Sample report 03: Home and DIY content site with display ads and sponsored posts

Public-data due diligence on a public Flippa listing, reviewed Oct 31, 2026. Sources: the public listing page, the site’s own public pages, sitemap and public WordPress post feed, the Internet Archive availability API, Google Search Central and Raptive’s help center. No seller data, no NDA material. The seller and the business are not named. Not advice to buy or not to buy.

Verdict in one line

Flippa has vetted revenue and traffic and the multiple matches the stated profit, but the title claims almost twice the monthly profit shown in the listing’s own metrics, most of the revenue appears to come from sources other than display ads, and publishing has nearly stopped since mid 2025. A buyer should get the revenue split by source and month before bidding.

What the seller claims (public page, Oct 31 2026)

  • Title: “Passive content site earning $3.8K/month profit at 99% margin, 261K pageviews/year, AdThrive approved, 87K Pinterest followers, and 10.5K ranked keywords”
  • Asking price: USD $55,000, reduced 33% from USD $82,000
  • Monthly profit: USD $1,996. Profit margin: 98%
  • Page views: 27,242 a month
  • Profit multiple 2.3x, revenue multiple 2.3x
  • Business location: WA, United States. Site age: 3 years. Description: “Launched in 2011”
  • Revenue from “affiliate marketing, advertising, and sponsored guest posts”; “Advertising comprises a significant income stream”; promotes products “notably through Amazon”
  • Traffic, “between January and November 2025”: organic search “47% of non-direct sessions”, social media “40% of sessions”, email “8% of traffic”
  • “over $34,000 from 1.22 million pageviews across three years, with a page RPM of $28.18”; revenue peaks “in the final quarter of the year”
  • The seller names “AI-driven traffic absorption and Google ranking updates” as challenges
  • Vetted + Data Verified Listing: “Our vetting team has reviewed this listing and verified:” revenue, primary expenses and traffic. Google Analytics and PayPal are connected
  • Flippa’s own buyer note on the same page: “Financials are seller-provided inputs. Always ask for verified financials.”

Risk 1: most revenue is likely not display ads, and the likely source carries Google policy risk (highest)

The listing gives enough to estimate the ad share. At the stated RPM and current pageviews, display ads earn about $768 a month. Total revenue implied by the listing is about $2,037 a month ($1,996 profit at 98% margin). That leaves about $1,269 a month, or 62%, from affiliate links and sponsored guest posts.

Page RPM assumed Ad revenue a month Share of revenue Left for affiliate and sponsored posts
$28.18 (stated 3-year figure) $768 38% $1,269
$40.00 $1,090 54% $947
$56.36 (double, seller-favorable Q4 case) $1,535 75% $501

For ads alone to explain all revenue, page RPM would need to be $74.76, which is 2.65 times the stated figure.

What the public site shows. The 20 most recent posts on the site’s public WordPress feed (Jan 19 to Oct 26, 2026) carry one to four outbound links each, 33 in all. Many point to commercial businesses: plumbing companies in Canada and the US, a moving company, a brandy brand, and helicopter and rail tour sellers. 32 of the 33 links carry no rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow” attribute. None of the 20 posts links to Amazon, although the listing says the site promotes products “notably through Amazon”. This report cannot tell which of these posts were paid. The listing says the site sells sponsored guest posts.

Google’s spam policies (last updated 2026-08-28, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) list as link spam: “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links” and “Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit”. The same page says: “It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel=“nofollow” or rel=“sponsored” attribute value to the <a> tag.” The site reputation policy on that page covers third-party content “published on a host site mainly because of that host’s already-established ranking signals”.

Why it matters: if sponsored posts are most of the profit, the buyer is buying a link-placement business more than an ad-supported content site. That income depends on buyers of placements, and a Google action could cut both the placement income and the organic traffic that supports the ad income.

Ask the seller:

  1. Revenue by source (Raptive ads, Amazon and other affiliate, sponsored posts) for each of the last 24 months, with the Amazon Associates and PayPal statements behind them.
  2. Which posts are paid, how buyers find the site (marketplaces, brokers, direct), the price per post, and the 12-month count of paid posts.
  3. Whether paid links are qualified with rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow” and labeled for readers, and whether the site has had any Search Console manual action or security notice.

Risk 2: publishing has almost stopped

The site’s public post feed reports 1,114 posts. Counted by publish date:

Period Posts published Per month
Jan to Jul 2024 15 2.1
Aug to Dec 2024 102 20.4
Jan to Jun 2025 202 33.7
Jul to Dec 2025 76 12.7
Jan to Apr 2026 23 5.8
May to Sep 2026 0 0
Oct 2026 1 1

Publishing ramped up from about 2 posts a month to a peak of 44 in Jan 2025, then fell away. The traffic figures in the listing cover January to November 2025, which overlaps the publishing peak.

Why it matters: if sponsored posts drive revenue, fewer posts likely means less revenue, and current revenue may sit below the averages on the page. If the seller has stopped selling placements, the buyer needs the new run rate, not the old one.

Ask the seller:

  1. Monthly revenue and pageviews for Nov 2025 to Oct 2026.
  2. Why publishing slowed, and whether sponsored-post demand has fallen.

Risk 3: the Raptive account sits just above the transfer bar

Raptive’s help center sets a 25,000 monthly pageview minimum to apply (https://help.raptive.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032840891-How-do-I-apply-to-Raptive). For a site sale to a buyer who is not already with Raptive, its transfer page says “the site must have had at least 25,000 pageviews or generated $500 in creator revenue in the past 30 days”, and “Sites must have been onboarded with Raptive for at least six months before they can be transferred” (https://help.raptive.com/hc/en-us/articles/31531129869211-Eligibility-guidelines-for-transferring-Raptive-account-ownership). The same page says “All sites transferring must be reviewed and approved under current standards”. Raptive’s application standards for sites under 100,000 pageviews include “Content is high-quality, original, and has meaningful human involvement” and 50% of traffic from the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and/or Australia. So the transfer is a fresh review, not a formality, and the sponsored posts in Risk 1 are part of what Raptive would see.

At 27,242 pageviews a month the site is 9.0% above 25,000. An 8.2% drop would cross it. Seller-favorable case: the $500 revenue test is an alternative, and at the stated RPM even 25,000 pageviews earns about $704, so the revenue test would likely pass.

Ask the seller:

  1. Pageviews and Raptive revenue for the last 30 days, and the date the site joined Raptive.
  2. Whether Raptive has confirmed the transfer, and the terms the buyer will sign.

Risk 4: traffic is split between Google and Pinterest

The listing reports organic search at 47% of non-direct sessions and social media at 40% of sessions, and it points to Pinterest (87K followers) as its main social asset. The seller names Google ranking updates and “AI-driven traffic absorption” as challenges.

Why it matters: the site depends on two platforms that set their own rules. A change at either can move traffic, and with the account close to Raptive’s bar, a traffic drop also threatens ad income. If social traffic is 40% of pageviews, a 21% drop in social traffic alone takes the site from 27,242 to 25,000 pageviews a month.

Ask the seller:

  1. Google Search Console clicks by month for 24 months, and the top 20 pages by traffic.
  2. Pinterest analytics: monthly outbound clicks for 24 months, and whether the Pinterest account transfers.

Questions on the numbers

  • Title “$3.8K/month profit” vs verified “USD $1,996 /mo”. The title is 1.90 times the metric. At $3,800 the multiple would be 1.21x. Ask which period the $3.8K describes.
  • Title “261K pageviews/year” (about 21,750 a month) vs metric “27,242 p/mo” (about 326,904 a year) vs “1.22 million pageviews across three years” (about 406,667 a year). Ask for monthly pageviews for 36 months. Falling from about 406,667 a year to 261,000 would be a 35.8% decline.
  • “99% margin” in the title vs 98% in the metrics. Minor, but ask what expenses exist (hosting, writers, Raptive fees, tools).
  • “Launched in 2011” vs “Site age 3 years”. The Internet Archive’s first capture of the domain is Sep 23, 2011, so the domain is older. The 3 years may be the seller’s ownership period. Ask when the seller acquired the site.
  • The $34,000 over three years averages $944 a month in ad revenue. The computed RPM is $27.87, close to the stated $28.18.

Assumptions: margin stays at 98%; the stated RPM applies to current pageviews; affiliate and sponsored income are the only other sources the listing names.

What checks out

  • Flippa or the broker verified revenue, primary expenses and traffic, with Google Analytics and PayPal connected.
  • The multiple matches the metrics: $55,000 / ($1,996 x 12) is 2.30x.
  • The site runs Raptive (AdThrive) ad code today, which matches “AdThrive approved”.
  • The seller states the seasonality and names the platform risks.
  • The domain has been live since at least Sep 2011.

What read-only access would add

With read-only access the seller grants: revenue by source and month from Raptive, Amazon and PayPal; a list of paid posts with link attributes; Search Console history and manual-action status; Pinterest analytics; and a crawl of all outbound links on the 1,114 posts.

Sources (retrieved Oct 31, 2026)