Answers
How do I buy an online business?
Short answer: To buy a small online business, decide the type and budget, screen listings on payback and red flags, question the seller, verify revenue and traffic with read-only access, negotiate price and terms, and close through escrow with a written asset purchase agreement. Expect most of your time to go into verification, not searching.
What are the steps?
- Choose a type and a budget. Content site, SaaS, ecommerce, newsletter or YouTube each need different skills and carry different risks. The Is it worth it? pages compare them.
- Set a payback target and work out the profit you need (below).
- Screen listings with the red-flag checker: payback, red flags, and a question for each.
- Question the seller (questions to ask a seller).
- Verify revenue and traffic with read-only access, not screenshots.
- Negotiate price and terms, including any seller financing, in a letter of intent.
- Close through escrow with a written asset purchase agreement (how escrow works).
Where are small online businesses listed?
The main marketplaces for buyers at this size are Flippa (all types and sizes), Acquire.com (mostly SaaS and startups), Empire Flippers (vetted listings, generally larger) and, for owner-run businesses of all kinds, BizBuySell. Brokers and private sales account for the rest. How they differ for buyers is compared in Flippa vs Empire Flippers vs Acquire.com, and what each checks in is Flippa legit? and is Acquire.com legit?
Competition is real: Flippa's H1 2026 Insights report (read 7 October 2026) counts 123,022 active buyers in the first half of 2026, and puts the average multiple for sales between $10,000 and $100,000 at 2.24 times profit, with the top quarter at 5.96 times.
How much profit does my budget need to buy?
Turn your budget into the monthly profit a business needs at your payback target. Our October 2026 sample of $10,000 to $150,000 listings asked a median payback of 26.8 months (what is a good payback?).
| Your budget | Monthly profit needed for 24-month payback | 30 months | 36 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| $25,000 | $1,042 | $833 | $694 |
| $50,000 | $2,083 | $1,667 | $1,389 |
| $100,000 | $4,167 | $3,333 | $2,778 |
Monthly profit needed = budget ÷ payback months. Use verified profit after paying for your own time.
Use verified profit after paying for your own time. A listing that needs 15 hours a week of your work is a smaller business than its profit suggests (SDE or net profit?).
Where does the time go?
Into verification. Finding listings is quick; checking one properly takes most of the effort: reconciling revenue to bank deposits, reading 16 to 24 months of traffic, and confirming which accounts can move. The checks by type are on the decision pages:
- Buying a website · content site · micro-SaaS · app
- Shopify store · Amazon FBA business · newsletter · YouTube channel
How do I close safely?
Pay through escrow, never by direct transfer; list every asset in the agreement; inspect before releasing funds; and, if part of the price is paid later, check the business can carry it (how seller financing works). For a SaaS, follow how to buy a SaaS business; for multiples by type, how many times profit online businesses sell for.
Sources
- FirstPass Memo, online-business listing benchmarks, October 2026, our own data, CC BY 4.0
- Flippa, The New Era of Digital M&A: Flippa's H1 2026 Insights Report (updated 24 July 2026), read 7 October 2026
- FirstPass Memo, red-flag checker rules, our own rules, published as /rules.json
- FirstPass Memo, free buyer calculators, our own calculators; the formulas are on each page
Related
- Is it worth it? By business type
- How many times profit do online businesses sell for?
- What is a good payback period?
- Questions to ask a seller
- How escrow works
- How to buy a SaaS business
- Glossary of listing terms
- More questions buyers ask
Get the 72-hour vetting plan
Join the FirstPass Memo waitlist and the next page gives you the 72-hour vetting plan (web page and PDF) straight away, along with the other free files: seller question checklists for eleven business types, the 72-hour vetting plan and a deal-tracker spreadsheet. Nothing is emailed; you download them on the page.
We will write when paid memos open, and occasionally before. Unsubscribe any time by replying "stop" to hello@firstpassmemo.com. Looking at a live listing priced $10k–150k? Apply for a free beta memo instead; its confirmation page has the same downloads.
Composite examples are invented and labelled. Figures from other sites are quoted with a link and the date we read them; FirstPass figures are asking prices and seller-stated profit, not sale prices. Informational screening only, not investment, legal or tax advice.