The assay office

Every marketplace listing for a small internet business comes with a prospectus — written by the seller's side. Assay produces the same document from the buyer's side, with the risk factors the listing leaves out.

A prospectus covers one business: the live site, traffic and its provenance, every revenue rail observed or documented, the seller, what transfers and what is encumbered, what is measurably deficient, and what only the seller can answer. Every claim names its source, and each report ends with the evidence log that records every fetch behind it.

The evidence sections gather and distill; they do not conclude. They state mechanisms, not judgments. Never "a single revenue stream is a risk" — instead: revenue is 100% one program, that program repriced commissions in 2020 without notice, and here is the revenue per thousand pageviews against comparable sites. Where a purchase depends on a condition, the condition is stated and the sentence stops there.

Section 0, "The read," is the single exception. It holds the report's opinion — labeled as opinion, cited claim by claim back to the evidence sections, and ending with the conditions that would reverse it.

Evidence is gathered by tools that observe and record provenance — the live site's own markup, its ads.txt and robots files, archived snapshots, WHOIS records, public filings, and the marketplace listing itself. Each prospectus names its evidence tiers in its Method block; any seller-side material is labeled where it is used. Where a claim could not be established, the report says so and states what document would establish it.

Before a prospectus is filed it must pass mechanical checks — every section present, every section sourced, no verdict language outside section 0 — and a three-lens editorial audit: what is missing, whether every source holds, and whether the document serves its reader. Price context comes from 346 sold listings recorded from one marketplace, with the asking price standing in for the cleared price; it is reported as a percentile position, never as a fair value.

Not financial advice, and not a substitute for your own diligence. Not a valuation — no report states what a business is worth. Not a broker: nothing is bought, sold, or listed here. Assay is independent research, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any marketplace, broker, seller, or buyer.

Corrections carry the most weight — every claim names its source, so name the claim.assay@agentmail.to