How Do I Make an Offer on an Online Business?
Written by Christopher Krassnig - Founder - Kairos Exchange and ZenoX Media. Last reviewed 4 September 2026.
You make an offer on Kairos Exchange by naming a price and the terms around it, backed by a refundable EUR 250 deposit rather than a wire. Anchor the price to verified profit and a multiple you can defend. Acceptance settles price and shape, then the deal moves to a letter of intent, or straight to the purchase agreement.
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What Does an Offer Actually Contain?
An offer is a price plus the terms that come with it. The terms do the real work. They set how much of the price is cash, and whether any part depends on financing you still have to secure. They also set how long the seller supports you after handover, and what happens to your deposit if talks collapse. A timeline belongs in there too, so both sides know when diligence and signing should finish. Vague terms invite renegotiation later, so keep each one specific. And an accepted offer is still not a closed deal. It means you and the seller agree on price and shape. It also opens the real sequence: you fund escrow, both sides sign the purchase agreement, the assets are handed over and checked off, you confirm the handover, and the money releases. Most deals put a letter of intent between your offer and that sequence, and that document is a separate answer of its own.
What Should You Anchor the Number To?
Anchor the price to something you can point at. On a verified listing, the order-level revenue has been checked, so your offer rests on numbers the seller cannot quietly rewrite. Verified profit times a defensible multiple gives you a case you can state plainly, and it makes your opening position harder to argue with. Kairos prices verified stores at 2.2x to 3.2x seller discretionary earnings, a band anchored to the valuation guides published by Empire Flippers and FE International. The asking price is an input into that work. It tells you what the seller hopes the store is worth, and it does not tell you what the store earns. On an unverified listing, none of that is done for you. You are the one who has to pull the store's own records, test the profit against them, and settle on a multiple before you name a number.
What Backs the Offer?
On Kairos Exchange, a submitted offer is backed by a refundable EUR 250 deposit. The deposit is held while the offer is live. It comes back to you if you withdraw the offer or if the offer does not win. It is credited straight toward the price if the deal closes. This is what makes a seller take the number seriously: money already committed is harder to walk away from than a message. The deposit is not purchase money, and no purchase money moves until the deal is agreed and funded into escrow. It is also separate from the earlier deposit that opens a listing's private financials; that one is a step taken before any offer exists. If your financing falls apart after acceptance, what happens to this deposit is its own question with its own answer.
Related questions
Where the band comes from: Empire Flippers publishes 30 to 50 times average monthly net profit for an ecommerce business, which is 2.5x to 4.2x a year, and FE International publishes 2.0x to 4.0x SDE for smaller owner-operated brands. The Kairos model prices in 2.2x to 3.2x, inside both, wide enough to span every niche it covers. It is not a record of Kairos sales - the marketplace has not opened yet.
Checked against
- Empire Flippers: how to value an ecommerce business - read 29 July 2026
- FE International, How to Value a Shopify or DTC Ecommerce Brand in 2026 (2026) - read 29 July 2026
Buying a Store Somewhere Else?
Kairos Due Diligence works on any deal - Flippa, a broker, a private sale. A person reads the store's raw numbers and writes you a report. If the deal is bad, the report says walk away. From EUR 1.5K, no account needed.
Answered. Now Get in Line for the First Store
When the doors open, verified stores go to the waitlist first. You have done the reading part. The list is the part with a queue.