Why media properties don't fit SDE or ARR cleanly
A YouTube channel, newsletter, podcast, or other media property earns from ad revenue shares, sponsorships, and affiliate or royalty payouts, income streams that are real but structurally different from a subscription (ARR) or an owner-run storefront (SDE). This codebase values media properties on a net-payout basis for that reason: what the account or channel actually pays out to its owner, net of platform cuts, rather than forcing a schema.org Product listing or an SDE multiple onto an asset that is neither.
It also means schema.org structured data is intentionally NOT rendered on individual media_property listing pages on this site (see lib/seo/deal-structured.ts): there is no clean schema.org type for 'a media account for sale,' and forcing a Product type would mislabel it as physical merchandise.
What to diligence on a media property
Audience trend (growing, flat, or declining subscriber/listener count) matters more here than almost any other asset class, since the whole value is future audience attention. Platform-policy risk is real and asymmetric: a channel's monetization can be demonetized or a platform's algorithm can change reach overnight, in a way that doesn't have a direct equivalent in a brick-and-mortar SDE business.
Payout history (12+ months, not a single good month) and the concentration of revenue across a single platform versus multiple channels both change how durable the income actually is.