Internet Home Business: Internet Business Startup Costs

Sometimes people delay starting an online home business because they are worried about what the business startup costs will be. Below I set out the kinds of expenditures you need to consider before you start so you can set up a realistic budget. You may find that it is a lot less expensive than you thought.

1. Obviously you will need a computer and access to the internet. If you do not already have a computer, this will be your first expense but if this is not affordable right now you could consider using your local library or internet cafe.

2. There are many internet businesses to choose from. Many of them are free to join, and many have extremely low membership fees. Compared to the startup costs of a retail or franchise business where you might need to invest thousands, setting up with an affiliate marketing or multi-level marketing company can be done for less than $50.

With affiliate marketing companies, you can often join for free and then earn commissions by selling the companies products. You can find these very easily by doing a search on Google. Shop around and find something that has a product that interests you.

3. If you are looking for a multi-level marketing company, where you earn money both from selling a product or service and recruit others to do the same, there will normally be a membership fee. These companies can be extremely lucrative in the long term because you can often earn several levels deep. However, you will need to weigh up whether you can afford the membership fee until you start making any profit.

4. Setting up a website and/or blog is very important, but can be daunting if you are not skilled in this. In this case you might want to consider paying someone to set them up initially until you are more experienced. On the other hand, you could consider spending some time learning about website maintenance and blogging so that you can do it yourself. Of course you will need to take into account the cost of hosting a website, which can usually be done for around $10 or less per month.

5. Marketing costs do not have to be as expensive as you might think. Most effective marketing can be done for free using article marketing and blogging, or submitting to free directories. However, there are certain tools that you really do need to consider if you are going to run a serious business. An autoresponder service, such as GetResponse, that sends out automatic emails to a list of leads is essential if you are short of time. Another good investment is an automatic article submitter such as Article Marketer, so you can get your articles out to hundreds of online directories and ezines without spending all your time doing it by hand. Most of these services have several packages so you can pick and choose what will suit your budget.

6. As mentioned above, some of the most effective marketing techniques are completely free. You can set up a blog account with WordPress or Blogger for free and then monetize it with your affiliate marketing products, or even sell your own e-books and services. Make sure you blog regularly to get good results and to build traffic.

Taking everything above into consideration, you can run your online business for under $100 per month very effectively. It is up to you to decide what you can afford and then you will be able to work out what you can pay for and what you will need to spend time doing manually.

Internet business startup costs are probably the lowest of any business startup! As long as you are prepared to give it lots of time and work, you can then expect and unlimited amount of income in years to come. As your profit grows, you can feed it back into the business to pay for more tools and services that will help it to grow even more. Even in the current financial climate, it is therefore possible for most people to start up an online business and make it work for them.