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I recently read a colleague’s blog post about creating an on-line business and there were several comments about the expense of getting started, and how on-line might be unaffordable.

If you are currently living paycheque to paycheque, affording only the bare essentials, with credit card debt, then I would say that starting a business may not be the best use of your funds at this time.

One of my favourite authors is David Bach. You can find his books in my Resource area – I would recommend any of them. He has great ideas about getting rid of your debt and finding money where you thought you had none. If you cannot even afford a book, then you should be down-loading my free workbook: Retirement? 8 Vital Insights.

Point 8, Page 12 links you to two budget worksheets. David Bach’s premise, and you’ll find this out if you are honest on the worksheets, is that we often spend bits of money here and there that we don’t “count”. Coffee shop coffees, magazines, wine, cigarettes, prepared meals… they all add up and they are all luxuries. Yes, luxuries. You can dispense with all of them if you need to.

What does “need to” mean? Well, if you are having a hard time paying off credit card debt, then you “need to” dispense with the frivolous expenditures for a while.

If you have your heart set on getting a business up and running so that you can make long-range plans for life on your terms – but can’t see a way forward because of lack of capital – then, again, you “need to” dispense with the frivolities. The good news here is that an on-line business takes significantly less start-up cash than a brick and mortar.

So let’s look at some of those real numbers.

Before you do anything else, figure out what you want to do in your business. You can get started with Natasha Nassar Hazlett’s Irresistible Brand Blueprint. Cost: US$37

When you are ready, go to GoDaddy and find the web-site name of choice. Perhaps it will be your name, perhaps it will be a phrase that tells people exactly what you are doing. Cost: <US$20

You need a company to host your website. I use Hostgator. My cost: <$17/month. This one is on-going and you need to know that.

Now that you have your domain, you need to learn how to make it reflect you. Even I was able to create a great site with Lorraine McNulty’s EZ Peasy WP. Included in this price (at time of writing) is a free theme, or you can find lots of free themes at WordPress. Cost: Cdn$67

Needless to say, there are still a ton of things you need to know. The very best training that I know of is Daily Marketing Coach. While up-grades can start to cost you money, the basic membership gives you on-going access to some seriously high-quality training for all the important aspects of earning money on-line. Cost: US$49.95/month (Currently your first month is $9.97)

I hope this information and these numbers are a pleasant surprise for you. (Needless to say, the prices named above are current only at the time of writing this blog post.) Not quite as financially daunting as you thought, right? There is so much good training out there for every aspect of having an on-line business that you do not need to contract out to high-priced professionals. Not to mention that if you join my team I am here to help coach you and direct you. Just a reminder: if you purchase anything via the links above, I will earn a very small amount of money, but that’s what business is all about and I will explain about affiliate sales in a future post.

Over the last two years I have spent some serious cash on my business. Some of it has been wasted on products that were not worth the time it took to download them. I want to prevent you from making the same mistakes. I, personally, have invested in some high quality training – worth every penny – but I can share that information with you when you have more money to spend on your business.

Now how do you feel about starting an on-line business?