I bootstrapped an e-commerce business many years ago and it has always been just myself. It is in a niche I no longer care about and have little desire to keep operating it. It has always been profitable enough to keep it going, but not profitable enough to scale it or bring on employees.<p>I offered it to people in my network, then listed it with a broker, but did not result in a sale. The business is not complicated but also not a simple SaaS or FBA that most buyers seem to want. A fair valuation is likely high five-figures.<p>What have others done in this scenario? While it is running I don't have much time to work on something new/different and I feel it would be a shame to shut down a profitable and established business, but there is also opportunity cost for me to keep running it.
Offer it up for a share of future profits, a leveraged buyout financed by you. For instance, you value it at say $60K because it makes $30k profit a year. Hand it off to someone to run with the agreement that they pay you 100% of the current profits for two years. The buyer tries to double the profits so they make money too during those years. You keep the domain registration until the terms of the agreement are fulfilled.