Always Look for a Free Service or Alternative First

This is especially true for people just starting out with their online business.  You don't want to be spending your money foolishly when you could be investing it in other parts of your business.

In my experience online, people or companies will try and charge for almost anything online.  You pretty much name it and you will find someone that will charge for it.  I'm not saying that is a horrible thing, there are plenty of great things to invest in, but you certainly can find free ways to do a lot of things and sometimes they are even better than paid services or software etc.

This could be any number of different things.  It could be a website creator.  There are some great free ones, but there are some good free ones, as well.  Go ahead and try out some free ones before you buy a paid one.  You may like it better than the paid ones, anyways.

The only thing that you absolutely have to invest in, is your Internet service.  After that, start to work your way up.  Don't go throwing money around, all over the place, without doing some research and having a plan.  

Most people start with a domain name and web hosting.  I don't usually ever recommend going the free route here.  But, it's only $20 for a domain name and web hosting, so even if you want to switch services, afterwards, it is no big deal.  I recommend name cheap for domains and host gator for web hosting.

Then you can get into auto responders and you might be able to try a few out for free.  You can do that with Get Response and Aweber sometimes has a free test drive.  They aren't very spendy if you pay for them and they should easily pay for themselves.

I don't really pay for a lot of software.  I bought a software to protect my downloads and I've bought some scripts.  I ended up buying the full version of my website designer and I've bought some other things and I'm subscribed to a few other services, but that is it, off the top of my head.

I've bought quite a few domain names in different niche markets, but I host them all with host gator for only $10 a month.  I also pay Aweber $20 a month for their service.

Most of the other stuff that I use are free.  I'm involved in many different niches, with many different web sites and have a bunch of different assets.  After some of the initial costs, you can run your online business pretty efficiently.

About $30 per month in services and I only have to renew my websites once a year and I buy an occasional domain, but that isn't much.  I run many websites and many mailing lists for about $30 a month in services.  Most of the other websites that I use are free.  The only other costs could be for promotion or outsourcing.