How to find online Businesses for Sale?

[Percy1980]

Hi folks, I wish to buy an established ebay/amazon business, but I'm struggling to find any decent listings for such businesses. I've managed to find an enormous amount of crap, people selling eBay and Amazon businesses that are really just adverts for training.

If you have any tips, I'm all ears. Thanks!

 

[Clinton]

Several years ago I was where you are now.

I did end up buying numerous businesses. But it ain't easy.

You need to automate the collection of data on businesses being adverised for sale and you need to automate the filtering. I commissioned bots to crawl numerous sites where businesses are listed for sale (including sites like Flippa that list mostly crap but do attract the occasional good business). They collected data for me which I then created software to filter. I've got terabytes of this data!

It's not an easy process.

If you're looking for small businesses (sub £100K) then you're on your own. There are so many make-money-online and site flipping blogs 99.99% of which are full of bullsh*t. But they are eagerly followed by newbies who take money out of their 401s or borrow money on their credit cards to buy online businesses because they reckon they can make their fortune.

You're competing with these muppets. Are you stupid enough to pay more than the silly prices they are willing to pay?

It's because of the state of the market that I closed the world's largest forum for buyers and sellers of online businesses (which I founded in 2010).

If you're serious you need to move up a gear and aim for a higher quality market. But, yes, you need the capital for that.

 

[The Byre]

I would even go one further and say that finding an on-line business that is for sale and has genuine substance will be considerably more effort and expense than finding the ideal company that is not for sale and copying their model.

 

[Bookmemate]

Try flippa.com

 

[Clinton]

Try flippa.com

Yes, I mentioned Flippa.

BTW, Flippa is also the world's biggest repostitory for scams, template sites posing as businesses, shill bidders and con artists etc ... all working on a platform that's been especially designed to make it easy for these sellers to take even the sharpest buyers for a ride. Flippa management even collude with these sellers to provide fake signals of trust (like "verified" traffic and "verified" earnings).

 

[Bookmemate]

Apologies, I scanned your post looking for a link initially but didn't see it as it was in plain text. For the record I've only ever browsed Flippa, never bought anything there. My suggestion is just based off that fact that it is a place to buy online businesses. Good to have it confirmed it is a risky place to do business.

 

[wevet]

If a business whether online or bricks and mortar will have strange little things called accounts.

You want to find a business actually running a proper business I would suggest looking at businssesforsale.com and business transfer agents.

Very many of the Amazon traders are nothing more than resellers or drop shops and have no real residual value.

You can, of course, find online retailers and approach them direct.

 

[Clinton]

Yes, a proper business will have formal accounts, P&L / Balance Sheet etc.

I have a list on my site of all the main marketplaces (including the businessesforsale.com that you mention). I also have a list on that site of all the business transfer agents in the UK. However, and this is an important caveat, don't bother going down this road if you're looking to invest some minor amount like £20K or £50K. For that type of investment you're pretty much limited to the Flippa kinda marketplaces and the "online businesses" of which 99.99% are scams.