[Alpha Hunter Zero]

Fanatstic thread! To the OP, on average how much money do you have to invest before launching and maintaining an online business?

[Alpha Mind]

(10-28-2012 01:38 PM)Alpha Hunter Zero Wrote:  

Fanatstic thread! To the OP, on average how much money do you have to invest before launching and maintaining an online business?

You're generally investing your time, more than anything. There's that cost (depending on what your time is worth), plus any services you buy.

Hosting is really your only upfront cost, in theory.

[txtraveler]

I wish I was smart or motivated enough to do something like this.

What's the initial startup cost of something like this?


Edit: Just saw the post above.

[txtraveler]

Since I can't edit my last post again, I do believe I'm smart enough, I just don't know where to start.

[txtraveler]

(08-23-2012 03:06 AM)Alpha Mind Wrote:  

In my short time being active on this forum I've seen a lot of people talking/asking about internet marketing, passive income, etc., so I figured I'd help out.

I run a large (10K products) ecommerce website and a top 100 (rated top 100 by serps.com) SEO agency, and have experience in most internet marketing related spaces. I've sold a few ebooks, but none of them have done spectacularly well.

To start, anyone can get into internet marketing. There are no barriers to entry--other than your own motivation--and you can easily start a business with minimal investment, not including time.

It's also worth stating: truly passive income is very difficult to accomplish. What's commonly referred to as a lifestyle business, is far more realistic.

For the younger guys on here, if you're in college or fresh out, look for paid internships or full-time gigs with companies that are in the space. Some cities are better than others, but there are rich IM guys/firms all over the US.

Craigslist has more gigs than you think and almost everyone I know posts IM-related jobs there. Check marketing and web/internet related categories daily. Yes, daily. It's much faster than going through 3 weeks worth of marketing gigs.

Meetup groups are a group source, assuming you know how to chat people up and network. Make sure you have biz cards, even if you don't own a biz. Make sure you know the acronyms. People love to test you with that. It's my one gripe about the industry. Anyone, feel free to add more and/or any variations of these that you've heard.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SEM - Search Engine Marketing
PPC - Pay Per Click
CRO - Conversion Rate Optimization
CPC - Cost per click or cost per conversion. Most people mean cost per click when they say this.
CPA - cost per action - this can refer to the cost per action/conversion, OR CPA networks, which are affiliate networks (like clickbank) that pay per action/conversion/sale you send their way.
IM - Internet Marketing (commonly refers to the info product scene, which is kind of it's own space)
SMO - Social Media Optimization (easily biggest boat of shit talking wannabe marketers on the planet).

There are more, but you should know what those are and entail before you go asking for jobs.

MediaBistro can be legit as well, but most of the firms that post there want qualified people.

Identifying small companies in your area that are in a space you want to learn is relatively easy and if you're persistent, you can usually get a job there; just show them you're interested.

You'll learn more at a small ecommerce or product development (assuming they sell online) company than you will an agency. Agency gigs are fine, but you'll typically be doing one thing only. SEO is probably the best to learn. PPC advertising--in my opinion--is awful. The only thing I dislike more than that is accounting.

If you can land a gig, you can learn the game relatively quickly.

For those that are jobs they can't leave, there's a website called The Challenge, at http://www.challenge.co/. It's free, and will teach you basic stuff. The guy makes money off of his software recommendations. I don't agree with all of them, so if you have questions about the tools, message me.

There is a very solid chance that your first business/website/product WILL fail. Don't get frustrated. You're just one step closer to making cash.

Oh, and if you run any form of Google AdWords, there's a free software called word watch that will optimize your bids for maximum number of clicks.

If you have questions, let's open this up. I'd also love to hear from any other people in the space.

taking the challenge at 8pm tomorrow central

[txtraveler]

Just watched the challenge webinar.


Going to try it out. Kind of excited. He's only asking 30 minutes a day, 7 days a week. Not too shabby.

[Cattle Rustler]

(10-29-2012 02:50 PM)Alpha Mind Wrote:  

You're generally investing your time, more than anything. There's that cost (depending on what your time is worth), plus any services you buy.

Hosting is really your only upfront cost, in theory.

Not sure if I got this right, but considering your plan, I plan to do the following. Correct me if I'm wrong.
PLAN A
1 - Build a website/blog about a Mexican city, I have a crapload of info on it. There's nothing like it on the web, i just googled it. It will be in Spanish and English.

2 - Post ads to expedia/hotels.com/despega.com (mexican expedia) on the website/blog.

3 - Wait for it to appear on Google rankings

4 - Profit.

Is that right?

PLAN B
Also, there's a company in egypt that sells a lot of "house decoration stuff" ($40 USD pitchers, $60 USD set of cups). They were featured on the NY times.

But they have 2 problems 1 - shipping is expensive to the US and 2 - Shipping takes a while.

My solution, become their importer. Buy a lot of stuff, resell it on Etsy/Amazon/Ebay/AliExpress

If I understand, these two ponies should do the trick.

[thirty-six]

(11-06-2012 09:34 PM)txtraveler Wrote:  

Just watched the challenge webinar.


Going to try it out. Kind of excited. He's only asking 30 minutes a day, 7 days a week. Not too shabby.

So, was it legit? I just read through this thread and am still pretty clueless about Internet Marketing. I wonder if that helped you. I went to the website and it says to enter your email for a ´´head´s up on the next rollout of Challenge training.´´ Seems spammy.

[ColSpanker]

I took the course 2 years ago and found it to be...enlightening. There's a lot of good ideas in it, but they push Wordpress too hard for my tastes. Furthermore, a lot of what the course was pushing at the time in the way of SEO would get you sandboxed by Google if you tried it today.

[testos111]

To anyone who has the basic down, I just have one advice. Let affiliate marketing come to you, instead of you going to it. By that I mean, start something that you are passionate about. You'll eventually find a million ways to monetize your online content. But unless it's something you love doing, it can easily become like just another job.

[ColSpanker]

(02-15-2014 10:40 AM)testos111 Wrote:  

To anyone who has the basic down, I just have one advice. Let affiliate marketing come to you, instead of you going to it. By that I mean, start something that you are passionate about. You'll eventually find a million ways to monetize your online content. But unless it's something you love doing, it can easily become like just another job.

So what you are saying is to get the traffic flow BEFORE you try and monetize it?

[worldwidetraveler]

(02-15-2014 10:40 AM)testos111 Wrote:  

To anyone who has the basic down, I just have one advice. Let affiliate marketing come to you, instead of you going to it. By that I mean, start something that you are passionate about. You'll eventually find a million ways to monetize your online content. But unless it's something you love doing, it can easily become like just another job.

I think that is the main reason why most people don't make much money online.

[testos111]

(02-15-2014 01:36 PM)ColSpanker Wrote:  

(02-15-2014 10:40 AM)testos111 Wrote:  

To anyone who has the basic down, I just have one advice. Let affiliate marketing come to you, instead of you going to it. By that I mean, start something that you are passionate about. You'll eventually find a million ways to monetize your online content. But unless it's something you love doing, it can easily become like just another job.

So what you are saying is to get the traffic flow BEFORE you try and monetize it?

In a way, yes. But traffic is not a quick phenomenon. Once you start getting traffic, you'll have plenty of time to think of monetization techniques before the traffic volume gets to a stage where it brings in sales. I would advise a beginner not to get too concerned with traffic. Nowadays, courtesy social media ads, it's much simpler and economical to get targeted traffic. You'd be surprised what you can do with just $2-$3 of daily budget using Facebook ads.

But the main aim should be sustainability. To keep producing content. And for that to happen, you gotta love what you are doing. It's true you could always pay someone else to generate content for you for something you don't like. But as I said before, that can soon become like a job.

Start something you love, slowly advertise it, use very basic SEO, and slowly build the most important asset, the LIST. And you'll be fine.

[worldwidetraveler]

(02-16-2014 12:27 AM)testos111 Wrote:  

In a way, yes. But traffic is not a quick phenomenon. Once you start getting traffic, you'll have plenty of time to think of monetization techniques before the traffic volume gets to a stage where it brings in sales. I would advise a beginner not to get too concerned with traffic. Nowadays, courtesy social media ads, it's much simpler and economical to get targeted traffic. You'd be surprised what you can do with just $2-$3 of daily budget using Facebook ads.

But the main aim should be sustainability. To keep producing content. And for that to happen, you gotta love what you are doing. It's true you could always pay someone else to generate content for you for something you don't like. But as I said before, that can soon become like a job.

Start something you love, slowly advertise it, use very basic SEO, and slowly build the most important asset, the LIST. And you'll be fine.

Sorry bud, I think I was misunderstood in my previous post.

I think doing what you love will lead to little money. Sure, you have to enjoy what you're doing but that doesn't mean you can make a hobby into a full time income producing business.

I also think blogging is one of the worst ways to make money. I can understand doing it if you love to write and making money isn't the primary motivating factor. If that is the case your advice is good.

Traffic is a quick phenomenon if you are paying for it.

For me, I like large markets with a lot of people coming in daily. I like a lot of competition because that means there is a lot of people and a lot of money. I like having a huge product line that allows me to make a lot of money off smaller segments of the market.

I have products planned out for years. I am just ramping up one product line right now and have some major developments scheduled for two more years.

I am not interested in a market that I can't come up with a lot of products for.

I get a raise on every product I produce and can also tap into affiliate products with my list (I don't normally sell them affiliate products unless I really like something).

This is a job. It takes consistent dedicated work to make consistent money. Build up the business where you can hire people to do the the simpler tasks will help but make no mistake this will always be a job.

Your advice is good if this is a hobby that you don't expect to make much money at. If you like writing, just write without worrying about monetization. If you want a business and to make good income, I would say you need to plan things out just like any business would do.