Hardware and software has made it possible to do anything

Even just ten years ago, in order to open an online store with premium quality product photography and attention grabbing videos on social media, you would have to spend thousands of dollars upfront—before even making a sale or listing your first product. Fast forward to today, in 2022, modern smartphones and online tools have cut that cost down to almost nothing. If already have a relatively new smartphone (with a good enough camera and video capability) and an internet connection, you already have all of the tools you need to start an online business.

A decade ago, in the faraway land of 2012, Squarespace had yet to launch commerce tools. Shopify was available, yet not as simple to use as today. You still needed some time to learn the specificities of whatever tool you were using. Today, in 2022, Squarespace has commerce tools (in addition to scheduling tools, membership tools, the ability to sell directly on social media, etc.) that are simple to use, and take very little time to get up and running with. Shopify is simple to use today, and now even offers warehouse management for big businesses. Most platforms you’ll use today are generally pretty similar to figure out, and much more user friendly.

Today, there exists a combination of software and hardware that makes it simple to start a business online. This is a possibility that is so new, that the effects have yet to really be seen.

Before this new availability of easy to use and widely available technologies, to start a business you’d need to rent a space, find a way to reach an audience, figure out payment processing for yourself, and still have time to actually run your business. Now, it is possible to start any business that you want, online, and sell on day one.

While you’re likely not going to develop a self sufficient online business overnight, after some time, you really can build something to support yourself for the long term. According to ZipRecruiter, “as of Oct 18, 2022, the average annual pay for an Ecommerce Business in the United States is $68,139 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $32.76 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,310/week or $5,678/month”

The ecommerce market is also relatively new in scope, despite having had players like Amazon around for what seems like forever. According to Statista, “in 2020, e-commerce sales accounted for over 14 percent of all retail sales in the United States and were forecast to rise to nearly 22 percent by 2025.” This means that the vast majority of people are still buying in stores. Ecommerce has yet to even get close to 50% of total retail, meaning that the online market only has room to grow.

Now that the physical limitations and barriers to entry are mostly out of the way, save for a monthly fee to keep a website running, or the cost of your phone bill, anything is possible. If you want to start a clothing business where you sell designs that are extremely niche, you don’t have to worry about finding enough people in your local community to support that business. You can just sell online, and find your place within the online marketplace. If you want to sell meal prep kits from your kitchen, you can now do that from Instagram. If you can think of it, it can probably be a business. So now that anything is possible, what do you want to start?