How much does it cost to start an online business depends on the biz you are starting. We will show you the tools you’ll need to get started. Starting with a website, hosting, and an email marketing autoresponder.
When you first start most people are usually just thinking about the money they want to make online. Turn your thinking around and start figuring out how can you help people solve their problems. Making money online is not an easy task.
It will take a lot of hard work and valuable time in order for you to succeed online. You will need to learn some skills you may not have mastered yet. If you’re like us, you don’t want to have to deal with inventory or customers service.
That is why we got into affiliate marketing. We sell other companies products or services and make a commission is how it basically works. No matter what you plan on doing to make money online, you will need to build your brand and get your audience to trust you.
That means offering valuable content to your audience and lots of it. How do you offer all of this content to an audience? You can do it the freeway or you can use paid advertising to spread your message. During this post, we are only going to talk about free methods.
Why? Because you need to learn your skills before you jump on the paid method or you could end up losing a nice chunk of change. We also want you to own your material and your content so we are going to use a CMS called WordPress.
This is the platform that you will build your website from because it is the best one to use.
How Much Does It Cost To Start An Internet Business With WordPress
There are a couple of reasons why we choose WordPress to start an online business. First off is reliability. WordPress is one of the most reliable platforms on the market.
That is why most of the big internet marketers online use the WordPress platform. Over 30% of all websites worldwide use this platform. You can move your platform from one hosting provider to another hosting provider as you grow your business.
Starting with WordPress gives you the ability to choose different hosting providers unlike the drag and drop website builders like Wix, GoDaddy, or Weebly just to name a few. When you first start out you should be thinking of the long term.
You are going to need a bunch of great content if you plan on getting traffic from your content. There is a lot of competition and trying to get ranked on the search engines for certain keywords is going to be really tough until you have established yourself.
You’ll not only figure out different traffic sources but the ones where your audience hangs out. Capturing their attention will be your focus and then having something that interests them or having a solution to their problem so they will join your email list will be key.
That was a big mistake we make early in our venture. Not starting an email marketing list. As soon as you start an online business we recommend that you get yourself an email auto-responder service.
There are many out there but we recommend the one with the best open rates. It will pay off in the long run and will pay off because your percentage of people seeing your email make you more money, builds trust and your brand. We choose AWeber hands down.
You Need Email & Hosting To Start A Business
We just got down talking about a couple things that you will need. First off, was the website builder, which we recommend WordPress. You can use 1000’s of different WordPress themes for free. You can also purchase many WordPress themes.
We recommend you start with a free theme until you start making a few bucks to keep your operating costs down. Another item or tool we talked about was an email marketing platform. Now, this is something you could also go cheap on but we do not recommend this.
Email marketing is where you are going to make most of your money. We’ve all heard the phrase, the money is in the list. So make this one of your top priorities because you want the best and the one with the highest open rates. AWeber is the best and costs $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers.
You don’t want your email in a spam folder. It also takes a little time gaining the skills to write effective emails. Just get the best and be one with the rest. It’s on you. Next up is you will need hosting.
Hosting is where your website will be located at. This is another one of those tools that you should consider carefully. There are many website hosting companies out there and they are not all the same. There is shared hosting and managed hosting for WordPress websites.
We recommend that you choose one that is reliable and has the speed you need. Also when hosting your website you will need an SSL certificate. Plus if you’re like us we have many websites because we are into different niches. So we have to host more than one website and have an SSL certificate for each website.
Cost Of Hosting Varies Depending Who You Go With
Your hosting cost will vary depending on who you decide to host your website with. We will recommend only 2 different hosting providers that we have used during our marketing venture.
You can read why we choose our hosting provider and the one that comes with training, tools, and hosting to help you start an online business that is affordable.
We don’t use the shared hosting because we have had too many downtime issues. We now only recommend hosting providers that have specific hosting for WordPress, our choice of content management systems.
Blue host is a bad way to go. It seems that they were better a few years back before they were bought out. They had better customer service back then. They are now owned by EIG (Endurance International Group). The same with Host Gator.
We all know what happens when big stockholders are trying to make money. Fewer employees, less service, and the cheaper the product gets. That’s my opinion and we are sure you’ve seen the same thing.
There are smaller companies that offer better customer service like WPX Hosting and we know they offer a better product. They have faster-hosting services for the money and are highly recommended by some of the best marketers in the world. WPX hosting is the best. Some other companies like Site Ground, A2, and InMotion are just a few hosting companies that are pretty good but we do not recommend them (your better off going with the best).
We use a couple of different hosting companies. One actually is not called a hosting company but it hosts millions of WordPress websites and their speed can match or outperform any of the ones we mentioned already.
They also give you an SSL certificate with each website and they will host up to 25 of your websites for the same price. In addition, you get more than hosting. How much does it cost to start an online business? Let’s start adding up everything you need to start.
Everything You Need To Start An Online Business
Let us talk about the things you should have to start an online business in 2018 and beyond.
- Website
- Hosting
- Email Marketing Auto-Responder
- Images
- Keyword Research Tool
- Training – ( If You Don’t Know The Skills)
The first thing is a website. Naturally, you’ll need to buy a domain name. Those are cheap and the most you’ll pay is less than $15 per year. You’ll be using WordPress to build a website so you can get WordPress themes for free.
You can always go for a better theme later after you’ve posted some blogs and have a solid foundation going on. Another word, get some content on your website. At least 20 – 30 blog post before you do anything.
That way when you start applying for affiliate marketing programs, you’ll have a better chance to get approved. So you’ll need to start with a niche and target an audience to make that happen. If your not sure what that is then yes, you may need some training.
Nothing wrong getting educated in affiliate marketing. There are many places that you can get this education from. Some cost more than others. We get most of our tools, hosting, and even help from the place we use.
We also get images that we need for our blog post and images that we use for social media billboards. We don’t have to go to all kinds of places looking for images. We have access to over a million images and use them for all our marketing needs.
Another tool we have is a keyword research tool. This tool would cost you at least anywhere from $30-$50 a month and it is included in the package we have. You’ll be glad you have one of these tools when you’re trying to find that low hanging fruit people talk about.
Where Did We Get All These Tools To Keep Our Cost Down
You can pay monthly or you can save money if you decide to invest annually. Some people spend a tremendous amount of money just on training. They buy all kinds of courses and keep buying more until they finally get fed up after not making any cash at all.
You can learn a lot from a community of affiliate marketers. You can also search and spend hours looking for the answers you need. With the community that we are involved with you can get answers to the questions you’re looking for rather quickly.
People that have had the same questions that you may have. They have already been through what you’re going through. Even if you do not need any training, you will need hosting, images, a good keyword research tool.
They have these tools for you to use. Like we said earlier they give you an opportunity to host 25 WordPress websites and include an SSL certificate for each and everyone. So, how much does it cost?
Click on our review to see the website speed test we conducted.
It’s $49 a month to have access to everything we talked about. Here is a secret. You can save some cash by becoming a member for an entire year. One year is $359. That is less than a dollar per day.
You cannot beat the price. Plus if you get a question or would like to be involved with the training you can do so. You can take the training and work at your own pace.
Another idea, go price all of the tools elsewhere and you will find that you will be paying more for everything you need. The hosting is fast, secure, and we challenge you to find cheaper hosting for 25 websites that come with an SSL Certificate.
Do You Have What It Takes
You already know the pricing. Do you know how to write a review? What about choosing a niche or targeting an audience, do you know how to do that? What is required of you to build your brand online? These are some of the things you will learn.
They even teach you about paid advertising, local marketing, how to get traffic to your website. We all need traffic and we all want ideas on how to get more traffic to our website. Nothing wrong trying to sharpen your skills while your building your online business.
What about social media, do you know how to build that trust factor and your brand using the social sites that you enjoy every day. Do you know how to get traffic from these type of sites?
Are you willing to put in the hard work to even start an online business? If it was easy everyone would be doing it. It takes skills that you have to acquire over time. It takes you producing content that your audience needs to solve their problems.
Are you willing to put in 20 hours a week for a couple of years before you really start making a decent amount of cash? We’re not talking a few bucks. Many that will enable you to live your dreams and do what you really want to do.
You can buy the pipe dream courses that are out there. You might even get lucky and make a couple of dollars. What you really need is discipline, putting in that hard work, and a burning desire to make it. Read this article so you don’t lose your mind and money to start your online business.
Note: updated Dec. 2018
