-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now playing: All the Way by Celine Dion and Frank Sinatra
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes. But.
There are definitely ways to generate income online without having to spend any money, such as "bum marketing," which mainly involves using article directories and free social or blogging sites to promote affiliate products or offers, and some have been very successful with these methods.
Affiliate marketing using only free methods does have some limitations. But if you are aware of the capabilities and constraints of the techniques you choose and how to use them to your best advantage, you won't run afoul of anybody's Terms of Service or be viewed as a spammer.
However, I'm personally a big proponent of the kind of Internet marketing where you make a small investment and keep your costs low. Basically, what I'm talking about is buying a hosting plan and a domain name. And if you're new to Internet/affiliate marketing, I recommend you take a beginner course or purchase a membership to a site that teaches the basics. (See Let's Talk About It below.)
When you buy your own hosting package rather than depend on free build-your-own sites or article directories, you are in the driver's seat and aren't at the mercy of someone else's decisions. Some who have put all their eggs into baskets they don't own have found that when policies or the marketing climate changed, their business dried up or went poof altogether. It's better, in my view, to have your own sites and build up your own reputation rather than simply building up Ezine Articles' or Squidoo's reputations. That way you'll have something of value to sell if you ever decide to stop IM, too.
The good news is that hosting is very, very cheap these days. A hosting package with the features you'd need to pursue a wide variety of marketing options can be had for less than $8 a month, sometimes way less. Not many people would say that's an unreasonably high investment.
Domain names are cheap, too; you can get them for under $10, and that's per year, not per month. So let's say you want to do affiliate marketing—you can do it for a whole year for as little as $70 to $100.
It's so cheap that even if you also want to take that newbie course, your overall investment is very, very manageable. In fact, some courses include a year of free hosting—hint, hint—so that you can get the hosting, domain, and training for approximately the price of just the last two.
Once you've set up your own site on your own hosting plan, there are dozens of ways to drive traffic to it without spending another cent. You can spend money on it, and it might help you make more, but you don't have to.
Let's talk about it—training or go it alone?
It is true that all you need to know is already out there on the web and it's free. But when you're a beginner, it's nearly impossible to know which information is reliable and which is just plain wrong. The time you will waste chasing dead ends is money down the drain, and if the instructions you follow convince you to buy things that really aren't necessary, there goes some more. Bye-bye, greenbacks.
You're far better off, in my opinion, getting a good grasp of the basics from a legitimate source first, and then you'll know that all your time and effort are not in vain. You'll begin earning money much sooner, and the things you do buy will pay for themselves in no time.
In the interests of full disclosure, I do have such a beginner course, so you could say I have ulterior motives and be turned off by my advice. But I felt training was important long before I wrote the course, and in fact, that's why I wrote it. I saw that there were a lot of beginner ebooks and courses out there, but I didn't find any that truly started from the beginning and didn't assume you already knew all the terminology and how to build a web site.
So check it out! You'll find that it's one of the most inexpensive ways to start a business in existence.
If you need clarification on anything in this article, please contact me. I'd be glad to help you out.
Similar Posts:
- How soon can you make money with affiliate marketing? Part 1
- How soon can you make money with affiliate marketing? Part 2
- How to make money from home legitimately without being scammed
- Does the recession mean you shouldn’t try affiliate marketing?
- Is there an affiliate marketing genius in you trying to get out?
I LOVE my “job.” Affiliate marketing takes work, but it doesn’t feel like work.
Comments on this entry are closed.