Do you dream of cutting your commute down to your living room? Do you pine for a time when no-one dictates your day but you?
Unless you are totally in love with your job then I am sure thoughts like this have crossed your mind at one point or another. You start to wonder if it would be better to have your own business.
For a few moments you let your mind wander and dream. Your mood lightens and you can see yourself doing what you’ve always wanted every single day. Maybe it is possible…
But that lightness only lasts for a few minutes because other thoughts start popping up.
I’ve never been to business school I wouldn’t know where to start? What would I create my business around, I enjoy lots of things? What if I choose a focus and then get bored? How would I find customers?
And the final questions;
How long will it take to start getting a decent income and How much is it going to cost me?
We can’t solve all of your concerns today but I hope we can solve one. Recently we surveyed members of our community to establish what was the average startup cost of a work from home business.
This stemmed from my anger at reading a statistic recently. 50% of businesses will fail in their first year.
Why does it need to be this way? Surely we can get this figured out so that more people can find the financial freedom they deserve.
One of the main reasons new businesses fail is cash flow. Managing incomings and outgoings can be challenging with limited experience and a lack of knowledge about how much items are going to cost.
I wanted to uncover once and for all what the average start up costs are for work at home mums. So we did a survey with 11 mums from the Business Jump community and of the questions we asked was how much does it cost to set up an online business.
Results
Average Cost To Launch A Home Based Business
We can reveal that 80% of those we surveyed said they spent between 0-$10,000 to launch their business.
And the average work at home mum spent $5,000 launching their business.
Average Cost By Business Type
But what about the types of business. Do the figures vary depending on if you are launching a product or a service based business?
The short answer is yes.
Launching a product based business does require more financial investment.
Those who selected they spent $5000-$10,000 were all product based or retail businesses. So if you have less money to invest launching a service based business is a good choice.
Most Costly Expense
So what was the primary expense that these businesses owners invested in?
We found that in most cases it was the website that business owners spent the most on.
One business owner answered:
“It was my website. I paid for a web designer to build me a website where it was nice, however I then realised it missed a lot of what I felt a website needed (though at the time of purchasing didn’t realise this). So I paid for a different website designer to build be a new website that I have now and absolutely love.”
This survey respondent highlights something really important. It is very difficult to know upfront exactly what you are going to need. In the first year of business everything can change. So don’t invest a lot into your first website.
If you have ever heard of a minimum viable product, that’s what you need to go for with your website. Something basic will do you just fine in the early stages.
If you don’t have $5,000 to invest in your business don’t let that put you off. You can still get start working on your dream part time, maybe you can launch just one social media channel & start building a community.
The fact that you are even considering these questions is a really great start and we want to congratulate you! We hope this has given you some idea as to how much you are going to need to invest in the beginning stages of your business.
Natasha is a 6 figure entrepreneur woman and founder of Business Jump . She shares tips, tools and techniques to help you jump into your business the smart way, so you can find financial freedom and enjoyment. Join over 4,000 supportive mums in the her Private Facebook Group for WAHM’s with smarts .
