Ecommerce Valuation Template

Start with the Assumptions sheet. Enter your store's trailing twelve-month revenue broken out by channel, then work through the expense categories — COGS, fulfillment, platform fees, ad spend, and operating overhead. The most important step is building accurate SDE: add back your owner salary, owner benefits, depreciation, amortization, and any one-time costs that won't repeat (a one-time inventory write-down, a website redesign, a legal expense). Buyers will scrutinize this add-back list closely, so document each adjustment. Also enter the operational metrics at the bottom of the sheet — AOV, CAC, repeat purchase rate, monthly revenue growth rate, and email list size — because these directly affect the multiple buyers are willing to pay.

With your earnings calculated, move to the Income Approach sheet and select the SDE multiple that fits your business profile. Use the reference table to find the range for your business type, then adjust up or down based on traffic diversification, revenue growth rate, customer cohort strength, and channel concentration. On the Market Approach sheet, add comp transactions from broker databases like Flippa, Empire Flippers, or FE International — their published transaction data is the most reliable source for ecommerce comps. On the Asset-Based sheet, enter your inventory at cost and work through the intangible assets, particularly the email list and SEO traffic values, which can be material for DTC brands with strong organic and owned-channel performance.

The Valuation Summary pulls all three methods together. For most ecommerce businesses, weight the income approach highest — buyers are paying for earnings power. If your business has a large, engaged email list or significant organic traffic, adjust the asset-based weight upward to reflect those intangible assets. Review the implied price-to-revenue multiple in the summary: most ecommerce businesses sell for 0.5x to 2x revenue; if your implied multiple is above 2x, verify the earnings quality and growth assumptions that support it. The sensitivity table shows how the value moves across multiple and growth combinations — use it to frame negotiation ranges with a buyer or to understand the assumptions embedded in an offer you've received.

Ecommerce businesses are valued primarily on Seller's Discretionary Earnings — the normalized profit available to a working owner-operator after all operating expenses, before owner compensation. Unlike SaaS businesses that trade on revenue multiples at scale, most small to mid-size ecommerce businesses (under $5M in annual revenue) are valued on SDE multiples, typically in the 2x to 4x range. A Shopify store generating $150,000 in SDE at a 3x multiple implies a $450,000 purchase price — the buyer expects that earnings stream to continue so they can recover the investment in about three years from the business's cash flows. The multiple reflects the market's confidence in the durability of those earnings.

Several factors drive ecommerce multiples above or below the midmarket range. Businesses command premium multiples when revenue is diversified across channels (owned website, email, organic search, Amazon, retail wholesale), customer cohort data shows strong retention and repeat purchase rates, gross margins are above 45%, the brand has proprietary or exclusive products, and traffic is not dependent on paid ads alone. Multiples compress sharply when the business is single-channel (pure Amazon FBA is currently trading at lower multiples due to policy risk and fee increases), customer acquisition is entirely paid, SKU concentration is high (one product driving 70%+ of revenue), or the owner is the primary face of the brand. Buyers pay a premium for systems and teams that don't require the founder to remain.

One of the most important inputs in an ecommerce valuation is the email list — not just the size, but the revenue-per-subscriber it generates monthly. A list of 50,000 subscribers generating $2 per subscriber per month in revenue ($100,000/month or $1.2M/year) is a fundamentally different asset than the same list generating $0.20. Buyers acquiring DTC brands are increasingly paying for this owned-channel asset explicitly, separate from the earnings multiple, because it represents a durable source of traffic that reduces reliance on paid acquisition. The Asset-Based sheet in this template captures this value. Before selling or acquiring an ecommerce business, run a 12-month cohort analysis of your email list — break it into acquisition month buckets and track cumulative revenue per subscriber. This single piece of data can meaningfully shift the multiple a buyer applies.