Justin Cooke, the co-founder and CMO of Empire Flippers - a brokerage platform that makes buying and selling websites incredible easy. After experimenting with website creation, Justin and his partner pivoted into brokerage in 2013 - and they’re handling millions in sales every year. Listen in to learn how the professionals value a website, how much the average site sells for, and why it’s best to be bold.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Built to Sell
What CEO do you follow? — Clay Collins
Favorite online tool? — HubSpot
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?—No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? — I should have been bolder. I could have made bigger business moves.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:29 – Nathan’s introduction
01:50 – Empire Flippers helps people buy and sell online businesses and apps
02:05 – Their biggest sale was $550k last month
02:26 – A recent sale was Rave Aid - an Ecstasy hangover cure site
02:56 – Individual sellers are the most common listers
03:25 – $297 listing fee for the first listing and $97 for repeat listings
03:45 – Some users have portfolios of up to 60 websites that they buy and sell on a regular basis
04:15 – The listing fee acts as a filter to keep out scammers and time-wasters
04:40 – The site pivoted to brokerage in 2013
05:00 – First-year revenue was around $275k in total sites sold
05:24 – The charge a 15% fee on sales
05:38 – Use a basic algorithm to help with valuation, then look at subjective factors
06:24 – 95% of revenue comes from the 15% brokerage fee
06:50 – Made $4.56 million in sales on 176 deals in 2015
07:30 – In April 2016, made $1 million in sales - meaning $150k in revenue to Empire Flipper
09:04 – How did Justin start Empire Flippers?
09:56 – “We realised there was a huge market of people looking for mini-businesses”
10:09 – In April 2016, between 20 and 30 sellers listed their businesses for sale
11:05 – About 15-20 of those sites were sold
11:28 – About half of the buyers are repeat buyers and half are unique
11:45 – The average deal size is $76k
12:24 – They’ve sold well over 1000 sites since their inception
13:35 – How do Empire Flippers value a site?
14:30 – The business is entirely bootstrapped
15:00 – At the beginning of creating an investor program to bring people with lots of money and no time into the site
13:30 – Connect with Justin on Twitter or at the Empire Flippers blog
18:55 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Be bold. Forge your own path - don’t be afraid to ignore what other people are doing.
Be willing to pivot as better markets reveals themselves
Listing fees and barriers to entry can add value to your business by keeping out tire-kickers and time-wasters
Resources Mentioned:
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives