This really depends on how much you believe your online business is worth to you. There is big and small businesses out there that spend more on their online business than their storefront or physical presence (brick and mortar).

---

I don’t want to not provide a number, but you have to understand the number depends entirely on what type of services you are buying. You can’t go to a mechanic and tell them how much does it cost to fix my car, without telling them what is wrong with the car, and providing the model and make of the car.

---

There is endless things you can pay for in an online business, but here are some of the main ones:

1- Building / Overhauling your website/shop if you don’t already have one. One Time Payment

2- Maintaining an online business that already exists, like a website, a shop or a social media presence. Ongoing Payments

3- Starting online ads (search ads, location map ads, phone ads, video ads, display ads, social media ads). Ongoing Payments

4- Online shop upkeep, to manage online inventory and incoming orders. Ongoing Payments

5- SEO Campaign, in order to rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing. Ongoing Payments

---

As you can well imagine there is a list of ways you can invest in your online presence. Whatever physical service and expense you provide your brick and mortar business, you will probably have a replacement for it on the online side as well. Some expenses are ongoing, some expenses are one-time.

Bottom line is, you should pay a website company depending on the services you are receiving from them, if you have a strong online presence you should have the funds/investment to back that presence.

---

Think of a physical storefront and a sales team that is generating or trying to generate a certain amount of revenue, how much do you pay them? You should pay them a percentage of the revenue in order to make sure they don’t fail, as they are the business. Your online presence is part of the bigger business, are you investing in it correctly or not, you should read some more posts from our blog to figure that out, or contact us and we can give you consultation for free.