Valuation guide · after the deal
Transferring an online business after the sale
Agreeing a price is the part people write about. The part that decides whether the buyer actually receives what they paid for is the handover: a list of accounts, files and relationships that each have to move from one person to another, some of which were never designed to move at all. This is that list.
The scale most of these handovers happen at
Read live from the public /api/stats endpoint each time this page loads.
| Asset type | Recent comps with stated profit | Median sold price (middle half) |
|---|---|---|
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Drawn from the most recent 200 sales we hold per asset type, narrowed to those whose listing published a profit figure. The bracketed range is the 25th to 75th percentile of sold price. No figures are shown under five comparables. How these sales are collected is set out in what small online businesses actually sell for.
At prices like these, paying someone else to run the transfer is hard to justify, and an escrow service holds the payment — it does not, by itself, move each account. So in practice the checklist is usually the buyer's to run. That is fine — most of it is clerical — but it means nobody else will notice the item that was missed.
Before any money moves: write the asset list down
Every handover problem traces back to an asset nobody listed. Before funds are released, both sides should agree a written inventory of what is being sold. Anything not on it is, in practice, not being sold.
- The domain(s), including misspellings and other extensions the business uses or redirects.
- The code or site files, the database, and any themes, plugins or licences they depend on — noting which licences are transferable and which are tied to the seller.
- Every revenue account: store platform, payment processor, ad networks, affiliate programs, app store listings, billing system.
- Every audience asset: email list and its provider, social accounts, community spaces, customer records.
- Every cost: hosting, software subscriptions, contractors, suppliers — with who pays each one and when it renews.
- Content and brand: written and media content, logos, trademarks if any, and who owns the rights to each.
- Knowledge: how the business is actually run, written down — suppliers' contacts, the posting schedule, the fixes the seller does from memory.
The order that protects both sides
- Funds into escrow first. The buyer's money is committed but not yet the seller's, so neither side is exposed while assets move.
- Transfer what can be verified immediately. The domain and the site or code are the core of most of these businesses and are straightforward to confirm once moved: the buyer controls the registrar account and can deploy the site from their own hosting.
- Move the revenue accounts next, or set up the buyer's replacements, and confirm the business earns into the buyer's account — not the seller's — before release.
- Move the audience assets, exporting lists and records where an account itself cannot change hands.
- Buyer confirms in writing, then escrow releases. Everything after release depends on goodwill; everything before it is enforceable by simply not releasing.
- Transition support runs after release, for the period agreed in advance — questions answered, introductions to suppliers made.
The first thirty days after handover
A clean transfer is not the same as a working business. The weeks after release are where a buyer learns which parts of the stated profit depended on the seller personally.
- Change every credential, including recovery email addresses and two-factor devices, and remove the seller's access everywhere it was shared.
- Watch revenue against the verified baseline. A dip after a platform change or a DNS move is normal; a dip that persists is a question to raise while transition support is still running.
- Pay the first round of every cost yourself. A subscription the seller forgot to list shows up here, on your card, and it comes out of the profit you priced.
- Keep the seller's written handover notes current. They are part of what you bought, and the next buyer will ask for them.
Everything that cannot be transferred cleanly — a seller-tied account, an audience that follows the founder rather than the brand, a supplier relationship that was really a friendship — is earnings the buyer may not keep. The time to price that in is before the offer, which is why due diligence asks about transferability, and why verifying the seller's numbers means seeing which account each dollar arrives in.
Price it before you plan the handover
The calculator prices a business against sold comparables of the same asset type and quotes the middle half of them, with the sample it used shown beside the result; it refuses to answer under five comparables. The full report adds the comparable sales themselves.
Related: how to buy a small online business · how long a sale takes · what it costs to sell · all valuation guides