How much money did you spend before you starte profiting doing online marketing?

This depends on when you ask someone this question? If you ask someone starting out in IM, they are likely to spends thousands because they are learning and testing. If you ask some of the pros in here, they could make a profit with very little investment (if any at all)...for example...start a youtube channel using a smartphone. Build a following. Get a brand deal. Merchandise. Sell your own digital products.

Get a website (cheap). Make a sales funnel (cheap). Drive traffic for free with social media. Sell the digital product.

Mastering these examples can cost thousands in courses, mentors, mistakes etc...but the way you worded the question, you make have some people answering "$0" when it's not the whole story.

I started selling Shareware back in the late 90s. Back then there were Shareware sites that did the marketing for you. It was an experimental sideline for me at the time but I pulled in $300-$500 each month from sales. This was when I worked for a living and before the whole "learn internet marketing" thing got started.

In the intervening years, I've spent probably close to $20,000 on various courses and training programs.

The thing us unless you apply what you've learned, it's wasted money, no matter how good the course or training is.

How much is spent will vary from person to person. One person might find the perfect fit of a course, straight out of the gate after spending $500. Another may spend years and much more money looking for the course that sets them on the course to profit.

But being a grasshopper, moving from course to course because you don't see results fast enough is a recipe for failure.

There's no point spending money on advertising unless you've researched your audience first. The "throw s**t at the wall and see what sticks" approach doesn't work. You've got to be surgical in your decision making, not ham-fisted!

For me, it's hard to say. I've been creating content for nearly 13 years now, so I've built an audience organically. Occasionally I will spend a bit of money on marketing and advertising, but most of my traffic comes in naturally. I create a lot of YouTube videos, which has certainly helped. Without YouTube, who knows where I would be.

If time is money I don't even want to add it up...

If I had to guess I'd say about $2k. I made money much earlier on that but I didn't start making consistent income until I was about $2000 in the red...

Before I started profiting doing online marketing, I spent $5,000 in a training course about affiliate marketing, dropshipping and eBay. I also spent $2,300 in paid traffic. I also registered my business RM Internet Ventures LLC in Utah, U.S. to take advantage of lower tax rates and to ward off against vicious legal demands from unsatisfied customers.

I started in 2000 so I didn't spend any money.

I found a great traffic source and was banking 8K per month

As you are seeing, the answers are varied, but in almost every case, the less money spent depended upon what the person brought to the table.

I spent 0 and in a few days had made $1,000.00 profit. By selling someone's product, and they took the money, shipped the product, did all that stuff, the only thing I did was link to a promotion. I guess one might call it affiliate marketing, albeit, this was in 1997.

But back then, we guys who had a remote direct marketing background, or came from Mail Order brought that expertise with us, mostly in the form of copy writing and creating promotions for products.

The people who tend to have FAST profits and spend the least amount of money bring their expertise and knowledge with them to the IM table.

People who understand business, what a transaction is, BRING value with them, can find the time to profitability to be very short. Alas, those are now the few.

GordonJ

PS. Those with a well thought out PLAN of action, knowing what the end result looks like will include knowledge acquisition as part of their plan.

I spent only $20 for Domain and hosting before i made profit about 10 years ago.

I spent about $500. This was over 18 years ago. I learned everything on my own through trial and error.

I think i spent about 1k before seeing any results.

Was running paid ads to my shopify store without having a funnel in place, no retargeting, and getting anxious becuase i wasn't seeing results right away...yeah...

I spent nothing to get started. My first online business was a shareware business. I eventually sold around $100,000 of product.


In those days I only had two competitors. I just found an obscure business niche and wrote some software that saved people a heap of time. I'd love to do something similar again, but right now I'm having a go at rebuilding a couple of micro niche sites.

There's nothing wrong with spending money to learn how to make it, but if you're spending thousands and not seeing anything come out the other end (and especially if it has become a pattern), you might want to get honest with yourself about why. A lot of products and programs have valuable information that can make you cash, but if you don't implement, it's all for nothing.

The very first $200 I spent learning online was making me money within a few days. Because I was super hungry for it at the time and I jumped in to take MASSIVE ACTION immediately with what I learned.

You may have a longer-term vision in mind and be on your way, so don't let me dissuade you. I don't know anything about what your learning or building, and not all business models produce that fast.

But it's something to think about anyways.

It doesn't matter because everyone's story is different. Back in 2006 I spent about $2K before I made my first $500 sale that netted me ONLY $50.

I profited instantly in the 2000s and didn't have to spend much. I think I spent $50 on a website generator. Man, those were the days. Easy Adsense money.

Today, it's incredibly competitive. Everyone wants in the game. There are so many courses. I refuse to buy any of them. The only thing I try to do now is build an email list, put them through a funnel and present a couple offers. It's sad but so many people like to buy crap. All these affiliate programs and such to solve a need people think they have. I spend monthly on an auto-responder. Leadpages is pretty great. Hosting costs too.

By the way. Don't buy courses. I'm a hypocrite because I affiliate market plenty of them. People love to waste money on these things. I'm happy to present it to them. Instead, find someone willing to apprentice you that is making money in the game. Somebody is out there willing to share knowledge without having to make a buck. Maybe they can show you how to build a website/email/funnel/etc., and simply have you put their affiliate link in the offer 50% of the time or 100% of the time for 6 months.

I was expecting to see some high figures in this thread as I've read a lot of horror stories about the amounts of money people spend trying to learn how to "make money online"

I know I've personally spent a fair amount on other marketers courses in the past - although in fairness i learned something useful from most of them

My experience is that it depends on the project, some projects require more marketing finance and some less, I also had projects that I couldn't do earning for 3 years, but then the market was the best and some projects I made was 15 years in profit

Me i dont spend to much because i always prefer the free traffic but i spend money on tools autorespknder etc .i think i spend like 2k

I spent a few hundred bucks on a deluxe hosting account, created about 3 different sites targeting locally and then networked every day possible and started getting on as many podcasts as possible and volunteering and speaking. Go to SCORE.org and volunteer as a digital marketing mentor - but only if you are really ready to talk to hundreds of small business owners who will need hand holding and you are not allowed to mention any kind of paid services in writing or they'll drop you immediately. If you give presentations through them, since most of the mentors there are 75-80, nobody knows anything about digital marketing or internet marketing or SEO in the slightest. That's where I got alot of leads. One day I slipped up and emailed a lawyer that his "free" Wix site was costing him tens of thousands of dollars in lost leads every day and that he really should invest a few grand if he ever wanted more clients. And they immediately banned me from every volunteering with them again. Probably for the better since they're so rigid that way, but if you can stick with presenting and speaking in person with people you might get some leads that way as well.


I only spent a few hundred originally for hosting and domain names, however, and got the referrals I needed to start moving the needle through speaking and networking like a fiend. I did some FB ads, but they were hit or moss.



Hope that helps.

Thousands upon thousands of dollars. Not even a lie. Now I run my own agency and live the laptop life from anywhere in the world. Don't quit, find out what you are good at and keep going!

It does take quite some time to make even a buck on IM. I am not talking about selling your service as a freelancer, but more of a setting up a website and earning through that.

It is indeed time-consuming.

I started out with 20$ and made it back fairly quick. And even though I am not making big bucks, I will get there. Just keep going.

Its very tricky to say ,just pay little amount and check weather you get any profit for the required money ,After that you can spend the money for more ...

I spend 1K per month on marketing.. You have to spend money to make money.