How Much Does It Cost to Start an Online Business?

Costs of starting an online business

Business license

To operate a business, you’re required to obtain a business license and/or permit. The cost depends on the type of business license you need and the location of your company, since each state has different fees. 

A business license can cost anywhere from $50 to a few hundred dollars, plus account renewal fees. If you operate in certain industries, such as agriculture and mining, you’ll also need a federal business license or permit.

Web hosting

You’ll need one of the top web hosting services and a domain name, which is typically your business website’s URL. You’ll pay an initial fee of about $50 to $100 for the domain name and then an annual fee of around $20.

Web hosting costs depend on how large your company is and how much traffic you anticipate. If you’re expecting a generous amount of traffic to your site every day, you’ll need to pay a bit more to have a platform that can host a large number of visitors. 

You can pay annually or monthly, but either way, you can expect a flat fee of a few hundred dollars and then about $100 a month, depending on how much traffic you expect to receive.

Web design and responsiveness

Customers must be able to easily access and navigate your website on their phones, and you’ll rank higher in Google search results if your website is mobile-friendly. So make sure your website platform includes mobile responsiveness in the costs.

If you have specific branding standards to follow, you’ll also need to pay for custom web design. Hire a professional who uses your brand colors and fonts to design your website’s homepage, menu and other content. 

These costs can vary, and you could pay as little as a few hundred dollars all the way up to thousands of dollars for custom website design. If you don’t adhere to certain brand standards, you can potentially find a free website theme online to add to your site. 

E-commerce platform

An e-commerce platform is a software application that helps business owners create an online store, accept payments for products and manage inventory. Many are cloud-based and charge monthly for their services. The cost of e-commerce software can range from $30 to $299 a month, depending on the features and tools you need.

Payment processing

A payment processor makes sure you get paid for your online sales. How much you’ll pay to  accept credit and debit cards varies depending on the type of card, the amount of the sale, whether the card is present and which processor you hire. [Read related article: The Best Credit Card Processors of 2024]

Visa, Mastercard and Discover charge 1.5 to 2.5 percent, while American Express charges 2.5  to 3.5 percent. The payment processor then tacks on an additional fee, known as the markup, which varies and can be negotiated.

Inventory

Whether you operate a physical store or sell only online, you’ll have to stock inventory. The costs to store, maintain and replenish it make up your inventory expenses. 

Typically, inventory costs are calculated as a percentage of the inventory’s value. Known as the carrying costs, they can represent as much as a third of the value of your inventory. For e-commerce operators, inventory tends to be the most valuable asset and the largest cost.

Dropshipping

Business owners who don’t want to keep inventory on hand can adopt a dropshipping model. Dropshippers don’t have any inventory or don’t purchase the products they are selling until they have a sale. 

But there are still costs associated with this type of selling, and they are dictated by the sales platform you use. Whether it’s eBay, Amazon, Walmart or Etsy, you’ll have to pay listing fees and a percentage of the sale, and these costs can eat away at your profit.

Marketing

Marketing is one of the most important things you can spend money on, because it has a direct payoff if you do it well. You’ll need to budget for expenses such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) ads, social media and content creation.

Why do you need to pay for SEO? For starters, so that customers know you exist! If you want to ensure that your site ranks highly in organic search results, you may want to hire an SEO agency to help you build backlinks and further optimize the content on your site. 

You can expect to pay several thousand dollars to set up your SEO marketing with an agency and then several hundred each month to make sure you continue to get results.

PPC marketing

Many online brands and businesses also choose to employ PPC marketing. With this option, site owners pay a fee based on the keywords they want to rank for and how many clicks they receive to their site. 

Your ads will appear on potential customers’ screens — for example, as a link at the top of the search results page or a small ad in the corner of their Facebook account — and if they click it, you pay a fee. This is a great way to get customers, and it’s not too pricey — expect to pay around $100 a month for PPC marketing.

Web content creation

If you’re not an experienced content writer, you should hire a freelancer to take care of your web content creation. Google and other search engines prioritize sites with well-written, quality content. 

If your homepage is full of spelling errors and doesn’t have a great user experience, your search rankings will suffer. It’s important to hire a good copywriter to make sure that your homepage, subpages and any blog-style posts have quality content that makes it easy for users to find what they want.

Social media

You should also hire a professional to handle your social media post creation and marketing. Just because you have a personal Instagram account doesn’t mean you know how to run a business’s Instagram account. 

You’ll need someone to maintain all of your social media platforms, create content, monitor reviews and comments, and make sure everything runs smoothly. Chances are, you don’t have the time or bandwidth to do all of that and run your business. 

Just hire a freelancer who knows how the world of social media works, and then sit back, relax and watch your follower count grow.

How to save money when starting an online business

If you’re in your first year of starting a business, you’ve probably found that the reality doesn’t always match up to your expectations. Most new entrepreneurs discover that they spend much more money and earn much less in those first few years than they originally anticipated.

Here are some ways you can save money during the early stages of growing your business:

• Start small. The first iteration of your business may not look like your long-term vision. Your ultimate goal may be to run an online clothing store, but that takes a lot of capital to create. You may want to get started with just one product line, get customer feedback and improve upon your idea. Over time, you can continue to grow your business and add other lines. 
• Take advantage of free tools. Software costs can quickly add up, so it’s a good idea to take advantage of as many free tools as possible. Figure out which ones you actually need to spend money on, and look for ways to save on the rest.
• Focus on growing your email list. Before you begin thinking about spending money on advertising, focus on growing your email list. You can do this via social media, your blog and other free marketing tools.
• Partner with other companies. Look for complementary brands you can partner with in the early stages of growing your business. Cross-promotion is beneficial to both companies and won’t cost either business any money.   

Jamie Johnson and Donna Fuscaldo contributed to this article.