Starting your own online business takes a lot of work. A lot of work! It's an endless task if you do well. The more the business grows the more you're usually working on it. I started my first online business 4 years ago in the Virtual Currency Market (MMORPG), I started off with SWG Credits. I bought and sold this currency after I saw how the system worked.
I first started with a shopping cart, which I recommend to everyone when starting out. I used VPASP at the time that was one of my biggest mistakes. I now recommend CS-Cart.com. They're easy to work with, search engine friendly, lots of free add-ons, etc.
Anyway, the cart cost $200, a domain name cost less then $10 per year. I recommend godaddy for that. When selecting your domain name, make sure it's short, easy to say and remember. My second mistake was a long domain name, I don't want to say what it is but it was pretty long.
The only accruing cost is usually your advertising, I used Google Adwords and of course your time. You'll spend a lot of time working on your site.
My products were bought cheap and sold competitively at around 100% profit. Competition now screws that up and you're lucky to get 20% profit but it was good while it last.
I would suggest if you're starting your own business. To write out what you want to do in a notepad. And check things off as you accomplish them. I say write it out because you'll stick to what you're doing, and get things done faster.
I created my business from nothing to a running business in less then 30 days. I figured out how the business worked, I found a shopping cart, installed the cart, I found suppliers, setup support, created content on the site, added products, and then started advertising. I had my first sale within an hour of going live. Very exciting times…
But don't think it's easy. When I first started I didn't know much about internet marketing, search engine optimization, advertising, or anything really. What I did know was HTML. I started when I was 15 with my first website. It was created with a notepad using HTML. It was a fan site for a game I was playing at the time. And actually it's still live:
GoldenEye
Anyways, I knew a little about what I was doing before I created my first business a few years later. Learn HTML (
HTML Tutorials) and you'll make your life a lot easier when it comes to making websites.
Good luck!
By the way I sold the business for $180,000 two years ago.
