Can You Lower Costs When Working Online?

A lot of people are becoming pro bloggers and entrepreneurs who base their businesses solely online. What this creates is a whole new dimension in the business world, one which has been round for many years now, but one which hasn’t been researched as much as the business world offline has been.

In recent times saving costs has been one of the main objectives for many companies around the world. The recession has affected us and has shown us that we need to be a lot more careful about what we spend, we have to be able to save money so that we can maximise our profits and in turn please the stakeholders within a company, whether that be you in your small start-up business, or the shareholders of a multi-national company.

This is where entrepreneur’s who work solely online face problems. Is it even possible to reduce your costs when you work online? There are two circumstances to which answer I can give for this question, as on one side, if you work by yourself managing a website which only needs you, a server and a domain, then you don’t really have any costs which you can get rid of. However if you are a website owner who has employees, saving costs works the same as any other company around the world, as there will be salary, rent and other costs to pay.

In this article I would like to look into how to save costs from the perspective of the former.

Why The Question Has Been Asked?

When looking at the title question, you have probably immediately answered with ‘yes’ or ‘of course’, I would have done the same thing, however, it’s a lot harder than just a simple answer such as that.

When you are self-employed, working from home and making a website you haven’t really got any choice on the costs side of things. If you are working from home, you are paying for the house anyway, so that doesn’t really count as a cost. Yes, you are using the computer more, so the electricity bill will be higher, but you can’t exactly turn the computer off and work on your website can you?

What Are The Costs of Owning a Website?

Below I am going to present you with the costs of having a website and how (if) these can be combated.

Disclaimer: These are the costs I incur from running websites, if you would like to add any, please leave a comment.

• Domain Name
• Website Hosting
• Website Software
• Computer
• Website Theme/Design

These are the four (see below) costs I have had to pay to enable myself to work on websites for a business. Some of them are needed, such as the domain name, hosting and computer, but others may not be needed, such as the software and also the theme or design. I have actually added the website software because many people use paid for software; I however use Word press, so this isn’t a cost for me.

How to Reduce These Costs?

Domain Name – You can go for a cheaper renting company to get a better deal for your domain name, however, this will probably only be a difference of a couple of pounds, so I would probably recommend just going for a reputable company.

Money Saved? No

Website Hosting – This is the same as the domain, you can go for cheaper hosting, but the problem with this is that it probably isn’t a high quality hosting package and in turn this may affect the speed at which your website loads.

Money Saved? No

Website Software – The first part where you can save some money. There is plenty of free alternatives to website software, so you can save some money quite easily in this section.

Money Saved? Yes

Computer – You need a computer to operate the computer, no arguments. Yes you can get a cheaper computer, but really you should just get which ever one is enough to run your business.

Money Saved? No

Website Theme/Design – This is the area where money can be saved quite easily, because if you use a popular software package, you will be able to get plenty of free themes, therefore saving you money. However, if you would like something more professional a custom theme is essential and going in cheap to get a custom one isn’t the bets idea, you need quality.

Money Saved? Yes

The Answer

From the above we can see that is very hard to save money, especially every month, due to everything you pay regularly for being essential to your business. The only places where you can save money are on the start-up costs and in my opinion this an area you need to be careful on, as you need the quality to build a good brand image.

I would also like to point out that the costs of having a website are very low in the first place, making saving money even harder. This is the case in businesses in every market, the lower the costs in the first place, the harder they are to reduce.

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net