How To Expand Your Business Using A $20,000 Business Loan

If you could get your hands on $20,000 how would you expand your business? Whether it is in the form of a loan or you have the cash laying around the house, hopefully this article will give you some insight into using the funds to grow your business. One of the most important strategies you can implement when growing your company is to develop an online business. Whether you have a restaurant, retail shop, or another type of business you can benefit tremendously by creating a revenue stream online. Many business owners are afraid to take this step but maybe if you are a bit more informed you might take the leap.
Below we will analyze the costs and necessary tools to launch your business online. Each item discussed has an approximate cost associated with it. These are guidelines but should give you an idea of what to expect.
E-Commerce. $3500 Every business should have a website that allows for customers to purchase their product. Whether or not the transaction can take place via the web is dependent on the product and a few other variables, but for sake of an example we will discuss a site that allows for online transactions. If you only require a phone call then you can just go with the design package below and add a few hundred dollars to it.
Online Shop Framework (the actual online machine). $0 Drupal or Prestashop are great open source options for free.
Shop Development. $2500 Obviously you are not a developer so you will require one. Craigslist.org and many other online portals will have freelancers who will develop your shop. You might even see substantially cheaper prices but to develop it correctly $2500 is pretty accurate. This will include 50-100 products installed, so if you require more the costs should go up around $500 per 25 products.
Website Design. $1,000 The developer can put the theme that you choose. Go online and look for themes for your type of shop. Typically they cost around $50 bucks so I applied the difference for the developer to install and adjust. Designing a site with your own specifications can be much more expensive so out of the box themes are much more cost effective.
Images. $1000 Images can make or break a site especially if you have a glamorous product that requires several angles and brilliant images. If you need to adjust the image budget you will learn as you do your initial shopping. Go to istock.com or any of the competitors and you can get reasonably priced images to limit the costs, but shop wisely because images of your product mean a lot to your consumer.
Website Content & SEO. $10,000 I put these together because they are one in the same. The average SEO content package out there will get you 5-10 landing pages (content optimized to get search engine ranking) and the SEO articles necessary to continually provide optimization to your site for 6 months. This package can be avoided if you can write the pages of content for your site, but the SEO that comes from constant articles is a must if you want visitors finding you in the search engines.
Website Internal/External SEO. $2,000 You will need a company to go over your title and meta tags internally in your site as well as build links for you. I separated this SEO from the above package because this is another aspect of optimization, and is a must whether or not you avoid the larger package above. The typical package can range up another $1,000 but if you interview a few SEO firms and negotiate you can get it within budget.
Social Media Marketing. $0 Dont be afraid to setup your Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter accounts. You can save a lot and your article provider will definitely post and keep these things up to date and optimized. But if you want to save you can do it yourself with some research and time.
There are also the cost for the domain name and monthly hosting but the cost can be under $20 a month so it wasnt discussed. There are several more things you can do for your site like paid advertising and other marketing efforts but if you offer a good product and customer service you can build your online business without paying excessively for it. Hopefully this article can help you take the leap into the online world and expand your business.