What You Actually Need to Start an Online Business
A short list, and a much longer list of things people buy first and use never.
The honest list of what you need to start selling something online is shorter than any article about it, including this one. So here it is first: a way for people to find you, a way for them to pay you, and the thing you are selling.
Everything after that is an optimisation, and optimisations are worth buying once the business tells you which one it needs. The order below is roughly the order money should leave your account.
What you need before you have customers
Very little, and most of it is not a purchase.
- Something to sell, described in one sentence a stranger understands
- A way to take money — a payment link is enough to start
- Somewhere people can find you and check you are real
- An email address on your own domain, which costs very little and changes how you look
- A way to receive and answer enquiries without losing them
That last one is the sleeper. Most early businesses lose more money to enquiries that were never answered than to anything they failed to buy. A contact form that actually delivers is worth more than a nicer camera.
the first version should be embarrassing and working. not polished and pending.
The kit that earns its money early
If you are selling a physical product, the first spending that genuinely pays back is on the packing bench rather than the desk:
- A scale that reads to the gram. It stops you guessing on postage, and guessing on postage is a slow leak.
- Boxes that fit what you sell. Wrong-size boxes cost twice — in postage, and in the filler you buy to stop things rattling.
- A tape gun. The cheapest minutes you will ever buy back.
- A way to print labels. Handwriting them is fine at five orders a week and unbearable at twenty.
If you are selling something digital or a service, none of that applies and the first useful spend is usually light — because the thing customers see is a call or a photo. What matters when choosing lighting is on the must-haves page.
Shipping, to start with
No specific picks in here yet — I only list things once I've actually formed an opinion about them. The points above are what I'd go on in the meantime.
What to put off, on purpose
These get bought early and used rarely. None of them is a bad product; they are just answers to problems you do not have yet.
| Bought early | Why it waits | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| A proper camera | The phone in your pocket takes better photos than you can currently light | Buy a tripod and stand near a window |
| A second monitor | Useful, but it makes an existing workflow nicer rather than making sales | Wait until you notice yourself window-switching all day |
| Branded packaging | Locks in a design before you know what sells | Plain boxes and a printed card you can change cheaply |
| Inventory software | A spreadsheet is genuinely fine well past the point people claim | Wait until the spreadsheet starts hurting |
| A custom-built anything | You do not yet know your own process well enough to specify it | Do it by hand for a season and write down what annoyed you |
The desk, eventually
Once the business is real enough that you are at the desk every day, the order that makes the most difference is: the chair, then the screen, then the light, then everything else. The chair is first because it is the only one that can hurt you, and the only one that is genuinely unpleasant to buy twice.
There is a full breakdown of what to look for in each of those in the must-haves pages, and a cheaper-first version in affordable office upgrades.
The one piece of software worth early money
Whatever takes payment. Get that right, keep the records it produces, and resist the urge to buy a tool for every other job in the business while you still have eleven customers.
Most tools solve a problem of scale. At the start you do not have scale; you have a small number of things you can still hold in your head, and a spreadsheet you understand. That is not a failing — it is the correct amount of system for the size you are.
The honest summary
You can start with a payment link, a page that says what you do, and a way to answer people. Everything on this site's must-haves pages is for later, when a specific thing is slowing you down and you can say which.
The failure I see most often is not under-buying. It is a business that spent three months and a lot of money getting ready to start, and never got round to starting.
Natalie Zingg
I build websites, custom software, dashboards and automation for small businesses — and I build my own products in public, so you can see the work rather than take my word for it.
Bought the kit, stuck on the actual thing?
If what's in the way is the website or the process rather than the desk, tell me what you're trying to do and I'll tell you what it actually takes.
Tell me what you're building