Can Anyone Become An Entrepreneur Online?

Loes Knetsch ^©

A question which raises more questions. Can anyone become an entrepreneur online? How much money do I have to invest to become an online entrepreneur? Which skills do I need? Where is the best way to start? Do I need a website? Do I need to have my own products? How can people find my website online? How much does a website cost? Where can I host my website secure?

All very sensible questions!

To answer the first question: Yes, anyone can become an online entrepreneur. And it’s obvious, you need a computer (laptop/tablet) and an internet connection for that. The cost, however, is various per platform. I will make an attempt to visualize this for 4 different website building platforms.

What else do you need to become an online entrepreneur?

You do need a website
You need some knowledge about how to build a website
You need to know how to advertise your website
You do need a couple of Social Media Accounts

Do you need a pile of money to start?

No, unlike a lot of websites claim, you don’t need to invest hundreds or even thousands of dollars to make a start. But it’s quite clear to me that when you don’t know anything about how things work online, you do need to invest in education. Just messing around a bit will not make you a successful online entrepreneur. You do need basic knowledge on how to develop a successful website.

Where to start?

There are lots of places where you can open a website for free. Those sites provide you subdomain names. For instance: Wix, Weebly, Wealthy Affiliate and Joomla. Most subdomains are free to use, but they come with limitations and often advertisements.

They all have a training program and website support. Some have a forum where you can ask questions when you run into problems. Just one of these has actually a community with a community live chat to help and back you up in times of need. And that’s the Wealthy Affiliate community. Wealthy Affiliate offers, for the premium, (paid for version) also full backups, 24/7/365 website, and community support, coaching and the opportunity to earn money with their own affiliate program.

The sun rises for nothing

Whatever choice you make, the sun rises for nothing. All these programs have an upgrade. When you want to have a serious chance to a successful online business, one day, you do want to upgrade. You want more possibilities for your website than the default options. And in that upgrade, are lying the differences. I am reviewing here the most advanced options of all four.

These four are all good options to begin your online entrepreneurship:

Do not focus on what others do, focus on what you do. And do it the best you can. ~Loes~ Click To Tweet

All these website providers work with easy to customize website templates, you don’t need to code anything.

Wix
The most advanced option will cost 24,50 a/month (with training videos and support)
- Excluded:
  SSL (about $80,00 a/year,
  Own domain name (about $5-$20 a/year).
  Web email account
  Opportunity to make your website ad-free (Named like that, it probably will cost extra)
Wix has its own affiliate program, so you can earn from advertising Wix to others.

Weebly
The most advanced option cost €23 = about $27/ annual payment. They have a lively community forum, when I visited the site there were 663 people online. However, the forum is static and not interactive. Weebly includes one domain name and SSL service. They do provide a live chat function and video training. A pro: They have their own app center, I don’t know if the apps are free to use though.
- Excluded:
  Domain email isn’t on the list, so I assume this is not included.
Weebly has its own affiliate program, so you can earn from advertising Weebly to others.

Joomla
The pricing of Joomla is not very clear to me. They do not offer a package, but you can add about everything you wish or need to your account. So you can make it as expensive as you like.
- Excluded:
  You can hire webmaster service (€50/h), support service (€12,50/month. All kind of additions for hourly and monthly pricing. This can become a quite expensive choice. They do not have an online community and live chat was offline when I checked. So there is no 24/7 live support.
They do offer their own affiliate program, so you can earn from promoting Joomla to others

Wealthy Affiliate
I have chosen for this option, to my full satisfaction, 5 years ago. They are very transparent with their pricing. They have 2 accounts, free ($0.00) and premium $49.00 a/month, 6 months $234 or $359.00 a/year.
- They offer everything included. No up sales.
  Hosting, SSL, 24/7 Support, Community services, live chat, live training, and video training, and more. The only extra cost at Wealthy Affiliate is: You pay for owned domain names, however, the hosting costs are included. They offer 25 free subdomain names you can use and host within the annual price, and next to that you can host 25 domain names of your own for free, and that’s quite unique because most website providers only allow 1-5 max. Web email addresses are included too.
  - Excluded
    No exclusions
They have an affiliate program of their own, so you can earn from promoting Wealthy Affiliate to others.
The free account is suitable for hobby and practice. There is no support.

Unlike the first three options, you can have a 7-day totally free premium trial period at Wealthy Affiliate. You may look inside the community, try-out your first website. Take a peek at what they offer. It’s a take it of leave again offer. No strings attached, no dime to pay. Nothing to lose!