Freedom Bound Business helping people launch online businesses

While many people are skeptical of starting an online business, the truth is that it’s simple and affordable to launch it. However, there are some costs and strategies associated with starting an online business, making it necessary to prepare well before committing yourself to the business. Depending on the type of business, where you want to launch it, and what you desire to do it, these costs and strategies can vary but it’s worth doing it.

 

With the world retail sales expected to go beyond US$3.4 Trillion in 2020 and more than 2 billion e-shoppers buying goods and services, it makes sense to start your online business. With this in mind, this post will discuss what you need to do to start your online business and their expected costs. 

 

General costs

When starting an online business, some costs are involved that you will incur before you can even make your first sales. But, doing business online is cost-effective as there are no infrastructure and fewer personnel costs than a traditional business. 

 

Remember that an online business is not entirely free and its success depends on the products and services you offer to your customers. Besides this, it also hugely depends on the investment you make. As a result, you should always budget for the cost of products, business fees, marketing, warehousing, and many more. To get assistance on how you can launch your business, perhaps Freedom Bound Business can help you. Using their services makes it easier to start and grow your online business.   

 

Marketplaces 

Thankfully, the internet has given rise to various marketplaces, giving you a chance to choose the best one that meets your needs. You can sell your products and services online using the below means: 

  • Existing marketplaces. You can use the already established marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon. However, you should prepare to pay a certain fee. Apart from this fee, there is also a Final Value Fee required to list your products. The Final Value Fee is generated as a percentage of the sale prices of your products. These marketplaces are good if you want to get customers and create awareness of your products and services. 
  • Open-source. You can make use of an open-source eCommerce software. Although this is free, it may have some cost implications. The costs come when you want to do maintenance, customize, and manage it. Here is the deal, such costs can go up to 50% of the initial cost every year. This is because you need to pay web designers and developers. You should note that some web developers may charge a fee of about $150 per hour. But if you have a technical background and web skills, such costs can be lower than $100 each month. 
  • A hosted eCommerce service provider. Using a hosted eCommerce service provider has many benefits. They can provide maintenance, support, and service. Several companies provide various packages for their services. They also require you to pay fixed monthly costs for their hosting services, software, maintenance, upgrades, and support.   

 

Payment options

Any online business needs to have payment options. Hence, you should consider accepting credit or debit cards where payments are processed via a Payment Gateway. For this reason, you need to choose a reputable payment service provider and create an account with them. But the setup costs for such an account differ among service providers because some of them such as PayPal offer free services. On the other hand, other service providers might charge a fee that can be up to $500. 

 

You might also find some payment service providers that can charge you a fee annually ranging from $200 to $500. For every payment that you get, it might also attract certain transaction fees of between 1.1% plus 30 cents for 4.5% and above. This is the reason why you should always look around for the best payment service provider to make sure that your profits are not affected.    

 

A mobile-friendly website

Website optimization strategies are changing significantly over the years. However, the various variables being used should not be a problem. Instead, it will be in your best interest to focus on the most important variables that have an impact on your overall SEO. Therefore, consider looking for and managing key variables that can affect your customers. Think about this, most people are now using mobile phones, so it makes a lot of sense in making your site mobile-friendly. Here is what you can do to make your website mobile-friendly:

  

  • Ease of access. Your online business should have a site that is easy to access. This means mobile users with tablets or mobile phones should not have difficulties using it.  
  • Image formatting. The product images should have the right formatting to enable mobile users to access them. 
  • Meta titles. There is no doubt that short meta titles are great for mobile users. This is because they can read them easily on their mobile gadgets.  
  • Remove excess pop-ups. If your site has a lot of pop-ups, it might make it difficult for your visitors to read the content. Therefore, get rid of some of the pop-ups so that people can read your content in its entirety.  

 

Website speed 

Website speed can determine if your visitors can stay longer on your site or not. You see, if your website is slow, some of your visitors can opt to look for another site that loads faster with similar products or services. No wonder, Google takes the website loading speed seriously and they even use this factor when it comes to ranking. Therefore, make sure you reduce the file sizes and HTTP requests by combining them.

 

Even better, when your site has the right speed, consider using the proper keywords. Google and other search engines want you to use content that they understand. This is because it’s the only way they can match the search queries from the users. As a result, the proper keywords give you a greater opportunity of being ranked well by search engines. 

 

The ranking is very important for your online business to do better on the market. Hence, the links you provide should also relate to your content. Don’t forget that Google and many other search engines consider links as another significant element when it comes to ranking. Consequently, the backlinks should be of high-quality.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.