Marketplaces to Buy and Sell Websites

Business broker marketplaces list domains and websites for sale and assist buyers and owners with the process.

Here is a list of marketplaces to buy and sell online businesses. There are tools for valuing a business, due diligence, and financing — and professionals to consult on the details.

Marketplaces to Buy and Sell Sites

Latona’s is a boutique merger-and-acquisition broker specializing in cash-flow-positive digital assets, such as websites, ecommerce (including Amazon FBA and Shopify), membership, lead generation, SaaS, and domain portfolios. Beginning as a domain name broker, Latona’s shifted to web companies in 2008, focusing on properties with an annual profit of at least $20,000 and one year of positive trading.

Latona’s

FE International provides M&A services for SaaS, ecommerce, and content businesses. It has an extensive global network of 80,000 pre-qualified technology investors and has completed over 1,500 transactions. FE International provides help throughout a transaction, from exit planning to valuation, negotiations, due diligence, accounting, legal structuring, post-sale considerations, and more.

BizBroker24 sells websites and internet businesses with valuations between $150,000 and $20 million. A registered broker-dealer, BizBroker24 assists buyers with the entire acquisition and capital-raising process and provides educational resources on financing, due diligence, business valuation, market trends, and more. For sellers, BizBroker24 consults on valuation, assembles a marketing plan to attract qualified buyers, and helps negotiate the price and terms.

Flippa, headquartered in Melbourne and Austin, is a global marketplace for buying and selling online businesses and digital assets, including ecommerce stores, blogs, SaaS companies, mobile apps, social media accounts, and newsletters. Flippa offers an in-depth due diligence service and access to third-party brokers and financing providers. The free valuation tool estimates a business’s worth.

Flippa

OpenStore is a site for qualified Shopify store owners to sell their businesses. To receive an offer, owners can link to their Shopify store, add financials, and connect advertising accounts. A separate OpenStore service accepts Shopify businesses for 12 months and pays the owners guaranteed monthly payments. OpenStore was co-founded by startup veterans from Opendoor, Atomic, and Google.

Empire Flippers is a marketplace for buying and selling web businesses. The platform vets all sellers, examining the site’s history of earnings and traffic. Sellers must have at least $2,000 monthly profit over a 12-month average. It typically lists a website by taking the average net profit of the last six to 12 months and multiplying that amount by 20 to 60. Empire Flippers has sold over 2,250 businesses with a total value of over $480 million.

Quiet Light facilitates the buying and selling of profitable online businesses. Potential sellers receive a free valuation from analysts with firsthand experience in starting, buying, and selling internet-based businesses. Quiet Light has sold over 750 online businesses for over $500 million in total transaction value, with prices from $65,000 to $13.5 million.

Quiet Light

Website Properties sells established websites and other digitally native or tech-enabled businesses. The brokerage’s partners have collectively started, developed, operated, and sold over 50 internet-based businesses. Website Properties sends listings to a private list of 30,000 qualified buyers and utilizes a network of partner and portal sites, including over 50 business-for-sale sites, newspapers, and U.S. business journals.

Website Closers is a brokerage for digital businesses, including marketing agencies, Amazon FBA, SaaS, and ecommerce. The company’s entire go-to-market process takes less than a week. Website Closers has sold more than 2,300 businesses, facilitating $2.2 billion in transactions.

Sedo (“Search Engine for Domain Offers”) is a platform for the professional trading of domain names. Its brokers help find domains and its searchable marketplace contains over 24 million domains for sale. Sedo has over 3 million registered customers.

Sedo

BuySellEmpire is a marketplace for buying and selling internet businesses, including ecommerce stores, Amazon sellers, affiliate sites, agencies, SaaS memberships, display advertisers, lead generators, blogs, marketplaces, and Chrome extensions. Businesses must have $1,500 in monthly revenue and one year of verifiable income and traffic. Fees for completing a sale are as low as 4%, depending on the transaction.

Business Exits specializes in selling companies with revenue of $2 million to $60 million, including ecommerce, IT services, agencies, and software. Business Exits says it has a 91% success rate of selling within six months and facilitated $315 million in transaction volume in 2022.

Niche Investor (formerly ​​BlogsForSale.co) sells content sites, ecommerce businesses, and niche digital assets. Owners can sell directly to Niche Investor or list on its marketplace, which contains over 60 businesses, priced from $599 to $799,000, at the time of writing. Sales fees start at 7%.

Acquire.com is a startup acquisition marketplace connecting buyers and sellers and providing acquisition support, from legal documentation to due diligence. Sellers pay nothing to list a business and a 4% fee only if sold.

Acquire.com

Charts: Global Investor Trends for AI, Sustainability

Investors’ concerns regarding global macroeconomic volatility and inflation have diminished compared to the elevated levels last year. However, these risks still influence decision-making.

That’s according to PwC’s “Global Investor Survey 2023.” The study, conducted in September 2023, surveyed 345 investors and analysts across 30 countries and territories, including in-depth interviews with 15 investment professionals.

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The study also uncovered that investors perceive substantial risk associated with adopting AI.

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Moreover, according to the data, investors want companies to report the costs to achieve their sustainability commitments.

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According to a February 2023 survey by Statista, 74.9% of businesses worldwide plan to invest in AI technologies from 2023 to 2027. Additionally, upwards of 64.5% of respondents said they would invest in some form of sustainability tech.

Ecommerce Acquisitions Steady in 2023

I last spoke with Mark Daoust in late 2022. His firm, Quiet Light, a digital business brokerage, had just witnessed a post-pandemic hangover from cheap money and booming ecommerce. A normal acquisition market had returned.

We connected again last week. I asked him for an update on the state of buying and selling ecommerce companies.

No one is more qualified for that update than Daoust. His firm has grown from its founding in 2007 to 13 full-time advisors — all former entrepreneurs — who, with Daoust, have collectively experienced frenzied markets and the opposite.

The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Kerry Murdock: What is the state of ecommerce mergers and acquisitions in late 2023?

Mark Daoust: The theme of the year has been more of the same. Deal flow has been flat during the year from 2022.

The pandemic for the acquisitions industry was very good — as it was for a lot of ecommerce businesses, including the Amazon aggregators.

That began to slow down on both fronts during the middle of last year. The pandemic spending started to dwindle, and the aggregator rush started to level off. We saw a pullback from the record levels of 2021. For about the last 18 months, it’s been fairly steady —  no big changes — maybe a slight cooling of the market, but nothing too alarming.

Murdock: Last year you stated 2021 was unusual in terms of huge volumes and prices.

Daoust: Yes. 2021 was such an abnormal market. It was incredibly red hot. I’ve used the analogy of driving a car very fast and then returning to a normal speed. It feels slow.

I’ve been selling digital businesses since 2007. The market we’re in now is normal or perhaps a bit down, but not alarming by any means. Just slightly cooled.

Murdock: Can you cite a deal or two from this year as examples?

Daoust: Sure. We’ve had a number of good ecommerce deals over the last year. One was a site selling patriotic gear and apparel. It sold for a healthy multiple of 4 times EBITA, excluding inventory and working capital. It was a larger deal, mid-seven figures. Apparel continues to be pretty strong overall. A number of deals in 2023 involved apparel.

Sports and hobby niches continue to attract buyers. The popular niches don’t change much when we look at strong versus down markets. Consumables such as teas, coffees, makeup, and health and beauty are good examples, as are, again, hobby niches such as pets and games. Those always have a strong buyer market.

Murdock: You mentioned Amazon aggregators. Do Amazon-focused businesses have the same acquisition demand as branded ecommerce sites?

Daoust: Amazon is the expectation by a lot of acquirers. But depends on the category. Certainly there’s a subset of buyers very interested in businesses selling on Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and other platforms. There are fewer of those businesses for sale, so it’s a little harder to find those opportunities. But there’s a critical mass of buyers for non-Amazon merchants to support a good price.

Murdock: ChatGBT took the world by storm in 2023. Did it impact ecommerce acquisitions?

Daoust: Not really.

Murdock: Say I own a business selling mainly on my ecommerce site and a few other channels. My annual revenue is $3 million. I’m thinking about selling it. What should I do?

Daoust: My advice is always to talk to somebody knowledgeable to get a sense of demand for your company and the levers that affect value. It’s not as simple as just throwing a multiple of, say, 3.5 on the business. Are buyers going to be excited? What will scare them? We’re still seeing a good amount of buy-side activity.

Last year, weaker businesses were not moving as fast as the stronger ones. That always happens after a boom. During the 2021 rush, people bought anything they could because they had raised so much money with a mandate to acquire.

If I had a business as you describe, moving into 2024, it’s critical to have a realistic assessment of how buyers would evaluate risk and opportunities. Can the business triple in size over the next few years? Is it easily transferrable? Are the books and records clean and reliable?

Murdock: Do buyers assess a seller’s specific technologies and tools?

Daoust: It’s uncommon to get into that level of detail. Occasionally a buyer has expertise in a particular platform. And the tech setup can be a drawback if it’s too obscure or looks difficult to operate. But there’s no impact so long as the seller uses a major platform that’s well-supported.

Murdock: Is funding available to buyers of ecommerce companies?

Daoust: Yes. A good percentage of our deals happen with outside funding. It’s available. Rates are higher, but banks and other lenders want to do deals. For example, in 2023 roughly 20% of our deals have used SBA financing.

Murdock: What’s the acquisition outlook for 2024?

Daoust: I expect a shift in the market next year with more activity than we’ve seen in the past 18 months. I’m looking into a crystal ball here — I may be mistaken. But over the years I’ve developed a sense of dams building, and that seems to be the case now both on the sell and buy sides.

A lot of buyers have been sitting on cash, waiting to deploy it. On the sell side, with the decline of the aggregators and the overall economic uncertainty, many sellers have been positioning themselves for an exit.

We’re hearing from owners wanting to go to market in 2024. So I’m anticipating the market to loosen up a bit next year with more deals happening.

However, the giant caveat is the U.S. election, which could slow things down. I’ve seen this over the years with midterms and especially with presidential elections. So I anticipate some buyers and sellers in July through November to adopt a wait-and-see mindset. Then, regardless of the outcome, folks tend to loosen up and move on with their lives.

Murdock: How can owners or investors get in touch?

Daoust: Our site is QuietLight.com. They can also email me. I love talking about the market.