Opinion on the initial capital to launch an online business varies widely including the cost of education materials. How much would you spend or have you spent to start your first online project? This includes hardware, software, education materials, domain names, paid hosting, etc. Obviously it's cheaper the second time around and on because you can continue using your materials from the first project. I'm just wondering about the first website and items required. I'm really into video, graphics, coding, decent hardware, and a fair assortment of software (in addition to MS Office and similar) so I spend more than most in pretty much each case but not as much as the biggest players. I started my first online venture over 10 years ago. Back then I must have spent around $3,000. However, I have my own physical product and I have to pay for items from several suppliers such as plastics, boxes, printing, and labels. That is an additional cost and doesn't apply to most people, so I won't mention those costs. Since it was almost 10 years by the time I did additional paid hosting for new niches, I've had to purchase new hardware, software, and education materials. The cost to properly start my new venture has been around $6,000. That includes hosting, business entity registration, accounting, and other related necessities as well. There will be ongoing expenses as I need to buy additional hardware, software and education materials. I also have a few free Web 2.0 sites and I value these quite a bit. I pretty much advertise for zero dollars though I have experimented with PPC. I intend to pick up the PPC pace a bit since I am now comfortable with my expertise on the matter. Why did you choose to spend what you spent and how much more would you spend if you were making $5,000 or more per month? If you haven't tried self-hosting yet, what are your main obstacles for not spending what you feel you need to spend - not enough money, afraid of self-hosting, haven't learned enough to take that step yet, etc? ~Newbie Shield~
Newbie Shield: Why did you choose to spend what you spent and how much more would you spend if you were making $5,000 or more per month? I didn't start out with a budget or a time frame because I didn't want to feel restrained by either. At the time my intention was to learn as much as I could about those areas that interested me and that I considered to be critical to my overall online ambitions. So in my scramble up the learning curve I attended a few offline seminars, many teleconferences, studied html, website development, graphic design, seo, copywriting, affiliate marketing, ebook writing and several other disciplines. In the process I amassed an impressive library of books on just about every aspect of Internet marketing, along with a growing inventory of software tools for developing, optimizing, maintaining, automating, submitting, tracking, securing, managing and... I forget what else. Today I'd say that the investment in time and money was well spent. As to whether or not I would have spent more if I were making $5,000 plus a month back then, I'd have to say, "Possibly!" That may simply have allowed me the luxury of a faster and more expensive route to developing my knowledge base and expertise. Hermas
Im pretty new to this and i am well on my way my initial investment was about 110 bucks and that included a website. I hope i didnt get ripped off, either way im all in now and there is no turning back, Money is coming to me now in abundance
