How Long Does it Take to Sell a Site? A Few Motion Invest Statistics…

Motion Invest launched almost exactly 2 years ago!

The business that was launched is not the business that Motion Invest is today.  In today's post, I want to share what has changed for Motion Invest and how the business currently operates.

I've also been asked questions, like “How many of the sites listed actually get sold?”  I'll answer that question and several others today.

I also want to open up the ledger a little bit and share some of the numbers behind the numbers.  I think these statistics will be interesting for anyone interested in buying or selling websites and what the trends look like over time.

The Evolution of Motion Invest

In the brief history of Motion Invest, we've “pivoted” a couple of times.

We initially thought that having a “membership” type site where potential buyers had to pay $29 a month to view all listings was the way to go.  However, in the early stages of a business where you don't have a ton of listings, people aren't very willing to sign up for a monthly subscription.

We quickly removed this paywall and it's now free to view all the listings, including the domain names, with a free email signup.

In addition, we were exclusively focused on buying sites off-market ourselves and then selling the sites we had purchased on the Motion Invest marketplace.

This worked to a degree.  And we still buy sites directly from time to time.

However, about a year ago we decided that following the traditional broker model where sellers list their sites (after we vet them) and pay a small brokerage fee actually had less friction.

As a result, we now have a vibrant marketplace of buyers and selling making acquisitions for vetted content sites.

We have a team that vets each site to verify traffic and earnings before it goes live on the marketplace.

The other interesting that has happened?

We were initially focused (and still are) on the smaller end of the market.  Our initial plan was to buy and sell content sites valued at under $50,000.

However, more and more sellers have come to us wanted to sell their sites valued at over $100k.  As a result, we've now done a number of transactions over 6 figures.

We are still a very small broker with these numbers, we get it.  But we feel like we are serving the smaller end of the market that has often been neglected by larger brokers.

We look forward to continuing to focus on smaller content sites (whatever the true definition of “small” content sites is). 

Success Rate of Sites Listed on Motion Invest

What percentage of sites listed on Motion Invest actually get sold?

We happen to keep detailed data on just about everything.  

In other words, listed sites have a 96.43% success rate!

The reason for such a high success rate?  We have a strong vetting process where we reject lots of sites that are not a good fit or don't meet our quality guidelines.

As a buyer, you can know that the sites that are actually listed are those sites that met all our internal criteria.  We reject more sites than we list.

A Few Interesting Statistics

How long does it take from when you submit your site for review on Motion Invest to when it actually gets listed for sale?  Obviously, that can vary a lot depending on whether you submitted everything we need upfront, etc.

• 5 to 7 days to get a site listed on average

We've improved our turnaround time quite a bit.  When we initially launched, it would take us closer to 12 to 14 days to get all the necessary vetting and documentation in place before we listed a site.

Now you can expect that the vetting and listing process will take around 5 to 7 days on average.  

• 11.1 days to sell a site on average

Over the past 2 years, it takes 11.1 days on average for a site to sell on Motion Invest.  We have lots of sites that sell in 1 or 2 days.  However, some of the larger sites can take a little bit longer.

• 35.5x monthly multiple

So, on average sites have sold for 35.5 times their monthly earnings.

The highest monthly multiple a site was sold for on Motion Invest was 90x!  However, that was for a very small site only making $20 a month, so it's an outlier for sure. (Although there have been several sites sell for more than 50x; all on the smaller side).

The lowest multiple a site was sold for is 17x.

Again this is an outlier on a smaller site.

How does it work?

The process for getting your site listed on Motion Invest is fairly straightforward.  Simply go to the Sell Your Site page here and follow the instructions.

This will allow you to get a free valuation of your site and officially list your site on Motion Invest, should you chose to move forward.

You will be asked what type of site you have and how it is monetized.  Then you'll be asked to provide screenshots or other income proof of how much money you are making through Amazon Associates, display ads, or whatever.

Getting the income screenshots is honestly the hardest part of getting your site submitted.

Once submitted, you will immediately get a price we would pay to buy your site directly AND how much you could expect to sell your site for if you listed it on the Motion Invest Marketplace.

Here's an example of what you will see when you submit your site for sale:

As you can see from this example above, Motion Invest is offering to buy the site directly for $3,600.  We close quickly (usually sending money within 48 hours) if you decide to sell the site directly to Motion Invest.

Or we give you the estimated sales price of $4,335 if you were to sell on the Motion Invest Marketplace.  This usually requires only about an hour of your own time to get it ready for sale, and we do the rest.  There are no listing fees, but we do charge a brokerage fee if it sells (fee varies depending on the size of the site).

We then compare to what you can expect to sell the site for on Flippa or Empire Flippers.  

Flippa requires much more of your own time to get the listing ready (since you are self-listing everything there).  There is also a $49 listing fee and other success fees on Flippa.

This particular site example is too small to sell on Empire Flippers.

If you decide to list your site, the information you submitted will then be vetted by our internal team at Motion Invest with follow up questions as needed.  If your site passes our vetting process, it will go live in 5 to 7 days typically.

Motion Invest is Moving Forward

Overall, we are continuing to move forward at Motion Invest making it faster and easier to sell your “smaller” niche sites.

We are dipping our toes into selling some six-figure sites, but expect that we will remain at the lower end of the market for the foreseeable future.  This is really why we started the business and feel like there are lots of “smaller” site sellers that appreciate the focus here.

The business has evolved a lot in the last 2 years, and we look forward to seeing what the next 2 years bring.