Category AI writing and SEO platform · Listed Flippa, confidential Asking $250,000 · TTM revenue $47,600 · Monthly profit $3,269 · Margin 82% Subscribers 170 · Churn 11% · Age 5 years · Traffic 51,936 page views/month
This is a vetted listing. Flippa's team verified revenue, primary expenses and traffic, and the seller connected Google Analytics. The numbers below are the seller's, checked by the marketplace. That is better disclosure than most listings offer, and it is why this one is worth reading closely rather than dismissing.
The asking price is 6.4× annual profit. The average micro-SaaS on Flippa sells at 2.85×, and the median across confirmed SaaS transactions elsewhere is 3.9×. So the seller is asking roughly double the market, and the listing explains why: five years old, 82% margins, fully organic acquisition, and an email list of 570,000.
Each of those is true. Two of them mean less than they appear.
| Churn read as monthly | Churn read as annual | |
|---|---|---|
| Risk-adjusted multiple | 2.5× | 3.4× |
| IRR at the asking price | −6.0% | 0.0% |
| Maximum defensible offer at 30% IRR | $115,000 | $131,000 |
| Half-life of the customer base | 5.9 months | 71 months |
| Annual net revenue retention | 24.7% | 89.0% |
Two columns, because the listing says "Overall Churn 11%" and does not say over what period.
That ambiguity is not a detail. It is the difference between a business that loses half its customers in six months and one that loses half in six years. At 11% monthly, holding revenue flat requires replacing $436 of MRR every month, forever. At 11% annually, it requires $38.
A buyer cannot price this listing without knowing which one it is. It is the first question, before the price.
170 paying subscribers. An email list of 570,000.
That is a conversion rate of 0.03%. Over five years.
The listing describes the list as "a highly responsive email audience" and as the channel for "occasional lifetime deal promotions" that produce "additional non-recurring revenue."
Put those two sentences next to the arithmetic. A list that converts at 0.03% into subscriptions is not primarily a subscription channel. It is being monetised through lifetime deals — and a lifetime deal is the sale of a customer who will never pay again but will consume infrastructure indefinitely.
That matters for what the $47,600 is made of. Recurring revenue and lifetime-deal revenue carry the same weight in a TTM figure and opposite weight in a valuation. The listing states LTD revenue is included and describes it as non-critical, but does not size it.
Split the $47,600 by the subscriber count and each of the 170 pays $280 a year, or $23 a month. That is a plausible SaaS price point — so either the LTD portion is small and the recurring base is genuinely $23/month per seat, or the LTD portion is meaningful and the true recurring base is smaller than 170 × $23. Both cannot be true.
| Adjustment | Effect |
|---|---|
| Market median, confirmed SaaS transactions | 3.9× |
| Churn above 5% monthly, if that is the reading | −0.9× |
| Single acquisition channel — 100% organic, no paid | −0.5× |
| Risk-adjusted | 2.5× to 3.4× |
The organic acquisition is presented as a strength, and in unit-economics terms it is: no ad spend, 82% margins. As a transferable asset it is a concentration risk. One channel, and the buyer inherits whatever SEO position five years built, in the category where AI search is currently reshaping traffic the fastest.
Five years of age is a genuine positive and the model does not discount it.
$115,000 to $131,000, depending on the churn answer, structured 60% at close and 40% as an earnout over eighteen months tied to retention of the subscriber base measured at closing.
At $250,000, the three-year IRR is between −6% and zero. Not thin — negative or nil, on the seller's own verified numbers, before any due diligence discovers anything.
The earnout is not a haggling tactic here. It is the only structure that resolves the churn ambiguity without either side guessing: if the base holds, the seller collects in full.
Run your own numbers on any listing: Ledgerline, free.
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