I’m sure that everyone would love to have a successful online business. The truth is while having a successful online business is no easy task, it is possible and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. I remember when I first bought a Deli some 30-40 years ago it cost me about $80,000 dollars. I’m sure buying a successful one today would set you back almost as much. I’m going to show you how you can have your very own online store for almost peanuts.

First let me show you my online stores.

• The Gifts Guru Gift Store: This was my first online store and is basically offering a whole sleuth of gift ideas.
• EZ e Sports Store: My second store focuses on sports orientated goods.
• Best Sex Toys: The sex aids store is a huge market and so I thought having one would be a good idea.
• Wassup Top Shopping: This store stocks almost anything and concentrates on a lot of goods that are popular and have a high profit margin.

The beauty about these stores is you don’t physically have to have a warehouse or actually carry the stock yourself. Nope all you need do is to join AliExpress as an affiliate, which is totally free. You can do that by joining at their AliExpress Portal portal.

The next thing you need do is to purchase the Xpress Stores Pro plugin for a low $47! That is your first cost. You need to be quick for this one because they say this low price is temporary, or that could be just a sales pitch.

Of course to have an online store you need to have a website and to do that you need to join a reputable web host. I have about 12 blogs and I host them with 4 different web hosts. I’ve used several other but I’ve found these to be the most reliable.

• Inmotion Hosting: My favourite hosting provider! Although you can get shared hosting for $5.99 per month I’m paying around $40 per month for VPS Hosting.
• Lunar Pages: Offers their basic plan for only $4.95 per month which is $59.40 per year. You also get a free domain for the first year.
• GreenGeeks: If you’re looking for a “Green” host then there’s none better than GreenGeeks whose basic plan starts at only $3.96 per month or $47.52 per year.
• Hostgator: At $5.56 per month or$66.72 per year is probably the most expensive but one of the biggest web hosts out there.
• Webhosting Pad: At only $1.99 per month, that’s only $23.88 per year, they are probably the most cheapest web hosting in town! My Sex Toys shop is hosted with them.

As not all hosting packages come with a domain you will need to purchase that as well. But don’t worry, at only $9.99 per year you can get your domain from Dynadot! When ordering your domain make sure it contains your store name somewhere in the domain name.

While you can run your store using one of the many free themes I prefer to use FlexSqueeze2 as I’ve found it to be the most versatile paid theme out there. For a limited time you can get this theme for only $97. I use this theme for all my sites. You can see a list of my sites with their relative host here.

If we now total all those costs using Webhosting Pad as the cheapest host, the total cost of your online store is only $177.87! Where on earth can you start up a business for such a low outlay. Keep in mind that the cost of the plugin and theme is a one time only cost. After that you’re only paying for the hosting and domain costing you only $33.87 per year.

Just so you can see how easy it is to set up your store I’ve put together a video for you.

Starting Your Online Store

If you have any questions, or would like to share your thoughts, just leave a comment below.