Empire Flippers review: fees, vetting and how a sale works (2026)

What Empire Flippers is and who it’s for

Empire Flippers is a vetted broker with its own marketplace. It checks each business before listing it, sets the price with you, finds the buyer, holds the money and runs the move to the new owner. You don’t deal with tire-kickers; it does.

It is not for small sites. According to Empire Flippers’ sell page, you need “An online business that makes $24,000 per year or more in net profit” with “at least 12 months of revenue/earnings”. Ad and affiliate sites “must be on the same domain for the previous 12 months”. Service or client businesses must get over 50% of income from multiple clients.

It turns away pornography, gambling, payday loans, hacking and illegal substances. The sell page shows 2,682 deals sold.

Its 2026 State of the Industry report shows what actually sells there. In 2025, Amazon FBA businesses were 36.1% of deals, display advertising sites 13.3%, direct-to-consumer ecommerce 9.6%, YouTube channels 8.4% and dropshipping stores 5.4%.

Right for: owners of profitable content sites, Amazon FBA brands, ecommerce stores, YouTube channels and similar businesses who want a broker to run the sale and can wait a few months.

Fees, with the math on a $10,000 and a $100,000 sale

There is no listing fee. Empire Flippers’ seller FAQ says: “if we can’t sell your business you don’t have to pay anything.” When it sells, the commission runs in tiers:

The flat $10,000 works as a minimum. It equals 15% of $66,666.66, so from there up to $700,000 you pay 15% of the whole price.

• $10,000 sale: the fee would be the full $10,000, so you would keep nothing. In practice a site that small wouldn’t qualify. Empire Flippers prices listings at 12 months of net profit times a multiple “ranging from 1.7X to 5X+”, so a business at the $24,000 minimum lists from about $40,800 (1.7 x $24,000).
• $100,000 sale: 15% x $100,000 = $15,000. You keep $85,000.
• For scale: a $50,000 sale pays the flat $10,000 (20%), and a $1,000,000 sale pays $105,000 on the first $700,000 plus 8% of $300,000 ($24,000), or $129,000.

Empire Flippers says it offers migration “for all of our sellers” and holds the buyer’s money itself, and it publishes no separate fee for either. There is no third-party escrow bill.

Buyers pay no published fee. The cost to a buyer is the deposit, covered below, and the money tied up while the move happens.

How a sale works at Empire Flippers

1. Vetting. Empire Flippers checks the business. Its sell page says any site with “fake SEO, IG/Facebook/Twitter followers, etc.” is denied, and it looks for manipulation such as penalizations, deleted accounts and 301 redirects.
2. Pricing and listing. It sets the asking price from the last 12 months of net profit times a multiple. Inventory or other assets can be added on top.
3. Exclusivity. The seller FAQ says: “We ask for at least 2 months exclusivity to list and sell your online business.” After that you can de-list or stay listed.
4. Buyer checks. Buyers verify their ID and show proof of funds before they can open a listing’s details.
5. Offer and deposit. An accepted offer is held with a down payment of “at least 10% or $9,900 (whichever is greater)”. Other buyers then get 24 hours to counter, and counters must be at least 10% higher. Buy Now takes the same 10% or $9,900, which the buying-process page calls non-refundable.
6. Full payment. The buyer usually pays the rest within 7 business days by wire, ACH (US banks), QuickPay, Wise or crypto (BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC).
7. Migration. Empire Flippers’ migration team moves the business. Its migrations page says this “can take between three to eight weeks, with an Amazon FBA business tending to be on the longer side.”
8. Payout. The seller FAQ says “From sale to seller payment, expect the process to take 1-3 weeks on average.” That figure comes from a different page than the 3 to 8 week migration estimate, so plan for the longer one.

The sell page gives an average time to sale of 130 days. Its 2026 State of the Industry report puts average days on market at 101.8 in 2025, down from 109.5 in 2024.

What your business will list for

Empire Flippers’ valuation tool uses one formula: 12 months of total net profit times a multiple, typically 1.7 to 5 or more. Smaller businesses are priced on SDE (seller’s discretionary earnings, which is profit with the owner’s own pay added back), larger ones on EBITDA. A yearly multiple of 1.7 to 5 equals roughly 20 to 60 times average monthly profit.

Its 2026 report gives 2025 averages by deal size: 22.42x for deals under $300,000, 26.69x from $300,000 to $1 million and 35.09x over $1 million. The report’s average listing multiples (monthly) by quality were 13.7x for distressed, 27.8x for typical and 31.1x for premium businesses.

So a site making $2,000 a month in net profit would list near $55,600 at the typical 27.8x. The fee there is still the flat $10,000, or about 18%. Our website valuation guide covers what pushes a multiple up or down.

Vetting, escrow and protections

Vetting is the main thing you pay for. Empire Flippers “may reject a business we deem as being unfit for our marketplace, or if we don’t believe we have the buyer pool”, and two or more instances of manipulation mean immediate rejection. It publishes no acceptance rate.

During migration, “Empire Flippers holds the funds like an escrow account”. That isn’t a third-party escrow company such as Escrow.com; the broker itself holds the money. Buyers can choose an “exclusive due diligence period”, but the page doesn’t say how long it lasts.

After the sale, the protection ends. The buyer FAQ says “All sales are final and we make no guarantees, expressed or implied.” Each buyer is responsible for their own due diligence, and no refund for a failed migration is published.

For a buyer, that means the checks before the deposit matter most. Read the listing’s profit and loss by month, ask for access to the analytics and income dashboards, and look at where the traffic comes from. Our buying checklist lists what to request.

Gotchas

• The $10,000 floor is steep for small deals. On a $40,800 sale it is 24.5% of the price. Under about $66,667 you pay more than 15%.
• Two months locked in. You can’t list elsewhere during the first 2 months.
• Deposit rules differ by route. The current page calls the Buy Now deposit non-refundable but doesn’t say the same for the offer deposit. Ask before you pay.
• Time. 130 days on average to sell, then 3 to 8 weeks of migration. Your site has to keep performing the whole time, because buyers see the latest numbers.
• Final means final. Once the money is released, problems are between you and the other party.

The 3-year view for a buyer

The purchase price is only the start. Whoever buys the site pays to run it. For a small WordPress content site, our site-wide baseline is $432.60 over three years: Bluehost Starter at $3.99 a month on a 36-month term ($143.64, renewing at $9.99 a month), $36.96 in domain renewals and $252 for one Google Workspace inbox. Writers, tools and paid plugins come on top.

Check what moves. Empire Flippers does the migration, but the platform decides how much of the site can leave later. Self-hosted WordPress scores 10/10 on our exit scores; Shopify scores 5/10. See moving your website for what a handover involves.

Who should use Empire Flippers, who should not

Use it if your business clears $24,000 a year in net profit with 12 months of history, and you want a broker to vet, price, sell and move it. Buyers who want listings that someone has already screened, with funds held during the move, also fit well.

Skip it if your site earns less than that, if you need cash fast, or if a 15% to 24.5% fee on a mid-size sale feels too high for the service. Those sellers should compare Flippa and Motion Invest.

Alternatives

• Flippa vs Empire Flippers: the two compared on the same sale.
• Motion Invest: content sites, 20% under $20,000 falling to 5% over $500,000, with a fast direct-buy option.
• Acquire.com: SaaS and apps, 6% to 8% at closing.
• Every option side by side: buy and sell websites.