Multiples for content/newsletter/media deals?
January 29, 2025
by a searcher from Ryerson University - Ted Rogers School of Management in Toronto, ON, Canada
Has anyone got any data on recent Multiples for content/newsletter/media deals with mid-6 or low 7 figures earnings?
one industry insider told me they are as low as 2X right now, due to the threat of AI; has anyone else seen different?
in Toronto, ON, Canada
If you look at Empire Flippers or Flippa, they tend to use multiples of *monthly* numbers and they can range from 12X to 24X (monthly)
"Content / newsletter" is a big net, and while the two often occur within the same property, the economics of each channel are very different.
If 90% of your traffic is to the website through search engines or a few large referrers (Reddit, etc) and your monetization method is PPC - you have to worry about AI and search engine use being in secular decline.
If the newsletter component is large and with a decent open rate, you can worry less about that and make the focus of your content site to be your top-of-funnel to get newsletter opt-ins. This is my preferred way to go to the point where I've turned ad networks like Ezoic off entirely and minimized the Google placements so as to not degrade the customer experience. Keep them on the site, get the opt-in.
If the newsletter becomes the focus, they usually get valued on a per-subscriber basis. One guy I was talking to before the holidays sold one of his financial related newsletters at 1X revenues + $1/per subscriber.
from Southern Oregon University in Portland, OR, USA