Rejection is the normal outcome
Empire Flippers publish the figure themselves: roughly 91% of businesses submitted to them do not pass vetting. That is worth absorbing before you read anything into your own rejection, because it means being declined is the ordinary result rather than a verdict on what you built. Nine in ten submissions fail, and a large share of them fail on things that have nothing to do with the quality of the business.
The reasons, in rough order of frequency
| Reason | Roughly |
|---|---|
| Identity verification failure — documents that cannot be matched or read | 31% |
| Insufficient earnings, or not enough trading history | 25% |
| Financials that cannot be verified — unclear P&L, undisclosed expenses, inventory charges | Common |
| Wrong document types submitted | Over a third of submissions, per their own guidance |
| Restricted niche — adult, gambling, CBD and hemp, dubious health claims | Automatic decline |
| No analytics installed at all | A small share of content sites |
The 91% figure is Empire Flippers’ own, published in their post on why most businesses do not pass vetting. The percentage split for the top two causes comes from a 2026 third-party analysis of their process rather than from Empire Flippers directly, so treat the ordering as reliable and the exact percentages as one analyst’s reading. Their own help documentation separately states they reject over a third of submissions because the wrong types of documents were provided.
The largest cause is paperwork, not the business
This is the useful finding and it gets buried everywhere else. The single biggest bucket is identity verification: an ID that cannot be read, details that do not match the document, a name spelled differently than on the account. That is an administrative failure and it is fully fixable in an afternoon. If your rejection came at the verification stage, nothing has been said about your business at all, and re-submitting with clean documents is the whole remedy.
What is genuinely a business problem
Two things. Not enough profit, or not enough history to prove the profit is stable — typically a business under six to twelve months old, or below the earnings floor. And financials nobody can verify, which covers an unclear profit-and-loss statement, expenses that were left out, inventory costs that were not disclosed, and add-backs with nothing behind them. The first is solved by waiting and trading. The second is solved by bookkeeping, and it is worth doing regardless of who you eventually sell to.
Restricted niches are not negotiable
Empire Flippers decline whole categories outright: adult content, gambling, CBD and hemp, and health or medical products making claims they consider dubious. There is no appeal and no version of your submission that passes. This is not a comment on legality or on your business — it is a decision about what they are willing to have on their marketplace, and it is stated in their published requirements. If you are in one of these categories, the answer is a different venue, not a better application.
How to read your rejection email
It usually names a stage rather than a reason, and the stage tells you what to do. Rejected at verification means documents — fix and re-submit. Rejected during in-vetting means an analyst looked at the numbers and something in them did not hold, which is worth asking about specifically because they will often say. Rejected on criteria means you are below a threshold, and re-applying before that changes is a wasted submission. Check the seller dashboard as well as the email; the specific note is frequently there rather than in the message.
Whether to re-apply
Re-apply if the cause was documentary, or if the numbers have genuinely moved since — more months of history, higher or steadier profit, cleaner books. Do not re-apply on the same numbers hoping for a different analyst, because the criteria are thresholds rather than opinions. And do not treat a rejection as the end of the process, because being outside one marketplace's window says very little about whether the business is sellable.
Where to go instead
Match the venue to why you were declined. Below the earnings floor or short on history, Motion Invest and Flippa both take smaller and younger businesses, and Motion Invest specialises in content sites under roughly $50,000. In a restricted niche, Flippa's open marketplace is more permissive, and a private sale to somebody already in your industry is often the realistic route. For a SaaS specifically, Acquire.com is built for software and will consider things a general marketplace would not. And if the problem was verifiable financials, fix that before approaching anyone at all, because every venue worth using will ask the same questions.
What a rejection is actually telling you
Usually one of three things, and it is worth being honest about which. That your paperwork was not ready, which is the most common and the easiest to fix. That the business is not yet at the size where a managed marketplace can make money on it, which is a statement about their economics rather than your asset. Or that the numbers do not survive examination, which is the one worth taking seriously, because the next buyer will examine them too.
- Empire Flippers publish a 91% rejection rate — being declined is the normal outcome.
- The largest single cause is identity verification failure, which is administrative and fixable.
- Restricted niches (adult, gambling, CBD, dubious health claims) are declined outright with no appeal.
- Re-apply only if the documents or the numbers actually changed; criteria are thresholds, not opinions.
- Below the earnings floor, Motion Invest and Flippa take smaller and younger businesses.
Work it out: Profit multiple calculator
Run a free valuation before you re-apply anywhere. Knowing the number tells you which venues will take you and which are a waste of a submission.
Value my site →Empire Flippers vets both sides and runs the migration for you. For established sites it consistently reaches the strongest end of the range.
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