The Cheap Internet Marketer

Here is my long answer to the first big question that most newcomers to Internet Marketing ask. 

You can get started using all free resources and spend zero dollars, but to be honest, it’s tough to do.  Let me explain how to spend zero dollars, and also explain why it’s not really a great idea.

First, you will want to get started selling affiliate products.  You can sign up at ClickBank and Commission Junction and other sites to sell affiliate products for no charge.  Most Marketers start with affiliate products and then add their own products later.  And just about all Marketers, even the big guys, continue to sell affiliate products along with their own products.  Affiliate selling is great. 

How do you sell your affiliate products?  Well, you can set up a blog at one of the free blog sites like Blogger.com, MyBlogSite.com, Wordpress.com and several others.   You can also set up simple free web sites on Hubpages or Squidoo and a few other sites.

Here’s why spending zero dollars to get started is not such a great idea — in order to use one of these sites, you are required to agree to their Terms of Service — and this puts the free sites are in control of your site and your content.  They are allowing you to use their web space, but only if you agree to play by their rules.  And they can change their rules at any time with no advance notice.  

Lots of people use these free sites and you can put up some very good looking blogs and websites, but you must be very careful to read and to comply with their Terms of Service, and keep up-to-date backups of all your content.  The free sites can (and will) lock your blog/website and/or delete your content if they decide it’s too commercial or objectionable in some way.   And if you don’t have current backups when this happens, it’s too bad. 

The free sites are in control of your content, and they can decide to shut you down with no notice.  And writing your content and designing your web site takes a lot of time and effort.  You don’t want some unknown person at one of these sites to dump all your work — and believe me, it definitely does happen.

Given the problems just mentioned, your best bet is to buy web hosting and your own URL, and host your own web site and blog.   There are a lot of really excellent web hosting services available, way too many to even begin to list.  I personally use BlueHost and love them, and I buy my domains through them, but you can use any hosting service you want, and buy domains through any company you want.

Moving on — to be successful long term in Internet Marketing, you’ll need to build your list.  The “Can SPAM Act” that was passed several years ago changed list building for everyone.  At one time you could get list-managing software and host your list on your own site, but it’s no longer a good option.  So you need an AutoResponder service that will keep you in compliance with Can SPAM, which requires double-optins, among other things. 

There are quite a few autoresponder services out there, the two biggest and best are AWeber and GetResponse.  It’s possible to use free autoresponder services, but they’re typically not great, and most people eventually change to one of the paid services. 

This is where you run into problems, because you can’t transfer your list from one service to another.  If you change your autoresponder service, you are not allowed to just move your list of subscribers from the old service to the new one.  Instead, everyone on your list is required to go through the opt-in process again.  And a whole lot of people will not bother to do this, so you lose a lot of your subscribers.  Getting subscribers takes a lot of work, you don’t want to have to start over.

Okay, we’ve discussed the pros and cons — so if you decide to buy services, how much does all of this cost? 

It depends on the company, of course, but estimate $9 or $10 per month for web hosting.  URLs cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per year, depending on the ending — .com is the most expensive, .net and .org and others cost less.  So you can get a year’s web hosting and one domain (URL) for less than $150 per year.  An autoresponder service is more expensive and their charges change depending on how many subscribers you have, but you should probably budget about $200 per year. 

If you have the money, plan on spending at least $350 per year on your business tools.   You don’t have to spend it all at one time, you can start with web hosting for a couple months and one URL, then add the autoresponder once you get up and running.   If you can possibly afford it, purchasing your own web hosting, URL and autoresponder service is the best thing you can do to safeguard your business.