8 Tips for Selling a Business Online

Last Updated on December 10, 2025 by Ewen Finser

Selling a business online the wrong way could be the most expensive mistake you’ll ever make. Unfortunately, the process is a minefield of potential missteps, and one wrong move could result in a five- or six-figure loss.

Here are eight of the best ways to avoid that. 

1. Get the Right Partner for Your Sale 

For 99% of business owners eyeing a sale, one of the most important pieces of advice you can heed is to NOT go it alone. 

DIY sales are only a good idea in a small minority of cases, so for most businesses, choosing the right brokerage or buy-and-sell platform is the first, most vital step toward closing the best possible deal. 

Business Brokers

Full-service brokerages do most of the hard work for you. They’ll guide you through valuation, find and approach qualified buyers, negotiate better terms, and generally coach you through the sale. You just can’t beat the expertise that a seasoned broker will give you access to. 

I personally recommend Quiet Light, especially for online businesses. This brokerage requires each of its agents to have either bought or sold companies themselves, guaranteeing a level of personal expertise that’s unmatched in the market. Its fees are also on the low end compared to its peers.

Online Marketplaces 

Brokers tend not to deal with smaller sales; if your company is valued in the five-figure range, you’ll probably have to use an online marketplace instead. Platforms like Flippa cater to smaller web businesses and domain sales, while platforms like Empire Flippers and Acquire serve the lower mid-market. Flippa vs Acquire: Where Should You Sell Your Business?

These marketplaces provide plenty of exposure to potential buyers, but they leave a lot more of the legwork to you (creating your listing, responding to inquiries, vetting potential buyers, handling your own negotiations, etc.). The vetting process in particular can be very demanding: If you list your business on a large platform like Flippa, you’re practically guaranteed to receive a number of unserious inquiries. Separating these from worthwhile offers can be very time-consuming. 

Some sellers in the six- and seven-figure bracket prefer to list on these platforms in order to stay closer to the sale process, but I wouldn’t recommend going down this road unless you know what you’re doing and have the time and patience for it. I wouldn’t personally use a marketplace for any sale bigger than $200k. 

2. Keep Impeccable Financial Records

Accurate financial records can make or break your deal. You should be up to speed with your books at all times, of course, but it’s especially important when you’re gearing up for an exit. 

Why? Buyers and their lenders will regularly turn away businesses with disorganized or inaccurate financials, while well-organized financials can increase the sale price and speed up due diligence.

At minimum, you should have 3+ years of P&L statements, a current balance sheet, and tax returns to back them up. If you run an e-commerce or FBA business, have clear records of COGS and inventory counts. If it’s a content or SaaS company, make sure you’re tracking subscription revenue, churn, etc., in a consistent manner. 

3. Reduce Owner Dependence

“What happens when you leave?” is a question you’ll hear a lot. If the honest answer is “the business will fall apart,” that’s a big problem.

Buyers will pay a premium for a business that runs smoothly without heavy owner involvement, while they’ll demand discounts for a business that is overly owner-reliant. In fact, if a company can’t easily be transferred to a new owner because all the key knowledge and relationships live in your head, you might find that any offers you get will require you to stick around long-term via an earn-out or seller financing holdback. 

So, how do you reduce owner dependence? 

• Document your processes: Start creating SOPs for all core tasks (fulfilling orders, handling customer inquiries, managing ad campaigns, etc.). 
• Start delegating: If you’re still stuck in execution mode, now is the time to make a change. Make sure your supporting team can keep things going without extensive support and supervision from you. 
• Introduce your clients to your team: Do you still handle all your company’s client interactions personally? If so, try to spread out those relationships. 

4. Craft a Stellar Sales Pack

If you’re working with a broker, they’ll help you prepare a confidential information memorandum (CIM) — essentially a detailed sales pack about your business. 

The perfect CIM will include an executive summary, your full company history, an overview of your operations or processes, details on the management team, a summary of growth opportunities, an industry or competitive analysis, a rundown of your assets (including any intellectual property), and high-level financials going back at least three years.  

Even if you’re selling on your own, having a solid info package to share with qualified buyers is vital: A sloppy or incomplete information pack is a huge missed opportunity, while a great one can dramatically boost buyer interest and trust.

5. Be Realistic About Your Valuation

As an entrepreneur, you’ll naturally want to squeeze as much money out of your sale as possible. However, you need to exercise extreme caution here. Overvaluing your business is a surefire way to sabotage your sale — an unrealistically high asking price will scare off serious buyers and cause your listing to languish on the market.

To avoid this, you need to ground your valuation in market reality. Ask yourself, what are similar businesses actually selling for? For example, online-first companies are valued on the basis of a multiple of their seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE) or EBITDA. The exact multiple depends on many factors (growth rate, niche, business model, owner involvement, etc.), but for many small- mid-sized businesses, you might see valuations in the ballpark of 2.5X–4X annual earnings. 

Your business could warrant a higher multiple if it’s growing fast, has recurring revenue, or boasts other attractive features. It could also be lower if it’s in decline or comes with risks. Regardless, the key is to objectively assess where you stand.

6. Pick the Right Time to Sell

Many entrepreneurs wait until they’re burned out or their business has started declining before they think about selling. Unfortunately, this tends to result in a loss of value. The best time to sell is when your business is doing well, showing strong or at least stable performance, and when you still have gas in the tank to get through a sale process.

If your business has seasonal or cyclical elements, consider that too. For example, if you have an e-commerce store that always booms in Q4, listing it right after the holiday season can make it more appealing. 

It’s also important to remember that the sale process itself can take a while — often longer than owners expect. On average, selling a small business can take anywhere from six months to a year (from listing to closing). But if the economy is shaky or your industry is out of favor, it could be longer. So don’t go into the sales process without properly considering the implications of this timeline. 

7. Don’t Take Your Foot Off the Gas

Once you decide to sell and maybe even list the business, it’s easy to check out and ease up on sales/operations as you divert more attention to the M&A process. 

This is not a good idea. One of your most important jobs during a sale process is to keep the business running at least as well as before; you must avoid any significant performance dip while the deal is in progress.

This is because nearly all offers and valuations are based on a snapshot of recent performance (usually the trailing twelve months), and buyers will keep an eye on your ongoing numbers right up until closing. If your sales or traffic suddenly drops during negotiations or due diligence, you can expect the buyer to get cold feet or try to renegotiate the price. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes: If you agree to buy a company assuming it’ll keep doing $50k per month, only to see it drop to $35k after signing the LOI, you’d be worried, right? 

Even if the buyer doesn’t walk away, their lender might — banks often require that the business maintain its financial trajectory before funding the acquisition loan.

8. Be Prepared and Proactive in Due Diligence

So you’ve accepted an offer or signed a letter of intent. Congratulations! Don’t get too excited, though; you still need to get through the due diligence process. 

This is where the buyer inspects your business in detail to verify everything before the deal is final. No business is perfect, after all, and your buyer will most likely want plenty of information about any areas of uncertainty that arise. 

Serious buyers will go into very fine detail here, and you need to be prepared to answer a lot of potentially difficult questions.

This means that proper preparation is the key here, including:

• Assembling a data room early: Start gathering and organizing all the documents you might need to show a buyer — even before you have a buyer at the table. 
• Being honest and up-front about issues: If there are any skeletons in your closet, it’s better that the buyer hears about them from you before uncovering them themselves. 
• Being responsive and organized: Respond to due diligence requests as promptly as you can. Slow responses can make buyers antsy, so if a buyer asks for a report or clarification, try to get it within a day or two. 
• Negotiate fairly if surprises arise: Due diligence can reveal issues that you hadn’t spotted before. In a situation like this, your buyer may try to renegotiate the sale price or other key deal terms, and a lot of the time, this is only fair. Try to be flexible in a scenario like this; it’s usually better to emerge with a slightly worse deal than no deal at all. 

Selling Your Company the Right Way

As you can see, company sales are far from straightforward. There are a lot of potential pitfalls to navigate, and these get more and more serious as sale value increases. 

This, ultimately, is why my key recommendation to sellers is to partner with a reputable broker. Rather than trying to implement all the advice in this article yourself, it’s much easier to simply hand it off to a seasoned professional who has been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt.