How a Health and Fitness Blog Sold on Flippa: Deal Review

Deal Summary

• Business name: <Redacted>
• Sale price: $75,000
• $3,226 /mo / $38,712 annual profit 
• 9+ years old
• Niche: Fitness/health
• It sold in 7 days, at the end of May. 

This is the story of selling my website for $75,000 in just 7 days. This site was making $3,226 per month, amounting to $38,712 in annual profit. It was a 9+ year-old site in the fitness/health niche.

I’ll cover:

• The purchase
• The improvements I made
• The selling process

The best part?

You’ll learn how I managed to achieve this even with a busy portfolio and minimal work on the site.

Let’s get started…

James Oliver Background

In 2014, I started my first WordPress website with around 10 posts. I had no idea what I was doing, but I still managed to make £2.66 from Google AdSense.

I had no tech or SEO background and was working abroad in Australia. After leaving, I travelled through Southeast Asia (again), and needed a way to make money online.

I remembered the blog I built and decided to stick with the blogging model. However, I shifted away from showing ads and focused more on affiliate marketing. Since 2017, I’ve been doing SEO and affiliate marketing full-time for the past seven years.

From those humble beginnings, I’ve built a successful affiliate marketing portfolio through SEO, getting lots of traffic from Google and organic socials. I hate paying for ads. I’ve made over $1 million in cash flow profit since starting, not counting the value of my current portfolio of affiliate sites.

Now, I’m growing my Conversion Collective community with Jamie IF from Increasing.com, building efficient SOPs, and automated workflows to maximise future freedom.

I’ve also managed to get some great domains, including Oliver.com.

Buying the Website

Funny enough, the site I just sold was one I bought on Flippa just over a year ago.

It was a great buy then and hard for me to sell now, but I made my great money during the year I had it. 

It was more of a side project for me.

Here’s the buying story:

I purchased the website on Flippa on February 28, 2023, for $69,868 USD.

I can’t see the old listing, so this is a bit of a guess. I believe it was earning around $2,200 a month. From what I remember, I got it around 30-34X, which was a decent deal at the time.

The site was 8 years old with a decent earnings history. 

The drawback was it relied heavily on 1-3 pages, which isn’t the best. 

I did a content audit, the same one I made for FREE on Gumroad, and the website passed all the tests and I found it to have potential.

Most of the pages hadn’t been touched in months or even years. So, updating content was a quick win.

I found that the top page had some paid backlinks, but they were manageable. This is key to check. If my audit can see paid backlinks, so can Google. You can get away with some, but you should always check the risks for yourself.

Also, it was on Mediavine, which was also being transferred, so it was a bonus that I could add additional websites. 

Plus, I liked the theme and wanted to clone it for my other projects.

The site had social media presence and a decent bit of traffic from Pinterest (which I didn’t touch).

The buying process went smoothly and quickly. 

I always recommend when purchasing a website, to do plenty of research, and on Flippa, filter out the noise by setting the traffic to over 1K.

From $2K to $3.5K Monthly Profit: My Side Project Improvements

From the time I had it, I managed to take it from around $2K to around $3.5K in monthly profit. Not bad for a side project that I mostly left on the backburner.

Here’s what I did:

1. Competitor Research: Reverse engineering is key to success. This doesn’t mean looking at just one website. Gather all the websites in the niche, combine the keywords, remove duplicates, and go through the list. Look for new pages or ideas you haven’t implemented yet.
2. Content Addition: After manually checking, I added new pages and tried a few affiliate pages for new products. A new affiliate program didn’t work—it was too off-topic, which was a shame, as it had great commissions. However, the other new pages did well. They were mainly supporting pages for the topical map and some affiliates. I used a writing agency at the time, and the content was SurferSEO optimized.
3. High-Commission Product: A few months in, I found a new product and added it to the top round-up review page. It had a much higher commission and sale price. 1 sale of this product equaled 100 of the top product (roughly). BIG NUMBERS. But a higher price point means fewer sales, so I placed it 2nd instead. It added a nice bonus when sold, and having it 2nd kept the consistency of my main affiliate. In fact, because the 2nd product was so high, it made the top pick look like much better value, increasing sales. (One of the biggest affiliate tips)
4. Updating Content: As mentioned, a lot of the content hadn’t been touched in a while. I believe this was when Query Hunter was released, so I smashed it for that. I highly recommend using it—it’s such a time saver and by far my favorite SEO tool last year.

That’s about it. I front-loaded the work—content updating, etc., in the first few months. 

Then I left it. 

In the last 9 months before selling, I maybe spent an hour a month, and that’s being generous. I would usually just send 1 invoice, that’s it. So, it was a decent project. It’s always good to look for sites with low friction and not too many moving pieces.

Why Did I Decide to Sell?

Even though managing the website required minimal work, I have a portfolio of 20+ websites. I’ve always built and purchased websites, and since 2021, I’ve acquired six content websites on Flippa.

However, I’m now diversifying into real estate in Bali. I’m currently acquiring land and building luxury villas, so I need to sell off some of the cash flow-generating websites, like the one mentioned today. 

Honestly, I would have kept it otherwise.

Typically, content sites earn an ROI in under three years and don’t require a lot of work to manage. But I’m hooked on this Bali villa project, and I have too many sites, so selling one was the perfect idea for risk management.

Why Flippa?

I can’t remember when I first heard about Flippa; I believe it was near the start of my journey through a Google search for marketplaces. 

It’s always a great idea to prove a concept works before trying it, and you see all the websites of differing business models being sold. 

The fact that they make money and are also able to be sold is proof it’s worth doing.

Initially, I listed the website on Empire Flippers because I thought the buyer pool for $80k+ websites was larger on that platform. However, after nearly three months with not too many buyers, I decided to give Flippa a try. 

Although I’ve bought multiple sites, I had never sold on Flippa before this deal. 

And they sold it in 7 days, which impressed me.

How Did You Determine the Value of Your Business?

Content websites are fairly easy to value. 

The multiple used to be around 30-40x their monthly earnings over the last 6-12 months. Since the recent Google updates (HCU), I would say they are around 20-30x. I sold at 23x, which isn’t what it used to be, but both the buyer and I are happy with the deal.

There are many factors to consider beyond the rough estimate I gave above, such as multiple traffic sources, multiple revenue streams, the age of the website, and increasing or declining traffic. The better these factors are, the more money and likelihood of a sale.

How Was Closing the Deal and Transferring the Asset?

Not much to talk about here. 

I had a few people initially reach out, one of them being the buyer. 

We spoke over the chat feature and had a Zoom meeting. 

A couple of days after the call, we closed the deal.

It makes life a lot easier if you have the asset separated from everything else, especially its own email and affiliate programs. The only challenge was waiting for Google to change over the phone numbers on the G Suite account. 

This was no one’s fault; we just had to wait for the process to happen.

I used Flippa Pay for the first time, and it was a much better process than Escrow. I’ve had terrible experiences with Escrow.com, and many others I know say the same thing. So, it was great trying Flippa Pay, which had zero issues and lower fees.

Financial Breakdown

Was it a success? 

• Purchase: -$69,868
• Sale: +$67,500 (minus success fee (10%) $7,500)
• Earnings: $51,917.48

Total Made: $119,417.48 | Asset Cost: $69,868 | Profit: $49,549.48

So, nearly $50K for just over a year. 

Not bad for a side project. 

I wish the buyer the best of luck; they plan to sell their own digital product, and I hope they take it to the next level.

What’s Next?

Currently, I’m building content websites and SEO software.

Now, I’m growing my Conversion Collective community with Jamie IF from Increasing.com, building efficient SOPs, and automated workflows to maximise future freedom.

I may sell some more websites at the start of next year. 

The plan is to diversify my portfolio, not just with traffic, but with different types of assets. 

Also, I’m growing my personal website, so if you want any SEO and Affiliate tips, join my newsletter at Oliver.com/newsletter. 

Cheers.