Your Online Store's First Year: The Costs Nobody Mentions

Ask anyone planning an online store what it will cost and they will quote you one number: the website. It is the wrong number. Over the first year, the build is almost always the smallest line on the bill — and the only one you pay once.

The costs that decide whether the store survives leave with every single order: payment fees, shipping, packaging, returns, photography, marketing and — the biggest of all — your own hours. Most plans skip them until they show up as missing money.

So let's run the numbers on a fictional store, start to finish. By the end you will have the method, a one-line formula and three honest scenarios to hold your own idea against — before you spend a euro.

The example store

Thirty own-brand products (artisan cosmetics, gourmet preserves, accessories — the sector barely changes the maths), an average order of €45 and a product cost of €22.50. That is a 50% gross margin, typical for makers and own-brand resellers. Keep those two numbers in mind; everything below derives from them.

The build really is the smallest number

In Portugal, a 30-product store costs roughly €1,500–6,000 to build, depending on platform and customisation — platforms, payment methods and the legal obligations (electronic Livro de Reclamações included) are covered in our guide to starting an online store in Portugal. For this exercise: €2,500.

Add about €150/year for domain and hosting and, if you would rather not be the person responsible for updates and backups, a maintenance plan from ~€30/month. That is it. Nothing else in this article is about the website.

Payment fees: 1.4–2.5% plus a fixed cut

Every payment — MB Way, Multibanco reference, card — hands the processor between 1.4% and 2.5% of the order, plus €0.05–0.30, depending on provider and method. On a €45 order at 2% + €0.25: €1.15.

Sounds trivial. At 200 orders a month it is €2,760 a year — nearly two decades of hosting.

Shipping, packaging and returns

Sending a 2 kg parcel within mainland Portugal costs €3.50–5.50 with CTT or a small-contract carrier; the islands and international shipping are a different table. Customers pay part of it, rarely all of it: charge €3.90 while the label costs €4.40 and you are subsidising €0.50 per order — and "free shipping over €X" is a full subsidy on those orders.

Packaging never makes it into the plan: box, tape, filler, label — €1.00–1.50 per shipment. We will use €1.20.

Returns happen outside fashion too: plan for 3–8% of orders, and 5–15% in fashion. Each one costs the collection, the outbound postage you already paid and the time to reprocess — call it €9. At an 8% rate, that spreads ~€0.70 across every order you ship.

Add it up: €1.15 + €1.20 + €0.50 + €0.70 ≈ €3.55 per order. Your €22.50 gross margin just became a contribution margin of ~€19.

Photography: paid once, selling every night

Thirty products need 60–90 photos that survive comparison with your competitors' listings. A professional session runs €300–600 (€10–20 per product); a decent DIY kit — backdrop, tripod, light — is about €150 plus a weekend. We will budget €450. It is the cheapest salesperson you will ever hire: it works every product page, at any hour.

Your time: the line that never makes the spreadsheet

Each order takes 10–15 minutes: confirm, pick, pack, print the label, drop the batch at the CTT point. On top come the messages ("has it shipped yet?"), stock updates and content. Honestly:

• 10 orders/month — ~3 hours a week (mostly admin and content)
• 50 orders/month — ~7 hours a week
• 200 orders/month — ~20 hours a week: half a job, no holidays

You may not pay anyone for these hours. They exist anyway — and they come out of something.

Marketing: what €150/month buys (and what it doesn't)

€150/month is the viable minimum for a new store: an email tool (~€20), tightly targeted search ads and the odd boosted post. The honest arithmetic: at a €0.30 CPC, the remaining €130 buys ~430 clicks; at a 1.5% conversion rate, that is 6–7 orders. Acquisition cost: ~€20 — essentially the entire margin of that first purchase.

The conclusion is not "don't advertise". It is that, at these margins, ads only pay off when the customer comes back — so year one runs on the channels with no cost per click: product pages that rank on Google, a consistent Instagram and an email list. What €150 does not buy: brand awareness, generic keywords ("natural cosmetics" costs multiples of this) or an agency — serious retainers start at €300–500/month.

Year one, in one table

Fixed costs for year one: €2,500 (build) + €150 (domain and hosting) + €450 (photography) + €1,800 (marketing) = €4,900. After that, every order contributes ~€19 (€18.95, to be exact).

	10 orders/mo	50 orders/mo	200 orders/mo
Annual revenue	€5,400	€27,000	€108,000
Contribution (€18.95/order)	€2,274	€11,370	€45,480
Year-one fixed costs	€4,900	€4,900	€9,100*
Result (before your time)	−€2,626	+€6,470	+€36,380
Your hours, annually	~150	~350	~1,000
Effective hourly rate	—	~€18.50	~€36

*Marketing raised to €500/month — 200 monthly orders do not happen on €150.

Three things jump out of that table:

• Break-even sits around 22 orders/month (€4,900 ÷ €18.95 ≈ 259 orders a year). Below that, year one is an investment, not an income.
• If your honest forecast is under 20 orders/month, postpone your own store: sell through a marketplace, markets or Instagram + MB Way until demand is proven.
• If your contribution margin comes out under €12, fix the price or the product — marketing cannot rescue it.

Run this before you request any quote

The whole method fits on one line:

Contribution margin = average order value − product cost − payment fee − packaging − shipping subsidy − (return rate × €9)

Multiply it by a realistic monthly order count, set it against the fixed costs, and you will know whether you have a business before you have a website.

If the total scares you, the problem is not the website — it is the product margin. A store contributing €19 per order covers its fixed costs at 22 orders a month; one contributing €8 needs 51 and will never have room for ads. No platform, template or agency fixes that.

Once the numbers close, the website conversation is worth having: describe your store in two minutes and get a concrete range, no meeting required.