I need start-up advice

save money, or get a personal loan.

If you can't get the money don't do it.

I think you first crawl... then walk... then run... ultimately fly....

Do not spend money till, you have successful, repeated and tested model. If you can profit $1 in small scale then only scale it up. Get your numbers first with proper tracking, testing and analysis.

There are many models of internet marketing. Just choose one... perfect it.... automate or outsource it... then move on to next model.... Keep track of your spending and earnings...

Hi

I would advise that you begin by putting in place all the free options you can, and learning how to drive free targeted traffic. This will start to build up the following you were talking about.

The way I would go about this is to start up a free Wordpress blog and start to build a following. All this can be done free. I would post regularly and promote your posts on social media, inviting your readers back to your blog. You can even get a free opt-in form for your blog as a widget. I would write an eBook with a few allusions to your idea, and maybe ask people what they would like to see from it? Engage with people. Give the eBook away free to subscribers on your blog. I would also get a great affiliate training product to upsell which is congruent with your own product..

The main thing you would be doing at this stage is building up a list of people who follow you, email them often and send them links to your posts. The proviso here is to make sure all your posts etc are congruent with the 'very well researched and planned out social media idea' you have. When your fortunes change you can kick it off. But don't stop with the idea. Keep it alive and look for the right time for you to get it out there.

Sounds like a plan?

Thanks for the advice 4/5 of you!

How much money do you think you need to start an online business? I assure you that most of your costs (about 90%) will come in the form of paid advertising. The other 10% will come from necessary services (website, autoresponder, merchant account, etc).

If you're in a bind financially we can understand that. Time to get on your grind then.

1) Donate plasma twice a week
2) Donate sperm (if this is available in your city)
3) Sell the Xbox and Playstation on ebay (along with the 402 games you got)
4) Work as many days as needed at the local Labor Ready in your area
5) Get a job
6) Take the coins hiding under your bed, sofa, and car and turn it into cash at the Coinstar machine at your local grocery store
7) Rest on the 7th day

Well, how much capital do you have? If you have a few hundred dollar at least, you can buy a few useful tools that will get things going for you for starters. You can try webtrafficgeeks for traffic and The Amazing Tool for promotions and PRs for example. If you have absolutely no money to spend, there should be free versions of these options, but bear in mind that they won't yield the same results.

Instead of getting a loan or diving straight in and investing, why not come up with the budget by making money with other online methods?

I've had great success with the following:

1. Promoting Amazon products on YouTube (and all other video platforms)
2. Selling solo ads (if you've got a targeted IM list you can sell clicks, you could easily bank a quick and easy $40 from just selling 100 clicks)
3. Product reviews - you could create a specific blog to promote a product and drive traffic with video, social media, blog commenting, forums, solo ads, ppc, seo, etc
4. Promoting affiliate products on YouTube and all other video platforms (clickbank products, etc)

If you're able to create a high quality product review video on YouTube and rank it, you'll easily rake in a couple of hundred dollars... Then it's time to scale up.

I've had some great success with those methods and I believe you can too buddy, gimme a shout if you need any help!

You can get buy a domain name for about 10 bucks

You can get website hosting for about 10 bucks

You can get an autoresponder for under 20 bucks

You can buy a course for about 10 bucks

You can get an affiliate link for FREE

You can make a video or write an article for FREE

You can use a social network to promote your affiliate link for FREE

or you can just use that $50 bucks and buy a video game and do nothing...

It doesn't cost 10's of thousands of dollars to start an online business...

Quit making excuses just get started

Bootstrap what you can. Start small and just take what you can handle. That way you can test your social media plan at a smaller scale and see if it's really viable instead of investing thousands of dollars without any assurance of success.

Why not try the Joint Venture section here on WF?

There are seasoned entrepreneurs with capital who MIGHT be interested.

You might want to start by writing a BASIC business plan.

hello Xarcz,
you start something less expensive on line. There are things that you can start with just a few dollars a month and then get to implement your project later.
I started well.
if you go look at my signature, it might be interesting for you

Don't build the real thing yet, build a fake platform of your social media idea. Use the fake platform to show people how it would work and start building a following, email list, subscribers, etc.

This will allow you to do 2 things:

1. See if the idea you have is a "hit" or a "dud". Just because you think it's a good idea doesn't mean the public will.

2. If it's a "hit" you will be able to have some hard-numbers you can use to get investments and it will also help create some buzz if you want to do the crowd funding.

Start small and work your way up.

Hope that helps

If you have no money, you can take a partner. But it is really so difficult to get a good partner. Therefor you can try. You may get. If you have a few friends, it would better for you. Carry on. Best of luck.

Xarcz -
When you say "a very well researched and planned out social media idea"...Are you talking about building the entire platform that you want to start? Like another Facebook?

Be careful not to reinvent the wheel. Research into consumer needs/wants is crucial before you proceed with building something that mammoth.

I have a few thoughts, most already expressed above but I want to reiterate them anyway because I think they are important.

1) Ideas are meaningless without action. There are lots of things you can start doing now without a budget. Creating a new site/service/business is not one of them though, unless you are a visionary AND a coder.

2) Is your idea really that original? Innovation is not for the weak of mind, heart or wallet. But that doesn't keep every wannabe on earth with some coding mojo from getting out there and trying it. The keys are clarity and elegance. If you can't describe what your platform does to anybody in one sentence, you are not ready to develop for launch.

3) Is your idea really that good? It would be irresponsible to suggest this, but if you look back at many of the great entrepreneurs with a crazy dream and no resources, they begged, borrowed and stole what they needed to get to launch by any means necessary. If this dream won't die, is it good enough to max out your credit cards for? Cash in your (or your parents') 401k for? Get a 2nd mortgage for? Be careful, these things are risky, but so is business.

4) You are not going to get someone to do all the programming for you on the cheap. Better to have a partner. But you can't be in a partnership where all you contribute is the idea. It will never work. And partners are risky - most partnerships fail. So think carefully about what you can actually bring to the table. If it is not skills, it had better be money. If not money, and not skills, why would anyone want to split the rewards with you? (assuming it is successful, which is still a big IF)

My advice? Figure out if this dream is the one you are willing to risk everything for. If the answer is yes, find the money. Find the right coder. Build a rough prototype. Then test, test, test.

If this is really innovative enough and the market likes it, double down and get it fully developed.

You don't necessarily need ten's of thousands of dollars to create buzz, Gary V had some solid ideas and insights for this area.. google him