Online Store Pricing

All of our online stores are custom built so there's no pre-priced packages. We simply haven't seen a generic store designed with nothing in mind that makes money! You can certainly do this with Miva using their default templates but we recommend against it.

$1500 will get you a pretty decent simple store where you provide the graphics and all the content. We provide the template coding, store setup, training and a few extras. We do have clients who are making money with these stores. Sometime this is what we recommend.

$2000-$2500 is a good price range for many stores. You don't get the research or full SEO package at this level but we can provide the graphic design and some custom merchandising and a small bit of help with your data. We have a number of money makers in this range.

$2500-$3000 is the most common price range for small businesses online. Often you can get a good deal of research and SEO for this price in addition to good store design and a number of merchandising customizations. A very good, solid price range that yields an excellent chance at making money.

$3000-$3500 is the second most popular price range. This gets you excellent store design, a nice volume of research, full SEO and the full range of onsite conversion optimizations. An excellent price range that yields excellent profits in a very high percentage of cases.

$3500+ is usually for larger stores or stores with complex customizations. At this price level you can achieve almost anything in an online store.

$5000+ is the price level for a custom store including all the research, optimizations and much more. While startup cost are relatively high, this is a very profitable approach when coupled with a decent ad budget.

As you can see, we have the flexibility to fit the store to your needs and do it in a way to maximize your ROI (Return On Investment). We will need to do a detailed phone interview to produce the most accurate quote.



Considerations

Not every store makes money right away. This is a reality we must address. In some cases the research will tell us what the optimized investment should be and we can then tweak the details to fit the startup costs. Generally we don't like going beyond a 4 year payout, which is an annualized ROI of 25%. We have done several with payout under a year but a 2-3 year payouts are more common for brand new stores.

The only reason to have an online store is to make money. When you spend a dollar with us we are constantly asking the question "how is this dollar going to make money?". It's common for us to advise a client not to spend that dollar if we can't answer the question. We want you to make money and be our customer for life because we'll make more money ourselves that way.

Return On Investment

Let's do a very rough ROI examination. Your ongoing costs are about $50 per month. At a turnkey markup you need to sell at least $100 per month just to cover costs. At $200 per month in sales you're just starting to make money, but how much should a $200/month store cost? Well, that's about a $50 per month profit assuming turnkey markup. A $2400 store will pay for itself in 4 years selling $200 per month with a turnkey markup.

Not all markups are turnkey and not all projected gross sales are $200 per month. Here's how to figure it:

Annual Gross Sales - Product Cost - Overhead = Annual Profit.
Annual Profit x 4 = Maximum Store Cost.
Annual Profit / Store Cost = Return On Investment.

We're looking for an ROI of 25% or better.

This example has everything averaged out over a 4 years time span. Real stores don't perform like that, they exhibit growth curves and seasonal cycles. New stores also suffer "startup lag" because of the time it takes to get established in the search engines. In reality a new store starts off "behind the curve" and underperforms. The growth curve finally catches up and the store begins to "overperform". It's that 4 year average we're looking at so a brand new $2400 store can actually start off losing a little money. The growth curve is highly dependant on the hours of online marketing work you're willing to do.

What To Expect

It is highly unlikely that a brand new online store will provide a living income for several years. There are a large number of factors at play here but it's remarkably similar to getting a new job as a commission salesman. The general rule of thumb is it takes 3 years to build a good clientele. Same thing with an online store, it'll take about 3 years on average to to develop a decent income. Just like sales it doesn't come easy. You still have to do the online marketing work.

There are exceptions to this 3 year rule of thumb. We've had several stores hit $10,000 per month gross sales in their first year. They just don't happen all that often so you should plan on a slower startup. If you can possibly afford the research you'll have the best opportunity for achieving a rapid startup.

For some stores there is a fast track called online advertising. This is quite difficult to assess without a history. It takes a lot of careful research to make an educated guess at how effective an advertising dollar will be. It takes time and money to get accurate data to guide you in making accurate advertising decisions. We've seen a lot of folks lose big money making "blind bets" on online advertising so we advise against that. Our approach is more rational and entirely data driven. Start small, gather data and learn, then grow very slowly and carefully letting the data guide us. If done correctly a good ad campaign can get your online store up to a nice profit level faster than grunt work marketing alone will. But beware! If done incorrectly online advertising will lose money, sometimes a lot of money.

Get Started

The best situation is to do the research before starting the store. The research gives you the very best odds at success. Then use the research to design and build the store. Use the research to design and build the online ad campaigns. But guess what? You still have to work hard at online marketing to make it all payoff in the shortest time!

There are not many miracles in ecommerce (we can't all be Dell Computer or the Apple Store), but it is the fastest growing market segment in the world. See the U.S. Census Bureau Statistics for online retail sales. Even during the latest recession ecommerce outgrew all other market segments. At very modest levels ecommerce usually pays off better than most other investments. Ecommerce is not a "get rich quick" thing and you're not going to rake in millions while lying around the beach. Not in the first 3 years, anyway!