How much money had you spent before you started making a profit?

I mainly lost money by spending on pointless WSO's

Yeeeowza - u mean you're finally making money or you've recouped the 10g's and are in the black?

I think I spent $50 on hosting which included the domain - on my dad's credit card back then lol - he still claims he has a 10% cut in anything I make

And was making my first cash within a month or so

Then I got into buying services, and courses, and WSO's and spent quite a bit

Ouch! That is a lot to spend before making a profit.

I was in profit in my first month and have always made more than I spend every month since. Keep track of your expenses and income everyday and it will motivate you to do better.

45-47 $ dont remember exactly

It depends on how you look at it.
I've never invested any of my "offline money", since I started out with "free" methods.
But i re-invested every penny of the money i made.
So I guess you could say that I invested around $500 and 100's of hours before reaching an acceptable and "automated" income level.

/Izerman

$10,000! Wow! I spent $0 before I started making money. Granted that was when I started out 4 years ago with a Blogger blog (flame away, but it was how I started) and AdSense, and it took nearly 6 months before I accumulated $100 in earnings to get a check cut. But that was part of my education. When I started creating niche sites with affiliate links I probably spent $50 between hosting and domains and was making a profit within 2 months.

Note that I am not including my hourly rate or salary for these numbers. If you want to factor in your personal salary or hourly rate, those numbers will certainly look different.

When I started, I think I spent few hundred dollars before I started making money. But looking back today, it was well worth it

I think you can not do anything without spending money or time. Also I think we should call them "investments" as they bring back success, later on. The idea is not to spend more than you expect to earn.

When I was a newbie I spent $5-600 before I started making anything.
This time around $25-30 because of who I am learning from now taught me how to make money 1st and free ways before charging me anything.

Yes i learnt about making money online about 5 yrs ago when i just turned 18. I jumped right in and spent about £3000 and made no profits. I never knew how to make money just knew there was a way. Anyway 5 yrs later and doing lots of research and learning, i am about to start my new adventure end of March.

Lets hope i make profits and able to quit my job.

I would have started out with a couple hundred dollars I think. Crazy that you spent $10,000 on websites before seeing any return, that must have been quite scary to have spent so much and not knowing whether it would pay off.

Are things going well now?

WOW!

Still at least you are making profit.

I had to spend about $80-$120 - these were buying MMO products and buying the domain and hosting.

Although the MMO products did not make me a millionaire they did explain to me a concept that I could then take forward.

I just started out article marketing, and what changed into Bum Marketing and admittedly when I started out I was ALL about quantity and not quality but it did make me money.

I have no idea why you would have to spend $10,000 making niche sites.

Unless of course you are outsourcing but I did it the other way - kept the money and put in the grunt work myself and to be honest not much has changed.

I really do not outsource that much now - except stuff that I know eats up my time and I am not the best at.

I never invested any money, just time. Now I have learned to see that time is more valuable than money and when it comes to choosing whether to do something myself or pay someone to do it, I usually choose the second option. That's the main thing that got me started in this business - you don't have to invest any money to make money.

Woah... the first $67 I spent online was for an
info product that was so bad, I quit for 6 months!

I came to my senses & spent $15 or so, domain & hosting fees..

2 weeks later I was in the black.

I spent a couple hundred dollars on article marketing and bookmarking programs and about $150 on hosting and domain names. The money spent on the programs was wasted money. I don't think I've opened any of them in the last year. The only program I still use from time to time that I bought when I was getting started is Micro Niche Finder.

I spent a couple of hundred before starting to make money in the beginning. It was well worth every penny.

I can't remember if I spent anything before I started or got my site started first and paid for hosting and a domain name. Either way, it wasn't much and I make more than I spend...although if you also factor in expenses such as rent, power, phone, internet, etc, then there are more costs but I only worry about those when it comes to tax time.

$10 on a domain. Than all organic search engine traffic by posting my links on forums and blogs.

Was up to $15000-$17000 month until google released the EMD update. Lucky to do $3500/month now...

When I am not focusing on one system and keep looking for the magic buttons, I spent thousands of dollars. This is not excluding the money that I have spent on attending live events and seminars.

However, once I wake up from my dream and start to have a mindset of treating like a real business, I start to make some of my money back. Having focus and discipline is the key to making money from the online business.

There will be days when we don't feel like taking action but we must have the discipline to take action even if we don't feel like doing so. I think that is the main factor that separate people who are making money online and those that are struggling.

Nowadays, I invested the bulk of my marketing budget on paid traffic and building a list as I feel that this is the long term approach.

Hey Mike!

Ya I haven't lost quite as much as you but I'm somewhere in the 5-6 thousand dollar range of loss before I made profit...

Thousands. I had a job at the time though, so it really wasn't a big deal to me. Once the orders started coming in everyday on the frontend, i started earning way more money on the backend.

Didn't keep tabs on it but I'd say a few thousand. I think at the beginning I was buying about 15 WSO's a month! That's when I had a 9-5 job, these days being full-time I'm a bit more serious and any money I spend is part of my business expenses so I need to make sure that it is going to add value to my business.

Well, i spent nothing except the TIME in learning.. I started back in 2009 with few blogs on blogspot with some quality content and started to see some traffic and after few months made few dollars ($10-15) through adsense. Then i increased the number of blogs and got my first pay check from Google after 1-2 months. It was just my learning stage.

Later i started offering services online on freelancing websites like guru, elance, freelancer etc and was able to get some good projects which turned out to be long term clients and i used to easily make 400-500$$ per month for some easy work.

I invested the same money in my expenses such as hosting, domain names and subscriptions etc.. to get into the affiliate marketing stuff like clickbank, amazon, cpa marketing etc.

So i didnt SPENT too much money except some precious TIME.. So will always suggest you to focus on Learning than Earning".

Few years back I spend about 2k and made like a dollar, so I quit. Got back about two years ago and spend roughly 80 bucks. I still kick myself for not doing more back then...

I would have spent thousands! Maybe more.

However all the stuff I bought was ok all the way to kickass, ....the thing was, I just never did anything with it. It just sat on the shelf collecting digital dust.

When I actually started to get off my LAZY ass and do stuff, then I saw results, then when I learnt more and tested more and finally built a list, then wow, things really changed for me.

Probably over $6k+ before I finally made a profit.

I've found that the more I spend trying to get a site up and running, the worse that site does. Spent about $10K trying to make a video membership site work, but it's only generated a few hundred bucks for me. On the other hand, small review sites and cheap (in terms of money, not in terms of time) authority sites have netted me in the multiple thousands of dollars very quickly (within a year at most).

So now I only do cheap sites. :lol:

Ha - this is a very subjective question - kind of like how many girls did you kiss before you moved around the bases and got a homerun.

The answer is probably a lot more than anyone is willing to admit - but when you finally hit that one out of the ballpark, all the practice seems well worth it in the end (assuming you ARE in a ballpark, and not in a hockey rink wondering why you're not hitting homeruns!)

To be honest, not that much. I lost about $100, but that was all spent on bad domain names. I make most of my money through a service, and I found a lot of ways to make money fairly quickly. Actually, most of my working life has been online.

Must be upwards of 5k Big buy first of a that turned my head, the a series of domains, having some 'friend', build my first site, rip me off, and time wasted.
A few wso's and still not turned a profit. BUT have learned valuable lessons and after the quagmire, am focused. Got my product ready, ( web tv show, with 2 episodes and related posts/videos/membership/etc/ and now scripting videoing the videos for prelaunch sequencing.
I've really not thought about the $$ I've spent as its mostly been in small bursts.

Lessons learned. Great question though, makes me realize I will continue, and what I want to achieve

JJ

Hey OP (Mike),

I know your story of course...very similar to ours. We spent around $10Kish and 4 months before we started breaking even each month...and like 6-7 months until we were paid back on our initial investment.

Like you though, we were head-down and committed to the process...it's not required that you put out that much money up-front to make it work.

Probably a couple of grand. Most of my training came from Wealthy Affiliate. Paid monthly, then joined up for the one fee on BTF. Made me realize WA was costing a fair amount for little return. Add to that the amount of domain names bought and deleted and perhaps the odd SEO course or traffic WSO between 27 and 47 USD at a time, it's not long in adding up. It's when I looked at the cost for WA that I sat down, went through expenses and then hooked up with one last training course from Tiffany Dow and that was to get into service providing. Haven't looked back since.

Was it worth the training?

Sure was. It was experience through trial and error and turning freelance, it's certainly handy to understand the needs of marketers are, and the lingo used. Without the training, I'd have no idea about keyword density, social integration, SEO, heading tags, LSI and all the other crazy things some clients need done.

Would I make it back using the courses?

One problem I had was not sticking with it the whole way through.I had sites generating affiliate sales, but I'd be trying a different course at the same time. Throwing some AdSense ads into the mix, and losing $20 sales for $0.10 cent clicks. Pretty daft stuff, as I just wanted to see which way to go.

It was all a learning experience and it's helped to drive my business mentality in terms of costs versus earnings. Nobody wants to spend thousands on tuition and not make a return. It's like going to university for a degree in social sciences, completing it, and taking a job a McDonalds. Defeats the purpose.

One thing I can say is that every training course I've bought, with the exception of Wealthy Affiliate, was worth the investment.

There was one course I done however, that taught about AdSense. It worked terrifically and a recommended profitable way was to flip it for fast cash. Done that and got banned. Put in the listing, "AdSense Optimized - #1 Ranking". Wasn't warned about MFA sites so I'm no longer an AdSense publisher. Shock horror.

After that I had a seriously strong think about Google and reckon it's for the best I don't have them paying me. Just like building your business around other peoples websites, advertising focused on one advertiser perhaps even runs a higher risk.

Overall, the money spent on training, forced me to implement them. Not all made the returns back, but most made something and all of them definitely contributed to where my business is at now, in terms of overall profitability, and industry knowledge.

Robbie

Well, calculating capital before and after the investment is definitely important. I suppose when people gets greedy they will just use the slogan "make an income as big as possible, and expense as low as possible". But this kind of mindset will not works in internet marketing. Here is the better motto for Internet Marketer "if you want big income, get ready to splurge big bucks on it"

I spent nothing before I started making a profit, because I started small and scaled up. Didn't pay for any expensive coaching, or "HOW TO MAKE 200,000 OVERNIGHT" nonsense, just buckled down and worked hard.

I spent some money on various clickbank methods and moneymaking get rich quick stuff before coming across Warrior Forum and Ed Dales 30 day challenge.

I now spend money every day but make more than I spend in profits so it works out ok!

I recommend building up a business model and investing in your business and build up passive income profits. Build Build Build! Thats the best way uP!

Over the years, I have spent in the thousands as well. It wasn't until recently that I can Honestly say that I have made a profit.

I spent around $100 for a domain name. This is back when they were much more expensive than they are now - just to register. And it was a terrible domain name too. >_< Oh if I knew then what I know now!

Fortunately, my first web design project easily paid for that domain and then some - and that's when I got hooked!

$2000 so far for me and still building, no profits yet but I'm in it for the long term.

I wouldn't even know where to begin...

Who keeps count of that stuff anyway?

~ Jo Jo ~

I spent a lot of money in the beginning of my adventures online because I was too ignorant but too confident; I spent thousands. I started by directly selling my own ebooks with the intention to promote my scientific discoveries; not just with the intention to make money.

I should have studied internet marketing before building my business. I studied it later. I was a victim of the marketing lies of experienced marketers who take advantage of ignorant newbies, presenting internet marketing as if it was ‘very simple’, while it is quite complicated.

I also was a victim of many people who tried to destroy me from the beginning. I had to deal with dishonest attacks of competitors.

I sold my first ebook early, but my ebook sales were working very slowly (something like selling one ebook today and another one only after three months or so). I was selling something, but spending a lot more to build my sites, or to improve them.

$2.01 is how much money I spent before I made a profit.

.01 for the first month of hosting at hostgator

.99 for a Godaddy promo code I found on the web

$1 for my Aweber hosting for the first month.

I made the money using nothing but FREE methods.

I set up a simple blog in a niche I had an actual passion in.

I drove FREE traffic using blog commenting and forum commenting.

I set up a squeeze page, built my list, and marketed affiliate products using nothing but FREE methods.

If you know and understand what you're doing, you don't have to spend ANY money in order to drive traffic and make a profit.

I spent no money at all when I started. I didn't have it What I did spend was time... and lots of it.

This was like 12 years ago. Things have changed quite a bit since then, but still...

Why do you think it took you so long (and so much)?

$0.0 but... it was almost 16 years ago

This is a question that can be understood in at least two ways:

1) how much did you spend before making ANY profit?
or
2) how much did you spend before making REGULAR, JOB-REPLACING profit?

And the answers will, I suspect, depend on WHO is answering, and what his/her experience and character is.

The vast, VAST, majority of the marketers I know spend what they consider "nothing" - which means they spend only on hosting, domains and such things (there are some who only use free resources too), so, in general, those folks will spend $500 up to $1000 per year. It's not "nothing" but it feels like it to them.

And then there are SOME who - on TOP of that - HAPHAZARDLY spend on traffic campaigns, designers, outsourcers, etc. Most of those are surprised to find that ANNUALLY, these costs add up to another $1000 AT LEAST.

FEWER still BUDGET and deliberately invest very conservative amounts and those will most usually wind up spending from $5k and up per year.

Note that almost all of them value their time at $0, by the way.

Finally, there's a small group of newbie online entrepreneurs who operate with amounts more similar to "the real world", i.e. $10k per year would be a rather "normal" amount - and UP.

Now, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY in all these groups NEVER make any money. Some make a few dollars. MOST never manage to achieve a job-replacing income.

Now, here comes the interesting bit: regardless of which category they're in, if they follow a sensible system, subject to the usual business checks and balances, they wind up turning a profit sooner or later.

$10k investment before retuning a PROFIT is not atypical. Many people manage this after only a few hundred $ or a couple of $K. But a profit LARGE ENOUGH and STEADY ENOUGH to replace a J.O.B. - that's another matter.

My situation wasn't typical when I was starting out online, because I had years of successful offline business behind me. But my learning curve cost me EASILY $10k before my ONLINE efforts paid off. Knowing what I know now, I could have done it for $1k without counting on "luck". But that knowledge is KEY.

So, the question really should be rephrased: how much did it cost you to acquire the knowledge to make a profit, stay in profit, and quit your job?

I spent absolutely nothing and made my first profit. I got my first payment which is $30 from some file hosting company and reinvest it on a domain and hosting for my blog