Free calculator
Max offer calculator: what multiple should you pay?
The FirstPass Memo max offer calculator turns a listing's monthly profit, age, revenue concentration, owner hours and trend into a rule-of-thumb price range in months of profit, plus the most you should offer at your own target payback. Small online businesses ($10k–150k) usually ask 20–45 months of profit; the risk factors below decide where in that band a listing belongs.
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Inputs
How it works
Starting point (months of profit): content 30, SaaS 40, ecommerce 30, FBA 28, newsletter 32, YouTube 26, app 30
Under 1 year −8 · under 3 years −3 · 5+ years +3
One source ≥70% −8 · 40–70% −4
Owner hours >20/wk −6 · 10–20 −3
Falling profit −8 · growing +2
Range = midpoint ± 6 months (floor 10) · Max offer = the lower of the top of the range and your target payback
The starting points sit near the medians we see on public marketplace listings priced $10k–150k (October 2026 benchmarks). The adjustments are deliberately blunt: they show which facts move a price, not what a specific business is worth.
Worked example
A composite, not a real listing: a 2-year-old content site making $3,000 a month, 80% of revenue from one affiliate programme, 5 owner hours a week, flat profit. The starting point is 30 months; age takes off 3 and concentration 8, so the midpoint is 19 months ($57,000) and the range $39,000–$75,000. A listing asking 36× monthly profit ($108,000) is well above it.
Get 11 seller question checklists: 151 questions to send a seller
Enter your email and the next page gives you the general seller question checklist (web page and PDF) straight away, no waiting, along with the other free files: 11 seller question checklists (151 questions across eleven business types), the 72-hour vetting plan and a 14-column deal-tracker spreadsheet. We also email you the links so you have them later.
No newsletter: we send one email with your links, and at most one more when online checkout opens. Reply "stop" to hello@firstpassmemo.com to be removed. Looking at a live listing priced $10k–150k? Get a full memo: $79, pay after delivery instead; its confirmation page has the same downloads.
Related
This calculator does arithmetic on the figures you enter. It is not investment, legal, tax or valuation advice, and it does not check whether a seller's figures are true.