Thanks for the response Peemac. I hope I'm fairly up to speed on what you covered - it's not as much what I'm wondering about and perhaps I phrased my question wrong.
I don't wish to go into detail about my business too much but I'll say that it's not a store (as such), it's a service/platform. I came to this point from needing the service myself with some forethought that it would be worth constructing my own usage around the idea of opening it to others in the future. With that same thought, I made it as scalable as possible. Its core functionality is all automated and has been built to work with x number of theoretical customers rather than just me. Worst case scenario, I've made a pretty robust service I use myself for my primary business, with very little operational costs, that has all the functionality of a platform I'd be paying somebody else for anyway.
I'm not sure if typical financial frameworks apply easily to this type of scenario. Besides my time, I've thrown very little into this and all costs are, for the most part, scaleable too. I don't have to (in a general sense) put any money into it until more resources are needed. I'm happy enough using the service myself but since I've got this far, am curious enough to offer it out to others and am that stage. I hope my question makes sense now but I'm wondering do I register for VAT right now when I know I'll be making little, if any, income on it for the near future. My primary reason for doing so is to instil confidence in a potential customer that this is as solid and legitimate a service as others. I truly believe so but it'll likely take offering full VAT options to encourage this. It just feels OTT if I've 10 customers for 6 months. I imagine the paperwork isn't too arduous, so perhaps it's something I should do. I won't have many expenses, regarding saving VAT on my own purchases, other than my time. That's the advice I was looking for, primarily. I'd imagine about 1/3 of customers would be to a business, the rest to individuals.