What Are The Ongoing Costs Of A Startup Streams Shopify Store?

what are the ongoing costs of a startup streams shopify store?

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Podcast by Eddie Eastman
CEO Startup Streams

“We are here to kickstart your ecommerce ambitions by providing you with a range of ecommerce stores in the most popular niches whilst providing you with a fully functioning business complete with products to sell saving you time, money and effort in the process."

Podcast by Eddie Eastman
CEO Startup Streams

“We are here to kickstart your ecommerce ambitions by providing you with a range of ecommerce stores in the most popular niches whilst providing you with a fully functioning business complete with products to sell saving you time, money and effort in the process."

Every business has expenses.

You have to spend money to make money after all. But just how much - or little - can you expect to pay to launch a new Startup Streams pre-made business for sale? Listen to this episode of the Startup Streams Serial Entrepreneur Podcast to find out…

 

Thankfully, Startup Streams stores come with only one compulsory monthly expense

Reassuringly enough, there is only one compulsory monthly commitment you have to make, per store. And that is for the Shopify plan. You may have heard in our previous podcast how we choose to exclusively make stores for the Shopify platform, simply because it is the best one on the market. To be able to benefit from all of the unfair advantages Shopify provides you and your business, you will need to pay Shopify $29/month.

 

UPDATE 2023: $39/month Shopify Basic Plan

It costs <$1 a day to launch your store

Now, I understand that this can be a commitment to some new entrepreneurs, having to pay around $350 a year to host your store, for those looking to do everything on the cheap, but I can assure you that the value for you money you receive is exponential. What’s more, you are essentially paying less than $1 a day per store, and you can stop or pause the store at any time. There are no long term commitments.

As far as I see it, if you are not planning to be making more than $1 a day to even pay for your Shopify hosting, I am not sure why you wish to start a business in the first place. I can check my Shopify Partner dashboard right now, and I can see just how many hundreds of Startup Streams members have active stores; meaning they are making money to pay for their store, their marketing and put extra money in their pockets at the end of the month. If they can, there is no reason as to why you can’t. 

But as stated earlier, the Shopify plan is the only compulsory cost. All others are optional. 

Let’s look at the others now…

 

You can buy a domain name

The very first expense you may wish to consider is buying a custom .com domain name. Currently, you are able to buy any available .com domain name from within your Shopify store at $15 each, for a year. You can buy domain names with other extensions, like .co and .io which are becoming increasingly more popular, but these are more expensive. You can also buy a domain name from another provider, like GoDaddy for example, and easily link to your store. If you struggle to come up with a name or domain name idea for your business check out our “Adventures in choosing 1000+ business names in 2 years” blog for our best tips and tricks. 

 

You can add extra Shopify apps to aid functionality 

The next expense you may wish to consider is paying for Shopify Apps. There are over 7300 available on the Shopify App store, many of which are free, but others you will have to pay for. I suggest taking some time to go through the Shopify App store and check to see how your store’s functionality can be greatly improved by installing a new app - perhaps to collect more emails by installing a fun game for new store visitors to play? 

That said, keep tabs on how much you spend. To put it in perspective, I used to spend an extra $80 on Shopify Apps per month, but realised I wasn’t generating enough traffic to my store to merit making the most of the additional functionality I was receiving from the said apps. I installed a digital heat map app, which shows exactly what customers are clicking on in your store, where they scroll to, what they read etc… but after seeing only one or two results were captured, it was evident it wasn’t enough data to make an informed decision. In turn, I cut that $80 a month down considerably, and now pay around $20 a month. 

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You can get a personalised business email address

After considering Shopify apps, you may wish to consider a personalised business email address. There is nothing more unattractive than a business type email coming into your inbox from a free gmail account. Therefore, having a professional business email account, with your own domain extension displayed, shows you are to be trusted and are taking what you do seriously. I often get solicitation cold-outreach emails from free personal email accounts, and they end up straight in the junk box without so much as a second glance. Don’t fall into the same trap. 

I personally recommend Google Workspace, or Gmail For Business, to help you set up a pro business email and I currently pay about $5 a month for such service - for each member of my team. 

 

Budget for your marketing expenses 

After the Shopify plan, business email, and any additional apps you may wish to pay for, the next expenditure you should consider is of course… marketing. After talking to Startup Streams customers, they tend to wish to spend between $150-$500 a month on ads, with $350 being about the average. Although this amount may be a lot for new entrepreneurs, the more you can spend on ads, the faster you will find your target audience to sell to and make more sales, faster. Spending money on ads can be an endless and bottomless money pit - especially since the infamous iOS14 update which restricts people from being tracked easily online by Facebook and Google etc…

If $350 a month to spend on ads is too much of a commitment, of course go check out out podcast on Free ways to market a new business. There are a number of Startup Streams customers who have been able to make money surely and slowly using free marketing methods online, so it is certainly worth a shot. 

I do currently stay clear of Facebook and Google ads at this time after some catastrophic failures on these platforms, without any explanation from Facebook or Google as to why my campaigns failed so spectacularly. I suggest sticking to other ways to spend your marketing budget. I find influencer marketing still works a treat. 

 

Soundbite references:

Tim Ferris Quote

 

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