The Absolute Least Expensive Way to Set Up an Online Store
Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash
How you too can set up an online business with its own web address for under $3 per month.
There are literally thousands of businesses with their own online stores, some fronted by social media pros or even famous people. These stores have plenty to spend on software, people, and resources to get a head start. You may not be so lucky, though.
If you are a side hustler, fresh out of school, a new immigrant, unemployed, coming out of incarceration, or returning to the workforce after raising children, then you probably don’t have lots of money to spend on creating a storefront. But perhaps you don’t need a lot of money to get started.
If you have something to sell, from antiques to your memoir, you may be wondering how you can sell it without spending a fortune. Well, before you shell out over $50+ a month for a Shopify all-in-one solution, let’s consider a better option.
The Plan in a Nutshell
What Shopify, SquareSpace, Etsy, WordPress, Google, and others have done is bundle all the steps into a neat package for which they charge a high price. This is an up-front cost before you’ve even sold a single product. On top of that, once you are locked in, you may only be able to add services they approve of …for a premium. Before you know it, you are spending upwards of $100 a month just to get started.
However, if you unbundle what you need to get started, you find that there are options that are far less expensive for each part. Sometimes these options are the very same ones that they include at a much higher price. For example, the first step of registering a web address is often marked up 30-300% (up to 4x as much) more than if you bought them separately.
I’m going to divide up the parts into three steps:
Registering your web address
Finding a place to host your website
Adding a store (aka a shopping cart) with payment processing
While it can be convenient when these are bundled together, you have to pay for that convenience. However, unbundling will cost considerably less. How much less? How about $3 per month? Oh, and it will not require using off-brands or questionable services. So, let’s take a closer look.
The Things You Will Need
Before we start, I presume that you have at least an internet-connected computer, an email address, a bank account, and a credit card. While you can set up a storefront without some of these (I’ve interviewed people who have), I don’t recommend it. Let me elaborate a bit on these items.
The Coffee Shop Office Alternative
Some of you might say that you plan to work out of a local Starbucks, a Barnes & Noble, a community center, or a public library. These provide Wi-Fi so you can work from your laptop. That is all true, but the issue is that they aren’t very private or secure and that’s a problem when you’re running a business. You can’t really take a call from a customer or even tech support in a busy library.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met people who have built a complete business entirely from a laptop working in the proverbial coffee shop office. Those same people also let me know how much better it was once they moved it to a home office. The Wi-Fi connectivity issues alone should be enough to discourage you from doing it this way.
The fact is that you need a secure and private place to work. Not having this could become a legal problem for you and your business. Consider this also when using your home Wi-Fi, since the same security and reliability issues can apply; it’s much better to use a physical cable straight to your router. If you do use Wi-Fi, then make sure you implement all the necessary security requirements available.
A Note About the Computer
Your computer is going to be the central hub for everything you do; think of it as the corporate headquarters for your business. It will be tempting to just use your everyday computer or even your gaming computer, but that would not be ideal. Find a dedicated computer for your storefront.
Now I know we’ve been talking about keeping costs down, so if don’t have a separate computer, then consider finding one. This is not as hard as it used to be. I’ve written several articles about how to find a free computer, that you should check out. It may take some legwork, but free computers are out there.
A Note About the Bank Account & Credit Card
I presume most people have these. If you don’t, then you go to a local credit union, open an account, and put a little cash in it. You can also use one of the many online banks. I’ve been using Capital One for years and it has been extremely convenient, and there are many others.
Also, it does not need to be a checking account or a business account. For what we are setting up, a basic savings account will do. This account will also typically come with a debit card that can double as a credit card.
Honestly, a separate credit card (not a debit card) is better for security reasons, but if this is indeed a shoestring business, then use the debit card for now. Just make sure you only use it for the storefront costs and not your groceries.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let’s set up the storefront.
STEP1: Registering your Web Address
A Web address, officially called a Domain Name, is your own reserved place on the internet. Think of it as a rented space at the local shopping center, except this shopping center is the whole internet. It isn’t open for business yet, but this is going to be where you hang up your “Open for Business” sign.
Now this won’t be free. Website addresses, just like a rented space at the shopping center, are part of the cost of doing business. However, we’re looking for the least expensive option, and for that, we have many.
What we need is a .com website address, and there are some great services that provide this for a very low cost. US News and World Report, did a recent survey and they recommended: Ionos, Namecheap, Domain.com, Google, and GoDaddy. Ionos is by far the cheapest, but that is an intro rate that actually gets more expensive over time. The second-best option is a hugely popular service called Namecheap; most bargain hunters use it, and it’s been around for some time.
Here’s the best part. Even after their intro rate, It’s still just $1.25 per month after that. More importantly, Namecheap has excellent support and great online tools to manage everything you’ll need. If you take the time to read the prompts as you sign up, you’ll agree it’s very easy to sign up.
When you do, you’ll need to select a good website address name. Many have already been reserved, so it may take a few tries to find one that is still available. If you can’t, then append the name of your town at the end of it, those are typically still available. So, while you might not be able to reserve MikesBaseballCards.com, you might be able to reserve StocktonBaseballCards.com.
Note that as you search, you’ll see that Namecheap also offers much more expensive website addresses. These are domains that someone else already owns and has put up for auction. Stay clear of those. Stick to the ones that aren’t owned yet and that are the standard $9.98 per year.
If you need a quick tutorial on how to register for Namecheap, here is one that I found on YouTube that does a good job of walking you through the basics:
You should now have your own Website address, or what they call a Domain Name. You are now the proud owner of a small piece of internet real estate! As long as you keep paying the Domain Registrar (Namecheap), it is yours forever. It cannot be taken from you without your consent. Pretty cool!
STEP2: Finding a Website Host
A website host is the place where your customers will land when they search for you on Google or enter your web address directly. This is why it’s important to spend a few minutes searching for a good one in the step above.
For this, there are many free hosting options, but those will not allow you to use the website address you just registered. That is the unfortunate reality about the current state of web hosting: there are no more free hosts that also allow you to use your own address. All the reputable free ones will impose their own address, something like www.StocktonBasseballCards.wordpress.com.
That is long and doesn’t look professional on a business card. What you want is just the StocktonBaseballCards.com part that you already registered for, without the wordpress.com part. As far as I know, there are no services that offer this for free or if they do, they have too many other restrictions.
So, I searched for a low-cost option instead. Again, many had too many restrictions, until I found Carrd.co. Yes, that is the name, spelled with two r’s and a .co, not a .com. You can type in carrd.com, but it will just go back to carrd.co. Anyhow, we don’t care, because you’ll be using your own web address, not theirs.
Yes, Carrd also offers a free version, but we don’t want that for all the same reasons as listed above. What we need is the Pro version, which is $20 per year, which comes out to just $1.67 per month. Yes, I know that’s another expense, but even with the website address fee of $1.25 per month, we’re still coming in under $3 per month, less than a cup of coffee.
So, go ahead and sign up for Carrd. You’ll again need your credit card to pay the $20 for the first year. Once you are logged in, you can quickly follow the prompts to set up a website. Using the available templates, fonts, and online help, it’s pretty easy to set up.
There are several Carrd tutorials online, but for an easy-to-follow one, this is pretty good. By the way, you’ll only need a simple website, nothing more complex, because remember, the online shop is not going to be with Carrd. Therefore, you will need to also add a button that will send people to your online shop. We will link it up later, but before you leave Carrd, create that extra button.
SETP3: The Online Shop
There are also many different options for building an online shop. Most of them are rather pricey and include a bunch of stuff you won’t need. You can find bargain-priced ones, but they tend to be too limited to run a business.
There is one, however, that is completely free and has only a few limitations, ones that I don’t think are a deal-breaker. The service I am talking about is Square.com (note this is not SquareSpace.com, a totally different company).
Square is well-known in the small business industry for its credit card processing services. They offer that little white square card reader (hence the company name) that plugs into the charging port of most cell phones. If you’ve ever been to a swap meet and paid with a card, then you’ve used one.
Square recently purchased Weebly, a popular website hosting service, to enhance its payment processing offerings. The hosting service has several tiers, including a free one with few limitations. The one notable one is that they don’t allow you to use your own web address either, but you have that covered with Carrd, so that’s not an issue here.
Another limitation of their free program is that they require the use of their own payment processing, which should be fine for you because that simplifies things. They do charge a small fee for every sale, but that is something you’d have to pay with any other payment processor or credit card service, too. Anyhow, that is not an up-front cost; you will only incur this after a sale, so that should be fine too.
The other limitation is that they only offer flat or tiered shipping prices. You will need to figure out the average cost of shipping the items you sell and then use that for everything. So, it’s not calculated by weight or size like at the post office. This isn’t ideal, but it shouldn’t be an issue if all the items you ship are a similar size and weight; then it won’t vary, and you can charge one flat shipping fee for every item you sell.
There are a few other limitations, mostly dealing with traffic quantity, but if you reach any thresholds, then that means that the business is good and can afford to pay a bit more for the service. For now, though, a free online shop is pretty cool.
Square is not as easy to use as Carrd, but it’s not rocket science either. After a few minutes, you begin to get the hang of it. For a thorough tutorial that is pretty darned good, you can check out this video. Once you create the site, you’ll need to link up your bank account info, and then start listing the items you are selling.
That last part may take a little time if you have a lot of different products to sell. However, if you have just a few separate products, this can be quick as well. Where Square really shines, though, is in the inventory management, sales tracking, and everything you’ll need to pay taxes and keep it all official and legal. All that is automated and much more convenient than if you must build all that yourself as well… and yes, it’s all completely free.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Once your Square site is set up, you’ll have a long web address for it, something like https://StocktonBasseballCards.square.site/home. You’ll need to link that to the button that you created on your card site.
And that’s it.
Conclusion
I realize that this is a little more work than using an all-in-one solution, but the cost savings will be substantial. To sum up, you now have:
A registered web address of your choice ($1.25/mo.)
A landing page website ($1.67/mo.)
An online store ($free)
So, for under $3 per month, you have the absolute least expensive online store with your own website address. Yes, Shopify, Squarespace, Etsy, and Wix can do all that for you in one integrated package, but not at anywhere near this price.
You will also have a much deeper understanding of what is involved in setting up an online storefront. The packaged offerings of the other guys tend to keep you in the dark about what happens behind the scenes. This makes you more dependent on them, but they’ll be glad to upsell you on additional services.
When you do it yourself, there also won’t be any issues about who owns what. For example, you own your own web address. You can own it with the other guys, but just try and extract it from there if you decide to leave. It’s messy; I know because I’ve done it for clients.
Finally, Square is backed by a large corporation that is extremely scalable, meaning that it will work with whatever business you grow into. In the future, you might also want to add some of their physical products like a point-of-sale (POS) cash register, post-office-style shipping, or their handy little cell phone-attached credit card reader. Those are added cost items, so you’ll need to determine what is best for your business as you expand, but knowing they are available is nice.
Square is a solid company that will keep track of your products even if you decide to switch to a different Domain Registrar or website host. The free storefront is an excellent way to get started, but as your business grows, you know that Square can grow with you.
By the way, Namecheap and Carrd are pretty awesome too.
