Two sellers quote wildly different prices for similar sites because they're using two different "multiples." For almost every website under $50k, the right one is the SDE multiple — not the revenue multiple you hear about in SaaS headlines. Confusing the two is how sellers overprice and buyers overpay.
A revenue multiple applies a factor to top-line sales (e.g. 3× ARR). An SDE multiple applies a factor to owner profit. For a small site, the same business can look like "$36k revenue × 3 = $108k" or "$12k SDE × 2.8 = $34k." Only the second is real.
Seller's Discretionary Earnings = net profit + owner-only add-backs: your salary/owner draw, one-off costs, personal expenses run through the business, and non-essential software. It's what a new owner would actually pocket. Add-backs must be defensible in due diligence — inflating them is the fastest way to blow up a deal.
Small sites are bought as income streams, not growth bets. The buyer wants to know what they'll earn, so the price is anchored to profit. This is why a $1,000/month site lands around $24k–$45k — SDE × a monthly multiple.
Revenue multiples are for high-growth SaaS and subscription businesses where profit is intentionally near zero because everything is reinvested. If your site is a content, affiliate, or e-commerce business with real profit, revenue multiples don't apply — and any buyer quoting one on a small content site is confused or fishing.
Revenue $2,000/mo − hosting $60 − content $400 − tools $90 = $1,450 net. Add back a $200 course you bought once and $50 of personal software = $1,700 SDE. At 32× monthly that's ~$54k. Honest add-backs raised the price by ~$8k here — inflated ones would have collapsed the sale.