Starting An Online Business: How Much Should You Spend?

Want To Start An Online Business?

OK, so you’re thinking of starting an online business. One of the first questions all our clients and students ask us is how much should they spend.

Select from one of the answers below and check out what you’re likely to get for your money.

A.      $0-$100 per month

B.      $100-$500 per month

C.      $500-$1000 per month

D.      Over $1000 per month

Firstly there are no right or wrong answers. Each answer has it’s own merits and depends on your budget, appetite for risk and so on. So go through these answers to get a great indication of how much time, effort and money you’re going to need to suit your individual needs.

A. $0 – $100 per month.

It’s fair to say that you will be exchanging a lot of your time for money. To start any online business you do need a few essential tools, probably the most important being an autoresponder so that you can build a list of prospects and market to them via email. That will cost you around $20 per month for an effective autoresponder and it’s something you don’t want to cut costs on.

What else will you get for that money?

Well you need a website of some sort. You could use something like WordPress.com which is entirely free, but if you’re serious about starting a business, you need a more professional approach and need your own website.

That will cost you roughly $10 for a domain for 1 year and between $5 – $10 per month to host it. Sorry, but you won’t have any money to get someone to build it for you, so you’re going to need to learn WordPress! You’ll also need to concentrate your marketing efforts on free marketing.

B. $100 – $500 per month.

Right, that’s starting to look a little easier. You’ve now covered your basic costs mentioned in A. above. You’re getting serious about starting an online business. Now you can look at things like marketing training and possibly even some advertising.

Here’s a word of caution.

There’s some great training on the internet, but our advice is to only invest in products where you can speak to people you trust before you make a buying decision. Some things to lookout for in marketing training are what is actually covered in the training? Is it all brand new and cutting edge or is it old rehashed stuff that used to work but doesn’t work so great any more.

Also essential is that you can communicate with other people in the same marketing system or training platform. Collaboration is one of the key ways you will become successful when you start an online business. Expect to pay around $100 – $150 per month for quality marketing training.

Great, that means you’ve got some spare cash. You’ve got a couple of choices, both of which will save you time; outsourcing some of your daily tasks, and paying for advertising.

C. $500 – $1000 per month.

You can become more successful as you’re now able to discover new ways to expand your business. We briefly mentioned outsourcing and paid advertising and if your budget has covered your basic running costs then our best advice is to spend most of your surplus on advertising.

The key with advertising your business is firstly to generate leads to get people into your sales funnel. But the most important part of paid advertising is that you start small and test your results.

Don’t go and fling $200 at for example Facebook advertising! Start with $10 per day, and slowly build up your budget depending on what results you’re getting. You should also outsource as many daily repetitive tasks as possible and a great place to find outsourcers is upwork.com.

E. Over $1000 per month.  

You’ve now got a serious budget. Don’t think that you need to start off with this, gradually build your business over time. The main area you should be placing your budget is in paid advertising. Paid advertising is going to give you the fastest results to generating leads.

And generating leads is really the main focus of your online business.

The more leads you have the more chance you have of converting people into customers. Once again, build up your advertising, don’t go and blow all your budget on Facebook or Google advertising until you’ve tested, tested, tested! You can also now start looking at elite memberships, and outsourcing more of your mundane everyday tasks.

So you can see that the lower your budget, the more work you’re going to have to do when starting an online business to get it up and running. If that suits your budget then there’s no problem doing that but be aware it will take a lot longer for your business to get off the ground. Working your way upward, spend as much as you can afford on paid advertising to really kick start your business, and focus 100% on gaining new leads.

If you're considering starting an online business, first assess what your monthly budget is, then you'll want to chat about it with someone.

All our contact details are below – so seek our professional advice on a tailored approach for you.

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Facebook Comments:

  1. Adrienne 12 years ago

    That was really great the way you outlined that guys. By breaking it down so that people will see exactly what they’ll be spending their money on is very helpful. I wish someone would have explained this to me when I started. They also didn’t have a lot of the training communities that they do now. I’m sure there were some good ones floating around but I was unaware.

    I hope for the most part, everyone starts off serious about growing their business. With the right help and support, you’ll go a very long way.

    ~Adrienne

  2. Author
    gandfscott 12 years ago

    Yeah – we wish we’d been told to set aside a marketing budget when we started out too.

    It’s funny how we’re reminded of the slow start we made, as we now advise people we mentor to budget for marketing so they can gain traction quickly in their online business. Fast growth, grows belief!

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