What buyers check before buying a content site
Buyers and brokers check the same things on almost every content site sale. Sellers who have them ready sell faster and argue less about price. Here's the list, with the affiliate-specific items that general checklists leave out.
What every buyer asks for
- Read access to Google Analytics, to see traffic for themselves rather than in screenshots.
- Revenue proof: screenshots or exports from each network and ad partner, and a profit and loss statement.
- Data that agrees with itself: the listing, the analytics and the revenue reports should tell the same story for the same months.
- Proof you own the domain, and a list of every asset in the sale (domain, content, email list, social accounts).
- Revenue trend and stability over 12 months or more, and how dependent the site is on one traffic source.
- Who does the work today, and whether the site runs without the seller.
- No growth tactics that could come back to bite: bought links, scraped content, traffic schemes.
The affiliate checks most sellers forget
- Amazon: the Associates agreement can't be assigned without Amazon's written approval, so buyers usually swap in their own tags at handover. Show revenue by tracking ID so they know what's at stake.
- Other programs: the buyer has to apply and be approved on their own account. A site that depends on one hard-to-get program is a risk to price in.
- Which pages earn: sub-IDs on links let a buyer see revenue per page; without them, they're valuing traffic and guessing the rest.
- Program concentration: what share of revenue comes from the top program, and how long it's been running.
- Link health: products gone, out of stock or untracked, which a buyer will find in their first week.
- Account IDs in the links: links carrying anyone else's ID, from a writer, a plugin or a previous owner.
- Disclosures on every page with affiliate links, and Amazon's required statement.
If you're selling
- Get 12 to 24 months of clean, connected data: analytics, search, every network.
- Add sub-IDs now, so the months before the sale show which pages earn.
- Fix broken links, foreign account IDs and missing disclosures before a buyer finds them.
- Offer read-only access instead of screenshots, and a report a buyer can check for tampering.
A report buyers can check
RevWarn collects traffic, search, revenue from every network and uptime for each site, month by month, and issues signed reports for a sale: what the networks reported kept apart from what you uploaded, gaps shown as gaps, and a private link that shows the buyer the report hasn't been changed. Free for 30 days.
Start a 30-day free trial How verified reports workSources: WebAcquisition: Empire Flippers due diligence · Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement (section 12).