E-commerce listings are the most trafficked category on every marketplace — and the most inflated. This guide covers the benchmarks buyers use and the red flags to check before making an offer.
Typical e-commerce valuations run 2.0x to 3.5x annual profit; owned-channel and subscription revenue pushes toward the high end, paid-traffic dependency pulls it down. Key factors: organic versus paid traffic mix, supplier concentration, Brand Registry and IP ownership, inventory age and seasonality, and ad-account transferability. Before trusting the broker's numbers, pull 24 months of ad-account and marketplace data — if ad spend is growing faster than revenue, you're buying a treadmill, not a business.