$2000 to Invest From Scratch- Where Should I Start?

first step is to keep your money and start learning. As you read, listen to podcasts, watch video, and absorb all the free information available to you, you will start to develop ideas and a plan. Once you have your plan in place you will soon find that you will only need a few hundred dollars to get started.

al

Without any doubt investing in paid traffic to build a list in your chosen niche as your list is an asset which will pay for you in the future .In my own words it is the closest thing to autopilot income

Which business well ther is no right or wrong answer to this .It depends on what you like

I think Al's advice is sound.

Put your money away and don't use it until you are ready. You can easily blow through 2K on paid advertising that has no return on investment.

I would say to do your market research first. Find a need or desire that is in demand and that you can build a business around. Figure out how to supply a product or service that answers the demand that you've found.

Put up your website and position your business in a unique way that stands out in the niche. Begin building a list of subscribers and adding valuable and relevant content to your site. Nurture your subscribers and engage them with 2-way communication.

Spend 80% of your time distributing your content, building your list, and presenting your offers to targeted prospects (marketing). The other 20% of your time can go to non-marketing tasks like product creation, daily execution of your business details, etc.

Only bring out your money once you have a successful and profitable money making system (could be a funnel) in place. Use your money to ramp up your sales with paid advertising. Start small, track and test all your offers, traffic sources, etc. Incrementally increase your advertising spend on the highest ROI sources and campaigns.

Introduce new products over time and begin doing JVs with other successful marketers in the niche who aren't direct competitors.

Stay focused in your niche and true to your purpose and audience. As your list grows it will become your highest converting platform for your offers.

This is really just an overview. The success of your system will depend upon how well you execute the small daily details of this outline, but it's clear to me that you should not spend the bulk of your money until you have a proven and profitable selling system in place - and then only spend incrementally so you don't put all your eggs in one basket - focus on repeating what is profitable already.

The very best to you,

Steve

What Al said. Also I always thought Investing my Money in quality content from some reputable Content Producers was a prudent thing to do.

Not necessarily going to spout Content is King like everyone else does...but it can sure be beneficial in many ways once you figure out the Niche and Products you want to pursue

- Robert Andrew

If you ignore the spammers, you're left with some good advice (Steve, Al &Robert).

I'll add this...

You might consider spending a small portion of your budget hiring researchers to do some of the grunt work (like compiling lists of niche sites, tracking down contact info, etc.)

You map out the plan and write the specifications for the project. They do the click-scan-copy-paste work and give you back a spreadsheet you can work with.

Fact is, if you don't know what you are doing, you can lose the fund gambling.

1. Drop shipping is a fulfillment model that allows you to buy products individually from a producer or wholesaler and ship them directly to your customer. For instance eBay or similar sites. You would need some amount of capital to buy items from producer or wholesalers and list on eBay. You can have your own store too if you have huge capital and carry out a massive promotional campaign.

2. Freelancing - You can offer your services as a freelancer on any of the freelance site like Fiverr.com, Elance.com, Freelance.com and the likes.

3. Affiliate marketing - This is about promoting company/people's product. Clickbank.com, Amazon, Commissionjunction.com are one of them. There are also many smaller ones. What matters most is the market and the authenticity of the affiliate program.

4. Ad network - Adsense is the number one ad network, there are smaller ones but nothing compared to adsense. It's about finding a niche/market, setting up a site around it and ranking for your keywords. It's very profitable but quite risky because adsense may ban your account for going against their strict TOS.

5. CPA (Affiliate Network) - Knows as Cost Per Action is a program where you refer people to your CPA offer and you get paid for every sign up. Peerfly, Maxbounty, Clickbooth are one of them.

6. Promoting your own product - You can develop a product and launch a WSO for it. You can find a market and create your own product and promote via your own site to make money. Here you keep all the profit and even have affiliates promote your offers if you choose.

7. Promoting a service - Do you have a great skills like article writing, SEO, Graphic, Web development e.t.c Find out if there is any market for your skills and turn it into a money making venture by offer it on your official company website and driving traffic to it.

8. Kindle eBook - Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been made within a short period for simply writing a fiction or non fiction eBook. Some people will say Kindle is the only way to go if you are a great writer. There are a whole lot of genre you can write on that's marketable and profitable.

9. And many more.

The income potentials of all the business models listed varies based on the market, your skills and budget.

One thing you must understand is, all the money making ventures listed above have there methods, a lot to learn and apply to be successful.

You could likely develop an MVP of a SaaS app. The right SaaS idea can create recurring revenue in a number of spaces.

I have been monetizing purchased data for over 16 years, so I'm obviously bias towards it., when members ask questions like this.

Basically I heavily promote PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers because there is no credit card / purchase rquired to complete an offer. All a user has to do is fill out a form and you make money. So conversion rates are typically much higher that offers that require a purchase.

I favor offers that have a make, get or save money angle/benefit to them, as they have typically performed the best for me and seem to have the broadest mass appeal. So the potential to generate high volume exists..

I acquire data through multiple channels and the reason why I choose this method over what most marketers do. is because I'm building assets that I then own and can market to over and over for low cost. Where most marketer pay for traffric that that usually oftens just ends in a bunch of slicks that fail to convert.

I buy fresh / targeted data where I know what the users are interested in and I know their is a PPL offer that matches their interest. I generate real-time co-reg that targets specific PPL offers. I buy aged data, however, this is bit more complex, as it requires additional tools/resources in order to do profitably. I also get rev-share data (fresh/targeted only) at $0 upfront cost and I split the revenue with the list owners that I generate from sending it. So there are multiple ways to get started, even with a modest budget.

Probably one of the best aspects of the business is that it is very systematic and process oriented, so it makes it very scalable using inexpensive virtual assistants that you can get for $2 per hour and up.

I will say it's not a business that is for everyone, but it really does work and can be extremely profitable. Most everyone that I know that is in the business and knows what they are doing, does 6-7 figures. While that is a very large range, much comes down to ones ability to scale your list acquisitions and effective manage the infrastructure that comes with scaling.

Anyway, something to think about.

I believe, get a mentor will be a great investment

Awesome ideas so far! A few points I'd like to add/make:

1. I made some edits to the original post to clarify that I am NOT new to IM. So you can assume I have invested the proper time to understand the basics of digital marketing, for the sake of this question.
2. If you're new to IM and reading this thread, never dump money into something without doing your research, developing a plan, and doing small testing. Others on this thread have made that point and I think that is SO important to get across.
3. I would disagree with investing the money in a mentor/coach. There are so many people willing to help or provide feedback that I don't think it's worth the money to just to have someone tell you how to spend the rest of your money. As was previously mentioned, a mentor is a great asset to have along the way, but a paid coach can be a bit of an expensive babysitter at times.

Again, great stuff and advice guys Keep 'em coming!

id get a well researched niche site up (shared hosting and domain) and get myself on a once-a-week 1k word post schedule.

id dedicate a youtube channel to that site. and put myself on a 2 to 3 video a week schedule. (tripod, video editor, small smart phone mic.)

id dedicate two or 3 social platforms that i know my niche audience hangs out at.. women = pinterest for example.

i'd start contributing content to sites like https://www.helpareporter.com/

id also start contributing my content to tribe sharing sites like Viral Content Buzz | Social Media Sharing Made Easy

i'd aweber a funnel out (aweber), load it with free content and affiliate products.

get a VPN (VPN) and upload a traffic tracker like prosper...

id spend the rest of the money on cheap paid traffic....

best of luck
Ike

If you were to ask me directly, I would sit you down to know more about you first and your knowledge in Internet Marketing. $2000 is just a small money that could be wasted if you dont know what you are doing.

You have 48 hours to make $53,000, what would you do?

Where is the best place to invest my $2,000?

well depends how much roi you need per month

i do 3 things at the same time right now, all positive roi