What Are the Practical Steps of Buying an Online Business?

As the seller of an online business, the more you can approach this process with the big picture of what it might look like from the buyer’s perspective, the easier it will be for you to craft the perfect valuation, online listing, and begin to work with a knowledgeable business broker.

You might have already built your business from the ground up because you started from scratch, doing things like figuring out your niche, the ideal product still listed on your Amazon FBA business, driving traffic to that site or to a website, or building an email list and marketing to it. Of course, it probably took some time before your new online business was profitable.

What Are Buyers Looking for When Buying an Online Business?

Many buyers are of the impression that they are buying a complete business with customers and products, proven marketing methods for generating leads, a presence on social media, an email list, ongoing ad campaigns and sometimes even contractors or virtual assistants.

These buyers are often looking for a turnkey opportunity that they can step in and take over, which means that they can begin running it as it was or make some changes in the effort of increasing profits. These buyers are also looking for companies that have a track record of profits and sales that can be seen before the business is purchased. This is accomplished in the due diligence process when the buyer looks at the financials.

Buyers are often encouraged not to rely only on the material presented to them by the seller. The possibility of a company being a big money maker is not the only reason why someone is interested in purchasing a business. Overall, these buyers must also have at least some level of interest in the niche in order to continue remaining successful

Training Opportunities

After the business is listed for sale and the due diligence process has begun. There are other things in the back of a business buyer’s mind, such as whether or not he or she can easily step in to that turn-key company. These buyers want to engage in shortcuts and many of the expensive and time-consuming tasks that they put into building your business before it becomes fully profitable.

Very successful sites will come with a high price tag, with prices in the tens to hundreds to thousands of dollars, or even up into the 7 figures. Buyers are also looking for things such as a good domain name, a large amount of quality website traffic and possibly even a large email list of responsive names. But they also want to know that there will be appropriate training provided to them to enable them to be as successful as possible when they step into the business. This can be very complicated for a buyer who is looking to exit his or her company as soon as possible.

Such a seller should have done all of the work in advance and have training manuals and standard operating procedures ready to be explained to the new buyer. Even when you are ready to step out of this situation quickly, you will need to be fully prepared to remain involved for at least a short period of time during the training phase. This can be an important component of the process of solidifying the deal that you have done with the buyer, and the more that you can show about how that training process will be accomplished in your early legal documents, the easier it will be for the prospective buyer to feel confident about their choice.