How much time/money did you spend when you 1st started?

I spent $1000 on my 1st online course and mentorship program in 2007. It took me 1 month to start making sales to recover my cost of that mentorship program

Sheldon Arendse

You do not need any money to start. Eventually you go get something like $1 for first 12 months web hosting and $1 for first year dot com from Namecheap. But you can make a living online freelancing without ever spending a dime too.

If you are trying to do list-> sales, then I'd suggest getting $25 and picking up $125 in Google AdWords, and maybe extra $25 for Facebook Ads, and testing at 10 cents per click.

I spent only few $$ for buying domain, hosting and some plugins. Rest of them I did manually including logo content.

I spent daily 6 to 8 hours per day for my IM blog.

When I built my first online community in 2008 I think it was... I literally didnt sleep for about a week lol... I didnt want to take the route of creating fake accounts so I added a script to make every new sign up automaticaly my friend, stayed at my computer and initiated a chat with every new sign up in order for them to feel as though there was activity and a need to return.

I used google adwords to drive traffic to the website and lucky for me there was just about no competition in the niche I selected at that time so I was getting really cheap clicks.

After about the first 3 weeks, the network kinda took off and I was able to lay back some.

Freelancing is a good idea for somebody completely new to internet marketing as there is a big learning curve towards owning a profitable website, making a list of thousands of people or even writing a great ad using PPC. It might be a better idea to use freelancing or even eBay towards bringing in some extra money to invest towards starting a long term website/blog though. The biggest problem that I can see about this, is that it still takes alot of time and work in order to succeed and I can tell you from experience that the 1st 6 months are going to be the toughest part of it. I have learned alot from joining the forum and the good part is that you can find out anything you want to know on these topics by simply using the search button on here, Google or YouTube these days though

What's the best way to freelance. Mostly every site I have been on have people that are more experienced then me for the job they are applying for. What I mean by more experienced is they have done more jobs as opposed to me just joining the site. How does one over come this

Best way to freelance is to drop your price....way low.
In essence.......buy your way in.... by almost giving away your skills.


Then, slowly raise your price...........after you've collected some positive reviews.

$250 to get into private label products on Amazon.

14 hours a day, Seven Days a Week, Insanity right, but obsession cultivates Genius, Hard work Creates Perfection.

It takes a lot of time and money to figure out what you DON'T want to do. There are millions of ways to make money online but only a few will fit within your personality and interest levels. Trying to find these few can cost you much time and money. If you already know then you are way ahead of the game. Most have no clue, though, until they get into the game and find out through the School of Hard Knocks.

I paid 10 bucks for a domain name and that's it.

I did the design myself using a free Zymic template and NVU and I hosted the site with a banner-free, free hosting company (tons of great free hosting options out there). I had no knowledge of graphic design, so I did the banner myself using a free banner generator and learned everything I know about coding trough Youtube and W3C schools.

Minimal $$ spent - under $1K for sure, most of that was on training to accelerate certain tasks such as learning the basics of copywriting and refining my copy and offers.

As far as time, you should be willing to spend every available minute/hour that is not spent on paying your bills (current job if you have one) and family (even that will get squeezed when you are starting any business). If you aren't motivated enough to give up many other activities/time wasters then you haven't yet reached the urgency required to make it as an entrepreneur (in any business)

Jeff

When I first started back in 1999 I worked about 4 hours
per day on building my internet business AFTER working
12 hours at my day job.

I plowed right into it. I really wanted to work from home and
be my own boss. Plus I wanted a better life for my then two
young daughters.

I invested $200 on the everything I needed at the time and
became an affiliate for the late Corey Rudl and his internet
marketing course.

Three months after I started I quit my day job and have never
looked back.

It's a passion. A lifestyle. A privilege.

You need to get deadly serious. Stop buying info products and
start taking action on what you've learned.

Be willing to go for it!!

Chat soon

~~ Gary

When i started (keep in mind this was several years ago and things were a little different), i got lucky and started seeing conversions after spending a few hundred ($300-400). After I saw the conversions, it gave me more condifence and started putting more money into it. I started to see positive ROI after spending around $1000.

I did however make one huge mistake, I jumped around between several different traffic sources. I strongly recommend against this when starting out. I strongly recommend to pick 1 traffic source and stick to it until you find success.

you can spend money, or try free ..but what matters is the passion and the time you spend has this kind of work, it takes time to emerge .. but that only happens when you truly believe in what you do!

Something I wish someone had told me when I first started out is; don't follow what everybody else is doing just because it's working for them.

Just pick one method, and stick with that until you reach that level of success. But, make sure that that method is actually something you're willing to do.

I got into blogging, web design, Facebook marketing, CPA, various arbitrage methods, and so on, and so on...

All because people were claiming that it was working for them. I couldn't even begin to tell you how much money I had spent through out the years bouncing around like that.

Then one day, I decided to take a step back, and really try to figure out where my main problem was. Why I wasn't making any kind of money.. And when it got right down to it, it's because I just really didn't want to do any of those methods.

There was absolutely no passion or enjoyment in those methods for me what so ever. Pretty much just a lot of cringing and sighing.

So I sat back and thought about all of the different kinds of methods that were working at that time, and picked the one that would actually enjoy doing.

After that, it didn't seem like it was just another tedious job anymore. I was actually excited to sit down at my computer throughout the day to work on my projects. And success came shortly there after.

So my advice to new people coming into the IM world..

Look into the various methods that are available today. And pick the one that you would actually enjoy doing.

If you can't stand the thought of running your own website. Then don't start up a website just because that's working for everybody else.

If you can't stand even hearing the name Facebook. Then don't buy into all of the different methods for Facebook marketing, just because everyone around is making money on Facebook.

There's all kinds of ways to make money online, both free and paid. Pick something that you would actually enjoy.

You'll be a lot more successful, and that success will come a lot faster, if you actually have enjoyment and passion in what you're doing.

There are of course other people that believe, if you want to make money online, then go with what's working for everybody else whether you enjoy it or not. Money is money after all.

But I personally came into IM to get away from that 9 - 5 job. For me, to sit there running a website, or networking on Facebook, was just as bad as that 9 - 5 job. I may as well have just went back to working retail.

Well, that's my advice from my own experience.. Go with something that you would enjoy, as long as that method is actually working today.

I hope that helps any newbies passing through.

Money - when started spent hundreds of dollars, spending now and will spend forever to grow my business.
Time - A lot of unproductive hours in the beginnin since I was without any guidance, used to browse for hours and hours till i found a system which is for life...even found this forum ages later. However, productivity got improved gradually and now its the matter of keepin myself up with the dynamics of industry, altering my ad campaigns accordingly and profiting.

Most people fail is because they are in desperation mode to make money.

Every new thing that comes into there inbox pulls them away.

So if you can get out of the desperation and focus in on one thing. You will be a success.

When I first got started, believe it or not I spent about ten grand on business leads to try and enroll into a handful of affiliate programs I had just joined.

I had a lot of issues with the merchant of said leads, and thankfully that was many years ago when filing a credit card chargback for IM related services was very straight forward.

If I didn't receive that money back I highly doubt I would have stayed involved in Internet Marketing.

I can't even count the years or tens of thousands I burned through with next-to-no results.

Today, like a mechanic whose mastered cars, I know automatically what to say and do.

It's like learning a map with thousands of potential wrong turns, where no matter how hard you try you could NEVER get to your destination - once you learn the route you effortlessly take all the right turns, and get from A to Z.

I put in maybe an average of 2 hours per day and a max investment of $1000 before I started making money. Even today, I don't put in any more than 1-2 hours a day.

Everyone's experience is going to be different! I got started in 1998. I didn't start making money until mid 1999. I didn't start "real good" money until 2000. I didn't start "making millions" until mid 2000s.

I started as a 13 year old kid with parents willing to risk $100 a month for a dedicated server. Everything else including web design, code development, and marketing had to be done by hand without funding. And trust me, it was A LOT harder back then, than it is now.

With all that said, I've coached and mentored thousands of Entrepreneurs over the years. Unfortunately the number of them that gave up was fairly high. However the ones that were willing to put the work in are now million dollar earners.

So it's tough to say. All depends how much "work" you're willing to put in and how focused you are.

right now im spending a lot of time but just a few dollars.
im new btw..

I spent all my time and money trying to make money when i first started. I'm talking 14 hour days. You might be wondering how it could be possible to spend 14 hours marketing a website, but trust me... the sh*t is possible!!!

I was trying to sell a $300 home business product on Overture (at the time), and of course, i sold nothing. I had a job, but eventually, i had no idea why i even needed money - because i would spend it on PPC, but never get sales!

My young nieces and nephew sometimes ask me if i can teach them how to make money online. But i just advise them to find a high paying career field to enter into (technology, medical, legal), and work at a job long-term where they can get paid a great salary - with great hours.

Sometimes i wonder if internet marketing is the thing that triggered my schizophrenia.