Cloud Is Reducing Costs
The days of our grandparents and even our parents starting a business once entailed a business loan or financial backer and not seeing profit margins for at least five years. Now with the recent boom of offsite cloud technology allowing regular people and new business owners to forgo the expensive costs of maintaining technology and software, those 5 years of deficit can become as little as three months.
Getting Started
Now lets start with the basics. In the beginning after the company objective and pre production planning has finished. The first step that must be taken is to separate personal from business with an LLC or limited liability company. This can be accomplished quite easily with legalzoom for only 99$. With this step it takes away some of the liability so clients or other patrons cannot sue the owner personally if things go poorly.
Platform
The next step is to figure out which platform is most beneficial for your company. This decision is not always so concrete and will change from time to time depending on the kind of business. The primary choices are Apple, Windows, and Android with Chrome or even Linux. While Apple and Windows have their best traits Android has quickly risen in the ranks with its chrome platform able to keep things simple affordable and cross platform. Linux on the other has had security at its core since day one. The main point here is not always about what is better but what works long term. Replacing devices every two years will eventually increase costs and lower profits.
Work Force
Once revenue has started to be generated, hiring employees is a natural development. While more men/women power is an added benefit these people expect to get paid. Hiring a bookkeeper to keep the numbers and do the payroll is an option but it can become quite expensive. For a more outsourced and affordable solution look to Intuit Payroll. Intuit has plans starting at 20$ to perform payroll and other services like workers comp and 1099. After payroll has been established making your presence known worldwide is the next step.
Getting Known
A website is primarily the first thing people go to once they hear about your company. Every company needs a website this no longer is something that can be overlooked or cheaply developed. However this is a tricky subject because as easy as it is to underspend on a website overspending can present the same problem. There are literally over 50x solutions of websites that make it easy to create your own website but one that stands out the most is SquareSpace. With SquareSpace starting as low as eight dollars a month and offering 24/7 uptime this could qualify as underspending or down right being cheap. This option however is the real deal and for what it can do for a new business this resource tool is simply irreplaceable. Once the website has been completed macro management is the next course of action.
Archived
Communication is a key part of any long term business. Being able to respond to time sensitive material is a must have for any business. A great email client with archiving is the starting point for this and the king of this is Google’s alternative Gmail. With POP IMAP and forwarding options included free of cost this is really a straightfoward choice. While Microsoft's Outlook may be used more widely in older businesses it is cumbersome and quite often runs into many bugs. The Thunderbird varient on linux while much better then Outlook can overwelm some new comers very quickly. Following a stable form of archived communication would be the addition of backwards compatibility for the less technologically inclined.
Being Paper Friendly
Faxing is nothing more than a plague in these times yet governments and older generation businesses still put priority on this form of sending documentation. So to make sure all clients have an equal opportunity eFax is the best solution. Starting as low as 15$ with a one time ten dollar start up fee this can be an inexpensive way of keeping those relations with customers and fellow governments that can only use this means of document communication.
Breif:
With all of these cost effective ways of starting a business this is really only the beginning. Being cost effective will only get more complicated as the company grows in value and size. Managing overhead costs will never be easy and with raging economies and hard decisions always on the horizon workload must always increase to survive. Working for yourself can be obtained quite easily in this cloud run era for under 1000$.
Breakdown
1. 99$ LLC
2. Cost of Device Platform Android,Apple,Windows,Linux
3. 20$ InTuit Payroll
4. 8$ Squarespace
5. Free Archived Email
6 15$ + 10$ eFax
