What do I have to do to buy an online business from someone else?

For reference the most popular marketplace fr web businesses is Flippa.com, you will find sale prices are typically 5X to 15X the monthly revenue. There are quite a few made to be sold sites, offered that are only a few weeks old and have no real traffic or revenue.

You mist do your due diligence, ask for access to their server log files so you can verify some of their traffic figures, likewise for finantial records.

Some use paid robot traffic to boost the visitor count. You can also check the number of links to the site with tools like opensiteexplorer.org and check ranking on sites like Alexa.com, quantcast.com you can also check search engine ranking for important search phrases, these traffic related stats all go toward earning potential.

Larger purchases are done through Escrow.

There are pretty standard procedures for transferring the ownership of the domain name which is the single most important aspect.

The WHOIS information for a domain name shows the current owner, some use a paid"privacy" proxy to conceal the real owner information, this may be a home based biz or something more devious.

Having an account on the same registrar it's current using makes the transition easier.

If may be possible to transfer the hosting account as well so you get the entire working site handed over, otherwise it may have to be recreated on your own server account.

You will need a lawyer. There are many pitfalls in this kind of transaction. The seller could start up again under a different name and take away all of your trade.

Sell green for a few years to build some nice life savings trust me bro it works.

ok