bb_wolfe

Opportunity: You are a workaholic who loves to learn and has always been good in front of a keyboard. You want to test your skills making teh moniez onlines and are going to start your own little part time enterprise.

Situation: You are intrigued by the idea you can create a website or campaign and actually make commissions from that traffic. You like the idea of working from home. You hate your cubicle job, asshat boss/coworkers, and the bitch shifts they make you work.

Problem: You're fucking broke, or you can't afford to risk the money it requires to properly fund your new business. Most new affiliates are on NET30 with networks, meaning what commissions you generate in February aren't paid until maybe March 25-30th. If you spend your only $1500 in 3 days and make $1600, you're stuck waiting. If you do get an early wire, the $30 network wire fee and $20 bank wire fee just wiped out 50% of your profits. That's assuming you got profitable on a $1500 spend on a brand new campaign.

Solution: Using these simple methods, you can generate enough money to successfuly build, test, and optimize your first profitable campaigns or sites. It won't be instant or without time invested, but you can get the whole process started by using the skills you already have and leveraging those locally to build up some ongoing coin.

Typical expenses when starting IM: Hosting, domains, themes/design services, traffic expenses like Google's Adwords, multivariate testing software, etc. First month these can add up to 2-3K assuming you're spending less than $100 a day on traffic. $100/day isn't going to test your page fast and not a lot of people break even quickly on smaller campaigns~! You'll learn to optimize and become more efficient as you grow, but upfront, you're gonna burn through some money.

As most any senior member here how long it took to really get their first campaigns profitable. I know I blew through 2-3K before I broke even. I had a toddler and a brand new baby and money was freaking TIGHT. I had become good friends with some experienced AMs and they all basically said put the first campaigns on the credit card, but I didn't have great credit at the time and only had a $1500 credit line, of which $300 was free. Nothing that would come close to helping me start making some profits.

Background on what the expert IMers know that you don't: Automation drives pretty much everything. Emailers automate the shit out of offers. Those EPCs you see on a lot of networks aren't what the noobs are making, they're usually what the emailers/media buyers are making. You see those 'guides' from networks with all the high EPC offers? Those are EPcs from guys who automate the shit out of Facebook, Google, PPV sources, and media buys. Some have insane backend management systems that help them become profitable very, very, very quickly. When you factor their complex multivariate testing systems, their known-good traffic sources/placements, and their experience after tons of failures in this industry, it really becomes evident that a noob starting out really needs to be smart about funding. You can get away with small piddly profits by just shooting shit out and seeing what works, but that takes a shitton of work and money, which you likely don't have!

Bottom line on the above: You have some serious competition that inhibits your ability to quickly grow unless you have some coin to drop.

ONLINE Sources for easy income to get your ass started:

• Onforce.com - Excellent for folks in larger cities. Onforce is nice for the ruraltards (like me) as well since there is short supply of guys looking for contract work. This is an easy platform because it's guaranteed funds once you are assigned workorders. If you are in front of a PC all day already, you can't afford not to do this. Those in front of a PC will get first crack at accepting the jobs that come through, hence will be in an easy position to make some quick cheddar. Replacing a hard drive nets you $60 and is done in 10 minutes. Repairing a TV nets you $140 and is done in an hour. Do 20-30 of these workorders in 1-2 months and you're sitting on top of an extra 2-4K. They provide the service manuals for most everything. Read the damn thing and you're golden. The ROI on this type of work is great becasue it gives you fast easy cash. You do need to know how to fix shit though, but it's stupid simple. Download an A+ certification CBT (Computer based training) course off of any torrent site and spend a weekend listening, then you're more qualified than 99% of onforce techs out there. 99% of the tickets you can do over your lunch hour or after work, or fucking take a sick day!
  
• Craigslist.com (for as many cities as you have time to scour) >> Jobs section >> Technical support/Systems/Web. Scour these ads in your city (and a lot of larger ones in the area) for ads that are for 'service techs' or related titles. They are national warranty companies that hire local computer technicians to do warranty and repair work. Sign up with as many of these as you can. Might only get 2-3 jobs a month, but most take 10-30 minutes and pay $80+, so your return is excellent and you can squeek 1-2K out of these jobs your first quarter. You also find a lot of spot jobs, or jobs that want someone for an overnight point of sale installation or something REALLY easy. (all you're doing is packing up the old shit, cleaning, and installing the new shit. If you can plug in a lamp, you can plug in a POS system) GREAT opportunities if you take teh time to scour daily.
  
• Dice.com: Another great place to find short term contracts. These guys have a lot of commercial point of sale installs (Target, American Eagle, Gap, Kohls, etc.) work that are overnight and pay well ($200-300) I really suggest you have resumes on monster.com/dice/etc., for these types of short term contracts. They're stupid simple money.
  
• elance.com/odesk/rentacoder.com/etc.
  These sites are full of indians and South Asians but have a substantial amount of US workers too. If you take some time and create a great profile in any niche you're qualified in (even writing!) you can get 1-2K a month doing work for people. Present yourself well and you'll make easy money off of work that can be done in your off-hours. If you have a HS diploma from any high school in the USA (Philadelphia EXCLUDED, dumb fucks) then you are more qualified than 99% of the indians there pitching their content services.

OFFLINE SOURCES for easy income to get your ass started:

• Craiglist/Ebay - you have too much shit, sell some, INCLUDING that fucking PS3/Xbox/Wii. You don't need that shit when you have campaigns to work on.
  
• Public Speaking. This is so fucking simple, but if you're good at something, someone else is willing to pay you for talking about it. That LLC I tell you to register below is handy since you hook up an individual membership with your local chamber of commerce and have them netowrk your services around. $100 for a 25-minute presentation at a church luncheon, company function, or trade association event isn't that hard of an upsell. Think of it this way: If you can't sell them on why they should pay you to speak, how the fuck are you ever going to convince some asshole on a PC to click your banner?
  
  
• Loan against vehicle's equity: I hate debt. I never use credit cards unless necessary. If you are hard up for 2-3K and have some equity in your car, take a loan against it (or add to the loan you presently have.) Don't go over 12 months term and pay this fucker off the first chance you get though

Ways to save money starting out:

• Don't buy guru shit or ebooks. Shoemoney/Anything from Warriorforum/Digitalpoint/etc. is all shit. All designed to show you their million dolla lifestyle financed by your dumb ass takign the class.
• Don't fall for the software sold on most forums unless you REALLY know some people using it successfully. Lots of software is niche and only a part of the pie for affiliates, so don't buy something thinking it's a turnkey system for you.
• You need to spend money to make money, but don't go all cowboy and throw it across 6 different platforms. Start with one, start simple, and test until the damn thing works, THEN you can scale.
• Shared hosting for certain traffic just blows, and you will lose money. Get some space on a buddy's dedicated box (Cpanel/WHM makes this EASY!) and pay him $10/mo in rent, plus maybe some beers at a conference when you get some coin!
• LEARN THE FUCKING TRAFFIC PLATFORM. SOOO many people just think getting a massive list of keywords is the key to success running PPC, it isn't, it's horseshit to be honest. Take Adwords, they have a HUGE training site that shows you everything about the platform, and a forum that has a lot of great content. Learn it before you use it. Starting out you usually make more money off of one keyword in a campaign than you can off of 1K keywords.

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bb_wolfe

Some tips for organizing/funding a long-term AM business:

• American Express credit card (plum) - People will fuck you over, it's only a matter of time. Amex offers some wonderful dispute resolution options that aren't offered by banks/debit card companies/etc.
• Rewards Debit Card and 3 bank accounts - I use Suntrust Delta Debitcards for the Delta points as Delta is the only airline in my small ass town, but Wells Fargo and others have reward debit/credit cards too. If you are gonna spend it, always get some sort of reward value for it. I haven't paid for a flight in almost 2 years. Starting out, you want one deposit account for networks to use, you want one debit card account for spend, and one account not linked to a network or a card to let money sit in. Transfer only as needed.
• LLC in your state of residence - Depending on your income situation, see an accountant if you plan to eventually turn this into a full time biz, they can best advise you on your tax situation and give you options to mitigate your tax liability. LLC's can be done yourself and usually cost $150-200.
• Business Paypal account - This is a great way to pay intl labor.
• PO Box at local post office or Mailboxes Etc. - No point in letting the (now broke and pissed) fat chick you sold Acai to knowing your home address.

SUMMARY:
If you really think outside the box, in 1-2 months you can easily have a 1-4K balance to begin working hard on your first campaign. This is by no means a guaranteed way to get some coin, but it does do 2 things that will show you if you're gonna cut it in IM or not.

First, it helps you show yourself that you can step outside your comfort zone and work hard to accomplish your goals. This is something tons of people in this biz (including my dumb ass) forget on occasion.

Second, it puts you in the mindset of growing your business, not just getting an extra paycheck. You work hard to fund the next step. Everyone makes mistakes, but it's the dudes that make 20K profit and go spend it on a $20K car that usually don't have a lot of longevity. Reinvest until you don't need that 8-5, then reinvest some more.


Just my .02 thanks to some Ritalin and a weekend doing absolutely nothing work related!!

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nukeleearr

This was a really amazing guide, well done!

Quick question though.. you mentioned $100 a day not being enough to test your page... that seems awfully steep? Certainly you can find niche markets with low CPCs, which is where a newb should be starting instead of jumping into say dating or berries with all the big boys?

bb_wolfe

Even if you're throwing .10 clicks at the page/site, that's still only 1000 views a day @ $100. Enough to get a baseline eventually, but not a lot of early significance in the numbers.

1000 clicks to LP
200 clicks to offer
Sample CPA $2.50

10 conversions == $25
40 conversion == $100
80 conversion == $200

You'll have some $25 days then some $200 days and once in a while a $400 day, but in order to really drill deep and find out what works for that traffic, you'll need more than 1000 clicks a day.

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nukeleearr

When you say 1000 clicks a day, is that including split testing? I'm asking because I was initially planning on doing 250 click samples for my split tests... which I thought was a fairly liberal amount... am I wrong?

bb_wolfe

250 clicks per variable is nothing.

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StackCash

+rep

I've been trying to get going for the past few months, and my biggest break through is learning what you were able to put into words in this thread. In essence, get a bankroll that's not laughable, and then be prepared to lose it. I'm in this "accumulation" phase now, and it feels great to actually accomplish something towards a goal. It's not big money by any means, but it's the idea of being on the right track.

Things I've been doing to make me $0-$200 a week:

-Fiverr.com - Writing Content for $5 a pop
-Fiverr Arbitrage - Finding popular services for $5 and reselling for $10+ elsewhere.
-Free Traffic - Article Marketing, Forum Marketing, Social Bookmarking, etc....getting $20+ a week from this.
-Ebay - selling guitar gear I don't need, raiding the girlfriend for shit she doesn't want, old books, dvds, cds.

I've got some other things that I'm trying out, too, but haven't seen results yet.

All I know is that I have to hustle for the opportunity to get started. I've spoken to enough people, in real life, to I know the hard work will be worth it.

dmnEPC

+rep for OP

Definitely worthy of a Sticky.

A lot of people are out of IM in a month or two for just this reason alone. Just because you want to make money, doesn't mean you will. Do some work and get paid pretty simple. Freelancing is a great way to come up with fast cash. You would be surprised was people will pay to throw up a Wordpress site or put together an Ebook. You can make as little or as much as you want.

Other than putting cash in your pocket. You will also get good at learning the back-end of this business (very important) and you will get new ideas that you can build upon for your own business.

Walden

Holy shit. Best post. Fucking A+
The hardest thing that I find is reaching a happy medium between investing enough money to learn & spending too much to lose out on the rest of my life (buying a house, travels, keeping girlfriend happy, maintaining my own sanity) etc.
Some absolute golden nuggets in there.
Thanks BB.

fm1234

Great post. I think money management kills almost as many newbies as lack of focus and following guru advice does.


Frank

Nohel

If you really need cash and you can communicate relatively well in English conversation, odds are, you can write. Doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to make sense. If you can do that, you can make nice money to bankroll your AM pursuits. Go to the SBT, offer a couple peeps a sample, get some reviews, and start your writing. People are ALWAYS looking for good content. I'm one of them.

Save. Test. Regroup. Test More. Bank.

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind!

THE SERP ASSASSIN
Get Your HIGH PR Contextual Links TODAY!

Compound

+ rep

good shit

i'm bumping this b/c everyone (new or experienced) should read this thread

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1825 Tulane

too long; read anyway

+rep

WickedWeasel

Great guide man ! +rep for ya

papajohn56

Stickied.

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cupidstunt

+rep this is true for so many things in life. BR management is #1.

bb_wolfe

3/11/2011 UPDATE

Ok, so to prove this works, I took some Onforce jobs this month. 9 came in, I accepted 6.

Call# / Work required / Payout

1 / Point of Sale replacement @ Taco Bell (35 mins work) / $85
2 / Telephone jack rewire @ residential home (10 mins work) / $250
3 / Replace RAID Battery in Dell server (4 mins work) / $80
4 / Replace RAID Battery and HDD (hotswap) in Dell Server (15 mins work) / $85
5 / Insurance survey of item damaged in transit (Took 25 photos with DroidX, zipped them up and sent to FTP site of client.) 23 minutes point to point from my house to their shop back to my house / $120
6 / KVM Site Survey - Photograph site and measure so company can prep for KVM over IP installation in May. (15 mins work) / $120

Even though most of it was stupid simple, I asked for detailed repair manuals for every job and they were emailed to me each time. So even if you didn't know something, odds are excellent you can learn quick.

So right there we have 1.7 hours of actual work and we had $740 in actual revenue. This was over 28 days. I declined maybe $300 worth of work since it was either too far or it was a VoIP phone system and I hate those fucking things.

Onforce takes a cut of your earnings of 10%, so actual earnings was just shy of $700.

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bb_wolfe

Edit: Also, I made sure to do these between 12-1p or after 5p. You can easily have a full time job and do this!

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Atlasj

Great guide, really appreciate the time that went into sharing it. Some creative financing concepts I hadn't thought of in here.

cgh85

im a newbie, money management is something i need to improve on, thanks for the advice

millsky

I am totally with you on this major problem. It's pretty clear there are trade offs that we all have to make. Just figure out what you value, how much you value it (the tricky part) and make your decisions from there.

NJForever

Does anyone know of a company like Onforce in Canada?

bb_wolfe

MooseForce.com

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IMHopeful

OnForce - The Marketplace for Computer Repair Services, IT Rollouts & Technology Installations

NJForever

LOL..... MooseForce.com

I think I will register that domain.

usrecord

That's really great topic. It a good post ans guide for all newbies.

IMHopeful

gettaworkeh.ca
frog-force.ca

Don't forget about ski-repair services and igloo building company websites (always in need of workers who can handle our frigid climate.

od265

I Love it simple direct and to the point no b.s... no excuse...

NameOfTheGame

Man is a heck load of information man... especially the beginning is very interesting to read... i believe that many people start out with big money problems and wish that the internet can help them out!

chris porter

Thanks for the informative post, man you provided a lot of detail and information!

writtenstyle

My problem is, I have saved the $4K after reading this Thread. Now, I am afraid to lose it.

Sux for me!

vsiyer

Very useful info. No one can become a successful entrepreneur without learning how to raise and manage money properly

Shadz91

This is freaking awesome! I can see why it is a sticky.

Thank you for posting this, it's amazing that when you start out you have an idea of what you want to do, then you find out what you should be doing :P. Once again awesome post

clyde

Fuckin A right here

+rep

/\/\achete

Awesome post. This helped get me off the ground a few months ago. I did article writing with Textbroker. Still kind of do. That helped me pay off some SEO stuff. Now I have enough to test with some paid sources.

+rep

Altec

Great post...Thanks.

WebDevMan

Thank you very much for this thorough write-up.

I have recently been considering PPC and was wondering what the startup bank would be like - now I know it's quite a bit higher than expected!

My bank is $300/month alone, and I can step it up with my business partner matching it.

If I look at say 2000 impressions per carefully tested keyword, do you think that will be enough data?

We have a $15 pure profit eBook, that's actually ledgit - my friend is a gold medalist in the olympics with 30 years exp training and we'd like to get this selling, so I was thinking PPC. (it's also going up on Amazon as a paperback, but the margins are quite low hence the eBook focus).

I'm also a math major - so numbers are kind of my thing. With a $600/month budget, think I can expect to start making a positive ROI in 6 months if I select and analyze my keyword performance well?

Thanks again,
WDM

bb_wolfe

THIS:

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roncllff

Thank you very much for the great post, i really appreciate it

smithk

It such a useful thing.I'ved been into many forums but I didn't make into them...
I have read all this topic and I'm always feel excited reading it.Thanks buddy..

phoenixrising

How would you suggest going about getting the professional reference if you are currently hustling on your own and don't know any professionals within the IT industry?

bb_wolfe

Where do you need a reference?

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phoenixrising

Oh sorry, OnForce.

ccrookston

I'm still trying to learn all the anachronisms around here. What is SBT?

bb_wolfe

Since you're 'local' (4 hours away), I'll be nice.

Sell/Buy/Trade.

Section here on WF.

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bb_wolfe

Friend + cell phone?? I dunno, just figure it out!

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BitWriter

Just chiming in to say that it's usually NOT a good idea to finance your first campaign(s) with a credit card, without having the "real" money to back it up. This is how I've racked up a few G's of debt from unsuccessful campaigns, which I'm struggling to pay off now.

Use real money (i.e., debit card), so if/when your campaign tanks, you won't be struggling to come up with "real" money to pay off the "fake" money you spent. It's a horrible feeling to take a huge risk with credit (money you don't have), thinking the campaign will make enough to pay it off, then have your campaign flop and a big pile of CC debt staring you down.

I know that some people have pulled it off, which is why I said that it's usually not a good idea. But chances are that you would be the rule, not the exception.

bb_wolfe

Don't let the door hit you in the VAGINA on the way out. Scared money == no money. This ain't a guaranteed game, nigga. If you're playing with money you can't afford to lose, you're a motherfucking cocksucking idiot.

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DarkB

Everything acceptable other than starting your first campaign with loads of cash. Probably the dumbest idea i have ever heard on an affiliate marketing forum. You think everybody who will start their first online campaign will start raking in with a good ROI? They will fail here or there. It has happened and will happen. Would never suggest anyone to start with a big wallet on his own. No experience and getting big will get your vagina a slammin rod. And yeah scared money = little money and != no money. Only start taking risks when you have got backup options available.

Choice Trade

I am impress through you guidance