Newbie: How much $ did you spend before getting paid?

P:S: ONE MORE SUBSCRIBER ADDED TO MY LIST (TOTAL 2) AFTER STARTING THIS THREAD. I LOVE WF!

I learned the hard way in the begining. Spent way too much time and money before I got my act together. Stay focused and learn the fundamentals. Reinvest your sales into more education...

At first I actually made good money off youtube. I got real excited about this internet marketing gig. I would dose off sometimes and just make some calculations on paper to see how much I can make in the future ( X articles x X traffic x X conversion rating = X dollars). Obviously the numbers were unrealistic, but I was/still am a dreamer. I then poured 400$ and made like 50$ back. It was a real bummer.

Sometimes I think I should stop wasting my time with white hat stuff, and does to the black hat stuff. That's where the money is tbh.

I remember vividly spending exactly $16.47 my first month and made 40 measly dollars with adsense in my first two weeks. That was all I needed to see that its possible to make money online. Then I discovered affiliate marketing and never looked back. That was 18 months ago and I've learned so much since then.

I am trying to learn PPC at the moment so a lot
But if i crak it I will make that money back easily

I am not buying as much ebooks as i used to and the ones I do are generally under 20 USD

jackson when you say only 200 competitors do you mean only 200 results come back when you type in you search term or 200 when you type in "search term"

i wouldnt cancel your auto responder because it's not an expensive service and even though you're not making sales straight away you're building your list.

Remember Seo is just one type of marketing, you can also do social media marketing which is free and can give results pretty quickly

all the best

I think I'm in the same boat as you. I started out with big dreams but i've learned the hard way that it takes patience,dedication and persistence to make it in IM. I think one of the biggest setbacks I had was not joining WF sooner. I had came across it before earlier on but didnt take the time to realize what it was about. Now, I am learning all kinds of things and i've made a couple sales online but nothing to quit my day job over. In any event, i'm continuing to learn and persevere.

You can get subscriber for free from Twitter. I actually bought a WSO a few days ago that shows how to do it. It's called '10 Dollars to 2000' from Bryan Kumar.

hmmmm.....if I may talk...or rant. In the first place, I have been online since I was 14years or thereabout, that around 2006 and just last week, 5 years later, I made my first dollar online which is $66 for a sale a website.

Now, I have spent over $200 which in my country is around over N30,000. Now after I made my first dollars, I discovered one thing and that is, YOU DONT NEED MONEY TO MAKE MONEY IN THE REAL SENSE OF IT. There is enough free rich information going around the web that you can read and educate yourself.

That been said, I needed only $21 to achieve what I needed to achieve . Spending money for the gurus is not the first thing!

When I first started I didn't think about the money I was investing as anything but the cost of learning the skills I need to be an internet marketer.

I considered it the same as some one going to college to learn Medicine. It's worked out pretty good for me in putting it in a perspective like that because the "I'm not making any money so forget this" thought didn't side track me or give me a reason to quit.

I have been a learner and not an earner for about a year now.
The free to $20 products have taught me more than the large programs.
Now I am ready to put my knowledge to test. Someone said don’t wait until you get a PhD on internet marketing before you put something online and “good enough” is good enough.
I think I will try to follow those words of wisdom.

Am tempted to tell you but I'd rather not. But I have fallen into a lot of scams and self-proclaimed gurus whose only interest is to have you opt in into their list so they can make money out of greenhorns like you. But you will learn how to separate the real from the fake. Meantime, if possible, don't spend anymore. There are a lot of sites which can help you shorten your learning curve for free.

Jackson,

First and foremost, you must know that you are going through a learning curve and how much money you can make off it will depends on the things you have learnt as well as your application to it.

I made money off Adsense when I started out. But it was not a bed of roses and I realize that it is much more difficult to make money off auto blog than it is to focus on one blog or one affiliate product. So recently, i change my focus and start building membership site.

I also realize that you need a mentor. It could someone you know or someone you admire and try to model his success. In my case, I see Jimmy Brown (creator of memberaire and affiliatenaire) and Jay Abraham as my mentor. That is, I learn everything they taught, I apply the lessons to my situations.

Also, I learn about focusing on just PROVEN method until you succeed. Most newbies drop out too fast. They tried and as long they don't get results, they drop out, not knowing why they fail.

See, i realize the proven method is pretty simple:

- Have an Offer
- Have a List to Sell To
- Have Ways to Build That List

That's about it. As long as you focus on list building and treating your list well, you will never go wrong.

Bottomline I want to say is that your autoresponder is very important. The biggest mistake I made was not having an autoresponder. Recently when I changed my direction (setting up membership sites) I make sure I build a list. So I encourage you to stay subscribe to your autoresponder and start providing offers to capture data.

Wish you luck!
Kenneth

I just spent time and internet monthly bill. That's all. Now, I am earning a lot.

A lot has to do with how much time you're willing to put into your business. It also depends on your skills in designing capture pages and following up with leads. So, someone completely new starting out with just knowing how to use email would take a lot longer than a web developer/web designer or someone with more experience outsourcing their work.

At the end of day, everybody is different. If you're not willing to invest the time to do the work or money to grow the business, then it's probably not for you. Now that's the truth.

Milton

I've bougth many many many ebooks and guru-stuff, but clickbank was my friend because of their refundpolicy. So all and all i haven't spent so much because i refunded all the crappy products and scams!

Go with Mail Chimp as an auto responder. Their free service kicks ass to get started.
You should use HostGator for your hosting.

When I got started I didn't spend allot of money, but I spent 100s if not 1000's of hours before I made any real cash.

Stick with it and you will find your groove.

I'm not much into affiliate marketing, but based on my experience, you just have to continue doing and scaling up things that work for you..

Chances are your just experiencing failure. I think it took me almost 16 months before I started making money. Then all suddenly boom I sky rocketed.

Jackson, as a newbie I bet you're bewildered by the many choices and methods that you have in front of you right now. It probably is going to be very tempting to try something new the moment you feel that your current efforts aren't working, but you have to try hard to resist this temptation.

As with anything new, it'll take some time and effort to get the hang of things. It may take several weeks (and realistically it'd be more like several months) of focused effort on one method before you feel like you're making some headway. Please bear this in mind before you get derailed in your efforts by inconsistency and a lack of focus. For example, with your listbuilding efforts, keep in mind that without focused effort at driving consistent traffic to your squeeze page, you cannot expect to get subscribers on a daily basis, so I'd keep at it and whatever you do, do not cancel your autoresponder service!

I was fairly fortunate in that I had the wherewithal to purchase a two-tier high ticket product when I was first starting out, and coupled with my PPC efforts I was able to make about $500 spending just a tad under $100 on PPC within two weeks, and that was all the impetus I needed to keep going with my IM efforts. I haven't looked back since then.

I think you're on the right track though. Bear in mind that SEO requires patience and consistency (if this is the path you want to take), so don't expect quick results within a few weeks. You'll make progress, but it'll be slow and steady for the most part. When you feel comfortable making these SEO sites, your next step would be to ramp them up by building multiple ones quickly so that you can multiply your income significantly.

Paul

I spent a couple of hundred at first investing in different learning materials and plans, at first they really didn't work out and it wasn't until I combined what I learn across all the different plans and combined all the methods that I started seeing some success, this took me the best part of 18 months though and only now am I starting to see some results but the results are definitely there!

I spent a lot of money because I knew nothing about internet marketing in the beginning (end of 2006) and I was bothered by my competitors, and by a schizophrenic who provoked many damages to my websites. I learned from the beginning that there is no safety online, and that your webmaster is your partner if you depend on him/her because you don't know how to build your website yourself.

As stated by other fellows in this thread, the truth is that you should not spend any money in order to make money online, unless you have already made money somehow and you want to invest your profits, so that you may make more money from this investment.

Study the posts in this forum, and you'll learn a lot. There are excellent marketers here, who give many free lessons about many very interesting aspects of internet marketing. You won't find so clear lessons anywhere. The Warrior forum is a true school for all internet marketers.

Here goes:

I've been doing IM in a lot of small breaks due to ermm.... educational issues (Other 17-year-old Indians aspiring for the IITs would know what I'm talking about).

My goal was to earn enough to buy myself an Alienware.....now its changed. I've made it into an IIT and now I've got enough time to do IM on a continuous stretch. Now, my goal is to work till I reach a constant 150$ a day on auto-pilot and then leverage the system.

Until now, I've spent 20$ on 2 domains, and around 50$ on hosting for 1 year.

I've read some people say that we shouldn't spend money on IM until we've made some money. Well you definitely should not spend, but you should "INVEST". Think about what you're investing into and if its good, parting with your money is a good step.

I spent around $1000 and got multiple times of amount back. Basically I buy domains, hosting, guides, membership sites coaching and software to gain the income. I always consider about my product, CPA and SEO to keep profit.
You don't need to spend much at the beginning. Just browse WF and learn IM. You also a war room member. In that section we have plenty of stuffs to improve skills.

Depends on your market. I do the back end programming and coaching so I've worked with a lot of successful and not so successful marketers.

I've seen people spend thousands and get nothing, and I've seen people spend very little and make thousands.

The trick is what you decide to sell. Don't pick a saturated market or you'll need to spend more to make anything. Most things are saturated now...so you need to be creative. On top of this, you have to make sure that your satisfying a need...not something like "How I make $400 a Day Doing 2 Simple things" (just saw this warrior ad)

Also, pick a market that you excel in...not something that you have to spend lots of time researching.

As a short answer, YOU CAN MAKE MONEY and lots of it. Just gotta think outside of the box a little.

I would say I was quite strick on spending money when Internet Marketing is concerned. I agree that without spending you are not going to get coz you cannot invent the wheels overnight when you do not know the well.

I spent less than $20 before I got my payment of $260 in paypal. The only thing I was doing I was really after my work. No matter what, i used to give considerable time and effort for people to know and recognize me. Building the relationship is much important initially in order for you to earn recurring.

I spent $27 before making $186.

After that there were ups and downs, it's a learning process.

I am also a newbie (5 months in IM) and so far I have spent very little money and made a few sales. From the start I was recommended this forum and reading through the many posts and threads one strong message kept popping up"Do not spend money on shiny/fancy products".

I really think that to date this has been the best advice I have received from this forum. So far I have spent money strictly on essentials (short course to learn the basics of IM, buying a couple of domain names, hosting provider and autoresponder).

Personally that's all I needed to get me started. Now the real hard work is generating traffic!