Curious... How much capital did it take to start your muse?

[MJ1225]

Hi Everyone!

As I have posted before, I am still in the process of building my muse. We are finding, it will cost about 3x what we thought it would to start. But with all things considered, it's a small investment compared to a brick and mortar business. We are looking at spending $6000 for start up. What about you guys? What was your start up cost?

Also, we are struggling with whether to hire a web designer or buy the software and do it ourselves. Either way, we want to be able to make changes to it, such as prices and photos. We also want it to integrate with our bank, merchant account, gateway and accounting software. We also need it to be flexable. There may be changes we want to make after we get started and want an easy way to do that. Any suggestions?

[storm33229]

Hi Everyone!

As I have posted before, I am still in the process of building my muse. We are finding, it will cost about 3x what we thought it would to start. But with all things considered, it's a small investment compared to a brick and mortar business. We are looking at spending $6000 for start up. What about you guys? What was your start up cost?

All I will be paying when my muse starts is hosting fees and marketing costs.
So that could end up being around 550/mo. at start and eventually $3050 at end.

[Dan]

I'd say that sounds quite a bit. What percentage of that is for your website?

As a web designer my advice to people is steer clear of off the shelf software, and get it coded as you want it - I used to be a die hard "off-the-shelf" fan, but got sick and tired of all the extra features built in, which made things more complicated than need be and slowed down the loading, plus the fact it was more time cosuming to add missing features my clients wanted. So I built my own basic cart, and now customise that to whatever the client needs.

The only exception I'd say to that is if you have allocated a low percentage to your website, or if you were going to do a test run of your muse with a smaller investment before you go all in, as the best 3rd party cart I ever used cost about $100 I think.

Best wishes,

Dan

[padma]

So far, I've created a network of about 10 sites with an overall cost of maybe 50-100 bucks. Most of them are test models for further development, but they do make some money.

[jonparker83]

Well aside for the money I've needed to live on while developing my website, I've spent the following:

- £6 on a co.uk domain name for 2 years
- £12 (i think) on managed DNS (for 1 year with no-ip.com) for quick DNS changes should something go wrong with my primary VPS
- £17 a month on the Virtual Private Server where the site is hosted
- £5 a month on a secondary Virtual Private Server which I use for (almost) real-time replication and backup of the database

That's all - I pay the friends that I have working with me on a commission basis so no sales - no cost.

Bootstrapping and guerilla marketing all the way for me. Although if some big VC company wants to throw several thousand at me to make my life easier, I'll happily take it!!

Also, we are struggling with whether to hire a web designer or buy the software and do it ourselves. Either way, we want to be able to make changes to it, such as prices and photos. We also want it to integrate with our bank, merchant account, gateway and accounting software. We also need it to be flexable. There may be changes we want to make after we get started and want an easy way to do that. Any suggestions?

As a web programmer, I would say that if you intend to program your website to integrate with your bank, merchant account, gateway and accounting software, as well as a very long book to teach you, you're also going to need a LOT of time.

The software for this kind of job isn't important i.e. you can't get a copy of dreamweaver and expect it to do this kind of thing for you. I would strongly urge you to get on elance.com or a similar site and find a service provider with experience in those specific areas.

Good luck

Jon :)

[MJ1225]

Thanks for all of your input. Some of you asked how much money we have allocated to the website. We were thinking the low end would be about $3000. Half of our start up costs. As for hiring someone to build it. Would that person be the only one who can make changes to it? I'm sorry, I really don't know much about websites. I left my husband in charge of that.

[Sven]

I've had websites coded and designed for several thousand of euro's only to find that I could have built it myself using drupal (free open source software for websites) for just the hosting cost and 10 hours of my time for trial and error.

I say, for a start up, use good open source and do it yourself. If you do not want to set up the website yourself, pay someone to set it up in open source. If you find you need customisation, do that afterwards.

[webgal]

Thanks for all of your input. Some of you asked how much money we have allocated to the website. We were thinking the low end would be about $3000. Half of our start up costs. As for hiring someone to build it. Would that person be the only one who can make changes to it? I'm sorry, I really don't know much about websites. I left my husband in charge of that.

If you want to make changes, let the designer know that and get something with a content management window. Drupal, Joomla are both open source with content management windows (allows you to type in). Wordpress can be manipulated into a website as well. The harder part is the ecommerce shopping cart.

It depends on how much design goes in and writing as to how much it might cost but $3k is reasonable. Some will argue you can get it for $500 and that's true. But I can't say that is always impressive. Then there's free.

A friend/client of mine has gone all routes and she does a yahoo store and pays about that for the design and some custom installations. She owns 5 internet stores.

Sven does find drupal easy. And it is to me, too. But pure beginners are not going to find the process all that easy. It's a steep learning curve at first.

[jonparker83]

Just for your information, I charge £25/hour when I'm doing freelance work so even at UK rates you're looking at 60 hours of pure design and development time. Trust me, you can get a LOT done in 60 hours.

With the rapid application development tools out there for programmers to use today, as long as you aren't expecting the next Amazon.com with some due diligence you should easily be able to find someone who will do a job you'll be happy with.

[Sven]

I guess that's true, starting on drupal can be a bit overwhelming. But at least for me it was soooo easy after getting used to the structure. There are shopping cart modules too but I have not yet checked them out.

[FrozenCanuck]

Here is what I spent:

Muse #1 (Affiliate marketing)
- Web hosting (basic plan) for one year cost $40
- a domain name cost $8
- Got a free $50 coupon for Google Adwords
- Started linking adwords ads directly to my URL, which was a frame with the affiliate offer URL inside of the frame. No cost.

So $48 invested, and got a return on that investment by the time my $50 adwords coupon was all spent.

Muse #2 (hypnosis CDs)
- Separate web hosting account (I should have gone with Bluehost originally!) for about $85 (pre-paid a year)
- No other costs since product was available to me already

Things related to Muse 2 that were free, or cost me only as I make a sale:
- Wordpress software to run the site (free)
- PayPal buy now buttons (free, PayPal charges me a couple bucks per sale)
- Shipping costs

So there are 2 muses that had almost no up front cost and are profitable (small profit, but at least it has a plus sign in front of it).

My next muses:
3) a CD audio course where I will have to purchase a $100 microphone and probably outsource the audio CD cover graphics and jewel case graphics. Total cost should be under $300

4) an e-book for a specific niche market, that I will write myself ($0) and market via website (I'll outsource website creation if I'm too busy)

That's all for now.

[Ironwulfsbane]

Don't design the site yourself. Rarely do sites that are self designed anywhere NEAR where the owner wants them to be without a design or programming background (I work in corporate branding). Hire a designer, and have them recommend a good "Content Management System" for you. That way you can still add pages, change pictures and text, update information, and anything else with total control. Best of all, you don't have to become a computer geek (unless of course, that's how you'd rather spend your time ;)). There's usually a small fee with these, usually around 40-50 bucks/month, but hiring a programmer to make those changes is usually around a $200 minimum. If you'd like a recommendation on a CMS that I use, PM me and I'll send it over.

[JohnnyMars]

Well aside for the money I've needed to live on while developing my website, I've spent the following:

- £6 on a co.uk domain name for 2 years


Out of interest, who do you use to get that rate?

Have you taken the equivalent .com domain, to stop squatters?

Jon

[jonparker83]

Hi

I use 123-reg.co.uk for domain registration - I think there *may* be cheaper out there but they make it easy when I want to change the name servers or DNS to point to my VPS (which is hosted by a sister company of theirs)

The .com wasn't available when I registered the domain so I've just got the .co.uk.

I'm solely focussing on the UK market for now, so I decided that having the better domain name was more important that having a more obscure domain with more TLDs registered.

Cheers

Jon :)

[jetpacklife]

It cost me $0 to start, just my own time, and I've been making money from it every since. ( I didn't start w/ a domain name, server or anything )

Sure, it has grown and I have more expenses now. There were also risks along the way where I'd had to spend months worth of profit on a new server.

I'd certainly recommend putting as little into it as possible to start.

[MJ1225]

Don't design the site yourself. Rarely do sites that are self designed anywhere NEAR where the owner wants them to be without a design or programming background (I work in corporate branding). Hire a designer, and have them recommend a good "Content Management System" for you. That way you can still add pages, change pictures and text, update information, and anything else with total control. Best of all, you don't have to become a computer geek (unless of course, that's how you'd rather spend your time ;)). There's usually a small fee with these, usually around 40-50 bucks/month, but hiring a programmer to make those changes is usually around a $200 minimum. If you'd like a recommendation on a CMS that I use, PM me and I'll send it over.

Thanks everyone! Hey, if we hire a CMS to build the site, would we need to purchase the software for content management? If so, Inonwulfsbane, would you recommend that the website be built in an open source program?

My husband built his company's website. But it's only an informational site. No shopping cart and very basic. He suggested that we buy aspdotnet storefront and build it ourselves and have someone else build a skin. What do you think? The software is $1000.

Thanks again for your input!

[jonparker83]

Thanks everyone! Hey, if we hire a CMS to build the site, would we need to purchase the software for content management? If so, Inonwulfsbane, would you recommend that the website be built in an open source program?

My husband built his company's website. But it's only an informational site. No shopping cart and very basic. He suggested that we buy aspdotnet storefront and build it ourselves and have someone else build a skin. What do you think? The software is $1000.

The suitability of different CMS/shopping cart software will depend totally on the nature of your site.

If you give us some more information on the contents of the site, then I'm sure there would be a few people that can and will make recommendations

So...
- How many products will the site be selling?
- How much content (just text and images) will there be on the site that needs to be administered by you?
- Are you already tied into a merchant account with a bank?

One recommendation I can make straight away is, unless you have a major reason to use windows-based software, save yourself the $1000 and go for open source software.

Cheers

Jon :)

[jonparker83]

Also...

As you mentioned your husband was going to install the .net cart, how much programming experience does he have?

If he already has some experience, then it may mean that your situation favours something along lines you suggested (install and configure yourself and get a designer to skin the site).

[onemoretry]

I have one startup that is still ongoing that I have spent around $4000 for so far, which includes the cost of a professional designer and some tools I needed to build the site quickly. That does not include the time it took to develop the startup (I am a web developer) which was close to 1,000 hours of my personal time. This is likely not a typical situation because it is a startup in the full sense of it being a web application like Flickr or Facebook.

I also have a more Muse-friendly project underway where I've spent about $300 for a decent sales-letter style web page and have spent around 40 hours so far on content that will become the product.

Remember to include your time as a cost.

[MJ1225]

I will have somewhere around 20 products. I am packaging the chocolate in designer decorative boxes that will change periodically. So, I would need to make seasonal changes for various holidays and such to the website. Along with the photos, prices and descriptions.

The shopping cart is very important. It needs to integrate with UPS as well as Quickbooks Pro. We have the merchant account set up with our bank. The bank suggests that we use Authorized.net for our gateway.

The reason we were looking at aspdotnet software, the shopping cart integrates with UPS, Quickbooks and Authorized.net. It has a lot of shopping cart options. In the long run, we think it will save us time and money.

What do you gurus think?

[JFrenzel]

I would opt to use the google shopping cart. Its easy to use. I would keep it simple at first. I have boughten plenty of products that went through a Google/Yahoo shopping cart, and it has been a good and seamless experience.


Jose

[rfantasy]

to live by tims principles you need to leverage your money to buy yourself time..

it sounds like alot of you are doing alot of manual labor.

what you need to understand is that you can outsource EVERYTHING.

the only job you will be doing is being a project manager and overseeing each part of the "muse" which will take a little bit of time in the beginning but the time you spend tapers off.

as you learn and complete the learning curve of the "muse" you will see how you can take yourself out of the equation and outsource remedial tasks to someone else.

the capital you need should be spent in generating traffic/leads/sales ... all other systems should be minimal in cost..

reserve your hard money as long as you can and leverage your credit cards. this is how you can get rolling in the beginning and it will give you room to breathe.

[jammer]

Has anyone used paypal for excepting credit cards? There is no start up costs just a per transaction cost. No merchant account setup and it comes with a shopping cart. It looks to me that you just have to add the buttons to your website the way they show you how and it works. It does look like it will require a little programming of your website but they show you how. It seems like a zero cost start up solution to me. Just curious to see if anyone has used it?
John

[froldt]

Has anyone used paypal for excepting credit cards? There is no start up costs just a per transaction cost. No merchant account setup and it comes with a shopping cart. It looks to me that you just have to add the buttons to your website the way they show you how and it works. It does look like it will require a little programming of your website but they show you how. It seems like a zero cost start up solution to me. Just curious to see if anyone has used it?
John

I've used PayPal to accept money from eBay auctions. Other than the extra cost (it's free if you use paypal to paypal) there isn't a difference. The amount is deposited into my account no matter where it comes from.

No idea about setting everything up, but it didn't look hard the time I looked at it.

[jammer]

Thanks for the input....Has anyone else used Paypal to except credit cards?
John

[TimW]

Yes, I used to use PayPal to accept CCs, as did my wife. We have both ditched PP. For me, it was they that suspended my account because I sold items, on my business website and not through any sort of PayPal store, that they believed to be against their terms of service (not porn or anything like that).

Normally, I kept nearly zero money in my PP account, but at that point had $500 in it....I think one of my competitors "snitched", and someone from PP "ordered" an item, paid using PP, then froze my money and closed my account. They held my money for 6 months before I could access it. Once it was freed up, I withdrew all of it.

Mine is not an unusual or unique issue with PayPal. There are scads of reports of vendors being charged-back the money received from "customers" who get what they order then tell PayPal it never arrived, was not what they ordered, etc. PP takes the money from the vendor and they're screwed.

They are not a bank, nor a lending institution and, therefore, are not subject to many (or any???) of the regulations that banks or lending institutions or, perhaps, even Visa/MC may be.

I will never use PP again. See www.paypalsucks.com for more examples. (not my site, I don't run it and have no affiliation with it whatsoever).

[webgal]

I use them but one thing that ticked me off was they promise you a listing in their shops if you are a biz member. Well, I am a biz member. But they have three other things you have to do. One is turn your paypal into a moneymarket account with them and essentially tie up your money. They have no FDIC and they bury this. You can't get an answer on much of anything either.

I'll use google checkout next time and might covert soon.

[JFrenzel]

Google is the best. Well put Webgal. They now offer free 411 and so forth. Their checkout is seamless.

Jose

[AshokanKid]

Hmmm., Been using PayPal for almost 8 years now., BUT am now heading over to Google to check them out., THANKS~! :-)

[therealrico]

lets see so far I have spent:

buying Domain, actually bought two because i thought of a better one $30
Design and drawings from Elance $798
Purchased the original product that I am improving upon on ebay $21.95
Cost of building bracket prototype $900
Cost of building nosecone prototype $880
Cost of 3 page test website $200
Cost of 6 day Pay Per Click Test Campaign $71.38

So far that is a grand total of 2901.33

Expected future costs before I sell one product
Registering as an LLC $330
Buying 50-100 units to sell range of $30-50 per unit

I think there are other future costs I forgot, but I can't think of them right now.

[therealrico]

Noticed some debate about using paypal vs Google, vs yahoo, can you put all three on your site?

[brucefenton]

that does sound high

figure a very cheap/ free way (facebook etc) to make some pages and test the concept for $100 or so

after this whatever you spend will get double the value anyway -- the more testing the better

as the carpenters say "measure twice, cut once"

[networkmemetics]

At the most, no more than $200 until I generated a profit. Now its just the cost of the domain....and my time. Will start outsourcing soon though.

[mastererrob]

Hi, just adding my two cents. I've started up my muse with roughly $1000 US. Mostly going to adwords to test if my product (using a mock sales page) would convert.

The website is so easy to build, but it depends on your product. If your product IS the website, then you need a web designer, don't try to get around that. If you're product is advice or some information product, then use some of the resources mentioned...I recommend Joomla being a web designer, it's easy to higher freelance when you need something complicated changed, otherwise it's easy to learn. There are some great services looming for remaking sales pages...check out

http://landingpag.es and google "M6 muse creator"

otherwise i think you are really going at it with too much money...the idea is an EASILY managed online business that has high markup....don't turn into a regular business owner and grind yourself into the ground.

i'm not all the way there yet, but completely started fresh 70 days ago. i'm chronicling my whole journey there... if anyone reads a blog here and there check me out http://thelifedesignproject.com

best of luck