How to sell your media business

Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button:

Let’s jump into it…

Quick hits

An interesting look at Yahoo’s deal with Taboola, which will power its self-service native advertising [Adweek]

A good breakdown of how record labels often screw over hip hop artists [HipHopMadness]

Bloomberg has over 450,000 paying subscribers. It charges around $400 a year, so that’s $180 million in annual subscription revenue. [TalkingBizNews]

Remember all the handwringing over whether a16z was trying to replace tech journalism? It was all for nothing [Business Insider]

Publisher ecommerce revenue hasn’t yet taken a hit. Publishers might be seeing a softening in advertising sales, but so far ecommerce/affiliate content is still strong.. [Digiday]

Do you live in the Washington, DC area?

So one of my resolutions for 2023 is to get out and meet other media operators in person. I’m tired of holding all my conversations over Zoom calls. As such, I’m going to make a concerted effort to hold regular social gatherings — nothing super formal, just getting together for dinner or hosting people at my apartment for drinks.

If this is something that interests you, get in touch. I’m compiling a spreadsheet of DC-area colleagues I can invite. You can find my contact information over here.

How to sell your media company

Earlier this week I hosted a Zoom call with several entrepreneurs that have experience buying and selling media companies. They included:

Terrell Johnson, who sold his running-focused website last year

Alexis Grant, who’s sold two of her businesses and also runs They Got Acquired, a site that covers acquisitions

Joe Pulizzi, who sold the Content Marketing Institute in 2016

Chris Schroder, who sold both a newspaper chain and a PR firm

Farhan Mohamed, CEO of Overstory Media, which has acquired several media companies

…and several others.

We discussed everything including how to prepare your company for a sale, how to find a broker, how to reach a valuation, how to negotiate, and whether to sign a non-compete.

I recorded the entire discussion, and you can find it in the video embedded below: