The day might come when you are ready to be done with your home business. It may be that you want to do other things, or it may be that the business has grown to big for you. Of course, you can just stop doing business and close up shop, but you may also have a business that could easily be transferred or sold to someone else. How on earth does a person go about selling a home business?
There are several factors that will influence your ability to sell your business or the way that you can go about selling it. The type of business you have and/or the legal organization of the business will influence how and whether you can sell it. It may be that you cannot sell the business as a whole, but you can sell “pieces” of it.
If you incorporate your home business, then it exists as an entity separate from yourself and this makes it easier in theory to sell. A sole proprietorship is really tough to sell as it does not exist separately from you. You can choose to incorporate a sole proprietorship, however, and that can change things. If you have a partnership, you can sell your part of the business to your partner or you can sell your “part” to another person. Regardless of which type of business you have, you will want to have a lawyer involved in the sale to make sure that it is done legally and completely.
The mission and type of business you have will affect its marketability too. A small consulting firm may not be of interest to someone else. You may just have to pass off your clients to someone else instead of trying to sell them all as a business. It is tough to determine the value of a small operation like that. My line of work as a freelance writer really is not something that I can sell as a business although if I developed products like a web site or other stand-alone piece of the business, I could sell that. Again, I would want to have a lawyer involved to help with the paperwork and make sure that everything was done fairly and legally.
See Also: The Details of Starting Your Own Candy Wrapper Business
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