Budgeting - A brutally honest post. (27)
Let's face it. The biggest limit in this area of Internet Marketing is your budget. How much can you spend, how much are you willing to lose, and how much can you afford to lose.
As a relative newcomer to the PPC/Facebook Advertisement side of IM, everything always seems to boil down to that one fundamental factor - MY WALLET.
So, in this post I am going to be completely and brutally honest.
I live paycheck to paycheck. I'm a college student, I live with my parents, and I really don't have many bills to pay besides rent for my college apartment which is cheap, and a few other odds and ends. When I say I live paycheck to paycheck I mean this. I don't have a savings. My parents don't have a savings. No one in my family is very good with money. That's just my own personal situation. If I need money for an emergency, I simply just don't have it. I have what I made at my full-time job that week, and whatever was left over from the week before.
I work 5 days a week 7am-4pm. Im out of the house at 5am, and I get home at 530pm. I make $560 every week. I am paid on Fridays (I am an engineering intern, and that's how much I make interning. Some would call this personal information, and it surely is. But, fact is, that is my position I'm in. I think it can tell a lot of people on these forums (which I have a lot of trust in) what I can and can't do. I don't want anyone to think that I have more money than I do when considering how I should go about my campaigns.
Basically what I'm asking for is this: someone evaluate what I wrote above, and dictate what they think with their experience in the business I should do in this field. I want to know what people think is a good money to invest in testing/scaling per week, until I start getting on my feet and I am able to reinvest money I make HERE as opposed to at my other full-time job. **Keep in mind, I will go back to the semester and will only make about $150 a week during the school year. I'm hoping I can get some sustainable income by then, even though it's a stretch. If I can hold myself up during the school year and continue to get better at affiliate marketing via the help from people in these forums, it will better my chances of becoming closer to the guys on thes forums that are KILLING IT in this business.
So, basically. What do you guys suggest?
And, don't give me any of the stuff I've heard before like "Create study groups at your college for 10 dollars an hour; or do article marketing, etc"
Between my job and my school, my time is worth a lot more than spending hours upon hours each day to make pennies.
I hope this thread helps some other people open up as well.
Im new to these forums and Im here because people have raved about this place. I really want to be a product of the quality that is shown here.
Cheers!
:: Matt P
I think most people have a story that is very similar to yours. The fact is that there is never the "perfect" time to start or the perfect "place" to start.
If you had a lot of money to start with then you won't have the focus and if you had a lot of time you won't have the motivation.
I suggest you save up until you have at least $1000 to buy traffic with. Scraping pennies to try and buy traffic is a killer because you'll be afraid of losing money. You will learn more by spending that $1000 on buying traffic than you would from 50 hours of reading stuff on blogs and forums. Most people will probably disagree with me on this but its just my experience. If you only have $200 and you lose $50 you will get nervous and kill campaigns that could work.
Starting with something that does not require a lot of management is probably the best solution. I'd suggest PPV as its cheap to get started and it will teach you all the ropes of tracking, landing pages ec. HOWEVER, you need to find something that you feel comfortable with.
I would suggest save up, take up part time job to earn more, saving help during emergency, once you have about $2000 or $1000 you can start with single traffic source : FB and go weekly with EWA
we're into paid traffic, it is up and down, hence more cashflow, the better you're , hence you need pull the brake first, save up then whack, make sure you have saving first...take consideration of every decision you make, don't assume the CPA network will pay you ( if you join the wrong one), don't make any assumption
traffic is always ready for you once you ready to roll.
you should read dantheman's blog, if you are like him, I can't see why your wallet is your obstacle, he was once broke, now with a new car with his affliate monies.
Is there any amount of money you can put on the side to start saving up? Is there anything you can cut out to save more money? Cause once you start spending and you pull the plug early your just shooting yourself in the foot.
If you're low on cash just do some YouTube spamming, I've done over 350/day thumbing up comments on popular videos. 
Step 1: sign up for a content locking network
Step 2: find a popular music video
Step 3: create a lander with some crazy video related to the artist (eg Justin Bieber fighting) then content lock it
Step 4: make 30 YouTube accounts
Step 5: comment on the video promoting the lander, use bit.ly (remove http:// and change the / to a \ to pass filters, the link will autocorrect when put in a browser )
Step 6: rate up the comments and change IPs every time using TOR
Step 7: profit and repeat
If you're really lazy you can just link to a CPA offer and be like "free pizza". Its not nearly as good but it works. Hope I helped!
jtg awesome sounding idea, around how long does it take for the +1 thumbs up you leave on comments to be processed so it actually shows up for everyone?
Originally Posted by jtgjustin
Step 1: sign up for a content locking network
Step 2: find a popular music video
Step 3: create a lander with some crazy video related to the artist (eg Justin Bieber fighting) then content lock it
Step 4: make 30 YouTube accounts
Step 5: comment on the video promoting the lander, use bit.ly (remove http:// and change the / to a \ to pass filters, the link will autocorrect when put in a browser
)Step 6: rate up the comments and change IPs every time using TOR
Step 7: profit and repeat
If you're really lazy you can just link to a CPA offer and be like "free pizza". Its not nearly as good but it works. Hope I helped!
@jtgjustin : $350 profit /day ? does it still working ?
It will process instantly as long as you use different IPs, the IPs need to be C class unique (won't be a problem if you're using TOR) Youtubes been getting strict about IPs since the last update but it's all good since the comments stay on top longer.
Rating on popular videos is for fast cash, another technique I use is to comment rate older videos so it stays up top longer, I rated on 30 older videos about a week ago and am still getting about 50-100 a day. Sometimes I can get comments to stick for over a month
You'll need to test lots of landers though, what I find works best is the magazine/news style ones, you can even port it to PPV once you start making cash flow.
Yeah it's defenitely working, it's unsaturated because of all the IP updates, I know some botters claiming to have pushed over 7k/day with this but they were promoting viral fb scrips with clickjacking and all that blackhat stuff
Edit: iPhone autocorrect messed things up
Should have a section titled - " Simple Money Making Ideas I Have Done "
@jtg ah ok also is there anyway to like the comment faster on popular videos that way you can get it on there before all the new comments refresh which takes longer for you to fish through the comments to find yours
@machete
Nope, there's not really a market for it yet and after the IP updates most people don't know how.
@Matt
Just click the share comment link and you'll have the direct link to the comment
@jtg oh awesome, also check the pm I sent you
Cheers.
content locking network? BLAM?
Fuck all that spamming shit. What is that going to teach you?
My first advice is to read this:
Read this post: http://www.wickedfire.com/newbie-que...e-newbies.html
Second suggestion, read this:
http://www.wickedfire.com/newbie-que...s-success.html
Third suggestion:
Try hitting trending terms using SEO. You're going to need to use your brain and creativity for this, but that goes for anything that will lead you to success. The first successes I had in this industry were from hitting trending topics and terms. You must think outside the box here....not like "Justin Bieber got in a fight today breaking news story." How long is that going to last? A few days, weeks?
Hit terms that occur monthly or yearly. You can rank them extremely easily and can just use shared hosting to do it which is extremely cheap. Just leaving manual comments on blogs could get you rank 1 easily, it has for me. Or you could just use scrapebox or whatever. Just use your brain here, I'm not going to spell it out for you. But it's just so easy.
This will help you get some extra cash. Then I would save up and follow other peoples advice. Get a good stack together, choose a traffic source, and practice mastering it.
Good luck bro.
thumbs up!
Originally Posted by jons
Seems like my thread got a bit off course thanks for the YouTube idea. I have tried pretty much everything. I'll give it a go in the meantime.
One of the basic questions I want someone to answer is, does anyone know a budget that is low enough to start ppc with, but not too low where it's not worth it. Or, do I NEED at least a grand to start.
I tried to give you good advice. You can start with whatever the hell you want. There is no set number here.
If I were you, I would strart with MediaTraffic. They'll accept you with like a $25 deposit probably. Plus they really high quality traffic for certain niches.
If you don't have a lot to test with, start testing with low payout offers. Test each target until you reach the payout threshold or a little over.
I still recommend you follow the advice I gave you earlier. I'm a student, too (grad student now). That's how I started.
If you're afraid of losing your money then don't even bother. Because your going to lose it. The most important thing is that you learn something from it in the process.
And fuck all that spamming shit that's terrible advice.
God speed.
Originally Posted by matthew ny
thanks for the YouTube idea. I have tried pretty much everything. I'll give it a go in the meantime. One of the basic questions I want someone to answer is, does anyone know a budget that is low enough to start ppc with, but not too low where it's not worth it. Or, do I NEED at least a grand to start.
There really is no hard and fast rules. I think $1000 is more psychological. It may take you a lot more to get something going. Its different for everyone because there are so many variables.
If you are keen to get started, PPV may be the way to go. There are some very good threads in this forum and you can test a number of campaigns for $50.
Originally Posted by deondup
Ok Matt....you've been given some advice....you'll have to decide for yourself what's good advice and what's bad advice.
Now its my turn, so listen up.. the senior forum member is about to speak (not senior in knowledge....senior in age only). It's time for you to sit down with a pencil and paper.....yes pencil and paper...turn the computer off.
Write down your 6 month, one year, and 5 year IM goals, be realistic but adventurous (don't pussy out).
Now take your six month goal and write out a detailed plan of action on how you intend to achieve it. Be sure to include all the nitty gritty, and try to estimate all the pitfalls along the way. Don't discount the value of this exercise, it can be the most important thing you do for your future.
Once you've go the 6 month plan, extrapolate for a year and then 5 years.
Now look at your 6 month detailed plan and do a budget for each item on the plan, give it your best estimate. You can study the follow along campaigns and others for testing costs and conversion expectations. Guess what....you now have your targets and budget needs.
Plan your work ..... and work your plan.....only deviate based on sound data.
That's my advice.....gotta go now.... it's time for my nap.
Tom
I thought this place was going to be with seasons guys but guess it's starting to get a lot of new guys trying to get in the bizz..... Try taking A few risks, and maybe hitting rock bottom..... to make you go hard. Right now you have a fine job, and are only doing this on your spare time from what it looks like. Since you work from M-F wheres the risk? Oh right the fundamental factor the wallet right lol. When I got into the internet all I had was my $300 credit card..... anyways good luck mate. Not sure if what I wrote to you makes any sense.
sell shit on ebay... buy wholesale and resell it.. thats what i did and got around 20k in start up capital and never loooked back..
also btw, your mindset is wrong. why are you asking us how much YOU NEED. This doesnt make sense to me at all. Depending on how good you are and your landing pages are, you can be profitable straight away...
when i first started i was scared to test things because i was constantly losing money, but then after reading up on a ton of shit, paying close attention, split testing, optimizing i was able to get profitable..
now almost every campaign i launch i can get profitable, its rare if i totally scrap the idea and campaign..
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