does not value your business. Averages describe pools of deals. A specific business is priced on its own numbers, by its own buyers.
- These are not neutral statistics. Empire Flippers, Flippa and Acquire.com earn fees from transactions and publish these figures partly as marketing. Acquire.com states its data is anonymised, customer-provided information. None is independently audited.
- The categories are not one-person businesses. The marketplaces do not segment by headcount. The solo-operator reading rests on deal size and on Empire Flippers’ description of its sub-$300K listings.
- The basis differences are real. Net profit with add-backs, net income and “profit” are close but not identical. Treat differences under about half a turn as noise.
- Public market multiples are not a target. Damodaran’s 24.48x EV/EBITDA for listed software is about 6.3 times Acquire.com’s 3.9x SaaS median, but the two use different measures of earnings and value, and listed companies carry scale, liquidity and management depth that a micro-business does not. The gap is context, not a discount to close.
- Offline small business data was not used. BizBuySell’s quarterly Insight Report, the usual main-street comparison, was not accessible to automated retrieval, and its figures were not taken from secondary coverage.
Frequently asked questions
What multiple do small online businesses sell for in 2026?
On the published marketplace data, mostly between about 1.2x and 3.9x annual profit. Empire Flippers shows 2.2x for typical sales; Flippa’s H1 2026 averages run from 1.43x (services) to 3.33x (marketplaces); Acquire.com reports a 3.9x SaaS median for 2025.
Why did Empire Flippers multiples look like 30x or 40x?
They were monthly multiples, price divided by average monthly net profit. Since 8 September 2026 Empire Flippers shows annual multiples. Divide any older Empire Flippers figure by 12 to compare it.
Is SaaS always worth more than a content site?
Not by much at the average. Flippa’s H1 2026 averages are 2.47x for SaaS and 2.32x for content. The bigger difference is inside each category: top-quartile content sold at 4.68x, about double the average.
Can a one-person business be sold?
Yes, if a buyer can run it without the founder. Owner time, documentation and concentration move the price more than category does. Businesses that are mostly the owner’s own skill price lowest; services averaged 1.2x on Flippa in 2025.
How much do brokers and marketplaces charge?
Empire Flippers charges $10,000 up to a $66,666.66 sale price, then 15% up to $700,000, with lower rates above. Flippa lists listing fees from $29 and success fees from 5%, with displayed tiers up to 10%.
How long does a sale take?
Acquire.com reports 81 days on average across 185 deals in its 2025 report; Empire Flippers shows an average of 129 days on its scoreboard.
Should a seller list above market to leave room for negotiation?
Acquire.com’s 2025 data argues against it: serious buyer interest was 60% at fair market value and 2% at 10% above.
Sources
- Empire Flippers. Marketplace Scoreboard: average sale multiples, commission schedule, sale duration and percentage of list price. Accessed 8 October 2026. Broker-published data.
- Empire Flippers (Greg Elfrink). We’re Switching to Annual Multiples. 8 September 2026. Broker-published.
- Empire Flippers (Nick Chi). State of the Industry Report 2023. Broker-published report covering 1,493 deals.
- Empire Flippers. State of the Industry Report 2021. Broker-published report, valuation method and add-backs section.
- Empire Flippers. State of the Industry Report landing page (2026 edition, form-gated; figures used only as quoted in source 2).
- Flippa. The New Era of Digital M&A: Flippa’s H1 2026 Insights Report. 15 July 2026. Marketplace-published data.
- Flippa. 2025 Online Business M&A Insights from Flippa. 19 December 2025. Marketplace-published data.
- Flippa. Business Valuation Multiples by Industry: Complete Guide. 7 October 2025. Marketplace-published guidance, multiple adjustment factors table.
- Flippa. Pricing page (seller packages and success fees). Accessed 8 October 2026.
- Acquire.com. Acquisition Multiples Report 2025 (PDF). February 2026. Marketplace-published, anonymised customer-provided data.
- Acquire.com (Veronica Buratini). Acquire.com Biannual Acquisition Multiples Report (Jan 2026). 11 February 2026, updated 1 September 2026.
- Acquire.com. Acquisition Multiples Report: 2025 Findings, Webinar Recap. 20 March 2026.
- US Census Bureau. Nonemployer Statistics 2023, United States file (nonemp23us) and US record layout (receipts size class codes).
- US Census Bureau. Number of US Nonemployers Grew Faster Than Employer Businesses Nearly Every Year From 2012 to 2023. America Counts story, July 2025.
- Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern School of Business. Price to Sales Ratios and Revenue Multiples by Sector (US), data as of January 2026.
- Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern School of Business. Value to EBITDA Multiples by Sector (US), data as of January 2026.
Tables labelled “CEOtudent analysis” are original calculations from the figures in sources 1-3, 6-10, 13, 15 and 16, recomputed in a published script; the readiness scorecard is a CEOtudent editorial framework built on adjustment factors published by Flippa, Empire Flippers and Acquire.com. Deliberately not used: BizBuySell’s quarterly cash-flow multiples (primary pages blocked automated access, and secondary news coverage was not used as a substitute); per-category monthly multiples attributed to Empire Flippers by third-party blogs, which do not appear in Empire Flippers’ own reports reviewed here; and IBBA/Pepperdine main-street multiples, which were found only in secondary summaries.
This content was compiled with the support of AI following in-depth research, then written and prepared for publication by the CEOtudent editorial team.
