How long before an online store is profitable?

Six to eighteen months for the ones that get there, and a majority never do. A first profitable month usually arrives well before a profitable year.

The reasoning

The stores that reach it early are almost always the ones that found a repeat purchase quickly. Selling something people buy once a year means paying full acquisition cost for every order, forever.

What most people get wrong

Selling online is not passive income. It is a business with stock, customers and a support inbox, and anybody describing it as passive is selling a course.

The number that decides whether a store works is not revenue, it is what is left after the cost of the goods and the cost of getting the customer. Plenty of stores with impressive revenue make nothing.

Repeat customers are the whole game. Winning a customer costs money; selling to them again costs almost nothing.

How an app changes it

This is where an app earns its place — it exists to make the second and third purchase easier, which is where the profit is.