Start-up costs and the investment of tools and an online education can be one of the most stressful elements of implementing a career as an Internet entrepreneur. No one wants to shell out more than is absolutely necessary, but before you know it, you may have spent hundreds – or even thousands on things you later find out you didn’t need.
What doesn’t help is the fact that you’re going to encounter a number of marketing leaders who lack the ethics to properly guide those on a budget. Instead, their goal is to squeeze every last drop of money from your wallet.
You’re about to discover how you can launch a perfectly competitive business with less than $4 a month. When and if you feel like reinvesting your earnings back into your business to level up and try other strategies that cost money, you have the option – but this leaves you in control – not the sharks circling the pool of newbies and preying on their hope and desperation.
Your $3.75 Home on the ‘Net
If you sit and think of the various start-up businesses in the world, most would cost tens of thousands of dollars. But senior Internet marketers can get away with paying a mere $3.75 (and in some cases as low as $2.75) and have unlimited earning potential.
Instead of scouting out real estate locally, paying for insurance and employees – you simply buy a hosting plan and domain and install a free WordPress blog on it. Your virtual home on the ‘net is all that’s needed to succeed.
In fact, to be honest, you can get away with starting your business for absolutely no money upfront if you want to. More about that later. For most Internet marketing business models, you’ll want a site of your own, and that costs a minimal amount.
A domain from a site like GoDaddy is just $12 per year ($1 per month). Hosting plans can run as low at $2.75 each month for a Hatchling plan at a place like HostGator. Also included in the Hatchling plan is a free domain for the first year, so you wouldn’t even have to pay for that separately if you didn’t want to.
Newbie marketers often buy way more hosting than they need. A Hatchling or Baby plan is plenty to get you going with a single website. There’s no need to start a dozen different sites at once.
Learn how to build and grow the success of one site first, and later branch out if you can manage it. With the smallest and cheapest plan, you’ll have a cPanel and the ability to click one button that installs your WordPress blog for you.
The domain and hosting will have unmetered bandwidth and your SSL certificate that lets people know your site is secure is included complimentary. When you first get started online, having a blog is everything you need to sell products or promote as an affiliate as well as recruit loyal subscribers.
Learn Everything You Need to Know for Free
One of the areas that will eat away at your online budget as an entrepreneur is that of your courses and education. This is something that many senior newbie marketers spend a small fortune on, typically due to fear of failure.
There is so much information available to you for free that there’s no reason to spend a single penny on a course unless you have the funds to invest in one without hesitation. Of course, the marketers who sell these courses will make it sound as if you’ll be missing out if you don’t buy it.
What these courses offer can sometimes be good information paired with the convenience of having all of it gathered in one place. So they aren’t useless. They also offer the perk of getting someone’s individual insight and sometimes case studies as opposed to broader or more generic information.
The key to getting a free education in online marketing is to know how and where to search for the information you need. Before you go searching, know what it is you’re looking for.
What often happens with needless spending, is a new marketer will get on a list where a product is hyped up so much that they buy it without thinking it through. All they can think of is the potential money they can earn if they get it.
You need to take time to figure out what it is you need to learn. If you don’t know how to build a lead magnet page or how to set up a blog, then you want to look for a specific course or lesson on those topics.
What you don’t want to do is buy a $17 course about one specific method of making money online just because the affiliate tells you the vendor made a boatload of money with it, even though you’ll end up not wanting to pursue that specific strategy.
Think about the business model that you want to get into. Maybe you don’t even know that part yet. You might need an education about all of the various business models available to you, such as affiliate marketing, info product creation, freelancing and more.
Once you choose your business model, you can select a niche that appeals to you. From there, make a list of everything you need to know to succeed in that niche with that business model, and if you don’t know – ask in a forum or from one of the social media accounts you’ve set up to network with other marketers.
For example, if you choose to be a fitness affiliate marketer, then you will need to know how to write reviews, create lead magnets, build a squeeze page, create a blog, and get traffic to name a few.
Some of these things you may already know how to do. But if there’s anything you feel uncertain about, that’s when you go seeking additional information that is up-to-date for this business.
There are many places to find free tutorials and full courses. Keep in mind many marketers put out free courses and lessons specifically to attract people to their own subscriber list.
They want to wow them, show value and prove their worth, so these are not useless reports that will lead you nowhere. Start by using your favorite search engine along with keyword starters such as the words how to.
You might type in how to install WordPress or how to create a squeeze page. This should return a variety of blog posts and articles that people have written to help educate those who need more information.
You can also search specifically for free lead magnets that detail the processes and provide more depth. You can also look for full eBook PDFs for your topic. Many of these are published and available free without even opting in to someone’s list.
Another way to get free tutorials on the things you need to know to succeed online is to use YouTube. There are hundreds, if not thousands of free step-by-step video lessons that walk you through things like how to install a blog or how to use an email autoresponder tool.
For some topics, such as how to write a good sales letter, you can even go to your local library and find numerous books on this topic. You can check them out and bring them home or make photocopies of important pages that are helpful to you.
Don’t forget that networking with other successful marketers and building friendships is very beneficial in providing a free education for you in this business. When you’re forming genuine friendships with people who know how to do these things, all you have to do is ask and most people will chime in with some solid advice as long as you’re implementing it and not wasting their time.
