Throughout the past couple years I’ve signed up for quite many subscriptions and lost track of most them. I was trying to find all my paid subscriptions and found them (hopefully I found all of them). I canceled some and kept the rest. Here is a list of the ones I still have:
Personal Subscriptions
- NetFlix $14 / month
- Few Magazine subscriptions (around $30 / Month total)
- Audible books $14 / month
- Gym membership $20 / month (cheap, isn’t it?)
Business (Website tools) subscriptions:
- HostGator hosting ($30 / month)
- Authorize.Net account ($35 / month)
- Aweber ($30 / month)
- Merchant Account ($30 / month)
- Online dropshipping tool ($100 / month) (unique to one of my websites)
- SEOMoz tools ($79 / month)
All these bills add up to closes to $400 / month. Some of them are essential for running the business. In fact the only one that I can cancel is the SEOMoz tools which wouldn’t make the monthly costs much less. I guess these are my overhead costs which will exist whether I make $1000 in a month or $10,000.
These are of course aside from utility and cellphone bills.
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:45 pm
hey nima, i found your site through your comment on neil patel’s site (quicksprout). your bio intrigued me because i too am a full time employee in the corporate world but am creating businesses online and doing web consulting/development on the side. i am a software developer for Xerox Corporation. i think there might be a niche for people like us, those who balance being an engineer and an entrepreneur. anyway, i had a question about some of your subscriptions, what’s the difference between your merchant account and the authorize.net? I thought authorize.net provided all you needed for a merchant account. what does the $35/mo authorize.net cover vs. the $30/mo merchant account? i’ve been using paypal exclusively for payments and have been wanting to use something else for a while now.
March 6th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Hey David,
Thanks for your comment. I do believe there are a lot of engineer online entrepreneurs out there. Where do you live? I live in Ohio at the moment.
Regarding your question, to process credit cards you need a merchant account provider and a gateway. You can get both of those from Authorize.Net for about $70 a month or so I believe. However I have mine separate. PayPal is great if you are dealing with webmaster and younger people, however when you start selling items online or getting companies as your clients, you will need to be able to process credit cards which you will need the merchant account for.
To get a merchant account you’d have to have a business name established and have a tax ID as well. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Best of luck