The True Costs of Selling Online

Aside from the actual process of setting up an online store which can be daunting if you attempt to go it alone, one of the big barriers to entry is the cost. So what does it actually cost to create a store online and start selling products? Depending on who you ask or where you look the answer can vary greatly. If you go to a large development house, expect to start the conversation at 25K to 50K on up. What does this get you. Most likely it you will get a nice custom design, a fully integrated shopping cart platform including content management, inventory management, UPS and FedEx integration, secure checkout using a variety of credit cards, product uploads, and more. A more savvy customer could simply purchase a license of Able Commerce, Interspire, or AspDotNetStorefront and hire a freelancer to upload, customize and setup the shopping cart for under 10K. The platform of the three mentioned would be similar technology that you would be getting from a full service agency. If this is still too much for your online venture, there are month to month e-commerce plans. Think of this like renting an apartment. Each month you pay a company to use their hosted e-commerce software to operate your store. Companies like Yahoo offer very popular plans around 100 bucks a month. This typically gets you a domain, a selection of site templates and access to all their tools for managing the store. This sounds like a great deal except for all the hidden charges you end up running into. Processing credit card payments, using too much bandwidth or disk space will increase your monthly bill. But wait, free options also do exist. Over the past few years the popular blogging platform WordPress has evolved into a total website solution. Free plugins are developed by a community of coders which can be uploaded and integrated into your site with just a few mouse clicks. Plugins for e-commerce exist that will give you basic store functionality. This can be a good way to get started before spending a huge sum of money on a full e-commerce platform. So in the end, if you go with a month to month solution, expect to pay around $50 to $150 a month. For around 5K to 10K you should be able to get a top notch e-commerce platform customized by a local freelancer or budget development firm. And if you have the funding, a full-service advertising agency will know just how to spend closer to 50K on your store.