Newbie Starting IM - Budget $150 - How Do I Invest It?

Hi, my suggestion would be to, as the absolute minimum, get yourself a domain name, hosting and autoresponder. You could then get Wordpress installed, set up a blog, have something to give away to subscribers to encourage them to opt in and join your mailing list and perhaps you could monetize your site with a few ads. That's pretty much my model at this stage, although I'm still pretty new to all this myself :-)

It depends. What you spend your money on will differ for everyone, depending on your knowledge, skill set and what you already have. (Hint: there's ALWAYS something we need to buy!).

It sounds like you have no idea what you want to sell or what niche you want to be in. If so, put your money away and start doing some research (free on Google).

Below is some information to get you started. But first, just to clarify: listbuilding is NOT a business!!!

Ok, sorry. Just had to get that off my chest.

Way too many Warriors use it in a list of businesses, like it's a business in itself. It's not. It's a critical piece of building any type of good direct-response business. But it's not a business in itself.

If you're serious about making money in IM, you first need to choose 1) a business model, 2) a niche and 3) a target market. Choosing a business model is a basic step that a lot of Warriors overlook.

Without a business model, niche and target market, you're NOT going to get the value out of any IM info that you COULD get out of it.

Clarity is a HUGE part of IM success. It's so simple when you know it -- and darn difficult when you don't! I owe my mentors a world of thanks for bringing this clarity.

IM is actually pretty simple: you can sell only one of two things:

1. Products
2. Services

That's it!

And selling products or services online happens in the same basic way for everyone, no matter what they're selling:

Traffic > Opt-in page > Autoresponder series (or e-zine) > Sales page

That's it! It's just that simple. (We IMers tend to overcomplicate things.)

But no matter what your niche is, or whether you're selling a product or a service, do you know what your business model is?

A business model is the framework or skeleton of your business. Essentially there are three types of online business models:

1. Membership-based model

A membership-based business model allows you to build a community of people (your members) who are as passionate about your subject as you are. Your membership fees can be monthly or annual, but either way, you're building recurring, passive income.

There are a lot of resources and information out there to help you build a membership-based business if you're interested in doing this.

2. Product-based model

Selling products allows you to maximize your time and effort by selling items over and over again. This can be hard goods or it can be information products. Information marketing is it's own business model under the product-based model. Information marketing allows you to take your brain to the bank by creating a product ONCE based on what you know and selling it over and over again.

3. Service-based model

Selling services can be great for 1) generating quick cash (as in the case of article writing or video producing) and 2) establishing your expertise and getting testimonials.

(Affiliate marketing falls under both models. You can choose to market either products or services as an affiliate.)

However, in the long run, your goal should be to offer services at a PREMIUM. The biggest advantage of IM is LEVERAGE. You're able to leverage your time, money and expertise exponentially online. We all have just 24 hours each day. Time to get ruthless about what you expect for those hours you spend in IM each day. Expect more of yourself and more from your business friends, clients, partners, etc.

What results are you getting for those hours you spend online each day? Ultimately, your services should be at the bottom of your funnel and cost the most since they involve your time and personal attention. (We all have a limited amount of time each day.)

The fun (and confusion) comes in with all of the endless mix-and-match possibilities of the above models. If you're just starting or still struggling to make money, keep it simple:

Pick just ONE!

1. Pick ONE niche. (Something you're interested in and know something about.)

2. Pick ONE target market for your product or service. (Who will buy what you're offering? The more specific you are, the more you narrow it down, the more successful you'll be.)

3. Pick ONE business model.

Now that you're clear about what business you're in, FOCUS! (And stop buying any info not related to your niche and target market, period!)

F -- Follow
O -- One
C -- Course
U -- Until
S -- Successful

And remember: build a list, Build a List, BUILD A LIST!

In IM, it's easy to put the cart before the horse. Take a deep breath, step back and consider what type of business you REALLY want. Don't worry about getting traffic or buying that expensive traffic product until you know 1) what your business model is, 2) what niche you're in and 3) WHO your target market is!

Successful business people will tell you that MARKETING is more than half the effort that's needed for success anyway. So pick a niche, target market and business model. Then spend most of your time and effort marketing it.

If you DON'T have a solid plan or system, THAT'S when it's hard. A good system will shave YEARS (and save you big $$$) off of your learning curve

That's why I recommend investing in at least one good, comprehensive IM course (or mentor who will give you such a system) instead of jumping from one $37 e-book to the next. A lot of people here complain about not being able to make any money. But neither are they willing to invest in their business. (Buying a random bunch of $37 e-books doesn't count.)

The best thing I ever did was invest in a comprehensive IM course aimed at REAL business owners, not just other IM wannabes. Yes it was $1500. (It's no longer available.) But it was truly some of the best A-Z IM info I ever bought. Everything else I've learned (from the $37 e-books) since has simply been plugged into this system.

Get a solid plan or system and then work the plan!

Hope this helps!

Michelle

My advise, do not spend it on buying a lot of hyped up stuff!

Rather follow the excellent advise from Nightengale.

Take in all the free and cheap information you can.

I think your first step should be picking a product/niche. That should determine ways you should market. But buying Solo Ads in your selected niche is would be my suggestion.

You just need to pick one niche and then buy one domain name, hosting, and an autoresponder. You don't need that much money to invest unless you want to jump start things e.g. PPC campaigns, back-links, content, etc. Don't worry about how much money you need to invest - you will need to invest time more than anything else.

Purchase a domain name, and hosting. Nothing more and get to use all FREE traffic generation models to market your site first. Hold on to the rest of your dollars.. before you throw everything into something you don't know much about.

Hi,

If you're just starting out then I wouldn't expect to make $500 in your first month... Everyone has been a beginner at some point, and we've all had to learn. Learning takes time, making money too. As others have already explained you'll need to establish your business - and that starts by picking a niche with which:

a) you feel at least a little bit comfortable,
b) people have a problem,
c) they're willing to pay to solve that problem (if you pick a niche where people don't spend their money then you're wasting your time),
d) you can bring them a solution, either your own (you can create the product) or via affiliate / CPA marketing for example.

Once you've done that and you have the right product(s) or services to offer then you'll have to generate traffic and bring your public to your offers.

Now that's just the general idea and there are many ways of achieving it... Some people are more successful with certain ways than with others, and that's something you'll need to discover by yourself through work and experimentation.

Seb.

Don't do it alone. The learning curve is steep and best delivered by someone that is already making money doing what you want to do.

I have a good friend, that has just released his mentoring/coaching program for newbie marketers that will have you up and running for well under your current budget. I believe the program comes with a product that will get you started almost straight away.

I will PM you the details.

You don't need to invest your money in anything right now.
What you need to do is understand the process & decide which way you want to go.
Once you have found your model then look at what you need to spend on to make it work.
You may even be able to do it all for free.

Start building a list and start blogging.

If you are totally new to IM, dont know how to create a website and only have $150 to spend, your chances of reaching $500 per month in income in 30 days is highly unlikely. Your best bet is to save the $150 and sock up as much free stuff as you can. Decide on a model that works for you and then DO IT. Start for free and keep building until you run out of ideas. Only then should you start buying things.

I would save the $150 until you come up with a business plan. Without a plan, it's unlikely you will make any money. Once you have a plan, it will be obvious as to how to invest the $150.

Seeing a profit is probably gonna take more than a month btw.

There are two ways....

Method 1: Invest in PPC campaigns and hopefully get some conversions so you can keep on funding further PPC research. Basically you will use a range of targeted keywords and see which ones get you the highest CTR. You will then see which ones give you conversions. Finally you will split-test which adcopies give you the highest CTR and what landing pages give you the best conversions. I guarantee if you do this, you can be profitable. There is a huge amount of risk involved.

Method 2: List building. Buy solo ads to initially build your list and then do some adswaps with others. Once you have a list start building trust and then market products to that list. Pure Leverage provides you with both a autoresponder and a great set of tools to promote for this method.

Good Luck!

Hi Infonet,

To achieve fast with your tight budget, you will need to use paid traffic methods.
Free traffic is too slow to see good results.

1. Market Search
You need to research your targeted niche.
Some recommended tools
1. Google Adwords tool
2. Market Samurai (free version)
3. Google Trends (my secret weapon)

2. Affiliate Marketing
Find the good relevant products to promote
Some vendors:
1. Clickbank
2. JVZoo
3. Bluesnap
4. CJ
5. Amazon
6. etc

3. Drive Traffic
Use PPC to drive search traffic. Very good for beginner
You can also consider PPV if you understand the workflow
Media buys are good too.

I don't recommend to build the list just yet.
You need more efforts to get people to opt-in.

Hope these help. Cheers.




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Put your wallet back in your pocket and save the $150. Now you just need $350. That's like $12 a day. You can make that doing grunt work for people.

Warriors For Hire

Take a look at the types of things drawing interest that you can also offer. Just be sure to show examples of your work in post #1 of your thread. If it's pretty decent stuff at good prices you'll hit your goal.

Forget about list building or affiliate marketing and things like that. You don't have enough time to get things going.

Wow, Nightengale and khooster1, thanks for two really solid posts of advice. I too am a newbie. I've spent the past four months establishing my blog with timely and regular content pertinent to my niche.

My colleague and I have just taken the steps needed to begin our efforts at monetization. We are using Samurai Warrior, AWeber, Affiliate Marketing and soon will be adding product. Your collective tips are very good. Any other suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Joe Benevides

Go join CPATrend or the network Cupid and set a daily budget of $5 on Facebook ads and go scrape a list of 30,000 of more UIDs from fan pages about hot girls and start optimizing your ad. You should make sure to push the dating FB app campaigns. Best of luck.

I would start by buying a domain, hosting and autoresponder then I would be buying traffic. Obviously before this I would have done my research as to what niche to go into and what sort of products to either create or promote. The best investment you can make when starting out is time. Just go out there and offer help where you can in your niche. this will build you up as an authority so you will have an easier route to market when you do have a product.

Initially I would just stick with the domain, hosting and autoresponder and start making roads into your chosen niche. Once you have learnt what the market wants then you can start to build your product (around the market needs) and create the sales material to then buy traffic to.

Or you could just follow what Craig Crawford is doing above! Seems like ideal timing for you and I know Craig and he is a smart guy!

You can build information pages on websites like Squidoo and monetize them with affiliate links.

It's not a great long-term strategy because you don't own the domain, but if you absolutely must be cheap and not spend much money, then it's a decent solution.

Also... you are unlikely to more than triple your money in the first 30 days of doing internet marketing, no matter how little or how much money you start with. Most experienced IM'ers would just laugh in your face if you asked them "how can I triple my money in 30 days as a total beginner?" because it's just not going to happen.

You can start blogging, and after few time if you like what you do you will see results. Important to choose a right niche, when you know that you will right something there,and have ideas what write

Nobody will know what works for YOU. That's dependent on many factors and variables, most of them are impossible to know without knowing you.

The cool thing is that even though there is not a good answer to this question and in general, it's too broad of a question to be a good one, it's the same exact question that every successful internet entrepreneur asked at one point when they were starting out!!

I say research many different methods and then pick the one that "fits" your personality the best!!

You're best off doing as others have already mentioned. Start a blog, get an autoresponder, get hosting, start posting unique content, and begin to build yourself a list.