These two questions are top of mind for many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial wannabes.

A new service from BizBuySell.com offers free business valuation reports.

The free online valuation tool offers a great way to get a fair sale price on a for-sale business.

The alternative is to hire business valuation consultants -- that's very expensive and they probably don't have as many good comparables as BizBuySell.com has because BizBuySell.com runs the largest online marketplace for business-for-sale listings.

BizBuySell's free business valuation tool looks at comparables for businesses that are currently for sale, as well as at comparables on sold businesses.

You can specify the geographic area, the asking price, gross income and cash flow ranges to analyze.

You can even select individual businesses to include in the report.

You can get business sale transaction comparables in over 50 business industries -- everything from supermarkets to hotels to niche manufacturing categories.

Of course, valuing a business is not an easy task.

But nothing is more important than figuring out how much to pay for a business. If you are, say, buying a convenience store or buying a gas station, it's critical that you don't overpay. Pay too much and you'll find you are living a painful life of negative cash flow.

On the seller side, valuing a business is equally important. Given all the effort you've put into growing the business, you certainly don't want to close things out by leaving too much money on the table.

True, placing a value on a business is as much art as it is science. But when it comes to pricing a business, information is power. That's what BizBuySell.com's free valuation tool gives you -- access to a database of business sale transactions and business listings that has heretofor never been available to anybody.

And did I mention that it's free. There is just so much great free stuff on the web for entrepreneurs -- and this new offering has to be one of the best.

We really like this new offering from BizBuySell.com. By the way, if you want to sell a business "for sale by owner" -- i.e. without a business broker -- this is a great service. We've heard of some great results from FSBO business sellers using this site.

If you prefer to use a business broker -- and there are many reasons to do so -- you can rest assured that the business brokers also recognize that BizBuySell.com is a useful selling tool. Over 90% of the nation's business brokers will list their business-for-sale listings at BizBuySell.com in addition to other avenues they pursue to help business owners sell a business.

Once again, here's the link to the site: BizBuySell.com. Just click on the promotional link for the free business valuation tool and start crunching your own numbers.