It has always been a challenge for small businesses to get financing. This is down to the fact that most startups will flop after the first year and start from scratch. Many investors will not want to take risks on businesses that they don’t see succeeding. However, nobody has a crystal ball. Some businesses that look bad on paper, could turn out to be a success. Most often though, it is the businesses that have been methodical in their planning that will have a better chance of success. A lot of international banks will only lend capital to businesses with an established history of some type. If you are just starting up in the world of ecommerce business, you may need some capital immediately to get you started. There are ways to do this and create your dream into reality.
Personal Money & Assistance
This type of financing is known as bootstrapping. You may have your own savings that you would like to sink into your business, or perhaps you are wanting a payout that you want to use as capital. Friends and family may offer up a certain amount of money or all of the money needed. There are some advantages to using personal financing:
- No complicated applications and no hidden costs relating to new financing. Keep that money safe.
- No interest to pay – you will always have the same amount of money there and there will be no repayments relating to your loan which is a long term benefit.
- Ownership is 100% yours – you do not have to share your business with any other type of investor and the business will always belong to you.
- Friends and family – this has some drawbacks as you may feel indebted to them and feel the need to pay them back, or perhaps they expect you to pay them back.
Credit Cards
This is one of the easier ways to access funds, quickly is to straddle different credit cards. You can balance out the interest rates but you will find that they are incredibly high still. It is a great and quick cash flow benefit, but this will mean you could be paying off thousands for many months or even years to come. If you are wanting to use only a few thousand, or less, then credit cards could be a good choice but be sensible with how you use your credit card and transactions. You could check out this to look at ways to use innovative credit card processing for your business at any stage.
Crowdfunding
If you have a new idea that could be beneficial to many people, then you could look at an online kickstarter campaign. This puts your idea to the people and they can donate money to help your startup. This is tricky to get the word out but you could ask friends and family to share and use social media to promote it. This can be really helpful and many successful businesses have used crowdfunding to help fund their business.