Sell My Ecommerce Business
Most sellers spend months preparing the wrong things. They polish the website and rebuild the branding, then get asked for twelve months of reconciled accounts they do not have. This page is what a buyer actually wants, in the order they want it.
What is my ecommerce business worth?
Annual net profit multiplied by a multiple. In a direct sale, multiples typically run from around 2.0x for a business under £120,000 of annual profit to 3.0x or more above £900,000. Two businesses earning the same amount can be worth very different sums, and the gap is always durability rather than the profit line itself.
The valuation guide has the full multiple table and the seven factors that move it. The short version: diversified traffic, growing revenue, repeat purchases and a business that runs without you all push the multiple up. Everything else is detail.
The four routes to a sale
| Route | Typical cost | Timeline | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace listing Empire Flippers, Flippa and similar | Commission, often 10% to 15% at this size | Months, and many listings never sell | Your business would genuinely draw several funded bidders, and you can carry it for months while they decide |
| Business broker | 8% to 15%, sometimes a retainer too | 3 to 6 months | The business is clean, growing and would attract several bidders |
| Direct sale | None | 4 to 8 weeks | You want the money certain, the timeline short and the process invisible |
| Strategic buyer A competitor or supplier | Usually none | Unpredictable | Rare, but can price above market if there is a real synergy |
The confidentiality trade-off nobody mentions
A listing is seen by many people, and in a small niche word travels. Suppliers get nervous, staff hear things, and competitors learn you are looking. A direct sale involves one counterparty under an NDA. If your niche is small, that difference is worth real money even before you count the commission.
What a buyer asks for, in order
A serious buyer works through the same list every time. Having it ready compresses the process by weeks and signals you are a professional counterparty, which materially affects how you are treated on price.
- Profit and loss for the last 12 to 24 months, reconciled to the bank. Not a spreadsheet of estimates.
- Platform analytics. Sessions, conversion rate, average order value, returning customer rate.
- Ad account exports. Spend and return over time, by channel.
- Traffic breakdown. What share is paid, organic, email, direct, marketplace.
- Supplier terms. Who makes it, lead times, pricing, anything in writing.
- Your actual hours, honestly. Buyers price founder dependency, and they find out anyway.
Want a number for your own business?
The confidential valuation tool gives a direct-sale range in about sixty seconds. Nothing is stored unless you choose to submit it.
Get a confidential valuation →Six mistakes that cost sellers real money
1. Going to market during a dip
A buyer values the trailing twelve months. Selling three months into a decline prices the decline, not the business you built. If there is a fixable reason, fix it first.
2. Waiting for one more good quarter
The mirror image, and just as expensive. Every extra quarter carries platform risk, supplier risk and burnout risk. Plenty of sellers price a business twice and the second number is lower.
3. Add-backs that cannot be evidenced
Adding back the car, the phone and a family member on payroll is normal. Adding back things you cannot document invites the buyer to discount the entire schedule, and a buyer who stops trusting one number starts re-testing all of them.
4. Hiding the obvious problem
A concentrated ad account, a single supplier, one SKU carrying everything. Buyers find these in diligence without exception. Disclosed up front they are priced once. Discovered later they cause a retrade and often kill the deal outright.
5. No transition plan
A seller who will not do a handover is worth less, because the buyer prices the knowledge walking out of the door. Offering a structured transition costs you a few weeks and adds more than it costs.
6. Transferring before the money clears
Under time pressure sellers hand over the store or the domain against a promise. Use an escrow agent, always. A buyer who resists escrow is telling you something you should listen to.
How long it takes
A direct sale to a single decision maker typically runs 4 to 8 weeks from first conversation to completion. A brokered or listed process more commonly takes 3 to 6 months, because listing preparation, marketing the business and running several buyer conversations in parallel all take time before diligence even starts.
The variable that moves the timeline most is not the buyer. It is whether your financials are ready on day one.
If you do one thing this week
Reconcile twelve months of profit and loss to your bank statements and to your platform reports. It costs a weekend with an accountant, it is the first thing every buyer asks for, and messy books are the single most common reason a price gets discounted for reasons that have nothing to do with the business.
Selling a Shopify, Amazon or multi-channel business
The valuation logic is the same across platforms but the diligence and the transfer mechanics are not. There is a platform-specific guide for selling a Shopify store, covering store and domain transfer, apps and the GDPR position on the customer list, and one for selling an Amazon FBA business, which covers the seller account problem and how inventory is treated in the price.
Common questions
Prepare twelve to twenty-four months of profit and loss reconciled to the bank, platform analytics, ad account exports and supplier terms. Then choose a route: a marketplace listing or broker for maximum competition at 8% to 15% commission over 3 to 6 months, or a direct sale to a single buyer with no commission, typically completing in 4 to 8 weeks.
Annual net profit times a multiple, typically 2.0x to 4.0x in a direct sale. The multiple rises with size and with durability: diversified traffic, growing revenue, repeat purchases and a business that runs without the founder. A single-channel business dependent on one ad account prices at the bottom of the range.
Four routes. Marketplaces such as Empire Flippers or Flippa, business brokers, a direct sale to a buyer who approaches you or whom you approach, or a strategic buyer such as a competitor or supplier. Marketplaces and brokers create competition but charge commission and take months. Direct sales are faster, confidential and commission free.
A direct sale to a single decision maker typically takes 4 to 8 weeks from first conversation to completion. A brokered or listed process more commonly runs 3 to 6 months. The biggest variable is whether your financials are ready on day one, not the buyer.
Reconciled financials, platform analytics, ad account performance over time, traffic diversification, supplier terms and how many hours the owner actually works. Every question is a version of one thing: whether the earnings continue after the current owner leaves.
It depends on whether your business would genuinely attract multiple bidders. If it is clean, growing and above roughly £500,000 of annual profit, competition can add more than the 8% to 15% commission. If revenue is declining or traffic is concentrated in one channel, competition will not materialise and you are paying for an auction that never happens.