How much money did you start with?

Bout $50-$100 I think it was. A domain name, hosting and a Flippa listing.

If I could spend more money earlier though, I would do it. Paying for quality advertising makes a big difference.

I started with nothing and became an Amazon affiliate recommending books. That was in 1997. After a while I began writing my own books. Then my only expense was hosting, Internet service and domain names. You could get listed on Clickbank free back then, no $50 fee per product.

You saying you'd spend the remainder on advertising? That would be for flipping though, right?

Put me down for "between $50 and $100", too.

Almost nothing, really. I might manage to spend $200 instead of $100, I suppose. I might spend $50 more on better hosting than I actually started with? Not sure, really. But when I was starting off my business, there wasn't ever a point at which anything would have been faster, better or steadier if I'd had a few thousand more. I'd only have spent it on shoes ...

well, what if i have a little more than $100, like $300, $500, but i have no internet marketing skill, professional skill like wordpress, photoshop, programming etc, and english is not my mother tongue
would someone suggest me to learn/master something first before investing and venture into internet marketing?
or, below are several things i think i can try, one at a time to focus, any advices are welcome
- get into kindle publishing, outsource almost everything (estimated $50-$100 per book, possible ROI?)
- build a few niche site with adsense, research competition, learn seo, wordpress etc (from scratch), outsource only articles
- venture into cpa industry, start with direct linking and media buy (i don't have big capital, is it a high risk option?)
- start social media services site (sell facebook likes, youtube views etc, estimated <$100 startup cost)

i have reseached and already have some knowledge for all above methods, now i need your honest opinions, your wise words are greatly appreciated especially from WillR, Alexa Smith, Greedy, LukePeerfly

P.S. sorry for hijacking the thread

I started my online venture with no more than a £25 Paypal voucher out of Morrisons.

Can't believe I actually bought a Paypal voucher, but it certainly got me started!

Actually i started with $0 by wanting to make more money, now when im doing it full time i just love how it all started out, couldnt be more happier

What would you do differently if you had more money for start up?

I paid for my hosting and my domain, which came to about $70 for two years.

Apart from that. Nothing else was spent on my behalf.

to some of the people who have posted here that started with little or nothing...what is it exactly that you are doing online?

I spent $187 and bought a dating site script.
I tried to start dating site at my own, after trying for several months, I gave up coz running dating site at own from zero was very hard job, I did waste almost $600 - $700 on that project..[including promotion etc]

then after few months, found a network where I am right now and simply register a domain name and get started with them

So my initial start up was $600-$700 and failed there

then the current start up was only a domain name

$90,

But I wasnt really 'marketing' per say. I created my own product. Used the money on a domain, hosting, and some graphics for a designer.

I dont think I would do anything differently. In fact I know I wouldnt for sure since I have more money now and I still do the same basic steps with each new product that I did on that original one.

Hey TravisA,

We were down around $10K before we started to turn a profit each month...and it was only maybe 2-3 months until we were in the black overall. This was back in Dec '10 - Apr '11 when we first started building niche sites.

I just did an interview with a guy that buys/expands/sells sites with us. I think we forgot to mention it in the podcast, but he was down around $30K at one point until he started selling sites off...he's quite profitable now, though.

Not everyone starts out with a $50 hosting account, $10 for the domain and a hope/prayer. Buying in can work and (usually) can speed up the learning process, I think.

I have started a $300,000/year business with about $20. In most businesses it isn't about the capital investment but the time and sweat you put into it. Of course some businesses will require more capital than others. Service businesses usually require low investment to start up.

I invested $500 in adwords for startup for a product sale and it yielded good results for long-term

$2500 in my holding company with which I invested in developing multiple products and ideas. I'm still not cash-flow positive but we have product that customers like.

That's a great thread
I've started many times though.
First time was about 6 years ago, I was running a free celebrity hosting service in exchange for adsense display. I started with ~$100 to pay for first month of dedicated server and I've made it back pretty quickly. I closed it down after ~2, because it required more time than I could spare.
I only came back into the game in December of 2012. I've tried different things and lost let's say $100-200, no profit at all, but I don't regret a bit, I've learned a lot.
After that I've started developing websites for sale, invested ~$50 (some of that was for learning) which returned after a week or two. This provides a decent income for me, but again, it's in exchange for the time invested.
Right now I want to get into the "Internet Marketing" in it's pure form. I've invested ~$30-40 so far, and I'm planning to invest some more. But this is optional for most people.
So, to sum up, I've never invested a lot and wouldn't even know how to invest big money atm

I started with $0 (zero).

I started off by buying $1300 of flash memory cards for my e-commerce business in 2001. However, in reality I needed to have a cash reserve of up to $50,000 as it take at least a month for sales money to go into our bank account. That business has since closed mainly because too much work was involved and we were fed up looking after employees.

My second business started off by buying revenue generating websites. My most important buy was $35,000 for a set of websites listed on eBay in 2005. It was a huge risk as the listing looked completely scammy. However, it turned out to be the best investment I ever made. I was confident enough to hand in my resignation for my full time job within a few months.

I started with $0 and earned my first money on fiverr. But if I were to invest it would be in buying an already successful site and then building upon it.

Started with probably about $50, for domain name, hosting, eJunkie (which was free for the first three months). Wouldn't do things differently today, either. I've spent plenty on other IM sites, sometimes up to a couple thousand dollars, and had them completely flop. It's not the money – in fact, in my case I can almost (almost!) say that the more money I've spent on a project the less successful it's been.

I started with $0. With blogger as my very first attempt at Internet Marketing.

If I had $10,000 cash, I would make more research and still try out for free first... Then I would create an information product and use the $10,000 cash to create a really good sales page and as advertisement to affiliates.