Take care of your money.
No matter what online beauty supply store you decide to run, keep your funds separate from your personal accounts. This is a big mistake that makes tax time and finances so confusing. It's really easy to open a free online beauty supply store business checking account at your local credit union or bank. All you need is your documentation, sole proprietor license information and an initial deposit with most financial institutions.
Don't pay for your account or get a line of credit of any kind, just find a deposit facility that will keep your money separate from your personal account. At the financial institution of your choice, this should not take more than an hour.
Build your website.
Whether your business is physical or online, you need a website, which means secure urls. Popular domain name sites like HostGator and GoDaddy will let you search for the domain address of your chosen website and buy it for as little as $9.99.
For an online business, you can attach your domain name to the front of an online shopping cart or store, such as Shopify, for a lower monthly fee, or you can use your own drag-and-drop site builder (such as Weebly) on your own URL to build a basic site, which costs less. Both cost less than $100 a month.
Test marketing.
Now that you have enough of a foundation, you can start testing the waters for some sales. Try to spread the word in a cheap and creative way.
If you run a service business, contact your local chamber of commerce or small business branch immediately and ask what resources are available for you to speak, present, or share information about your business. If you run a product-based business, you can test the viability of your product at a local garage sale, farmer's market, or other community event to test what the public really thinks (and whether they will buy your product).
Related: 5 daily essentials for building a successful online business
Use simple Facebook ads with budget limits to drive traffic to your site, or set up a Google AdWords account with budget limits to test whether traffic will flow to your site.
You can follow these six steps without spending a lot of money. This is a great way to test the viability of your small business before pouring all your time and money into an unproven idea.