The best part about marketing products and services online is that anyone can get started with minimal set-up. All you need is an Internet connection and a device to connect to the Internet and you can start making money online right away. But many people soon discover that online marketing costs money, at least if you hope to be really good at it. But you can keep costs to a minimum if you do things correctly. The following tips will help you build up an Internet marketing empire, even on a shoestring budget.
Affiliate Marketing
Most would agree that affiliate marketing is the easiest way for the Internet marketing novice to get started. With affiliate marketing, you don’t need to manufacture products and you don’t need to provide any services. Instead, you’re going to be marketing other business owners’ products and services and then you’re going to make a commission off of every item or service package you sell.
Affiliate marketing is free to get started and unless the business you’re marketing for has an approval process, you can get started right away. So, right there you have a way to make money online without needing any money of your own.
But once you have the affiliate offers, how do you actually pitch them to people? For this, you’re going to need a web presence.
Building Your Web Presence
To market products and services online, you should have a website or blog online that you can send your prospects to. For this, Blogger and WordPress will work nicely. These platforms let you build free blogs online, and they’re hosted and everything. You simply provide the content and you have your very own home on the web.
Of course, if you hope to build relevancy, trust and authority in your given niche, which is what’s required if you hope to be good at Internet marketing, you will need a website sooner or later. For this, you’re going to need web hosting.
Domain and Web Hosting
Every Internet Marketer worth his or her weight in gold should have an independent domain. This means a domain that doesn’t have ‘Blogspot dot com’ or ‘WordPress dot com’ attached to it. We’re talking about domains like (Your Domain Here Dot Com). Of course, the Your Domain Here would be replaced with your keyword or phrase of your choice. The trick is to choose a domain that is relevant to your field and also one that’s highly searchable and easy to remember. But how much does a domain cost?
When you secure a domain, and we suggest Host Gator for this, you will also be able to buy hosting service with that same company, in most cases. You will only need a basic hosting service, which means you will only need enough room to put a few files online.
You can usually get by with a domain and hosting for under $100. And some companies offer services much less than that. The best advice you’ll hear on the matter is to do a thorough online search and don’t forget to look for coupon codes, which many domain registrars and hosting providers love to use.
Right now, we’re down $100 or less, but we have a domain name and hosting service. So now at least we’re able to put our offer online. Now, you can use Blogger and WordPress and you can put them on your own domain. Or, you can create your own website. Of course, the best thing to do is outsource.
Outsourcing Your Work
Unless you’re a professional writer, designer and coder, you’re going to find it very difficult to successfully market products and services online. If you don’t think that’s true, consider this. Sure, you will get a few sales on a website that is converted from Blogger. You may even get twenty or more sales on a website that you created yourself, even though you have no writing or design experience.
But if you hope for your website to get thousands of visitors and you expect to make the kind of money to retire on, then you’re going to have to go for professional all the way. That means hiring a professional copywriter to write your sales copy, your e-books and e-reports, and all the autoresponder emails and articles that will be used to power your web presence. And you’re going to need to hire a professional web and/or graphic designer to design your squeeze pages, your e-book and e-report covers, the banners you’ll use to drive more traffic to your online offer, etc. And if you don’t know HTML from PHP, then you’re going to find the actual development of your web presence a virtual nightmare.
But there is hope. The trick is to find an outsourcing team that can do it all. You need to find a top-notch team comprised of skilled copywriters and trained designers. And you need a team made up of code monkeys and video producers and, most of all, marketing professionals. The bottom line is that you need a team that will produce the ultimate Internet marketing package that will dominate your niche and have your prospects and customers always coming back for more.
Now, it is true that a team like that can easily charge upwards of $1000 or more per package they create. Especially if the writing, design, coding, videos and all other aspects of those packages are of the highest quality. But you can find cheaper services, and by cheaper we don’t necessarily mean of lesser quality. The trick is to keep your eyes open for teams that are actually interested in seeing online marketers succeed. They’re out there and, just like you take coupons with you to the grocery store in order to save money, you should bargain shop with every aspect of your online business from domain buying to outsourcing.
But just think, when you outsource the creation of your online marketing materials, the squeeze pages, the e-books and e-reports, the autoresponder emails, the articles, press releases, the banners, the keywords and all the research, every single bit of it is done for you. All you need to do is receive the package, set it up and your entire package runs on autopilot.
Conclusion
So does online marketing cost money? Not necessarily. You can start selling affiliate products and services right away on Blogger and WordPress.com and you don’t need to spend a dime, except maybe to pay for your Internet service.
But if you want to do it right, you’ll choose to outsource. In this case, you’ll need a domain and hosting, and you’ll need to find a company that will create the ultimate online marketing package that will build relevancy, authority and trust between you and your audience. And the right team is out there that will let you have it all for much less than you’d think.
But consider this. When you spend money on experts to outsource your materials, it’s not like you’re wasting your money. Your money is being invested, and you’re investing in the very best in the business. Once your Internet marketing package goes online, you’ll see that the investment was well worth it. That’s how the experts do it and if you want any type of success in this business, you’ll follow this advice.
In closing, Internet marketing may be free to get started. But if you want any type of real success, and we’re talking the ‘real job’ killing success that most people dream about, then you’re going to have to invest in your business. But if you shop around and you invest in the best, you’ll succeed in this business where so many have failed, guaranteed.