How Much Money Do You Need to Open an Online Store?

8 min read

Starting a business is a risky initiative. No one wants to waste their time and money selling online without a return. Some of you may have a friend who had a friend who took a loan, opened a business, went belly up and swore not to touch business plans ever again.

In this article, we will break the stereotype of spending gazillions dollars to start a business online. This one is for beginners who haven’t opened an online store yet. Experienced entrepreneurs are unlikely to find anything new here. You might want to read how to increase your revenue with newsletter segmentation instead.

So, back to the beginners — let’s begin.

To Spend or Not to Spend?

A bankroll is helpful for opening an online store, but not a must. Start with small things. Creating an online store is much cheaper than opening a boutique in the mall. You don’t pay for the space, decorations, and many other things.

Initially, your apartment or garage can serve as a store. Your cat will enjoy it.

Metro.co.uk

At first, expenses for an online store may be confusing. One would think: “Okay, I need to build an e-commerce website. I need to find a hosting company. I need to buy a domain name, determine taxes, add payment methods, ooooh…” Luckily, you can start small.

At first, plan to create an ecommerce website, or a Facebook page with an online store, or test your product at art shows and street markets, to check if the juice is worth the squeeze. And if everything goes well, dare to register a business.

Ecwid’s Instant Site

Build More as Your Business Grows

Let’s imagine it was off to a good start — you sold everything during the first month, and your online store’s following is growing. You’ll eventually need more than just a storefront with a cart. You’ll want more e-commerce tools and automation. At this point, you can create a more professional website and add an online store there.

Machines Work, People Earn

People invented computers to take on rote work and use their time more efficiently.

imgur.com

E-commerce platforms have the same goal: to make entrepreneurship easier. An online store serves as a storefront, a shop assistant for customers, and a personal manager for its owner.

The bottom line is that you can open an online store and add more features when you stand both feet on the ground.

Be sure to take into consideration the following expences.

Business Registration

I added this part because lawyers asked me. JK.

To make your business legal, it must be registered. Most people start with a sole proprietorship because it has the lowest barrier. An annual business license for the State of California is $35.

If you have bigger plans or need to protect yourself, there are two options: LLC or Corporation. We discussed their differences in the article devoted to registering your e-commerce business. Small businesses generally prefer LLCs.

Domain

The domain is your site’s name or URL. Share it with your friends, print it on business cards and link to it on social media. You can buy a domain on special sites like this one.

Domain prices vary and usually start from $9 per month. By the way, you can buy a domain name with Ecwid.

Hosting

A website is a set of files that needs to be stored somewhere. This is why you’ll have to get a hosting account. The companies that sell domain names typically offer hosting. Like Ecwid, you can pay for hosting month-to-month or purchase rights to the domain for the entire year. The latter is cheaper, of course.

Basic hosting on FatCow.com costs $48 per year.

If you create your ecommerce website with Ecwid, you won’t have to pay for its hosting separately. You’ll pay just your plan price.

Online store

Ecwid is an e-commerce platform that allows you to create your own online store. Using Ecwid, you can display and sell your products on a website, calculate shipping expenses and taxes, monitor your orders and enable various payment methods.

It is very affordable to create a store using Ecwid. If you have up to five products, a Starter plan will be enough. When you’re ready to implement advanced tools, you can upgrade to more feature-rich plans to grow your business.

For example, Venture Plan allows 100 products.

The budget

Let’s add everything up to see what it costs to start selling online.

	With a website	Without a website
Business registration	$35	$35
Domain name	$12	$12
Annual hosting	$48	✕
Ecwid’s Starter plan	$5	$5
Total	$100	$52

What does “without a website” mean?

Ecwid creates an Instant site when you sign up. Later you can buy a domain name and connect it to the Instant site. It saves money and time.

New businesses have different goals and different budgets, but creating an online store can be cheaper than visiting Starbucks once a week. Whatever your budget, start a small business with an online presence on Ecwid, because it is a much cheaper, less risky alternative to opening a retail or physical location.

Share this article with your friends who are looking to start something new.

To Spend or Not to Spend?

Build More as Your Business Grows

Machines Work, People Earn

Business Registration

Domain

Hosting

Online store

The budget

Sell online

With Ecwid Ecommerce, you can easily sell anywhere, to anyone — across the internet and around the world.

Get started

Preparing to Launch Launch a business in 30 days

May 23, 2016

About the author

Jesse is the Marketing Manager at Ecwid and has been in e-commerce and internet marketing since 2006. He has experience with PPC, SEO, conversion optimization and loves to work with entrepreneurs to make their dreams a reality.