Where to list a business for sale, and what it costs

Listing marketplaces are advertising, not representation. You pay for a slot — normally by the month, with a minimum term — and buyers who are already searching find you. Nobody screens the inquiries for you, nobody negotiates, and with one exception below nobody takes a percentage of the sale. That is a fair trade at the sums involved, provided you understand what you are buying: visibility, and nothing else.

Budget by the month, not by the listing

This is the part owners get wrong. Prices are quoted monthly and small businesses commonly take several months to sell, so the honest figure is the monthly price multiplied by the number of months you expect to be looking — and then a bit more, because listings that expire mid-conversation are a needless way to lose a buyer. Longer terms cost less per month, which is why most sellers are better off committing to a longer package up front than renewing anxiously every thirty days.

One listing, several sites

Consolidation works in your favour here. The largest marketplace syndicates a single listing onward to its sister sites, so paying for one slot buys reach on several. That means the sensible strategy is not "post everywhere" — it is post on the biggest, take the free tier because it is free, and add a paid second only if the first is producing nothing after a few weeks.

You post it, under your own account

We prepare the copy; you paste it in. That is not a limitation we would rather do without — it is how these marketplaces require it. The largest of them permits listings only from the business owner or from a licensed broker holding an exclusive listing agreement. ExitKit is neither, so we never post on anyone's behalf. You keep the account, you keep the login, and buyer inquiries land in your own inbox rather than being relayed through us.

The marketplaces

Prices below are the published owner-facing figures recorded in our data bank, each with the date we last checked it. Marketplaces change their packages and their pricing without notice, and the price you see at checkout is the one that counts. Verify before you commit to a term. The posting steps are the same ones our placement walkthrough gives you, in the same order, so you can see exactly what the job involves before you buy anything.

What every listing form will want from you

The forms differ in detail but not in substance. Each asks for a headline, a description, an asking price, and your earnings figure — usually labelled cash flow, sometimes net profit, but in every case they mean seller's discretionary earnings. Several also ask for gross revenue and your reason for selling. If you have not settled those numbers yet, do that before you open an account; SDE explained walks through the calculation.

The headline is the field that decides everything else, and it is short — between seventy and eighty characters on every marketplace we track. That is roughly a dozen words to say what the business is, where it broadly is, and what makes it worth a second look, all without naming it. Buyers scan hundreds of these. "Established HVAC Company For Sale" tells them nothing; the version that mentions the service contracts, the years trading, and the metro area gets the click.

The description field is generous — a few thousand characters — and this is where most owner-written listings fall down, either by pasting three lines and hoping, or by writing something so specific that anyone local can identify the business immediately. Both are avoidable. It should be the blind version: no business name, no street address, no phone number, no website, and no detail so distinctive that a town plus a niche gives you away.

What to expect once you are live

Within days of listing you will hear from brokers offering to represent you, from services offering to sell you leads, and from people who want the financials before they will tell you their own name. None of that is buyer interest. Genuine inquiries tend to be shorter, more specific, and willing to answer questions about funding. Ask early and ask plainly: are you buying for yourself, have you bought a business before, how are you funding it, and have you spoken to a lender. A serious buyer will not be offended.

Keep a simple record of who has seen what — who received the blind summary, who signed a confidentiality agreement, who has the full memorandum. It matters for confidentiality, and it matters later when your attorney asks.

Before you post anything, it is worth reading why most listed businesses do not sell, because the listing is rarely the reason. And if you have not assembled the diligence file yet, see what buyers will ask for — the questions start arriving faster than you expect.