Empire Flippers

This Week in M&A Issue #257

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:11:58 +0000

Hey ghouls and gals!

Today’s trend of the week is “Hobbyween”.

Halloween isn’t just about costumes and candy anymore. For some shoppers, it’s becoming a chance to pick up a new hobby.

Americans are expected to spend a record $13.5 billion on Halloween this year, up from $13.1 billion in 2025.

A growing interest in hands-on, offline activities has given rise to “Hobbyween”. Michaels reported that searches for Halloween crochet kits jumped 583% year over year, while searches for analog hobbies increased 136%.

Selling craft kits, DIY projects, hobby supplies, and other products that give consumers something to make or do is a trick that could make Halloween a treat for online sellers.

Today we have for you:

Amazon expands Seller Central beyond Amazon
Shopify lets AI Agents complete purchases

And:

The AI opportunities eCommerce owners are missing
Google begins its fourth Spam Update of 2026
How to check if AI can find your content

Alright, let’s dive in.

Amazon

Image Source: Giphy (Juan Billy)

Amazon Adds New AI, Lending and Fulfillment Features

Amazon used Amazon Accelerate 2026 to announce a long list of new features aimed at making it easier for sellers to run their businesses across multiple channels.

One of the biggest changes is an expansion of Seller Central beyond Amazon. Amazon says more than 95% of independent sellers sell across multiple channels, so the new tools are designed to bring more of that activity into one dashboard.

Sellers can connect other ecommerce accounts, import and link listings, view orders from different channels, and fulfill them through Amazon. They can also continue using their own warehouses or third-party fulfillment providers. The tools will roll out gradually over the coming months at no additional cost.

Amazon is also expanding Seller Assistant, its AI tool for merchants. It will monitor areas including inventory, pricing, advertising, demand and compliance, and, with permission, prepare or take actions for sellers.

That could give Amazon a much broader view of a merchant’s business, particularly when sales data from platforms such as Shopify, Walmart, TikTok and eBay is connected.

Amazon is also expanding its fulfillment network beyond its own marketplace. U.S. merchants using Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) can now offer fast, free Prime delivery on their own websites at no additional cost beyond standard MCF fees.

Customers don’t need an Amazon account or to change how they check out. Merchants keep their existing payment, customer service, and return processes, while Amazon verifies Prime eligibility after checkout and handles fulfillment.

Finally, Amazon says Amazon Lending will open to every seller by the end of 2026, removing the invitation requirement. New options include lines of credit and SBA 7(a) loans of up to $5 million, with sellers potentially able to use multiple financing products for different needs.

For now, these features are limited to the U.S., but Amazon says it plans to add more channels and capabilities.

The Opportunity podcast

What AI Can Really Do for Your Ecommerce Business

AI can do a lot for your ecommerce business. But are you using it for the things that actually matter?

In this episode of The Opportunity Podcast, we sit down with Eric Bidinger, Co-founder and CEO of Luca AI, a tool that uses AI to analyze business data and help entrepreneurs identify opportunities to improve their businesses.

We dig into where AI is actually useful for ecommerce owners, from finding hidden profit opportunities and operational inefficiencies to analyzing inventory, margins, and cash flow.

We also discuss how AI could change the way ecommerce businesses approach growth capital, why small operational improvements can have a surprisingly large impact on profitability, and what happens when everyone has access to the same AI tools.

If you’re trying to figure out where AI can actually make a difference in your ecommerce business, this episode is definitely worth a listen.

eCommerce

AI Agents Can Now Complete Shopify Purchases

Shopify is making it easier for AI agents to do something that previously required a human shopper: complete an online purchase.

On September 28, Shopify announced that browser-based AI agents can now handle checkout on eligible Shopify stores, including purchases made through Shop Pay.

Shopify already allowed these agents to search products, check inventory, and add items to carts through WebMCP. The new update extends that functionality into checkout with three tools:

get_checkout lets an agent read the current checkout.
update_checkout lets it update details such as a delivery address or shipping option.
complete_checkout allows it to submit the order after the shopper approves it.

The shopper still stays in control. They must review the order and total and authorize the purchase before it can be completed. Login requirements, 3D Secure challenges, and certain checkout extensions can also hand control back to the shopper. Agents can’t add or change products through these checkout tools.

There are some limitations. Standard three-page checkout supports WebMCP only with Shop Pay, while B2B, embedded, mobile SDK, draft order, and several other checkout types are excluded. The tools currently work in Chromium-based browsers.

Shopify is also expanding AI shopping partnerships. Meta’s Muse can shop and check out through Shop Pay, while Instinct supports product discovery, checkout, and order updates.

For merchants, this makes accurate product data, pricing, availability, policies, and checkout information increasingly important as more shopping happens through AI interfaces.

Read All About It!

13 startup grants to help you grow your business: fuel your business

Revenue-generating business idea database: 3K+ real, profitable projects

OpenAI launches Dots: autonomous AI assistant for complex tasks

One change took this founder’s app from $100/month to $10k: product pivot

Google

Google Rolls Out a Longer-Than-Usual Spam Update

Google has started rolling out its fourth spam update of 2026, and this one comes with an unusually long timeline.

The September 2026 spam update began on September 24 at 09:15 PDT and applies globally across all languages. Google says the rollout could take up to two weeks, potentially running until around October 8.

That’s a much longer timeline than previous updates. March took 19.5 hours, June took about two days, and August took two days and 16 hours.

The impact is already showing up in search results. Search Engine Roundtable reported significant ranking drops across sites in different industries and countries, as well as increased ranking volatility between September 25 and 27, with several tracking tools showing particularly high movement on Saturday.

Google has not said what specific spam tactics this update targets. Early observations from SEO professionals have pointed to highly templated and programmatically generated pages, including some content produced at scale with AI. These are observations from the SEO community, not confirmed details from Google.

The policies also apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, which Google explicitly clarified in May. Practices such as scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse can affect visibility in these AI-powered search experiences too.

For site owners, it is too early to draw conclusions from a few days of data, as rankings may continue changing throughout the rollout. If traffic has dropped since September 24, monitor Search Console and wait for the update to finish before assessing the full impact.

AI & SEO

A Simple Test for AI Content Retrieval

AI search introduces a new problem for website owners: Can AI systems actually find and retrieve your content?

Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools provide detailed information about how pages are discovered and indexed, but there is no equivalent reporting for many AI search systems.

SEO consultant Chris Green suggests a simple workaround: test whether a chatbot can retrieve a page using an exact snippet from its content.

The process is straightforward. Copy a distinctive passage from a page and ask a chatbot with search capabilities to return results containing that exact text. If the chatbot returns your URL and correctly attributes the passage to your page, that suggests the content is available through one of the search sources it uses.

If the page does not appear, there are several technical issues worth investigating. The page may not be discoverable through your site or sitemap, could be blocked by security tools or robots.txt, may not be crawlable, or could have indexing issues such as a noindex directive or canonical pointing elsewhere. The content may also be too generic to stand out in the underlying search results.

There is an important limitation: this is not a replacement for Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, or server logs. AI systems can use different sources, and a single test does not prove that a page is consistently retrievable. Green recommends testing several times with different snippets.

Most importantly, retrieval is only the first step. A page being retrievable does not mean an AI system will cite it or send traffic to it. If the content can be retrieved but is rarely surfaced, factors such as topical authority, content quality, and competition become more important.

Money Nomad

Looking for a side hustle?

Try Money Nomad, our sister marketplace built specifically for profitable side hustles and micro-businesses that are too small for Empire Flippers.

Check out this recent listing available on the Money Nomad Marketplace:

Listing #10180 – $22,500.00

affiliate, display ads | travel

This portfolio of three established WordPress travel sites focuses on destination-driven storytelling and practical guides, generating $1,984/month in revenue through affiliate marketing (40%), display ads (38%), sponsored content, and digital products. The flagship site centers on a French city and boasts over 7,000 email subscribers with an impressive 50% open rate. Learn More

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This Week in M&A Issue #256

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 08:05:32 +0000

Hey champ!

Today’s trend of the week is “school supplies”.

Back-to-school shopping kicked into high gear in August.

According to the latest Shopify data shared with Retail Brew, sales of label clips jumped 606%, while graphic calculators were up 56% and kids’ desks rose 47%. Desk calendars increased 31%, while sticky notes climbed 25%.

This creates opportunities to target specific back-to-school needs with focused products, bundles, or niche ecommerce stores.

There’s also potential to reduce the seasonality. With the right design and positioning, products such as desk calendars, sticky notes, and organizational supplies can appeal to adults as well as students, opening up opportunities to sell into the office and home workspace markets year-round.

These products are lightweight and cheap to produce, so it could be worth doing a little homework on these categories.

Today we have for you:

Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse from its marketplace
Google brings AI checkout to Shopify stores

And:

Case study: What if sites charged AI Agents to crawl them?
Amazon sellers face new $1m insurance rules
Why you shouldn’t recommend your most expensive product

Alright, let’s dive in.

Amazon

Image Source: Giphy (HBOMax)

Amazon and Meta Fight Over Who Controls AI Shopping

Amazon has blocked Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, from accessing its marketplace.

Muse launched on September 8 as a personal AI agent that can handle multi-step tasks, including shopping. When a website doesn’t offer a direct API, Muse can browse it using credentials provided by the user.

The agent has already reached the top of Apple’s App Store rankings, passing ChatGPT just 10 days after launch.

Amazon has asked Meta to remove Amazon.com from Muse’s shopping experience. Users trying to access Amazon through Muse now see a message saying that unauthorized AI agents violate Amazon’s Conditions of Use.

Amazon says Meta didn’t tell it Muse would access Amazon and that the agent doesn’t identify itself as an AI agent while browsing. It also raised concerns about access to customer accounts, order histories, and sensitive credentials.

Meta says Muse cannot see users’ passwords or payment information, which are stored securely for the agent to use.

There’s an obvious irony here. Amazon is objecting to Muse doing something its own AI shopping agent, Buy for Me, does to other retailers.

Buy for Me lets Amazon customers purchase products from brands that don’t sell on Amazon, with Amazon completing the transaction in the background. Some retailers only discovered the feature when their products appeared in the Amazon app. Amazon has confirmed that retailers who want to opt out must email the company.

Amazon has also taken other steps to limit third-party AI shopping. It sued Perplexity over its Comet shopping agent, while also making order confirmation emails less detailed to reduce information that AI systems could scrape.

Meanwhile, Shopify has taken a vastly different approach, announcing a partnership with Meta to support Muse-powered checkout through Shop Pay.

None of this appears to be slowing consumer adoption. PYMNTS estimates that around 132 million Americans have made a retail purchase with AI assistance, while 22% now start online retail research in an AI tool.

ecommerce

Shopify Merchants Can Now Sell Through Google AI

Google is making it possible for Shopify merchants to sell products directly through its AI tools.

Eligible Shopify stores can now let customers discover products in Google AI Mode and the Gemini app, then complete their purchase without being sent to the merchant’s website.

The feature uses Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which is designed to let AI tools interact with ecommerce systems. That includes finding products, checking availability, placing orders, and handling parts of the post-purchase process.

For shoppers, the experience is pretty straightforward. A product can show up during an AI conversation, and the customer can click to buy, use their shipping and payment details, and check out without leaving the AI experience.

There’s an important detail for Shopify merchants, though. Direct checkout is turned on by default for eligible stores. Merchants can switch it off if they would rather send customers to their own website to complete the purchase.

The rollout is currently limited to eligible Shopify stores based in the U.S. that sell to U.S. customers. Stores also need a valid Google Merchant Center account and must meet Google’s other requirements. The feature is still rolling out, so it won’t be available to every store or shopper yet.

That gives merchants another thing to think about. Product information, pricing, inventory, shipping policies, and other store data need to work well in places where customers may never visit the merchant’s website.

It also raises a practical question: what happens to the customer relationship when an AI platform sits between the shopper and the store?

case study

What Happens When AI Agents Have to Pay for Web Content?

What if AI agents had to pay a tiny fee every time they read a page on your website?

That’s what SEO consultant Suganthan Mohanadasan decided to test. He added a one-cent charge to pages on his site, then watched to see whether an AI agent would pay for access.

When an agent requests a protected page, the website returns an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response. The agent can then pay one cent in USDC and receive the content.

He ran the experiment five times, including one test where Claude Code paid for access. The payments were made with testnet USDC, so no real money changed hands, but the transactions were recorded on the blockchain.

It’s a small experiment, but it raises an interesting question as AI agents consume more web content.

Today, publishers generally have a few options. They can allow AI crawlers to access their content for free, block them, or work with AI companies on licensing deals.

Pay-per-crawl offers another possibility: charge AI agents directly for access.

The system uses x402, a protocol that gives HTTP 402 a practical way to handle payments. An agent requests a page, the site tells it how much access costs, the agent pays, and the site delivers the content once the payment goes through.

Cloudflare is also working on this idea with tools including Pay Per Crawl and its Monetization Gateway.

There are still plenty of questions. Regular search crawlers aren’t currently arriving with wallets, and this particular experiment used testnet funds. It also doesn’t solve the bigger issue of how much a piece of content should be worth.

But the basic idea is pretty straightforward: instead of trying to figure out how much an AI company owes a publisher after using its content, websites could potentially set a price upfront and let AI agents decide whether the content is worth paying for.

Read All About It!

Super niche businesses making millions in 2026: founder insights

Building a $20K/month SaaS business: what it really looks like

Top 100 most visited websites in the world: how web traffic has changed

Best SaaS affiliate programs in 2026: earn repeat revenue from your content

sales

The Best Product to Recommend May Not Be Your Most Expensive

If you have a few pricing options on your website, you might want to think twice before putting a “Recommended” label on the most expensive one.

New research looked at how people respond to product recommendations and found that the most expensive option isn’t always the one customers are most likely to choose when it gets the recommendation.

Across eight experiments involving more than 6,200 people, researchers tested how different recommendation strategies affected buying decisions.

In one experiment, participants were choosing between drinks at different price points. When the mid-priced drink was labeled as recommended, sales of that option increased by 58%.

The researchers also found that people were 24% more interested in buying when the cheapest option was recommended. When the most expensive option was recommended, purchase interest fell by 8%.

Why?

People know businesses have a financial incentive to sell more expensive products. So when a company recommends its priciest option, customers may wonder whether the recommendation is actually about what’s best for them or simply what makes the business more money.

A cheaper recommendation can come across as more genuine for that reason.

How you frame the recommendation matters, too. Instead of simply saying “Recommended,” labels based on customer behavior, such as “Bestseller,” can provide a more objective reason for choosing an option.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should stop selling premium products. It’s more a reminder that customers pay attention to why you’re recommending something, not just what you recommend.

Amazon

Amazon Makes Insurance Mandatory for More Sellers

Thinking of selling on Amazon? New insurance rules could make some product categories more expensive for sellers, even if they’re just getting started.

Amazon is changing when some sellers need product liability insurance.

Starting November 2, 2026, sellers on Amazon with products in categories subject to enhanced safety requirements will need at least $1 million in commercial liability coverage, regardless of how much they sell. The requirement applies to both new and existing listings.

The affected categories include children’s products, cosmetics and ingestible products, and lithium battery products, among others.

Previously, Amazon generally required sellers to obtain insurance within 30 days after exceeding $10,000 in gross sales in a single month, although Amazon could request coverage earlier. The $1 million minimum itself is not changing. The important change is what triggers the requirement.

That means a seller can have a product that generates very little revenue, or no meaningful sales at all, and still need insurance simply because of the category it is listed in.

For smaller sellers, that adds another fixed cost before a product has proven demand. It also makes product classification more important, since Amazon’s categorization can determine whether a listing falls under the new requirement.

Amazon says the change is intended to protect customers and sellers from financial losses related to product incidents.

Money Nomad

Looking for a side hustle?

Try Money Nomad, our sister marketplace built specifically for profitable side hustles and micro-businesses that are too small for Empire Flippers.

Check out this recent listing available on the Money Nomad Marketplace:

Listing #10170 – $15,000.00

display ads, affiliate, digital product| lifestyle, crafts & DIY

A 16-year-old natural essential oil lifestyle brand generating $290/month profit through display ads, affiliates, and digital products. Features 503 Page-1 Google rankings, 10,000 email subscribers with 25%+ open rates, and 250,000+ monthly Pinterest views. Learn More

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This Week in M&A Issue #255

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:17:49 +0000

Happy Friday!

Today’s trend of the week is “trail running”.

Trail running is officially having a moment.

Google searches for “trail running shoes” hit an all-time high in June, while 17.2 million Americans took part in trail running in 2025. That’s a 6.6% increase from the previous year and a 57% jump since 2019.

And the spending isn’t stopping at shoes. Hydration vests have some of the highest attachment rates to trail footwear, while clothing, socks, packs, gaiters, and trekking poles are all part of the growing trail-running ecosystem.

That creates some interesting opportunities. There’s room to build businesses around trail-running gear and accessories, but also around content and niche communities that help people get into the sport.

Today we have for you:

Amazon DSP Ads are coming to ChatGPT
Google tests paying publishers for AI answers

And:

eCommerce return rates by product category
We’re giving away free tickets to Affiliate Grand Slam
Microsoft wants businesses to turn data into Ad revenue

Alright, let’s dive in.

Amazon

Image Source: Giphy (Jimmy Arca)

Amazon Launches DSP Ad Inventory in ChatGPT

Amazon Ads and OpenAI have launched a US pilot that lets selected advertisers extend campaigns they already run through Amazon DSP into ChatGPT. The pilot launched on September 10.

Advertisers can manage campaigns through Amazon, while OpenAI controls how and where ads appear within ChatGPT.

Ads can be bought on a cost-per-click or CPM basis. Amazon is also testing product feed ads, which can automatically create ad assets using information from an advertiser’s product catalog. The ads appear beneath relevant organic ChatGPT responses and are clearly labeled as sponsored.

For advertisers, the appeal is less about adding another advertising platform and more about reaching people while they actively research and compare options. Someone planning a home renovation, for example, could encounter a relevant product ad while using ChatGPT to find DIY advice or design options.

Amazon is bringing a lot of useful data to the party. Amazon says its advertising technology can use signals from browsing, shopping, and streaming activity alongside its existing advertising relationships. That gives Amazon another way to apply its audience data outside its own properties.

There are still limitations, though. OpenAI’s ad business is relatively new, with measurement, technology, pricing, and available ad formats still developing. The Amazon partnership gives advertisers another established buying channel, but it doesn’t solve those underlying challenges.

The deal fits into Amazon’s broader push to make more premium digital inventory available through its advertising platform. Over the past 18 months, Amazon has added access to inventory across services including Netflix, Roku, Spotify, SiriusXM, Disney, Hulu and ESPN.

For now, the pilot is limited to selected US advertisers, so there’s still limited data on how the channel will perform at scale.

Google

Google Tests Pay-Per-Value AI Licensing Scheme for Publishers

Google is testing a new way to pay publishers when their content helps power AI-generated answers.

The early-stage pilot runs through Google Search Console and pays publishers when their content makes a meaningful contribution to answers in Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Publishers taking part get a new dashboard showing their monthly AI-related earnings, although Google hasn’t said exactly how those payments are calculated.

There’s also a gap in the data. Google’s generative AI reports show impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode, but not clicks. The new dashboard shows earnings, but doesn’t show the data behind those payments.

So, what actually counts as a contribution?

Google pays when a publisher’s content helps shape an AI-generated answer. Simply getting a link or citation in the final response isn’t enough. In other words, Google is testing whether publishers can get paid for the information AI uses, rather than just for the traffic they receive.

Early feedback suggests the payments are still relatively small compared with traditional advertising revenue. Still, some publishers see value in getting paid directly as AI answers more questions without necessarily sending users to their websites.

Publishers can opt out at any time, and Google has reportedly approached dozens of publishers to join the program. The program has also expanded beyond traditional news organizations, with smaller and mid-sized publishers showing particular interest.

Google already has licensing relationships with more than 2,800 publications through Google News Showcase. Its separate news-focused AI program includes more than 200 titles globally.

The bigger question is whether this turns into a broader system where publishers are paid based on how much their content contributes to AI answers, instead of how many visitors that content brings in.

That could become an important new revenue stream for publishers as search becomes less dependent on sending users to websites.

eCommerce

Which eCommerce Categories Have the Highest Return Rates?

Online shoppers are far more likely to return some products than others.

New data from ECDB shows that 19.14% of fashion purchases are returned, more than twice the rate for DIY (9.4%) and electronics (9.04%). At the other end of the scale, hobby and leisure products have a return rate of just 4.51%.

Within the fashion category, apparel has a 24.22% return rate, compared with 16% for footwear and 12.91% for bags and accessories.

The main reason is fairly straightforward: you can’t try something on before buying it online. Sizing also varies between brands, so buying the same labeled size doesn’t guarantee the same fit.

Some customers also deliberately order multiple sizes or colors and return whatever doesn’t work. This practice, known as bracketing, becomes easier when retailers offer free and flexible returns.

Return rates also vary significantly by market. In the US, 31.18% of apparel orders are returned, compared with 23.75% in Germany and 23.77% in the UK. ECDB suggests that differences in return policies play a role, with generous, no-cost returns making it easier for shoppers to over-order.

For eCommerce sellers, returns can have a big impact on the numbers that matter.

A sale might look great on the dashboard, but if a significant percentage of those orders come back, the actual revenue and profit can look very different. That’s why return rate is worth tracking alongside metrics like conversion rate and average order value.

According to the NRF, US retailers are expected to deal with $849.9 billion worth of returned merchandise in 2025. Online shoppers return products even more frequently, with 19.3% of online sales expected to be returned.

For fashion businesses with high return rates, better sizing information, clearer product details, fit guidance, and more accurate descriptions can all help reduce unnecessary returns.

Read All About It!

The guide for going from 0 to $1M: Shaan Puri’s framework

Amazon confirms dates for Prime Big Deal Days: October 6-7

+200 ready-to-launch business ideas: tools & frameworks

Amazon Prime user and revenue statistics: data on growth, usage and more

Events

Win a Free Ticket to Affiliate Grand Slam in Rome!

We’re heading to Affiliate Grand Slam in Rome this November, and we’ve got a few extra tickets to give away.

As one of the event sponsors, we’d love to use those tickets to invite some of our customers so we can finally meet you in person.

If you’re an affiliate, ecommerce entrepreneur, online business owner, or just someone interested in joining the space, this is a great chance to spend a few days around other people building businesses online, hear from some of the biggest names in the industry, and hang out with the Empire Flippers team.

And the best part? Your conference ticket is on us.

Enter the giveaway here

If you’re going to be in Rome anyway, come say hi. And if you weren’t planning on going, this might be your excuse.

Good luck!

Please note: The giveaway covers the Affiliate Grand Slam conference ticket only. Travel to and from Rome, accommodation, meals, and any other personal expenses are not included and are the responsibility of the winners.

Microsoft Wants More Businesses to Monetize Their Data

Businesses that own valuable data, content, audiences, or ad inventory may have another way to make money from those assets.

Microsoft is pushing the idea of media curation, where businesses package their own data and media assets into advertising products that brands can buy programmatically.

According to Microsoft, nearly 70% of real-time bidding advertising, worth around $52 billion a year, now runs through private marketplace deals. These deals give advertisers more control over where their ads appear and the data used to target them.

The opportunity for businesses is to go beyond simply selling ad space. They can combine first-party data, audience insights, contextual signals, and premium inventory into curated advertising packages.

Microsoft’s Microsoft Curate platform is built around this idea. It lets businesses bring together audience activation, inventory, forecasting, campaign optimization, measurement, and reporting in one workflow. Their curated deals can then be made available to buyers through major third-party demand-side platforms.

Microsoft says one customer simplified their ad setup by reducing 250 line items to just 14 after moving to curated deals, cutting down the amount of work needed to manage campaigns. Data-enriched private marketplace deals can also produce 1.5x to 3x higher click-through rates and 10% to 30% higher video completion rates than open exchanges.

Microsoft says its platform uses Copilot and Model Context Protocol so users can ask questions about campaign performance, deals, reporting, and account changes using natural language.

Essentially, a retailer, publisher, data company, or other business may already have assets advertisers want. Instead of just using those assets internally, they can package them into products that other companies are willing to pay for.

For businesses with strong first-party data or specialized audiences, that could turn existing assets into a new source of advertising revenue.

Money Nomad

Looking for a side hustle?

Try Money Nomad, our sister marketplace built specifically for profitable side hustles and micro-businesses that are too small for Empire Flippers.

Check out this recent listing available on the Money Nomad Marketplace:

Listing #10178 – $108,000.00

ecommerce | home, culinary

Elaran is a turnkey Shopify store selling kitchen and home essentials, generating $24,700 in monthly revenue and $6,631 in profit after just 2 months. The business includes 3 months of coaching and ad management support, plus validated products with 59% gross margins and a proven Meta ads playbook. Learn More

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This Week in M&A Issue #254

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:01:18 +0000

Hello friends!

Today’s trend of the week is “bicycles”.

Bike sales aren’t slowing down just because summer is.

According to the latest Shopify sales data, bicycle lights saw sales jump 123% in August, while bicycle trainers increased 66% and kids’ bikes rose 53%.

The opportunities go beyond selling bikes. Entrepreneurs could tap into related products such as maintenance gear, indoor cycling equipment, and accessories for kids’ bikes.

There’s also plenty of room for content businesses covering topics like bike maintenance, indoor cycling, safety, gear reviews, and guides to choosing the right accessories.

This is also encouraging news for anyone concerned about seasonality in the cycling niche. People are still buying bike products as winter approaches, suggesting demand could extend beyond the traditional summer cycling season.

It looks like there’s still plenty of mileage in the bicycle market.

Today we have for you:

Amazon makes it easier to reach millions of B2B customers
Google says its search results are getting worse in Europe

And:

We’re giving away tickets to Affiliate Grand Slam
How to expand your ecommerce business internationally
Amazon opens Sponsored Ads to audiobook authors

Alright, let’s dive in.

Amazon

Image Source: Giphy (Andrey Smirny)

It’s Now Easier For Amazon Sellers to Promote Products to B2B Customers

Want to sell your Amazon products to both businesses and consumers? It just got a whole lot easier.

Starting August 31, sellers can create exclusive, limited-time deals for Amazon Business customers across 10 markets, including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, and Australia.

That puts these promotions in front of a pretty large audience. Amazon Business now has more than 11 million registered business organizations globally, with more than 1.8 million joining in the first half of 2026 alone. The platform generated more than $60 billion in annualized sales in Q2.

Sellers can run a deal for anywhere from one hour to 30 days, using either a fixed price or percentage discount. The deals are only shown to registered Amazon Business customers and are based on the seller’s Business Price, not the regular consumer price.

There are a few rules to qualify. Products must be new, have at least a 3.5-star rating, and meet Amazon’s pricing and seller performance requirements. Standard deals need to offer at least 10% off, while deals tied to events like Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday need to be at least 15% off.

Amazon is also giving eligible deals some extra promotion during major shopping events. Until December 31, 2026, they may be included in dedicated email and push notification campaigns at no extra cost.

For sellers with products used by offices, restaurants, hotels, contractors, or other businesses, this could be worth testing. Business customers may buy in larger quantities and come back for repeat orders.

Since these deals are built around Business Pricing, it’s worth reviewing your existing B2B prices before deciding which products to promote.

You can find the new feature in Seller Central under Price Discounts, as long as your products already have Business Prices.

The Opportunity podcast

Thinking About Taking Your eCommerce Business International?

It’s easy to look at international expansion and see a bigger customer base waiting on the other side. The reality can be a little more complicated.

In the latest episode of The Opportunity Podcast, we chat with Andy Hooper, CEO of Expandly, about expanding ecommerce businesses internationally and the lessons he’s learned from helping thousands of sellers enter new markets.

We cover how to approach international expansion, common mistakes to avoid, and what founders should consider before entering a new market.

If international growth or acquisitions are on your radar, this episode is worth a listen.

Google

Google Says Its EU Search Changes Are Making Results Less Useful

Google says its latest changes to Search in Europe have made its results worse than at any other point in the company’s history.

The changes are being made to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is designed to give competing services more opportunities to appear alongside Google.

So what does that actually mean for Search users?

For searches about things like hotels, flights and restaurants, Google is giving more space to specialist sites such as Booking.com and Expedia. Instead of Google showing its usual results, users may see one specialist service at the top, two more with less information, and then a carousel of businesses underneath.

Google is also removing some features, including real-time pricing, from these results.

Google says the problem is that this can make it harder for people to find what they are looking for. The company claims that earlier DMA-related changes already caused a 30% drop in free, direct booking traffic to European businesses.

That could be a bigger concern for businesses that rely on Google for customers. If Google gives less visibility to certain business listings, there could be fewer clicks and bookings coming from organic Search.

Google says it tested the latest changes with millions of European users and found that many were unhappy enough to search for the same thing again.

Of course, Google has a clear interest in highlighting the downside of the EU’s rules, and regulators may see things differently.

For businesses targeting European customers, though, it is another Search change worth keeping an eye on. A strategy that works in the US may not produce the same results in Europe as Google continues adapting Search to meet the DMA.

Read All About It!

Google’s top ranking factors: according to 131 SEO professionals

How to do ecommerce niche validation: create a viable business idea

How to build your first AI SEO agent: full SEMrush walkthrough

TikTok Shop opens cross-border sales between EU and UK: sell to EU shoppers

Events

Win a Free Ticket to Affiliate Grand Slam in Rome!

We’re heading to Affiliate Grand Slam in Rome this November, and we’ve got a few extra tickets to give away.

As one of the event sponsors, we’d love to use those tickets to invite some of our customers so we can finally meet you in person.

And the best part? Your conference ticket is on us.

Enter the giveaway here

If you’re going to be in Rome anyway, come say hi. And if you weren’t planning on going, this might be your excuse.

Good luck!

Amazon KDP

Amazon Expands Sponsored Ads to Audiobooks

Amazon is giving authors a new way to promote their audiobooks.

As of August 28, authors, including those publishing through ACX, can advertise audiobook titles with Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands in the US. Previously, these ad formats were only available to author advertisers promoting digital and print book ASINs.

There is one requirement to get started. Authors need to claim their pen name through Author Central. Once that is done, their Audible title ASINs can become available for advertising through Amazon’s advertising console or API.

The biggest benefit may not be additional ad placements. It’s better attribution.

Authors can now include print, digital, and audiobook versions in the same campaigns. This makes it easier to see when an ad for one format leads to a purchase of another.

For example, someone could click an ad for the Kindle version but decide to buy the Audible version instead. Amazon can now connect those actions and report the purchase as an attributed conversion.

Authors can also track standard metrics such as impressions, clicks, and attributed conversions to see how their campaigns are performing.

This is a big opportunity for independent authors to cash in on a growing market. US audiobook sales reached $2.43 billion in 2025, up 9% year over year, while 157 million US adults had listened to an audiobook, according to the Audio Publishers Association.

Amazon has offered Audible advertising to vendors and publishers for several years. Vendors gained Sponsored Products access globally in 2023, followed by Sponsored Brands in nine markets in 2024. Authors are now getting similar access, although it is limited to the US for now.

Amazon hasn’t said when the feature will expand to other markets or whether additional ad formats will be added.

Money Nomad

Looking for a side hustle?

Try Money Nomad, our sister marketplace built specifically for profitable side hustles and micro-businesses that are too small for Empire Flippers.

Check out this recent listing available on the Money Nomad Marketplace:

Listing #10163 – $76,125.00

Amazon FBA | home, equipment

This Amazon FBA business sells home improvement tools across UK and EU markets with 13 SKUs generating $15,955/month in revenue. Fully enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry 2.0, the brand requires just 4 hours/week to manage and benefits from reliable multi-supplier sourcing with a strong presence in Italy (42%), UK (36%), and Spain (10%). Learn More

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We’re Switching to Annual Multiples

Greg Elfrink — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 07:08:15 +0000

The only constant in both business and life is change (our multiples included).

In the beginning, when we were AdSense Flippers, we were known as the “20x Guys.” The small AdSense sites we flipped typically sold for around 20 times their monthly net profit, and since most of those sites only earned about $20 per month and were just a few months old, valuing them against a year of profit they didn’t have yet was never really an option.

Monthly multiples were the honest format for businesses that measured their lifespans in months, and they served us well.

We rebranded to Empire Flippers in February 2013, moved steadily upmarket, and kept the monthly multiple the whole way.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve now sold over $590 million worth of online businesses across 2,600+ completed deals, including multiple 8-figure ($10M+) exits. Behind the marketplace sits more than $15 billion in Verified Buyer Liquidity from over 325,000 registered buyers and sellers, and on our larger deals we regularly work with private equity firms, family offices, and high-net-worth investors.

It’s truly great to see how far this marketplace has come.

Now, we’re updating how we display multiples to reflect that.

As of September 8, 2026, every multiple you see on Empire Flippers is an annual multiple. To be clear, nothing about our valuations or listing prices has changed. A business priced at $500,000 yesterday is priced at $500,000 today. The only thing that changed is the format.

How Do Annual Multiples Work?

An annual multiple is the listing price divided by the business’s annual net profit.

For example, if a business earns $10,000 per month in net profit and is listed at $360,000:

Annual net profit = $10,000 x 12 = $120,000
Annual multiple = $360,000 ÷ $120,000 = 3.0x

Under our old format, that same listing would have displayed a 36x monthly multiple. Same business, same price, different math.

That also means converting any historical Empire Flippers multiple takes one step: divide it by 12. Using the average listing multiples from our 2026 State of the Industry Report:

Distressed businesses: 13.7x monthly becomes 1.1x annual
Typical businesses: 27.8x monthly becomes 2.3x annual
Premium businesses: 31.1x monthly becomes 2.6x annual
7-figure premium businesses: 41x monthly becomes 3.4x annual

(And yes, by today’s math, the 20x Guys would have been the 1.7x Guys.)

Why Did We Change to Annual Multiples?

The broader M&A industry, from main street business brokers to private equity, values businesses in annual terms. Whether a business is online or offline, most small businesses trade between 1x and 5x their annual SDE or EBITDA, and buyers operating at scale build their financial models around annual figures.

Monthly multiples made sense when our average deal was a young site earning a few hundred dollars per month. However, with nearly 100 seven-figure sales behind us, worth close to a quarter of a billion dollars combined, we felt it was time for our format to match the caliber of businesses on the marketplace and the buyers evaluating them.

We reviewed how deals are priced and compared across the industry, and the conclusion was simple: adopting the standard makes our listings directly comparable. A buyer can now place an Empire Flippers listing next to any other opportunity on their desk and read the numbers the same way, with no conversion required. Sellers get the same benefit in reverse, since their listing now speaks the language every serious acquirer already uses.

What hasn’t changed is who we serve. At any given time, about half of the listings on our marketplace are priced below $300K, and they are overwhelmingly purchased by individual buyers, often making their first acquisition. Helping first-time buyers make that first deal safely has been our specialty since the AdSense Flippers days, and it still is. Many of those buyers start small, learn the ropes as an operator, and come back for a larger deal later, often with financing behind them.

We’ve moved upmarket over the years, but we haven’t moved away from the entrepreneurs who got us here.

Ready to see the new multiples in action? Browse the marketplace.

Curious what your business is worth in annual terms? Run it through our valuation tool.

The post We’re Switching to Annual Multiples appeared first on Empire Flippers.

This Week in M&A Issue #253

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:08:02 +0000

Ahoy there!

Today’s trend of the week is “toys”.

Toy Story 5 isn’t the only toy story making headlines this year.

U.S. toy sales jumped 17% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, giving the industry its strongest first-half growth in six years.

And it’s not just parents driving that growth. Toy sales among adults aged 18 and over jumped 25%, while adult-only households now account for 55% of toy sales. Sales to teens aged 12 to 17 grew even faster, increasing 33%.

Together, teens and adults were responsible for almost 60% of the industry’s dollar gains.

Toys are becoming more than something parents buy for their kids. They’re increasingly being bought as hobbies, collectibles and social experiences.

For entrepreneurs, that creates opportunities well beyond traditional children’s toys. Collectibles, trading cards, games, building sets and other fandom-focused products can all appeal to consumers who are buying for themselves, rather than their kids.

Today we have for you:

The FTC sues Amazon for secretly overcharging advertisers
Amazon products can now be tagged directly on YouTube

And:

How to build a podcast that actually grows your business
Semrush connects its SEO data directly to Claude
ChatGPT Ads reach a $1 billion run rate in under 200 days

Alright, let’s dive in.

Amazon

Image Source: Giphy (Seinfeld)

FTC Says Amazon Secretly Inflated Ad Prices

The Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general are suing Amazon, accusing the company of secretly increasing advertising costs for more than seven years.

The case focuses on Amazon’s ad auctions. Advertisers were told they were participating in a second-price auction, where the winning advertiser generally pays slightly more than the next-highest bid.

According to the FTC, Amazon introduced a hidden “soft reserve” in 2019. Regulators allege this acted like an additional competing bid, allowing Amazon to charge advertisers much closer to their maximum bid. The complaint says the practice appeared in about 80% of auctions by 2024, up from 30% to 40% in 2021.

The FTC estimates advertisers paid more than $20 billion in additional costs as a result.

The lawsuit covers Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and display ads, affecting more than 1 million brands and sellers, including over 500,000 small and medium-sized businesses. The FTC also alleges Amazon increased the surcharge during major shopping periods such as Prime Day and Black Friday.

Amazon strongly disputes the allegations. It says the FTC misunderstands how its auctions work and argues that soft reserves help determine the market value of ad placements. Amazon says average winning bids for Sponsored Products search ads fell 50% between 2019 and 2025, while conversion rates increased 24%. It estimates its auction model saved advertisers more than $8 billion between 2021 and 2025.

Amazon has a lot at stake. Its advertising business generated $68.6 billion in 2025, making it one of the largest digital advertising businesses globally.

The case will now move through federal court. For Amazon sellers, there is little to change right now. The case could take years to resolve, but businesses with significant historical ad spend should keep records of bids, CPCs, spending, and campaign performance. Those records could become useful as the case develops.

The Opportunity podcast

The Real Business Value of Starting a Podcast

Podcasting can be a powerful marketing channel, but only if you know what you’re trying to get from it.

In the latest episode of The Opportunity Podcast, Greg sits down with Jim Barton, founder of Growth Podcasting, to break down what actually makes a business podcast valuable.

They discuss why your podcast doesn’t need a massive audience to drive business results, how to use it to build trust and generate leads, whether YouTube is worth pursuing, and what actually helps a podcast attract new listeners.

Jim also shares practical advice on starting a podcast without overcomplicating it, creating better episodes, and repurposing your content without simply posting the same clips everywhere.

If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, or wondering why your existing show isn’t getting the results you want, this episode will help you figure out what to focus on and where podcasting can actually fit into your marketing strategy.

Amazon

Amazon Gives YouTube Creators a New Way to Make Money

Amazon has officially joined the YouTube Shopping affiliate program, giving creators another way to monetize product recommendations and giving Amazon sellers access to a new sales channel.

Eligible U.S. creators can now tag Amazon products in videos, livestreams, and Shorts. When viewers click through and buy, the creator earns an affiliate commission.

Getting started is relatively simple, but there are a few limitations worth knowing.

Creators need to be part of both the YouTube Partner Program and YouTube Shopping affiliate program, have an active Amazon Influencer or Amazon Associates account, and connect it to their YouTube channel. Each Amazon account can only be linked to one YouTube channel.

Products can be added manually through YouTube Studio, or creators can enable auto-tagging, which lets YouTube identify eligible Amazon products in recent and future content.

The biggest limitation is attribution. YouTube Studio reports aggregate clicks, sales, and estimated revenue, but it does not show which specific video or product generated a purchase. That makes it harder for creators to identify their best-performing content and decide where to focus their efforts.

Getting paid also takes time. Commissions are locked monthly, and earnings can take roughly two months to reach creators through AdSense. Returns can also reduce the balance or push it negative, with the deficit carried into the following month.

Conveniently, YouTube recently lowered the subscriber requirement for its Shopping affiliate program from 1,000 to 500, opening it up to many more creators.

Read All About It!

He copied a successful app and now makes $80K/month: in less than a year

10 industries ripe for disruption in 2026: massive opportunities

Judge rules Google can keep its Ad business: new restrictions will follow

How to build an E-E-A-T checker with Claude Code: create reports in minutes

SEO

Semrush Brings 28.8 Billion Keywords Into Claude

Semrush has launched an official connector for Claude, allowing you to access Semrush’s search and marketing data directly inside Claude conversations.

Announced on August 26, the integration is now available to Semrush One and SEO Classic subscribers. It uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that lets AI assistants connect directly to external data and software.

Semrush says the integration gives Claude access to 28.8 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, and 317 million LLM prompts. The LLM prompt data is especially interesting because it shows what people are asking AI assistants, rather than only what they search for on Google.

Previously, if you wanted Claude to analyze Semrush data, you had to export reports, download the files, and upload them into Claude. The new connector removes that extra work by giving Claude access to live Semrush data directly within your conversation.

That can make everyday marketing tasks much faster. You can ask Claude to find keyword opportunities, analyze backlinks, research competitors, or explore market data without first building spreadsheets or reports.

For example, you can use a backlink analysis to identify potentially toxic links and create a disavow file and action plan. You can turn competitor research into content briefs or combine traffic, audience demographics, and market share data for market research.

You can also automate recurring tasks. Semrush says Claude can generate monthly client reports, send weekly toxic-link alerts, and monitor competitor rankings daily.

This isn’t Semrush’s first AI integration. The company has already integrated with platforms including ChatGPT and Lovable.

AI

OpenAI’s Ad Business Is Scaling Faster Than Google’s Did

OpenAI’s advertising business is growing much faster than many expected.

ChatGPT Ads has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, according to OpenAI, with tens of thousands of advertisers now using the platform.

That doesn’t mean OpenAI has already generated $1 billion in ad revenue. The figure is based on its current monthly revenue multiplied by 12, showing where the business is tracking. Still, reaching that pace in less than 200 days is a significant milestone.

ChatGPT Ads is now available in more than 40 countries, and OpenAI is expanding self-service advertising through Ads Manager across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. That gives more businesses direct access to the platform without relying on OpenAI’s sales team.

For comparison, Google took roughly four years to reach the same $1 billion annualized advertising run rate.

Part of the appeal may be how ChatGPT understands purchase intent. Traditional search ads rely heavily on keywords and previous search behavior. ChatGPT can use the conversation itself to understand what someone wants, including their preferences, requirements, and budget.

That could give advertisers a way to reach consumers when they are already researching a purchase.

And it works. According to PYMNTS Intelligence, ChatGPT’s share of consumer product research has increased from 2% to 30% in two years.

As more people use AI to research products, compare options, and decide what to buy, advertising within those conversations could become an important customer acquisition channel.

OpenAI has reportedly set much larger advertising targets, including $2.5 billion in ad revenue for 2026. If it can continue growing at anything close to its current pace, advertising could become a much larger part of its overall business.

Money Nomad

Looking for a side hustle?

Try Money Nomad, our sister marketplace built specifically for profitable side hustles and micro-businesses that are too small for Empire Flippers.

Check out this recent listing available on the Money Nomad Marketplace:

Listing #10165 – $22,900.00

ecommerce | beauty

Klixer is a 16-year-old eCommerce brand selling the world’s first motorized latch-hook tool for professional locticians. With $2,831/mo revenue and $1,309/mo profit, it’s grown organically through search and word of mouth with zero marketing spend. Learn More

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The post This Week in M&A Issue #253 appeared first on Empire Flippers.

This Week in M&A Issue #252

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:18:55 +0000

G’day mate!

Today’s trend of the week is “UPF clothing ”.

Sun protection is moving beyond sunscreen and into the clothes people wear. UPF clothing, which helps protect skin from ultraviolet radiation, is gaining traction as consumers look for more ways to limit sun exposure.

UV apparel at US activewear brands was up 12% year over year in May, while 34% of full-price UPF items have sold out this year, compared with 22.6% last year. Google searches for “UV shirt” are also up 26%.

UPF clothing has been popular in East Asia for years, but the trend is now gaining momentum in Europe and the US. For online business owners, that growing interest could make UV-protective apparel an interesting and lucrative category to explore.

Today we have for you:

US eCommerce growth hits a new high
The domain extensions driving more eCommerce revenue

And:

The AI tool categories with the most demand
Amazon’s changing rules and the next wave of FBA growth
ChatGPT has changed how it searches the web

Alright, let’s dive in.

ecommerce

Image Source: Giphy

Double-Digit U.S. eCommerce Growth Returns

U.S. ecommerce is growing at rates not seen since the early days of the pandemic.

U.S. online retail sales hit $340.2 billion in Q2 2026, up 12.2% from the same quarter last year. That follows 10.1% growth in Q1, putting ecommerce growth at 11.1% for the first half of 2026.

That’s a big change from the slowdown that followed the pandemic. By Q2 2022, ecommerce growth had fallen to just 5.1%. Growth started improving again last year.

Online sales are also growing faster than retail overall. Total U.S. retail sales increased 6.7% in Q2, compared with 12.2% for ecommerce. Online sales now make up 17.1% of all retail sales, up from 16.3% a year ago.

Before you get too excited, it’s important to note that the figures are not adjusted for inflation, so some of the growth comes from higher prices. Amazon also moved Prime Day from July to June this year, which likely pulled some sales from Q3 into Q2.

The growth also varies quite a bit by category.

General merchandise was up 21.6%, while sporting goods, hobbies, and books grew 20.4%. Food and beverage increased 8.1%, health and personal care grew 9.3%, furniture was up 4.6%, and clothing grew just 3.8%.

The size of the category matters too. Health and personal care grew faster than clothing, but clothing actually added more sales dollars because its overall market is larger.

So while the broader ecommerce market is showing stronger demand, the opportunity still depends heavily on the category, product mix, customer base, and sales channel. The next few quarters should show whether this growth marks a lasting acceleration or a temporary spike.

The Opportunity podcast

Amazon Sellers Face New Rules, AI, and Global Opportunities

The Amazon playbook is changing. Sellers are facing stricter compliance requirements, shorter titles, AI-powered search, and a growing need to think beyond their home marketplace.

In the latest episode of The Opportunity Podcast, Greg Elfrink sits down with Jana Krekic, founder of Seller Lingo, to unpack what these changes mean for Amazon sellers.

They discuss how AI tools like Rufus and Alexa could change the way sellers structure their listings, what Amazon’s tighter rules mean for categories like supplements, and why international expansion may offer opportunities that many sellers are overlooking.

Jana also shares practical insights from working with Amazon brands across multiple markets, including why simply translating a listing isn’t enough to succeed internationally.

Listen to the full episode to hear Jana’s take on where Amazon is heading and how sellers can adapt.

eCommerce

.Org Ecommerce Sites Are Outperforming .Com by 34%

For years, choosing a domain name for an ecommerce business was relatively straightforward: if you could get the .com, you took it. New data from Wix suggests that strategy may be worth reconsidering.

Wix analyzed domain registrations and performance data from 2025 and 2026 and found that .com still dominates, accounting for 82% of Wix websites in the US. People are also 13 times more likely to choose a .com than any other extension.

But alternative domains are increasingly showing stronger performance. The biggest surprise is .org.

Wix found that .org websites are 34% more likely to generate ecommerce revenue than .com sites and receive 3% more site sessions.

The .store extension is also performing well. Ecommerce sites using .store generate 10% more revenue than .com sites, while earning twice the revenue of .shop and .net sites. Registrations of .store, .online, and .shop domains doubled between January and May 2026.

Technology-focused extensions are growing quickly too. .ai registrations increased 20% during the same period, making it the 10th most popular extension in Wix’s data. .io registrations also increased 32 times in May.

Geography still matters. .com dominates in countries including the US, South Africa, India, and Japan, while local extensions remain more popular in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

For ecommerce store owners, the data suggests domain selection is becoming more flexible. A .com is still valuable, but it is no longer the only option that consumers appear comfortable buying from.

There is also a case for buying domains defensively. Beyond protecting your brand name, businesses may want to secure relevant keyword domains across extensions that competitors could otherwise claim.

Read All About It!

How a solo app builder runs his $40k/month business: a day in the life

How to check if a domain name is available: and what to do if it’s taken

Trending topics for August 2026: top 100 trending topics right now

The best free vibe coding tools: build apps for free

AI

The AI Tool Categories Getting the Most User Demand

Thinking about building an AI tool? The biggest question probably isn’t whether people want AI. It’s what they actually want to use it for.

OneLittleWeb analyzed 9,531 AI tools and their web traffic to see which categories are getting the most attention. Looking at web traffic from May 2025 to April 2026, it found that some AI categories are attracting significantly more demand than others.

Unsurprisingly, Chatbots are in a league of their own. They generated 86 billion visits over the past year, accounting for 59.5% of all AI tool traffic. That’s up 90.8% from the previous year. This category includes ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and Perplexity, so it’s already highly competitive.

Design is the next big category, generating 10.9 billion visits. But there’s a catch. Canva accounts for 96.3% of that traffic, making it a difficult market for a new general-purpose design tool to break into.

Translation is another huge category, with 5.7 billion visits, but traffic fell 22.5%. With translation increasingly available inside general-purpose assistants, users have less reason to visit a dedicated tool.

Some of the smaller categories look more interesting from a growth perspective.

Video generators grew 31.2% to 2.6 billion visits, while music generators grew 21.2% to 1.3 billion. Image generators attracted 3.5 billion visits, although traffic was basically flat.

Project management is worth watching too. Traffic grew 18.6% to 2.6 billion visits, and the category includes 285 different tools. Unlike design, there isn’t one company dominating the market.

The biggest category isn’t always the best opportunity. A large market with strong growth and plenty of room for different products can be much more interesting than a huge category that’s already dominated by one or two platforms.

AI Search

What ChatGPT’s New Search System Means for Businesses

ChatGPT has quietly changed how its web search works.

A recent analysis by Search Engine Journal of ChatGPT’s search activity found that OpenAI has rebuilt parts of its search system. The new setup gives us a better look at how ChatGPT decides what to search for, how recent information needs to be, and which sources it uses.

ChatGPT doesn’t search everything the same way

One of the interesting changes is that ChatGPT adjusts its searches depending on what you’re asking.

For example, searches for stock information may focus on the past two days, while sports searches can look at the past week. Commercial research may use a 30-day window, while earnings information can use 90 days.

ChatGPT also has separate systems for products, businesses, and images. That matters because getting your website into Google is only part of the picture. If you’re selling products, your products may also need to appear in the data ChatGPT uses for product searches. Local businesses face a similar issue.

Sometimes ChatGPT doesn’t need a website

ChatGPT is also making greater use of built-in tools and widgets.

Instead of searching several websites to answer something like a sports schedule or stock question, it can pull the information into the response itself.

For businesses, this could mean fewer opportunities to get a website visit or citation for certain types of searches.

Reddit is worth paying attention to

Another interesting finding is how often ChatGPT searches Reddit when researching products and businesses.

Those Reddit results don’t always appear as citations in the final answer. However, the analysis suggests they could still influence what ChatGPT ultimately says.

AI search is changing quickly. Strategies based on how ChatGPT worked a few months ago may already be outdated, making it important to monitor how your brand, website, and content actually appear in AI searches.

Money Nomad

Looking for a side hustle?

Try Money Nomad, our sister marketplace built specifically for profitable side hustles and micro-businesses that are too small for Empire Flippers.

Check out this recent listing available on the Money Nomad Marketplace:

Listing #10159 – $27,678.00

lead generation | home & garden

Established Canadian lead generation business in the home services niche, generating $1,035/month in revenue with 95%+ profit margins. Built entirely on organic local SEO with strong Google rankings, this 8+ year old site requires only 1-3 hours weekly and operates with zero ad spend. Learn More

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This Week in M&A Issue #251

Lauren Buchanan — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:23:26 +0000

Hola!

Today’s trend of the week is “analog products”.

Shopify’s June 2026 sales data points to growing demand for products that offer a break from screens.

Vinyl sales rose 40% year over year, CDs jumped 137%, while DVD and Blu-ray players increased 347%. Sales of landline phones, feature phones, cassette tapes and stereo systems also climbed.

Hula hoops, toy trucks, pretend electronics and other hands-on toys also saw significant growth, suggesting consumers are increasingly looking for physical, offline experiences.

For online business owners, that creates some interesting opportunities. Products don’t necessarily need to be faster, smarter, or more convenient. They can be deliberately physical, hands-on, or simply give people a reason to step away from a screen.

Shopify suggests merchants focus on the ritual of using a product, the experience of being present, and the value of actually owning something rather than accessing it through a subscription.

Today we have for you:

Five markets generate 80% of Amazon’s global sales
Google begins rolling out its August 2026 Spam Update

And:

How to optimize your Amazon listings for AI search
Shopify AI referrals surge 197% but organic search still leads
9 AI search myths debunked

Alright, let’s dive in.

Amazon

What Amazon’s Market Concentration Means for Online Sellers

Amazon may operate across dozens of countries, but its sales are heavily concentrated in just a handful of markets.

According to ECDB, five countries account for 80% of Amazon’s global gross merchandise value (GMV). The US alone generates 51%, followed by the UK at 10%, Germany at 8%, Japan at 7%, and Canada at 4%.

These markets are particularly difficult for competitors to challenge because Amazon has built strong logistics networks, high Prime adoption and significant customer loyalty in each. Its presence has also changed consumer expectations around delivery speeds, product selection and service, putting additional pressure on other retailers.

The remaining 20% of Amazon’s GMV is spread across the rest of the world. In many of these markets, Amazon entered later, invested less aggressively, or has a limited presence. That has given regional marketplaces more room to establish strong positions.

MercadoLibre is a major player across Latin America, Trendyol leads in Türkiye, Allegro dominates Poland, and Shopee has a strong position across Southeast Asia.

For businesses, this concentration creates an interesting strategic choice.

Selling into Amazon’s five largest markets provides access to the majority of its customer base, but those markets are also the most mature and competitive. Expanding into smaller Amazon markets can mean less traffic and demand, but potentially less competition as well.

For brands considering international expansion, the opportunity may not always be in Amazon’s biggest markets. The less-developed parts of its global footprint can offer different conditions, particularly where local marketplaces have not yet been displaced.

The Opportunity podcast

How to Make Your Products More Visible to Amazon AI

Amazon search is changing, and sellers need to rethink how they approach visibility.

In this episode of The Opportunity Podcast, we sit down with Jon Tilley, founder of ZonGuru, to explore how Amazon’s growing use of AI is changing product discovery.

We look at Alexa for Shopping and Amazon’s Cosmo algorithm, and what they mean for sellers. We also discuss why simply using AI to rewrite your listing isn’t enough, and how sellers can better optimize their products for AI-driven discovery.

If you want to understand where Amazon search is heading and how to improve your visibility, this episode is definitely worth a listen.

Google

Google’s August 2026 Spam Update Is Now Underway

Google has launched its third spam update of 2026, and this one applies globally across every language. The rollout began on August 18 and is expected to take several days to complete.

Unlike a core update, the August 2026 spam update focuses on websites that violate Google’s existing search spam policies. Google has not announced any new spam policies alongside this update, so there are no new rules for site owners to follow. Instead, it’s refreshing the systems behind SpamBrain, its automated spam detection technology, to better identify existing violations.

The policies covered include scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, site reputation abuse, back button hijacking and violations involving AI Overviews and AI Mode. Older spam categories such as cloaking, link spam and doorway pages are also covered.

The timing is worth watching. Search ranking volatility was already being reported in early and mid-August, although some apparent changes were caused by a separate Search Console reporting issue that temporarily affected impressions and clicks.

This is also becoming a more regular part of Google’s search updates. The March 2026 spam update lasted around 19 hours, while the June update took about two days. At the time of writing, the August update is still underway, so its duration and impact remain unclear.

Read All About It!

How this entrepreneur built a $252k+ ARR business: in just 72 hours

Average conversion rate per eCommerce industry: how do you compare?

5 business ideas capitalizing on current trends: ideas from Shopify data

Amazon launches bulk storage service in EU: AWD to launch in 5 EU countries

eCommerce

Shopify AI Referrals Jump 197% but Organic Search Still Leads

Many people assume that AI is slowly killing organic search. But Shopify’s numbers say otherwise…

AI-referred traffic to Shopify stores jumped 197% year over year in Q2 2026, while orders from AI referrals roughly tripled. That sounds huge, and it is. But organic search traffic grew 12% too, and it still sends more traffic to Shopify merchants than all tracked AI platforms combined.

It seems like shoppers are using AI and traditional search for different reasons.

Visitors who reached product pages through AI converted about 80% better than those coming from organic search. For products that require more research, the gap was even bigger. In categories where shoppers need to compare specifications, compatibility, use cases, or reviews, AI-referred visitors converted at roughly twice the rate of organic visitors.

Shopify also found that AI-referred shoppers converted at about twice the rate when AI systems used structured Shopify Catalog data rather than scraped or third-party product feeds.

That makes product data increasingly important. Give search engines and AI systems clear information about your products, including specifications, materials, compatibility, use cases, fit, reviews, FAQs, and delivery details.

You don’t necessarily need separate strategies for AI and Google. Better product information and stronger product pages can help you show up in both.

AI search is growing quickly, but Shopify’s data suggests you don’t have to choose between AI and SEO. Clear, detailed product information can help you attract more traffic from both search engines and AI while giving shoppers the information they need to make a purchase.

AI Search

Ahrefs Data Challenges Common AI Search Myths

There’s no shortage of advice about winning visibility in AI search. But how much of it is actually true?

Ahrefs analyzed around 15 million data points to test nine widely repeated claims about how to get cited by AI search engines.

Here’s what they discovered.

1. “Best” Lists Don’t Guarantee AI Recommendations

“Best of” lists made up 43.8% of pages cited across 750 ChatGPT prompts. But promoting your own brand doesn’t guarantee AI will recommend it. In a test of 34 self-promotional lists and 9,886 AI answers, competitors were often chosen instead.

2. You Don’t Need An llms.txt File

Ahrefs analyzed 137,000 websites and found that 97% of llms.txt files were never fetched. Of the files that were read, 77% were accessed by non-AI bots.

3. Schema Isn’t A Shortcut To AI Citations

After tracking 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD schema against 4,000 control pages, Ahrefs found no meaningful citation increase in ChatGPT or Google AI Mode after 30 days.

4. SEO Still Matters

An analysis of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts found that 88.46% of citations came from Google’s general search index. Classic SEO still plays a major role in getting cited.

5. Page One Rankings Don’t Guarantee AI Visibility

Only about 38% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews ranked in the top 10 for the same query. Ranking for related searches matters too.

6. AI Answers Are More Stable Than They Look

Across 43,000 keywords, wording changed 70% of the time and cited sources changed 45.5%. Yet the underlying meaning remained highly consistent, scoring 0.95 out of 1.

7. AI Hasn’t Replaced Google

Google sent 190 times more traffic than ChatGPT across 76,000 websites. Google accounted for nearly 40% of traffic, compared with 0.21% for ChatGPT.

8. AI Overviews Can Reduce Clicks

Ahrefs found that AI Overviews reduced position-one click-through rates by 58% in its latest study. Other studies have reported similar declines.

9. Mentions May Matter More Than Backlinks

Among 75,000 brands, backlinks and Domain Rating showed weak correlations with AI visibility. YouTube mentions had a much stronger correlation, followed by branded web mentions.

AI search doesn’t appear to reward shortcuts. Traditional SEO, strong topical coverage, genuine brand mentions, and content people actually reference still matter.

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The post This Week in M&A Issue #251 appeared first on Empire Flippers.

YouTube Channel Buyer Due Diligence Checklist

EF Staff — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:52:48 +0000

Buying a YouTube channel looks straightforward until you’re three weeks post-transfer and the ad revenue has dropped by half. The metrics looked clean, the niche seemed solid, and the seller was responsive. Without a structured due diligence process, though, you were working from incomplete information.

That’s the real risk. Not that YouTube channel acquisitions are bad investments, but that the problems rarely surface before the deal closes. They show up after.

This checklist covers every verification step you should complete before committing capital, from traffic source analysis to monetization health and policy compliance.

The Due Diligence Checklist at a Glance

Here’s a quick overview of the four steps this guide walks you through:

Verify revenue and monetization data against raw platform analytics.
Audit channel health, policy standing, and compliance history.
Assess traffic sources, audience quality, and long-term sustainability.
Review seller documents, contracts, and transfer terms before signing.

Use a due diligence checklist built specifically for YouTube channel acquisitions. Each step below expands on one of these four areas.

Before You Begin

Before you request access to anything, confirm these prerequisites are in place:

Request live screen-share access to YouTube Studio. Do not accept screenshots or exported files alone. Raw analytics inside the platform are harder to manipulate.
Ask for 12 months of revenue reports and traffic source breakdowns. This forms your seller data room and gives you a baseline before deeper verification begins.
Confirm the seller will use an escrow service to hold funds during the transfer period. This protects both parties.
Clarify whether the channel is faceless or tied to a personal brand. Creator dependency changes the entire risk profile. A channel built around one person’s identity carries audience retention risks that a faceless channel typically does not.

Step 1: Verify Revenue and Monetization Data

Start by pulling 6-12 months of revenue data directly from YouTube Studio and comparing it line by line against what the seller has claimed. Look for consistency in RPM and CPM month over month, since sudden spikes or unexplained dips are worth questioning before you go any further.

When evaluating the asking price, check whether it falls within a reasonable revenue multiple. YouTube channels typically sell in the range of 20-30x monthly net profit, depending on niche, growth trajectory, and audience quality. If the multiple sits well above that range, the seller needs to justify it with data.

Warning: AdSense does not transfer with the channel. After the transfer, you will need to set up a new AdSense account and relink it to the channel. This process can delay revenue flow by several weeks, so factor that gap into your cash flow planning before closing.

Run the Outlier Video Dependency Test

Sort the channel’s lifetime views by individual video performance. If one or two videos account for a disproportionate share of total views and the revenue tied to that period, you are looking at an outlier dependency problem.

A single viral video can inflate average monthly revenue figures significantly. If that video is no longer generating meaningful traffic, the channel’s true earning baseline is lower than the reported numbers suggest. Discount the valuation accordingly, and carry that skepticism into the compliance checks in the next step.

Step 2: Audit Channel Health and Compliance

Check for Hidden Demonetization Risks

Open YouTube Studio and confirm the channel has zero active copyright strikes and zero community guideline strikes. Both are visible under the Channel dashboard, and if either is active, the channel may be ineligible for monetization or at risk of suspension.

Next, check for Content ID claims across existing videos. Even without formal strikes, unresolved Content ID disputes can block ad revenue on specific videos or trigger future takedowns after the transfer.

Verify that YouTube Partner Program eligibility is intact. The channel must meet current subscriber and watch hour thresholds, and the monetization status should show as active, not under review.

Warning: Visible strikes are only part of the picture. Look for yellow dollar icons on individual videos, which signal limited ad suitability. A pattern of these flags, or a history of monetization appeals, points to ongoing advertiser-friendliness issues that strikes alone will not reveal. Also check whether the content sits in categories prone to advertiser restrictions, such as controversial topics or borderline subject matter. Review YouTube’s official monetization policies to understand exactly where those category lines fall.

Step 3: Assess Audience Quality and Traffic Sources

Evaluate Algorithm Dependency vs. Sustainable Traffic

Open YouTube Studio and check the Traffic Source breakdown for the past 12 months. Channels that pull the majority of views from Browse Features or Suggested Videos are heavily dependent on the algorithm. If YouTube stops recommending that content, traffic drops quickly and revenue follows.

Channels with meaningful traffic from YouTube Search or external sources carry less platform dependency risk. That mix is more stable and easier to maintain after a transfer.

Next, check audience geography. A high concentration of viewers from tier-1 countries like the US, UK, Canada, and Australia supports stronger CPMs and higher ad revenue per thousand views. Heavy traffic from tier-3 regions can mean the channel looks large but earns less than the numbers imply.

Pull audience retention data on the top 20 videos. Flat or artificially high retention curves can signal purchased views or engagement manipulation. Organic retention typically shows a natural drop-off pattern in the first 30 seconds, then stabilizes.

Finally, verify that subscriber growth is consistent and gradual. Sudden spikes tied to giveaways or sub-for-sub campaigns indicate an inflated subscriber count that will not convert to real viewership or ad revenue.

If you want to apply these checks to pre-vetted listings, browse our marketpace for profitable YouTube channels.

Step 4: Review Transfer Terms and Protect the Transaction

Use an escrow service to hold funds until the ownership transfer is fully verified and the channel is accessible under your Google account. This protects you if anything goes wrong between signing and handover.

Confirm the transfer includes all associated assets: social media accounts, email lists, domain names, and any branded content templates. If it is not listed in the agreement, assume it is not included.

Get written confirmation that the seller will not start a competing channel in the same niche for an agreed period. A non-compete clause is standard in most transactions and worth enforcing in writing.

Finally, plan for a gap in revenue after the transfer. YouTube Partner Program status may require re-verification once ownership changes hands, and that process takes time. Build that delay into your cash flow projections before you sign anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Red Flags Should Due Diligence Uncover?

Watch for sudden subscriber spikes with no clear cause, inconsistent revenue that does not match traffic trends, and active copyright or community guideline strikes. Be cautious if the seller refuses to provide live YouTube Studio access or if a single video is responsible for most of the channel’s historical earnings.

What Are Common Due Diligence Mistakes?

Relying on screenshots instead of live platform data is the most common error. Buyers also frequently ignore audience geography, skip Content ID claim checks, and skip escrow entirely. Each of these shortcuts creates exposure that only becomes visible after the deal closes.

How Do You Verify a YouTube Channel’s Revenue Before Buying?

Request a live screen-share of the YouTube Studio revenue tab and cross-reference it against AdSense reports. Compare RPM trends across 12 months to confirm consistency. If the numbers do not align across both sources, treat that gap as a signal worth investigating before proceeding.

What Happens to YouTube Partner Program Status When a Channel Is Sold?

YouTube Partner Program membership generally transfers with the channel, but the new owner must link a new AdSense account after taking ownership. The channel may go through a re-review period, which can delay monetization. Factor that gap into your cash flow planning before you sign.

Your Next Move After Completing the Checklist

A completed due diligence checklist does not guarantee a perfect deal. It eliminates the most expensive surprises.

Buyers who follow a structured process enter negotiations with verified data, not assumptions. That changes the conversation with sellers and sharpens your ability to price risk accurately.

The next step is straightforward: apply this checklist to real YouTube channel listings and start asking sellers the right questions.

The post YouTube Channel Buyer Due Diligence Checklist appeared first on Empire Flippers.

YouTube Channel Business Acquisition Mistakes

EF Staff — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:29:26 +0000

Buying a YouTube channel looks straightforward until you’re deep in a deal and realize the numbers don’t hold up. YouTube has matured into a legitimate asset class, with channels changing hands regularly across content niches, monetization models, and audience sizes.

The acquisition process carries risks that don’t apply to most other online businesses. Ad revenue behaves differently from affiliate income; audiences are tied to personalities, and the mistakes that cost buyers the most tend to occur during evaluation, not after the handover.

Avoiding YouTube channel acquisition mistakes comes down to five steps. First, verify the channel’s revenue sources and cash flow history before accepting any seller-provided numbers at face value.

Second, audit the compliance record and strike history to confirm the channel is in good standing with YouTube’s policies.

Third, assess creator dependency and whether the audience will transfer to new ownership.

Fourth, validate subscriber quality and engagement metrics beyond surface-level counts.

Fifth, secure contractual protections and plan the operational handoff before closing.

Before You Begin: What You Need for Proper Due Diligence

Before evaluating any YouTube channel deal, have these in place:

YouTube Analytics access (read-only) covering at least 12 to 24 months of historical data
AdSense revenue reports and any third-party income documentation, including sponsorship agreements, affiliate dashboards, and merch platform statements
A due diligence checklist covering monetization status, policy compliance, and content rights
Confirmation that the channel is active and in good standing within the YouTube Partner Program

Step 1: Verify Revenue Sources Beyond AdSense

Many buyers review AdSense revenue and assume that tells the full story. It doesn’t. Sponsorship deals, affiliate commissions, and merchandise income may account for a significant share of monthly cash flow, and none of that transfers automatically when ownership changes.

Request direct access to every revenue platform, not just screenshots. That means affiliate dashboards, brand deal contracts, and any merch or course platform statements. Screenshots can be edited; platform-level read-only access cannot.

Warning: YouTube monetization policy changes can reduce or eliminate AdSense income with little notice. A channel that earned well under previous ad rate conditions may not replicate that performance after a policy update. Never base your offer on peak-month earnings.

When evaluating revenue multiples, cross-reference reported earnings against YouTube Analytics traffic data. If revenue spikes don’t align with corresponding traffic increases, that inconsistency warrants a direct explanation from the seller.

Use a thorough due diligence checklist to structure your cash flow verification across all income streams before accepting any valuation.

If you want expert guidance on verifying revenue before committing to a deal, talk to an Empire Flippers business advisor.

Step 2: Check the Channel’s Strike History and Policy Compliance

Skipping a compliance check is one of the most expensive shortcuts a buyer can take. Active strikes on a YouTube channel can escalate to termination, wiping out your entire investment before you’ve had a chance to grow it.

Request a full account health report directly through YouTube Studio. Look for copyright claims, community guideline warnings, and any active restrictions on monetization or distribution. Also confirm whether the channel has ever been demonetized or flagged for manual review by Google.

Note: YouTube’s Terms of Service do not explicitly permit account transfers or sales. This creates legal exposure that standard purchase agreements may not cover. Before closing, conduct proper legal due diligence to understand how ownership transfer affects your standing with the YouTube Partner Program.

A clean compliance record is not a bonus. It is a baseline requirement.

Step 3: Assess Creator Dependency and Audience Transferability

Channels built around a single creator’s face, voice, or personality carry real transfer risk. When the person behind the content is the reason subscribers showed up, there’s no guarantee those subscribers stay once ownership changes.

Evaluate content transferability by asking a direct question: does the value come from the person or the topic? A channel covering personal finance concepts, product reviews, or how-to tutorials can often continue under new ownership. A channel built on one person’s commentary, humor, or life story is much harder to hand off.

Check subscriber growth trends and viewer retention data inside YouTube Analytics. Declining retention after the creator steps back is a warning sign the YouTube algorithm may also respond to.

When buying an existing channel, negotiate a transition period where the original creator introduces the new direction or endorses the handover. Faceless and topic-driven channels are generally the safer acquisition, and the compliance checks covered in Step 2 apply equally here.

Step 4: Validate Subscriber Quality Over Vanity Metrics

A high subscriber count means little if those subscribers stopped watching months ago. Channel valuation should reflect engagement depth, not just audience size.

Pull up YouTube Analytics and examine watch time trends, average view duration, and click-through rates across the past 12 months. Declining viewer retention alongside a large subscriber base is a red flag, not a selling point.

Also look for sudden subscriber spikes. Sharp, unexplained jumps can indicate purchased followers or a single viral video that never converted into a loyal audience. This kind of inconsistency is exactly the type of discrepancy that cross-referencing revenue and traffic data, as outlined in Step 1, is designed to catch.

Consistent watch time across multiple videos is a far more reliable signal of real audience value than raw subscriber numbers.

Step 5: Secure Contracts and Plan the Post-Acquisition Handoff

Closing a deal without proper contractual protections is a mistake that shows up weeks later, not at signing. Start with a non-compete clause that prevents the seller from launching a competing channel immediately after the sale.

Define a content continuity plan in writing. This should cover upload frequency, content style, and editorial direction so the channel doesn’t lose momentum during the transition.

Ensure that there is a structured handoff period with documented SOPs and full access transfers across all platform accounts, social profiles, and associated assets. Content transferability needs to be explicitly addressed in the purchase agreement, not assumed.

One of the benefits of buying a YouTube business through a reputable broker like Empire Flippers is that we handle the transfer of assets for you. Browse businesses for sale on our marketplace to find a profitable YouTube channel to suit your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do You Verify a YouTube Channel’s Revenue Before Buying?

Request read-only access to every revenue platform directly, including AdSense, affiliate dashboards, and sponsorship contracts. Cross-reference reported earnings against YouTube Analytics traffic data to confirm the numbers align. Screenshots are not sufficient verification.

What Makes a YouTube Channel Difficult to Transfer to a New Owner?

Creator-dependent channels are the hardest to transfer because the audience is tied to a specific person rather than a topic or format. Channels with active strikes or unresolved YouTube Partner Program compliance issues also carry significant transfer risk.

How Do You Value a YouTube Channel for Acquisition?

Channel valuation should be based on revenue multiples applied to verified, sustainable earnings, not peak-month figures. AdSense revenue alone rarely reflects total cash flow, so all income streams need to be documented before applying any multiple.

What Due Diligence Should You Perform Before Buying a YouTube Channel?

Due diligence should cover financial verification across all revenue sources, compliance history within the YouTube Partner Program, audience quality metrics, and contractual protections for the transfer itself.

Your Next Move After Reading This

Most YouTube channel acquisition mistakes are preventable. They happen when buyers skip structured due diligence, not because the risks were hidden.

You now know what to check: revenue sources, compliance history, creator dependency, subscriber quality, and contractual protections. Apply these steps to any channel you’re currently evaluating before you move forward.

Preparation is what separates a sound acquisition from an expensive lesson.

The post YouTube Channel Business Acquisition Mistakes appeared first on Empire Flippers.