Here's a thing that happens to website buyers more often than anyone wants to admit: they buy the site, the wire clears, and then a chunk of the revenue just… doesn't show up. The site's the same. The traffic's the same. But the money was running through something tied to the seller personally, and when the seller left, the money left with them.
You can buy the restaurant and find out the recipes walked out with the chef.
The trap is that revenue and the website are two separate things, and the sale usually transfers one cleanly and the other not at all. The website — files, domain, content — moves over fine. The income flows through a stack of accounts and relationships, and a lot of those don't transfer just because you now own the site.
The usual places income quietly stays behind:
- Affiliate accounts. Those affiliate links earn through the seller's account with the affiliate program. Amazon Associates, in particular, is tied to the individual and generally doesn't transfer — you have to re-apply, and you have to qualify. If a content site's revenue is mostly Amazon, you're not inheriting the income, you're inheriting the chance to re-earn it.
- Ad network accounts. Display revenue runs through the seller's account with the ad manager (Raptive, Mediavine, AdSense, whoever). Some let you transfer or re-apply, some have traffic thresholds you have to re-clear, and there's usually a gap while it re-approves. Find out the specific network's rules before you assume the ad money is yours on day one.
- Sponsorships and direct deals. If revenue comes from “I know a guy who sponsors the newsletter,” that's a relationship, not an asset. Relationships don't transfer in a contract. Ask which sponsors are under a real agreement and which are a friendly handshake that ends when the friend leaves.
- Payment processors and app accounts. Stripe, PayPal, app-store accounts — check whose name they're in and what it takes to move the business to yours without freezing payouts.
- The email list's platform. A list earns nothing if it's stuck on the seller's personal ESP account, or if the consent doesn't transfer cleanly.
The fix is unglamorous and it's the whole game: map every dollar of revenue to the specific account it flows through, and for each one, ask the boring question — does this transfer to me, or do I have to re-apply, and what happens to the income in the gap? Do that mapping before you sign, not after, because “after” is when you discover that 40% of the revenue needs a re-application you might not win.
If you're staring at a P&L and you can't tell which of those income streams actually comes with the sale, that's a core part of what a pre-purchase audit sorts out. But you can start it yourself with one column on a spreadsheet: revenue stream, the account it runs through, and whether it transfers. The blanks in that third column are your risk.