How to start an online shop cheaply?

Tanie Sklep Internetowy – mit czy fakt ?

Everything depends on what you consider “cheap” for you. For one, the cost of an online store, e.g., 5 or 10 thousand zloty, is cheap because you want to pay once and have something owned by yourself. For another, a monthly subscription of 24.99 zloty defeats all rational arguments and goes for it like in a so-called “smoke” (: and then turns out that it’s not as nice as he thought, no, let’s say directly, companies offering both want to make money.

So how to put it, if you buy an AGD but not high-specialized IT service (((: you don’t need to know about it because you’re probably not an IT specialist because if you were one, you would have built the store yourself.

Don’t confuse “high-specialized service” with “complex panel”, so this is why it’s a high-specialized service so that you can easily manage such a store later.

These are two worlds

1. online stores on own property on open-source platforms (e.g., WordPress/Woocommerce, Magento, PrestaShop) – there are more of them but these are the most popular ones and not necessarily the best for everyone.

and

2. online stores with subscription – and here is complete madness, there are many subscription-based platforms with attractive offers like 25 zloty per month or half price for the first six months, marketing specialists from companies offering such services stand on their heads to make water out of a duck’s head, i.e., to trick you into subscribing.

ONLINE STORE ON OWN PROPERTY

Let’s take a closer look at online stores on own property. I mentioned 3 most popular platforms, I’ll say right away that WordPress/Woocommerce dwarfs all the others including those not mentioned here, because it has over 50% of the market share, and there is a reason for this.

What are these platforms? They are systems similar to Linux, which you probably know about. They are open-source solutions competing with dedicated or proprietary online stores, which are closed and very expensive in terms of purchase and development costs. In contrast, open-source platforms like WordPress/Woocommerce have an open code, a large community of non-profit developers working on them, and an even larger community of developers creating countless modules for these platforms that can be installed from the admin panel.

Now, let’s get to the point, although there are tens of thousands (I mean sets) of free modules available for WordPress, most of which are free because there is a huge number of paid ones costing between 50-500 dollars (one-time payment), in the case of platforms like Magento or PrestaShop, there are hundreds of such modules and some of them can be really expensive. The more complex your store gets, the higher the development costs will be, and it’s very hard to get out of this without making a huge loss.

WordPress/Woocommerce gives you great flexibility and no dependence on contractors if you decide to hire someone to build your online store using this platform. This is why millions of users around the world (including in Poland) choose WordPress/Woocommerce because it’s easy to manage, intuitive, and economical both in terms of building and expanding your store as you have access to countless free modules from the admin panel.

I’ve been dealing with this topic for over a decade and I could write a whole book on it, but there would be too many technical terms so I’ll focus on the most important aspects from the perspective of someone who has no IT knowledge but wants an affordable online store solution that is cheap both to build and expand. And WordPress/Woocommerce meets these criteria – millions of users can’t be wrong.

ONLINE STORE WITH SUBSCRIPTION

Online stores with subscription lure people in with low entry costs, a 14-day free trial, which is also okay if you want to see how it works, but you need to be aware that they are not as cheap as companies creating them claim. This is a game where the goal is to trick you into playing along with the system by activating more and more modules, and I have clients who come to me when they receive their second bill (e.g., for 5 thousand zloty) with a nice offer: “PAID YEARLY!!!” – don’t you think this is a cheap store (: ?

Recall the price of an online store on own property mentioned at the beginning of this article, 5-10 thousand zloty (one-time payment) compared to 5 thousand zloty PAID YEARLY – what’s cheaper in your opinion?

As I mentioned earlier, there are countless platforms like this and they keep growing because it’s a goldmine for companies creating them. They go for quantity even if only a tiny fraction of users will pay the exorbitant annual fees so that those who won’t do so will still leave millions (the effect of scale) before they realize that it’s not worth it.