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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\u2019re 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\u2019s best to be bold.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? \u2013 Built to Sell
What CEO do you follow? \u2014 Clay Collins
Favorite online tool? \u2014 HubSpot
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\u2014No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? \u2014 I should have been bolder. I could have made bigger business moves.

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:29 \u2013 Nathan\u2019s introduction
01:50 \u2013 Empire Flippers helps people buy and sell online businesses and apps
02:05 \u2013 Their biggest sale was $550k last month
02:26 \u2013 A recent sale was Rave Aid - an Ecstasy hangover cure site
02:56 \u2013 Individual sellers are the most common listers
03:25 \u2013 $297 listing fee for the first listing and $97 for repeat listings
03:45 \u2013 Some users have portfolios of up to 60 websites that they buy and sell on a regular basis
04:15 \u2013 The listing fee acts as a filter to keep out scammers and time-wasters
04:40 \u2013 The site pivoted to brokerage in 2013
05:00 \u2013 First-year revenue was around $275k in total sites sold
05:24 \u2013 The charge a 15% fee on sales
05:38 \u2013 Use a basic algorithm to help with valuation, then look at subjective factors
06:24 \u2013 95% of revenue comes from the 15% brokerage fee
06:50 \u2013 Made $4.56 million in sales on 176 deals in 2015
07:30 \u2013 In April 2016, made $1 million in sales - meaning $150k in revenue to Empire Flipper
09:04 \u2013 How did Justin start Empire Flippers?
09:56 \u2013 \u201cWe realised there was a huge market of people looking for mini-businesses\u201d
10:09 \u2013 In April 2016, between 20 and 30 sellers listed their businesses for sale
11:05 \u2013 About 15-20 of those sites were sold
11:28 \u2013 About half of the buyers are repeat buyers and half are unique
11:45 \u2013 The average deal size is $76k
12:24 \u2013 They\u2019ve sold well over 1000 sites since their inception
13:35 \u2013 How do Empire Flippers value a site?
14:30 \u2013 The business is entirely bootstrapped
15:00 \u2013 At the beginning of creating an investor program to bring people with lots of money and no time into the site
13:30 \u2013 Connect with Justin on Twitter or at the Empire Flippers blog
18:55 \u2013 The Famous Five

3 Key Points:
Be bold. Forge your own path - don\u2019t 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible \u2013 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