How to Start a Business on a Shoestring
by: Julie Martin
You don’t need to invest thousands of dollars to have a successful Internet business. In fact, chances are that you can do it for less than $100 by following our simple plan. Our ebusiness will be selling an informational e-book that we will be purchasing sales rights for.
Step #1 – Cheap Domains
Don’t get fooled by domain registrars that overcharge for a domain. You can register your new domain for as little as $6.95 a month if you comparison-shop. If your current registrar is charging an arm a leg for a renewal, consider transferring to a new registrar. Most of them offer a free year’s extension on your domain if you transfer over to their service.
Domain Registration fee - $6.95
Cost so far - $6.95
Step #2 – A Cheap but Reliable Webhost
This is where things can get tricky. If you need a lot of features for your website, then a bargain basement provider will probably not be able to help you. However, the webhosting business is highly competitive and you can find a decent ecommerce hosting package for as little as 15.95 a month. You’ll need to comparison shop to make sure you find the best deal. Make sure you find a host that doesn’t charge a set-up fee, to defray your start up expenses.
Webhost cost - $15.95 first month
Cost so far - $22.95
Step #3 – Getting Your Content or Products Ready
If you plan to sell an e-book, you will need to make sure that you have the rights to distribute and sell this information. Of course, if you wrote the e-book, you won’t have to worry about this. If you plan to sell physical products, you can set up a relationship with a drop shipper so that you have no initial out of pocket expenses.
We’ll be purchasing distribution and sales rights for our e-book for $40.00
Distribution Rights - $40.00
Cost so far - $62.95
Step #4 – Designing Your Website
If you have a flair for this, it won’t cost you anything but your time. However, if you are completely clueless, you can purchase a website template, where the design is completely done for you and you just input your content. If you look hard enough, you can even find these templates for free.
Since we want an original look for our website, we are going to go with a cheap, but professional business template.
Template Cost - $10.00
Cost so Far - $72.95
Step #5 – Advertising Your New Site
Once you have your site up and running, you are ready to start doing some actual business. You would be surprised at how easy it can be to find cheap or no cost advertising. First, you will need to list your site with the most popular search engines. The good ones don’t charge, but it may take a few weeks for your link to be active. While you are waiting, start joining ezines and message boards that are compatible with your product. Since our e-book contains information on how to raise and grow indoor gardens, we’ll want to find all of the gardening ezines we can and join them. We’ll start by posting actual questions on gardening to message boards and adding a signature file to our posts. This is an honest way to get a lot of free exposure for your site.
Next, we’ll be placing our ads in ezines, which will normally charge anywhere from $1.00 to $25.00 per ad. Since we are on a shoestring, we will start by placing 5 ads for $1.00 a piece in 5 ezines.
Advertising costs - $5.00
Final Cost - $77.95
See, you actually have money left over! It is even possible to do this for even less money, but this example should give you an idea of how easy it is to start your own business for a very small initial investment.
© Julie Martin
About The Author
Julie Martin is the publisher of “The Iscaweb eZine” a weekly eZine dedicated to increasing your online profits, no matter what you are selling. Julie also uses the “Plug-In-Profit” system to GREAT effect!
To subscribe to the eZine, or to learn more about the Plug-In-Profit system visit:
http://www.iscaweb.comThis article was posted on August 16, 2005
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