What's the minimum $$$ required to start off?

Hi,

Could the experienced folks suggest the mimimum $$ required to start, test and be profitable?

I know the $ amount would vary & depend on a whole bunch of things. I'm only experienced with clickbank & would like to know if I'm ready to test out azoogle.

Azoogle has said okayed me, but I wanted to know if I have (financially/technically) what it takes.

Thanks Guys.

 

depends on if you have traffic already, then it costs zero. if you don't buy traffic and see what happens. if not, use ppc methods but be careful due to high costs w/ some niches (ringtones)

 

Thanks. I should have given more details.

I don't plan on promoting any of the insanely competetive niches like dating or ringtones & I plan on using PPC.

Any estimates?

 

Regardless of niche, if you go after the long-tail or keywords others aren't, you could start with as little as a couple hundred bucks. You could also try Content Network... but read up on it first.

 

Stay away from clickbank. At the very least you need $100k in assests to get started in affiliate marketing. I suggest taking out a loan if you don't have that much.

 

Cut, are you serious?

 

Cut... you are very wrong in your statement. The minimum required to get into this business is $1,345,333.02 - Very easy to come up with. I recommend you get as many high interest credit cards as you can... max them out... and take as many loans out on your home as you can

Okay, now that we have all the nonsense put aside... you really need to be some-what comfortable starting out in this business, about $1,000... but if you have $100, you can start out, but you will have to move in smaller steps, and then keep reinvesting your profits as you get them.

 

I started with about $600...

 

Thank you all. Thats what I wanted to know. Am going all in with 600$.

 

Cool, good luck

Take your time, but also be willing to take risks

If you are smart with your $600, you will be able to start turning profits whether it be one week from now or 6 months from now...and don't dump all of it into 1 campaign.

 

WOW 100k....are u serious. You can start with way less than that. Even as little at $1000 is what I think is a good amount to start with

 

With GTAce's help -- and his other forum members advice, its only took me a month to earn $10 a day.

It's not a lot -- but it took me MUCH longer then a month to earn anything with adsense.

I started with $10 a day and have now got it at $20 a day, and am soon going to try $50 a day.

$10 cost = $15 return = $3/$5 profit
$20 cost = $25 return = $8/$10 profit
$50 cost = $??? return = $???profit (I'll soon see )

So, i would say you could start with as little as $10 a day.

 

Do you guys just concentrate on Adwords?, or do you split the campaigns among YSM & Adcenter also?

 

The number one objective in Affiliate Marketing is to get traffic to the offers your are promoting. While many use Google's Adwords since it is the most popular source for traffic online, you should by no means discount YSM, Adcenter, etc... In my experience I tend to get higher conversion rates from Google's search traffic, but I pay a little more than I would anywhere else.

But again, you are looking for traffic that converts. Pick a traffic source, give it a try for a few days, and see what happens.

Remember: You must learn to crawl before you can walk, and you must walk before you can run.

 

I mainly only use Google and Yahoo, but that's only because I can't find time to get a lot running with MSN. If I had more time, I'd definitely dive deeper into MSN and others (Ask.com), but I only have time to focus on Google and Yahoo right now.

Google obviously has the most volume, by far, but it's also the most expensive. Yahoo is next in volume. I recommend that people new with PPC stick strictly with Yahoo while they're starting out. Yahoo has pretty good volume and is relatively easy to work with (as far as keywords/landing page quality is concerned). Adwords can be a beast to figure out sometimes, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can throw away a lot of money there...Not to say that Yahoo is easy though, it's just easier than Google.

 

I started with $8 for a domain and $10 for a years worth of hosting. That and $2000 in AdCenter coupons.

While the $200 coupons are gone, you can still start with $50 or $100 at YSM.

 

If you're hurting for money, I would do SEO instead of PPC. Once you get link popularity, then try doing PPC. your clicks will be cheaper by then because you're QS will be better.

 

I totally agree with the above statement

 

As suggested by GTAce & Webgenesis, I had started off with yahoo. I started at the top. My bids were 45-50C a click and I was at the #1 position. After gathering enough clicks, I noticed I was spending more than what I was making. So I gradually started lowering my bids till I was in the 4-6 positions. Unfortunately, now my clicks have dried up completely.

I also realized that I need to open multiple accounts to target countries other than US & CA. Presently I have only 1 account and targetting only the US & CA and yet got a sale from NZ!!!

In yahoo, for some of my ads, the ctr is like 7% and yet the blue-bar/Quality-Index is only 3. IS 7% not a good ctr?

For now, I'm using only exact match & long tail . Should I be using broad match for long tail? ..i know..test ..test.. right?

When we create a new Adgroup, we can opt for either advanced or standard match. I chose standard match, coz that seemed to be the one for targetting exact match. Once I choose "standard match", do I need to qualify my keywords with [brackets] , or is it not required?

Thank you all for your time and tips.

GTAce..I realize you are on twitter, but was wondering if you have a blog or site. I was spending way too much time following everybody around on twitter and so deleted my twitter account :-(

 

It's not unusual to see a lot of traffic early on with new Yahoo campaigns and then lose traffic for no reason after a few days. That happens all the time with Yahoo.

Also, quality index is not based solely on CTR...and a 7% CTR, believe it or not, might not be considered "good" if you are at the #1 position. The quality of CTR is dependent on the position of your ad and the CTR of the ads around yours.

I don't have a blog, can't bother with one right now and don't worry, I don't say much on Twitter anyways. People mainly use that to push their own stuff, and when you don't have a blog to push, you don't have much reason to "tweet"