How Much do You Realistically Need To Get Started?

Realistically, I'd say 1-2 grand is a good startup revenue for an online business. You could have your own product and a great sales page for that cost or 3 or 4 WSOs running and making you a full time income.

There's no universal number, but that's probably the most realistic.

You need less than $20 for domain name and web hosting
for the first month. But beyond this, you need:

-Focus
-Consistency
-Determination
-Proven system
-List building
-Willingness and ability to learn. Online marketing is a school

All the best!

All of it and a lot more.

If you haven't invested it all, then you have not maximized your chances of success.

That doesn't mean to buy trash ebooks, spam services and the other junk.

Investment should be in:

1) Development
2) Publicity
3) Advertising

That is the proven formula for every single successful dot com that ever existed. 200% of your available money. 200% of your available time. 200% of the money you can borrow. 200% of the time of other talented people you can persuade to join you in your crazy vision.

That's the way it is. It will never be any different.

I'd say about $100.

Squeeze page - freebie to give away - domain name - hosting - autoresponder.

Get the domain name, link that to hosting.

Setup squeeze page, and link that to the hosting and put the freebie in, while setting up your autoresponder sequence.

Then buy ad space on WSO section advertising your free WSO.

Depends on your interest. I would first start off with a Domain and get a com, net or org for $1.99 at namecheap (hint: buy a domain today at that low price after you "like" there fanpage) and buy hosting with Hostgator.

I started with a registered domain name and one year's of hosting prepaid.

These days, that can be done for under $50... When I started, it cost me about $120.

Your Mileage May Vary.

There's a reason for that little phrase... everyone is different.

Do you need money to live on while you get going? Do you have money to invest?Do you know what you should spend money on if you do have it? What are your income goals?

How you answer these, and many other questions will have a direct effect on how much money you will realistically need.

I spent almost nothing to get started, and reinvested my earnings into tools that would speed things up as I go. If I would have had more to work with it may have accelerated the process and I may have spent way too much on things I didn't need because I didn't know better. Who's to know?

at least a few hundred bucks minimum to get started properly

Thank you everyone. I have a site, I've just never monetized it. I have Hostgator and I've got several domain names registered, I've got products lots of them (from my work as a workshop speaker), and more written up and ready for creation that I can create easily on my Mac. I've got about 4k that I could put into the endeavor at the moment, 8 K for the year, definitely a lot more if I see even a hundred dollars a week I can sequester upwards of 16K.

Due to being a very skilled salesman, I have enough money to live on Roman Noodles and a Roof over my head while I try my hand at Internet Marketing for a year. Due to my Girlfriend Going to Africa for a couple of months, I have 8 to 12 hours free a day to work on this (four hours on weekends). I ran a great offline marketing campaign to get business, but running online marketing campaigns baffle me and I have no clue.

Thanks again, I wanted to know if my goals seemed realistic and they sound slightly realistic now. Someone had told me that you shouldn't do internet marketing without 10 to 20 thousand dollars up front, but I was reading so many success stories here, I was wondering how much you all started with.

I would say a minimum of $120 at least.

If you're a skilled website coder then you can probably save more money than the others.

It is possible to do it with $0. If you do not want a domain name or hosting, you can get a free site on weebly. Then use free traffic methods like article marketing, back-linking, guest blogging, forum marketing. But this will take a while to get going. So realistically, if you want a dedicated domain name and self-hosting, and are willing to pay for some traffic, then you are looking at around $100.

You need nothing to make money online. I started off article marketing and I made a sale on my first day, this was when articlebase auto approved articles. Now I use ezine and articlebase and point my articles to free blogger review blogs.

I started out with:

A website: domain and hosting, about $70 a year.

That website makes $4000-$7k a month, but it's just one of mine (the first one, my "baby"). I only have a handful of sites, and the real kicker is to have a plan and stick with it.

I know it sounds unreal, but I've only been online making money since the end of 2009 and haven't worked for others since January of 2010. Play to your strengths. Mine's writing and SEO.

Stick with a plan.

Doesn't need to be complicated.

This will depend a lot on how much you want to learn, and how much you want to pay professionals to do.

In my opinion you will need a domain and hosting for sure.

Then it gets tricky. You can use wordpress for free, but most of the WP sites that look good were made or at least edited by a designer / developer of some sort.

Unless you really have the time and desire to learn a good bit of fairly technical stuff, you should probably be prepared to spend a couple hundred(ish) total to get you a good looking site up and running.

Then it gets into the marketing side. In my opinion, you need to spend about 20% of a small marketing budget (1000 ish) on products to help you learn marketing and the other 80% on actually advertising to get customers / leads.

You absolutely need to be building a list from day 1. That means a top tier autoresponder systems. Trust me, you don't want to ever move your list if it can be avoided. Aweber and most others top tier AR services are $20 a month.

Pretty much any additional money you have should go into advertising.

When I take on people to train, I tell them upfront that if they can find 2k to start, it will shave months off how long it takes them to turn a profit. Of this 2k ish, I suggest spending 1500 ish of it on actually advertising.

It can be done for free, but the failure rate of those that start absolutely for free is very high. Most of those just end up giving up.

If your really on a budget, it can be done for 100ish. But that means your going to be the one doing all the work instead of hiring professionals to help you along the way for some things.

I honestly didn't need anything. I started with blogger and clickbank and earned around 200$ in my first month from a lot of hard work. I then used that to venture into other methods.

I realistically started (once I made the mistake of spending too much for training that was way over my head) with the cost of a domain name, autoresponder, and hosting company.

If you are picking a niche, just about any niche, you can find all kind of free step by step courses and ebooks on this forum.

So you find a profitable niche that shows good search volume in Google Keyword tool (it is free, just google it).

Then buy the domain name that fits that niche you found.

Get hosting.

Set up the autoresponder and a squeeze page or blog (which you set up easily in your hosting account using Wordpress). If I can do it, anyone can.

Find affiliate products to promote to your list and valuable information you can give them for free to get them to sign up and you can get started getting traffic.

Then the key is getting free traffic. It can be done. I did it.

:-)

P.S. As an aside, since you mentioned real estate...I purchased my first 15 pieces of residential real estate, all were already rented and on yearly leases and in good shape and not only did it not cost me a single dime out of my pocket but the seller had to transfer all the tenants deposits to me so I immediately got cash that of course I had to put in a savings account but still, I got it.

Like others have said- you can make your first $100 before you have to spend $100 if you're willing to just do work.

The only absolute necessity is a domain and hosting- starting out with free blogs is more expensive later than just getting your own hosting.

You need money and time. If you have plenty of time to do everything yourself then a hundred bucks is enough. But once you start running out of time and you need to buy products or pay other people to do things ...

Realistically? Zero.
Get a free blogger account, promote a clickbank product for free - or put adsense or whatever you think, get traffic through twitter/facebook/manual commenting on other blogs. If your really focus you might even not need to invest a single buck until you get you get thousands of them.
That's the awesome thing with internet marketing

Not alot money. You will need a website, an autoresponder, and a product that you've created yourself. Other than that, you could run free marketing campaigns and get tons of traffic to your website, generate leads, and sell your leads on buying your product.

The best thing to do is use your tax return! 1-2 grand if you want to build a long lasting business.

You are probably looking at about $25 bucks a month.

Domain name $10 Annual
Web Hosting $3-$4 bucks a month
Auto Responder $19 bucks a month
That is bare minimum getting started. Assuming you do everything yourself. (ie. build your site, minimal graphics etc...)

There isn't really any certain amount you need to get started in IM. It kinda depends on what type of IM you are planning on getting in to as paid traffic can be quite expensive. You will also need knowledge which can be found for free for the most part but will take a lot of time and can be difficult to separate good knowledge from bad or just opinion. Furthermore, you will need money for hosting and a domain if you are planning on creating a website. Also, tools will greatly help speed things up but are also optional. At the end of the day, the more you have to start, the quicker things will take off assuming that you get the right info and the right mentors.

In every business venture getting started is a crucial part that is why proper decision making should be observe.

Here are some of my thoughts on how to start a business:

-You must able to define your strengths and weaknesses, knowing your limit will help you in making decision.
- Have focus and goal.
- Do market research, as a future marketer it is your duty to know what is in and what' not.
- Foresee your prospect and make strategies how to reach them.
-Take everything one at a time.

As others have said, it depends on what skills you can bring coming in. You need three essentials for most online businesses.

• A Website
• Good or great content & copy
• Targeted traffic

There are bootstrapping techniques to get all of these but most newbies aren't interested. Not saying you, just sayin'. If you're handy with Wordpress you've got one covered already. If you're a good writer, that's covered. I'm not going to get into traffic because it's really not my thing.

But I've found a way to get a lot of excellent targeted traffic by just having the other two in place. I've known about it for years but wasn't aware of how powerful it was until a couple months ago. It's article syndication. And I'd dare say that doing it properly, the way you need to do it, won't appeal to many either.

As a general rule of thumb, I usually put aside $200 for every site I launch. That amound spent wisely will get my foot firmly in the door of almost any niche. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you win BIG.

Depends what you are doing. If you are just aiming for quick cash, then get ready to lose a lot more than you win. If you are really passionate about your project, invest a little more and keep at it. Whatever you do, you can't stop, otherwise you will have worked for nothing.

That being said, sometimes you have to cut your losses and move on if things just aren't working.

It's all a big game, you learn from your mistakes. Just don't invest more than you are willing to lose on any given project.

To get started you don't nee much, I started with less $129.87 including my primary company, my hosting and my domain.
Depending on what you want to market you just need a website or blog a hosting company and a DOMAIN name, then from there, either spent money on marketing or learn the hard way seraching and posting for free traffic!, I'm learning the hard way getting results

Sometimes will feel overwhelmed with so much information out there, but focus on 1 thing at a ime, not 2 or 3, just one thing at a time
Set up a daily plan
20 minutes for this
15 minutes for that
30 miutes for this
etc....
Not Focusing and being consistency will drive you nuts and then you want to call it quits.

hope it helps
jaime

Everyones been pretty much on the dot.

This is the checklist irregardless of what type of website you build.

1) Domain name cost. Godaddy coupon code $6-7
2) 2 year hosting blue host $143 (you can start repaying your hosting cost back, by promoting other peoples signature links for $10 monthly cost)

OR

You can start writing, and sell your squidoo lens on the squidu forum.

Thats pretty much it.

I just improvise on stuff like photoshop like with google chromes apps you can install pixlr and use lucid chart to organize your thoughts. (both free)

Google documents, if you dont have word.

I hope this helps!

i STARTED with literally about $80 AUD (australian)

I failed twice, gave up twice and started again, and with help I was able to create a 5 figure a month business several months later.

It can be done, as long as your head is in the right place and you put yourself around those that are better at marketing than you.

All you need is a domain name and a Wordpress blog. Hammer that hard in your niche for 6 months and your cash will roll in.

Just make sure your niche is something you have a passion for and that it has a buyers market.

Easy - a domain and hosting you can pick up for as little as 10 bucks a month or less.

start with what you have, build on it, develop yourself and sky is the limit.

I think its extremely important to not get stuck on a rather insignificant startup cost. If you have the right mindset, you can really pull anything off in this business. Since you stated you already have a decent amount of money to invest, that's great!!

You'll have a bit of a headstart money-wise, but you'll still need to focus and pull through.

I started with $20 and that's all I've ever had to invest in the "tools" for my online business. However, I have spent more on other things like coaching and mentors. If you already have a domain and hosting, you're pretty much there, maybe invest in an autoresponder and then you can get traffic using free methods. Once the money starts to come in re-invest it in other traffic methods, or build your list and continue doing so with solo ads and ad swaps using that as your main traffic source.

Jack

You need a TON... of time. What's that worth to you? There is a triangle: time, experience, money. Most people have one or two, and usually trade it for the others. As people have written about, IM doesn't have to cost a lot of money. However money can buy other's experience in the form of education, coaching or hiring, and thus save you time.

Cory

You could start by registering a domain with some hosting and getting an auto-responder account. (Aweber, get response etc.)

Everything else can be done for free. It's probably gonaa' take a whole lot longer, but if money is an issue that's no reason why you can't succeed.

There are many ways to go with this response...

1. If you are singularly focused and committed to your success, then the investment is negligible, if not $0. I have learned, that if you spend time on this site, all of the information required to be successful is present. As have been stated in prior posts, there are ways to get free domains and autoresponders. Obviously they won't be the best products, but would likely suffice until you have earned sufficient funds to begin expanding in appropriate ways.

2. That being said, if you had a couple hundred $, then wait until Kenster opens his next Six Figure Alliance course. Based on my industry experience and Warrior Forum experience, there are some new concepts introduced in his course, but he has a way to make it work and make you work to gain success.

Through his course he gives you all the tools needed to get started and to grow your business.

So, in a $0 world, do your Warrior Forum research, sign up for Kenster's class and then go from there.

Hopefully, I was helpful.

I started without investing a penny. I personally thought IM was a scam many years back but I was very curious therefore I tried out different techniques that didn't cost me anything. They made me about $100 in the first month which was small (for my hours of work), but something. I knew IM had potential and scaled the $100 up to $2,000 in my first year via simple investments and new techniques. Later I went on to make more, and more money in IM and slowly took it as a career path (aside from my offline business ).

It all depends on what business model you're going for, your budget, your overall strategic approach, what your core competencies are, etc.

I started my first online business for under $200. That was over ten years ago. Last year I started a new online venture and the start up investment was significantly more than that, but it was a much bigger operation that required more technology, more planning, and more people.

RoD

honestly forget everything about 20 dollars for a domain and hosting and your good to go.... maybe if you want to make peanuts for the first 2 years ... imho no less than 500 AT LEAST is needed to start a full time - replace your current job and still live comfortably - online marketing career. come on people lets get real it takes money to make money and anyone who thinks they are going to buy a site for 7 dollars and host it, install wordpress, and magically make at least 3 grand a month from content locking or adsense or clickbank or whatever you choose to do is crazy. LETS SEE SOME PROOF. anyways end of rant and good luck op in your journey

You can start off with about $50.

Buy a Domain name, and get a few months of webhosting.

The rest is up to how well you can apply yourself.

My first business was started with about $15!
Still makes me a few thousand a month with no work required

Realistically i don't know of any way to make money online because one i have been victim of scam.I have spent so much of my hard earned cash until i can no longer bear it any more

Time is your most valuable asset. Everything else is cheap. Domain $10. Hosting $5 per month. Depending on what you plan to do you might need a script which could be $100-$500. If you plan on using seo to drive traffic that could take a while; or you could pay for traffic which would cost you thousands.

Realistically $20-1,500. It all depends.

Really depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

The first site I made money on cost me nothing .. if you have the knowledge and the work ethic you can make it.

The site I am working on now will not cost more than $100 but ... the product I am selling took contracts to be exclusive, personnel in place to move the product (even before I know if sales will be made) and other investments that will total well over $20,000. Still best case scenario will show profit in less than 30 days .. worse case .. ouch!