This page explains the methods in plain terms, so you can read a listing, prepare a sale or sanity check an offer. One honest note first. SoldComparables does not hold a database of website acquisition deals. What we have today is 128,867 recorded domain sales, and the tool that is live is domain comps for domain names. The methods below are general and apply wherever you get your deal data.
The three common methods
Earnings multiples (SDE)
For most small online businesses, SDE is the starting point. It is the profit the business produces for one owner-operator: revenue minus operating costs, with the owner's own pay and one-off expenses added back. A buyer of a content site or a small ecommerce store is effectively buying that income stream.
Value is then expressed as SDE over a period (often the last twelve months, sometimes annualised from a shorter recent period) multiplied by a factor. The factor is what everyone argues about, and it depends on the adjustments covered below. Marketplaces and brokers often state multiples on monthly profit rather than annual profit, so always check which one a listing uses before comparing two of them.
A hypothetical example, for arithmetic only: a site with 2,000 USD of average monthly SDE has 24,000 USD of annual SDE. At a hypothetical multiple of 3 times annual SDE, that is 72,000 USD. The same site quoted as "36 times monthly profit" is the same number. The multiple itself is not a market figure, it is only there to show the arithmetic.
Revenue multiples
Revenue multiples are used when profit is not a fair picture, for example a business that is reinvesting heavily, or a larger company where buyers model their own cost structure. They are common for software and subscription businesses (see SaaS valuation multiples) and less common for content sites, where costs are mostly content and hosting and profit is easy to measure.
Revenue multiples need context. Two businesses with the same revenue can have very different margins, and a revenue multiple hides that unless you look at both lines.
Comparable acquisitions
The comparable acquisitions method prices a business by looking at what similar businesses actually sold for. Similar means the same model (ads, affiliate, ecommerce, subscription), a similar size, similar traffic sources and a similar trend. For each comparable deal you want the price, the earnings or revenue at the time of sale, the implied multiple, the date and, ideally, the buyer type.
This is the same logic we use for domain names: real sales, with dates and sources, matched for similarity. It is usually the most persuasive method in a negotiation, because it answers "what would someone actually pay" instead of "what does a formula say".
The difficulty is data. Many website deals are private, and the ones that are public are often reported without full numbers. Treat any single comparable with care, and prefer a range built from several.
The adjustments that move the multiple
Two sites with the same earnings can sell for very different prices. These are the factors buyers look at most.
| Factor | Pushes value up | Pushes value down |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic concentration | Several sources (search, direct, email, social) | One source, especially one search engine or one platform |
| Revenue concentration | Several income streams or partners | One affiliate program or one ad network |
| Age | Several years of stable history | Young site, short track record |
| Trend | Steady or rising traffic and earnings | Declining traffic, recent algorithm hit |
| Owner time | Runs with little owner work, documented processes | Depends on the owner's daily work or personal brand |
| Assets | Email list, original content, strong domain name | Thin or copied content, no owned audience |
| Verifiability | Clean analytics and payment records | Earnings that cannot be confirmed |
Traffic concentration
A site that gets almost all of its visitors from one search engine carries the risk of one ranking change. Buyers discount that risk. A site with an email list and direct visitors is more resilient and usually earns a higher multiple.
Age and trend
A long, stable history reduces uncertainty. A recent spike may not last, and a recent decline worries buyers more than a flat line. Expect buyers to look at monthly figures over at least a year, not just the last few months.
Owner dependence
If the business stops when the owner stops, the buyer is buying a job, not an asset. Documented processes, freelancers already in place and automated operations all reduce that discount.
Where the domain name fits
The domain is part of the business, and for some sites it carries real weight: a short, memorable .com can support direct traffic and brand trust. But in most website deals the value comes from the earnings, and the domain is priced inside the multiple, not separately.
There are exceptions. If the domain alone would fetch more than the business, for example a premium one-word .com with a small site on it, the domain value sets a floor under the deal. That is where domain comps help. In our corpus the median recorded domain sale is 1,900 USD and 86.8 percent of recorded sales are below 5,000 USD, but premium names are in a different league: help.com sold for 3,000,000 USD on Above.com (2023-01-10) and call.com for 1,600,000 USD on Sedo (2022-08-11). If you suspect your domain is worth more than the site, check the comparable sales for it before you accept an offer.
A simple process for valuing a website
- Gather twelve months or more of revenue, costs and traffic, with records you could show a buyer.
- Calculate SDE, adding back only expenses a new owner would not have.
- Find comparable deals for the same model and size, note their multiples and dates.
- Place your site in that range using the adjustment factors above, and write down why.
- Check the domain separately if it could be worth more than the business.
- Express the result as a range, not a single figure.
How SoldComparables helps today
SoldComparables is built for domain names. For any domain it finds semantically similar sold names, scores each one from 0 to 100 with up to three reasons, and gives a low, likely and high estimate with wholesale and retail figures, a confidence level and a rationale citing the comps by name, price and date. It is a data-backed estimate, not a certified appraisal.
We do not have a database of website acquisitions, so we do not value businesses. If the domain is a meaningful part of your deal, run it through the domain appraisal tool, or see pricing for reports you can attach to a sale.