How much cash do I need to start out?

Harvey,

You don't have to get into specifics but most inexpensive themes out there will do the trick. Is the $850 theme really required for what you're trying to accomplish?

Hi Harvey

If you're a total newbie, i always tell my students they need $100, but preferably $200 to start and approx. $25 per month 'running costs'.
Money would be well spent on getting yourself a good mentor, i feel that's the most important thing when you're starting out, learn by someone else's mistakes.

If you need any help feel free to contact me.
Hope this helps.

To your success.

Kevin

What exact business model are you looking into pursuing? I can give you advice on exactly how much money you need to start if you'll be able to share more details about your venture.

And Aweber is only $1 for the first month. I'm looking at 10,000-50,000 people on my list which will cost a lot every month on Aweber.

Use a free or much cheaper premium Wordpress theme. I have a subscription to ElegantThemes which was about $35 for the year.

You can start out with nothing. Get a free hosted blog, blog about an affiliate product or service, add your blog link in your sig and let the money roll in!

The thing is, I don't want to see crap to mediocre results initially. I want quality results first time round. I don't want people to think of me as 'that guy with the ****ty hosting and a free WP theme'. Who's going to buy products from people like that?

I need conversions.

If you don't mind spending money to make yourself a professional website,

Warriors for Hire Section is the best place to start looking for:

Custom Wordpress Theme Design
Logo Design
eBook Cover Design
Sales page Copywriter
Product creation
Article Writer
and many more...

It is backed up with honest reviews by many warriors! You don't have to worry about getting a crappy service.

You won't need to spend $850 for a custom WordPress theme. There are many out there that are free that will do just fine.

My friend it is always good to look for free or cheaper alternatives that offer about the same functionalities. Really, things don't always work out the way we plan it, and that's the painful aspect of business, whether online or not.

I've had affiliate sites/pages that were just ugly, crap HTML that made me tens of thousands of dollars in profit.

Every single one of my WP themes uses some generic free theme with a custom header if I'm feeling creative. Sometimes, they don't even get that. They all convert fine.

Everyone is telling you not to spend $850 on your site's design for a reason.

Hey,

How long have you been into IM? I only ask because of your recent signup date and of course the term 'start out' in your title.

A lot of people when starting out fail initially (unless they get a very good mentor or some paid help). A lot of the time it's due to just not following through and lack of focus. But there's definitely a learning curve too. You can read all the WSO's in the world, but you still need to take ACTION to both see results and (maybe more importantly) to learn.

Perhaps try a smaller project first? No need to invest such quantities of money without have much experience. It would be SO EASY to get bogged down, or confused then end up spending even more money to fix whatever problem you think you have ... realise it was money badly spent again, and then quit. You'd lose not only a lot of money but also confidence in the whole IM idea.

You sound as if you want to just throw money at a project, and see a quick return. Based on your initial numbers, if people just starting out could invest and then show a 150% ROI after one list message ... don't you think everyone would be doing it?

Trust me, start out with some experimentation with a project of smaller scale and more importantly which costs less initially.

Your numbers are way off.

Domain: 7.49 with coupon code.
Hosting: 14.95 a month, business shared hosting.
Custom Wordpress Theme: $97 will get you optimizepress, in which you can easily modify with a new header and background graphics. Maybe another 100 bucks for modifications.
Aweber: 1 dollar first month.
Software to protect ebook: Not needed. Pirates will crack it anyway (if they care enough about it). You'll just waste time and frustrate your buyers. But if you want to go that route, best of luck to you.

You won't get a 50k list within a month. Not at this skill set and the fact you are bootstrapping means limited cash.

I think you're looking at maybe 300 bucks to start off and then 50 bucks a month after that.

Next, you shouldn't assume your product will convert at 1% initially at 79 bucks.

Unless you are getting extremely targeted traffic AND you have damn good copy, you're conversion rates will be lower.

This means you need to split test your copy and your cost of the course, to see what the highest ROI is.

20% Refund rate? Where do you get that?

If you get a 20% refund rate, there is something seriously wrong with your sales copy.


Modest with your numbers? No, you are way too optimistic.

Unless you have these:

1. A proven network of affiliates who can send you high quality traffic.
2. A proven way to sell that traffic - for example - a good sales letter.
3. A way to split test sales letters and be able to pay/get sufficient traffic to run the test numbers, then ramp up quickly.

You are looking at making next to nothing for a couple of months until you figure these things out.

Not trying to burst your bubble here, but I'm just being honest with you.

If you have a good product, and good sales copy, then that is a start and you can be profitable out the gate.

But unless you plan on paying for a copywriter, you need to learn how to craft offers and sales letters that convert.

I've seen your other thread, and by the way you want to angle your product (the science behind height), you had probably hire a copywriter to tell you how to sell the product.

Rob

I won't tell you to even worry with free. Just understand .. some here are telling you to go free from not beleiving in spending money on their business but many are telling you from the point of realizing an online business is easily expanded ... no building permit required.

What assures you of such a huge list so quick? Of server busting traffic out of the gate?

If you are pretty certain .. by all means get a theme you are proud of but .. I personally love a clean hand coded PHP .

Cloud hosting is a must for that type of traffic and both awebber and Get Response offer higher end business accounts .. me personally I love Get Response.

I noticed you would be interested in an eBook cover creator .. I hope these eBooks are bait and not the prime product for a balls to the wall campaign.

The campaign you seem to want will also need professional sales copy .. squeeze copy ... email follow ups .. professional terms .. contact ... disclaimer .. privacy pages. Might need to look into a help desk solution .. with that many customers you will not be able to handle CR by your self.

Might need to look at permanent staff for a lot of things

Custom graphics and some hand coding for those tweaks after main installation to get the right feel.

If you are going full out ... $15 to $20 thousand can slip away rather quickly

No need to spend $850 on a custom wp theme... But if your content is gold, you will get the money even if you have a crappy site... Just get the basics for your domain, hosting, WP, and autoresponder... You can even start free with Get Response, but they bump you up to the $8.00 per month package once your list reaches 100...

some online start up is free. try mine...

1. Get a cheaper host like Bluehost for less than $10 per month.

2. Ditch the custom WP theme and go with a free theme, at least until you are making money.

3. Don't buy Aweber until you already have a site up with traffic to capture email signups from.

4. Don't protect your ebook. Data protection will annoy your paying customers with the extra hassles and meanwhile, hackers/torrenters will break your protection anyways (it's impossible to fully protect anything electronic).

On fiverr there are a few good rated gigs where you can get a decent custom header for only $5. I used one of these a few days ago and the results were great. The seller also had the option to convert the header/logo into an eBook cover as well for only an extra $5 or $10.

If you're interested, message me and I'll send you the link for the gig.

You should get hosting for 10 a month.

No idea what you're doing getting a $850 premium wordpress theme. Is it really that necessary?

I think most people have pointed you in the right direction but I just wanted to add that it's not a good idea to use a free platform (like blogspot) exclusively, especially in the long run. I've read experiences of people who work hard to build up traffic, income, etc. and then suddenly lose it all because their blog is deleted. Buying a domain name (and paying for a hosting account ideally) is definitely worthwhile.

Best of luck with your site.

You need hosting, autoresponder and domain and all the free information on this forum and that is it. So only about $25 upfront for domain and then $52 a month or so for aweber and hostgator which is what I use and recommend.

No need to buy anything else to begin with.

Build your own list don't buy one. Most autoresponders don't let you use purchased lists and besides, they do not convert well and you would probably just be wasting time and money.

Once I started focusing on really good market and keyword research and then got a domain name and built a list in that one niche, I started making money in a few days.

It took about 1 month to build up to what most people would consider an income and then I systemized it all and started all over again in another niche.

Regardless of if you want to do CPA, amazon products, affiliates promotions, you can promote all those things, your own products and services or anything else to the lists you build in each niche.

I also started out with all free traffic and it worked great.

There are lots of ways out there but eventually, most will agree, the money is in the list.

Good luck.

I would certainly never spend $2000 if I was starting out. I would only be willing to spend that much further down the road when I had made at least that much. Then I would consider reinvesting it.

Do you really need the $850 custom theme?

Anyway, if you got the money, then the choice is yours really. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I am certainly not the most knowledgeable when it comes to Internet marketing and sales.

You can cut corners and save money.

1. You do NOT have to spend $800 on your custom WP theme. Go to Themeforest for some killer templates for $20-40.

2. You can drastically cut the $120-140 for hosting and aweber that you listed.

I have 100 squeeze pages in 10+ niches. my total cost for hosting and autoresponder is only $5. You can do the same...check the link below.

"Let's say I get an email list of 10,000"

How do you plan to do this starting out might I ask?
Hopefully not purchasing an existing list....

I would start with a free blog through Wordpress or blogger. It'll get you used to doing content and writing and see if you still want to be in IM

If you are just starting out, you want to be workingwith the bare essentials.

Only spend money on what is 100% neccasery.

A custome theme is not. Worry about things like that when you are already making thousands of sales and you are trying to get your conversion rates to nudge ever so slightly.

I just did an entire video series on this, but unfortunately I can't post it because of affiliate links. Check this package out though...

Products | Tips and Tricks


And PM me if you're interested in the video series, it's free.

I think its good business sense to smart small, test, and then scale up. Even if you have the money, its not necessary to spend it. You can find a beautiful free WP theme to use. Its more important to have a simple design that works, that doesn't get in the way of your potential customers from tuning into your product. That's all that matters. You can always get more elaborate, with more bells and whistles, later on- but quite honestly, you may never need this. Overdesign can get in the way, and even work against you.

Well, what really jumps out at me is "Custom WP Theme."

Yeah, about half of that is this custom WP theme. So if you want to save money, maybe you dump that and buy something off the shelf in the $50 to $100 range.

How about if you start with an email list of 100 and see if you can't use low-end infoproducts to generate the $50 a month you need to keep everything running?