A Look At One Major Advantage Websites Have Over Brick And Mortar Stores

The Cost of Owning 10 Websites Compared to Owning 10 Brick and Mortar Stores

One of the things that attracts so many people to starting an internet business is the low overhead cost. Say someone had 10 item categories they wanted to sell in. All 10 items are very different from each other and each deserves its own space. This can be accomplished the old way, which is to open 10 brick and mortar stores, or it can be accomplished the internet way, which is to run 10 websites.

The overhead involved in owning 10 brick and mortar stores first includes the lease or purchase of the stores in 10 desirable areas that will attract traffic to the stores. Then there are deposits for the lease and for utilities. Imagine 10 lease payments and 10 deposits, and then 10 monthly utility bills. Only someone making seriously mad cash could possibly outlay those kinds of funds to run these stores. And those costs are just the beginning.

Because of the nature of the brick and mortar business, there would need to be at least nine employees hired to run those stores. This means paying nine or more paychecks, their unemployment insurance, half of their FICA, and other taxes. This also means several specialized insurance policies to protect the owner in case of accidents and to protect the owner in case the employee feels like stealing from the company.

The stores would have to be outfitted with shelving, display areas, a counter and cash register for each store, and cleaning costs for a cleaning crew and for pest control. Store owners these days also budget for regular lawsuits and for a certain amount of shoplifting. Advertising can make or break a brick and mortar store, and can easily be thousands of dollars a month per store.

An internet business of this size, however, could also be run by owning 10 websites. Getting 10 websites meaning paying for domain hosting and registration, and possibly for copywriting for professional ad copy. Then there are the product costs if the product is to be actually sold by the owner of the sites. If the sites are run to sell products as an affiliate, the cost of products is zero. The cost of maintaining an inventory is zero. The employee cost is zero. The utility cost is pretty much just the cost of the internet access. After that, there is only the cost of marketing.

Marketing a website is a far cry from paying for commercials or print ads for a brick and mortar store. Buying 100 pay per click ads is likely to be less than the cost of one small newspaper ad. The rest is carried by links, direct email marketing or by search engines, all of which cost nothing. Looking at the costs of advertising alone, there is just no comparison. Unless the owner is incredibly wealthy or has some type of corporate conglomerate behind them, owning 10 brick and mortar stores is pretty unlikely. Owning 10 websites, however, can be done by a Trekkie in his mom’s basement, with very little start up costs and a modest advertising budget.

Building Your Internet Empire – Having Multiple Websites

Nothing changes quite so fast as the internet. In order to keep up with changing trends, many internet business owners choose to utilize several websites in order to have a steady stream of income. Multiple websites means having more income security and some protection in case one site runs into problems.

Staking an entire income on one website is a dangerous way to make a living. It is also much more difficult when there is only one site to promote. If the advertising of that one site is ineffective, or the market for the product sold on the site runs dry, you’re down by the overpass holding a sign that says will click for food. Diversify to construct a more secure income stream that is resistant to tiny changes in the market.

Building multiple websites isn’t really much harder than building one. And, considering how little it actually costs to run a website, the cost isn’t going to be much higher. Having multiple websites does mean extra advertising costs, but it also allows more wiggle room in case one advertising method is failing. Someone owning one website will find their business completely dependent on that one site for an income. If the ad costs run too high and the income gets too low, you’re out of business unless you can find a way to change things fast. With multiple sites, there is room to watch and wait on some of the sites to see how profitable they will be. If one is consistently costing too much and not bringing in the cash, the owner is free to dump it and concentrate on the others. The steady stream of income from the others buffers and changes that need to be made.

Multiple websites also means you can diversify in the items that are being sold. When one item suffers from too much competition or outdated technology, there are a score of other sites in your arsenal waiting to take up the slack. And separate sites for different items make a lot of sense in terms of creating trust in the items and in the seller. Each site will sell something that is built up to be a good, reliable product or service, something that the buyer needs to have. Will that still be believable when the site sells diet supplements and ebooks about internet auctions? Diet products and real estate books? Each item that is not related really should have its own site with its own sales page and its own related content if desired.

And lastly, more sites simply mean more money. Using the technique of weeding out the duds and staying with the proven money makers, it is possible to expand the number of websites that are bringing in money almost indefinitely. Using this technique, the multiple sites will be much more profitable than relying on one site. And when the sites are run by an affiliate selling someone else’s product, it isn’t much harder to run many sites than it is to run one. Running many sites may mean automating what you can, or even contracting out some of the work, but the profit potential is enough that it will be worth keeping the empire going strong.