Newbie with $20K, desire to succeed, and wants to create a six figure business.

Be careful about flaunting "money to invest" around here. You will undoubtedly be inundated with PM's and emails from people that know just where you should invest your dough.

That is a good plan, but be careful if you invest all your money in websites and they are all connected to Google webmasters tools that you stay whitehat all the way. If you violate any rules, big G will shut you down no matter how big your empire is.

Put $19,500 in the bank use the other 500$ on things you actually need. Domains, web hosting, outsourcing cash, aweber service, scrapebox, article spinners. DO NOT PURCHASE everything that comes up in your inbox.

If you want to invest, look into purchasing a site off flippa that is already a decent income on autopilot.

Don't let your wallet think for you.

I'd go for a mentor, personally. Find someone who you trust, who's already successful, who's willing to give you a trial call and who will hold you accountable for your progress. That's a hard combination, but when you find it, it's golden.

Do you have hosting? If not HostGator is having a Fourth of July 40% off sale on their most popular plans. The sale ends at midnight.

As mentioned above, you're current aspirations of owning niche websites will only require $500 investment at the most.

If you're serious about investing $20k you need to think bigger. I mean for that amount I bet you could probably buy all the other websites in your niche!

Focus on what you are passionate about, then try to develop a product or service that incorparates them.

The greatest mentor is free. Success leaves clues.

Don't just burn out your money buying everything. Stick to one thing and Take action. You will see the success.

Chances are if you have to ask the public what to do with your money, you should just save it. Whether or not you have $20,000, that truly is unneeded. There are people on this forum that have started with dime-sized budgets and have successfully made money. So, here is my advice to you: Save your money and use it when you truly need to. Don't buy every single tool, course or golden-eye product out there. Find something that interests you and start researching.

Get in your car, drive down the highway and throw the $20k out the window.

Then focus on learning business and not just throwing money around hoping something sticks.

How about spending a small portion with a good mentor which there are several and have them guide you like you need that seems invaluable. I think Tristan Bull is $500 and had great reviews leaves you with $19,500 to automate and hire people to help speed up what you learn.

My 2 cents,
Fred

Even though you have enough to make a serious investment, be as careful with that 20k as you would be if you had 1k. I know some people who have burned through that much money IN A HURRY and their biggest mistake was NOT LEARNING. Money is awesome because you can pay others to do stuff you are not good at, but you should always understand the process so you can truly make educated decisions. Even if you never do your own SEO or copywriting or web design or anything you should at least learn about it so you can know when and how to make the right hires.

You seem to understand this, just do not lose site of it. You can PM me if you want more guidance. I love friends with money

Hold on to most of your money. There is a great deal of information to help you to get started and it costs you absolutely nothing. Yes there are some gurus who will be happy to lighten your wallet by a few thousand dollars to sell you the same well packaged information you can find yourself with a little work.

But once you do get started, it certainly does help to be able to invest in well designed websites, backlinks to raise search rankings and a few highly recommended tools. Might take $1,000 or so and you'll get a tremendous return for that investment.

The main thing is to do your research and find a strategy which works for you. Once you get going, you can investigate outsourcing to help you to do more things. But take it slowly at first until you get more up to speed. You have an excellent plan so I wish you the best with it.

As people have already suggested, it's probably best not to think about spending the $20K all at one time. In fact, ideally, you'd never have to spend it, as if you invested a small amount and began earning on it, any future expenses could come out of your profit. It's just so easy to burn through money in IM (not that I'd know this personally, lol) that even if you don't fall for a scam, it can be dangerous to think about having a relatively large amount to invest up front. I suspect most of the successful Warriors here began with a lot less.

If you're looking to learn, The Challenge is probably the best free program I've ever came across.

Dude save yourself the hassle and get a good mentor or business coach. I can't overstate this enough.

You can buy all the tools you want but if you don't know exactly how to use them to get ROI and profit you're losing time. Time is money. Fast Track yourself and get a mentor who has a track record and is reliable.

A mentor can get you up to speed actually making money online in half the time. This is not theory this is from personal experience. I took a business camp program with a business coach and I spent $500 to attend his camp.

You know what my return on investment was: over $100,000 dollars just from one technique he taught me. He taught me a number of things.

Plus a good mentor should have connections with other students who will buy your products. Just from networking with fellow clients of my mentor I generated close to $10,000. This is one of the most important parts of having a good coach or mentor.

They have other connections to students and prominent people who can put you in the money. This is a big advantage many people over look when considering hiring business coaches and mentors. They can give you the hookup!

For instance if you get a good IM mentor that mentor can make a few calls to other prominent IM marketers and put a buzz in their ear about you. You could get JV deals other newbies could only dream about.

Having a mentor could be invaluable for you. You are lucky most IM newbies or students don't have 20gs to invest in their business. We had to bootstrap for years before being able to afford a mentor.

You are way ahead of the pack with that type of investment. I suggest you should be open to investing up to 20% of your savings on a good (proven) IM coach or mentor. Good luck.

Jennifer,

You're off to a good start and you've gotten some good advice and some not so good advice in this thread. But more on that in a second.

My questions to you are: what markets are you targetting? Are you focusing on affiliate marketing? Cost Per Action marketing? Your own product creation? Adsense? Or any combination of those?

Do you plan on building an opt-in e-mail list where you can send people to any link that you want and building a near-passive income over the long term?

You're going to get a wide variety of responses because everyone has their own marketing bias, meaning that whatever has worked for them is what they are going to recommend to you. Many marketers specialize in one or two areas; very seldom do I meet someone who has specialized in more.

Someone who has had great success with using Wordpress and SEO / SEM tactics is going to steer you in that direction. Another marketer who makes a killing with banner advertising might suggest going that route. Of course, article marketers and content marketers are going to focus on using your content to generate targeted traffic so that you can market whatever it is that you're going to market.

The MLMers will point you to their network marketing opportunity and so on and so forth. The marketer who makes money by creating smart phone apps might advise you to look into that.

The thing about IM is that there are dozens of ways to make money. Add the different marketing techniques you can use and those permutations become almost endless. As an example, I have 4 good friends of mine who make a lot of money using PPC marketing, yet all 4 of them do it in very unique and different ways. It's pretty mind boggling on how many variables there are to making all this work.

Some of my SEO buddies would never touch pay-per-click because they do very well getting free traffic. I've done both and think they are both crazy by not expanding their channels of distribution (which is how real big wealth is made online).

Finding a mentor or a coach (not the same thing) is probably a good idea, however, make sure they are going to mentor or coach you in an area that you:

1. Plan on pursuing
2. Are interested in.

Also ask for references and be suspicious of anyone asking for 100% upfront monies because any mentor or coach worth their salt knows that it's a 2 way business relationship and should offer to take 1/3 or 1/2 first and then the rest later (of course those kinds of contracts can come in many different shapes and sizes, I'm just citing some examples).

I've been in business for myself online since 2001 and have tried a lot of different ways to make money online. Some of them were failures and some were wildly successful. There are 3 things that have worked extremely well for me over the years:

1. Creating and marketing my own products.
2. Licensing software or products for others to use.
3. Affiliate marketing

As far as generating traffic for #1 and #3, nothing has worked better for me than paid advertising. However, you can lose your shirt really fast if you don't know how to set up profitable campaigns, how to monitor them, tweak them, and adjust your sales copy to increase your conversions. I recommend Jonathan Mizel's Traffic Evolution course to peple who want to learn the basics about paid advertising and already have some money to invest in some campaigns to "test" out a market.

The two other things that have generated mounds of traffic are affiliates and using content in the form of articles, podcasts, press releases, videos, e-books and free reports, and software.

It has taken me roughly 3 years to really understand how to use all of this together in a profitable way, which is why I recommend you focus on one thing first, get it to where it's profitable and where you have learned the basics, before moving onto the next thing.

You've joined the War Room and that's a great investment, but it can be information overload in there. I'd recommend spending a few days to a week in there, reading and absorbing the knowledge. You can read different opinions on the same subject.

Every marketer needs to learn salesmanship, whether it's in person or in print or the written word. One of the best books on this topic is a book by the late Joe Robson, it's something that I think every marketer should read. I paid about $30 bucks for it a long, long time ago but now it's free over here: Make Your Words Sell! (not an affiliate link).

If you invest your next 3-6 months learning the marketing fundamentals such as sales copy, generating targeted traffic, how to increase conversions, and how to set up winning campaigns, you're going to be much better off in the long run.

RoD

My suggestion to you is like Brian said, for now, keep the savings to yourself. I didn't see it as flaunting or anything, but I would like you to stay safe and protected.

Anyhow. I would figure out what it is you like, like to learn more about, are excited about and find someone who specializes in that area. Invest in yourself. Hire a coach, participate in membership area and don't get distracted by "shiny objects."

Reinvest profits you earn from your training back in the biz. Save some for yourself, treat yourself for your earnings, and put it right back into the biz. Invest in growth of both your education and the earning potential for the biz.

Best of luck my friend. With 20G and the desire to succeed in IM, you'll do fine!
Ryan

[QUOTE=jenniferlne;4193292]So, I am new to IMQUOTE]

Much (good) advice here. Even though you are a savvy monery person with investments, etc., it does not overide the greed factor. Remember
all those people who ever knew Bernie? A good craftsman always measures twice and cuts once. I know you are aware of all this. There are sill individuals who will charm you to get your wallet. Do your research and find someone you can trust. As always learn what you can at first to do it yourself. I know sometimes it does not pay to do things yourself when someone else can do it while you do what you do best.....making $$. Many people say they can do it all. They can even fly, until they stand on the ledge of a building. You are an intelligent person and will come to an intelligent conclusion. Good luck

You have more than enough to become an online success. I would personally go for a mentor so I could hit the ground running as to speak. That's what i'll be doing.

Stick with your gut! If you are good with money you will know what feels right and what does not. If that does not work, research the bejeezers out of the product so you know what you are getting into.

Someone asked me recently what I would do with $10K for my business, and realistically could only think of about $1K I could spend right now.

I already have a mentor, aweber, automated tools, and VA's.

The only additional items I could come up with are better WP themes and maybe more article marketing outsourcing. Other than that, everything else did not seem worth the money.

Andy

Hey Jennifer,

If you have 20k to spend I would highly recommend either 2 routes -

1) PPC
2) Websites

I currently make 1k a week on PPC and that's from an investment of 500 per week. You can also lose money so I wouldnt recommend spending too much on it unless you know what your doing. You can either do PPC with affiliate networks, or PPC with CPA networks which I'm doing both.

You can also get websites created for you such as product websites or anything else and literally just flip them or let them make money for you. Traffic is key for this business and if you don't have targeted traffic - it doesn't matter how much money you have, having the right traffic is what matters. You can get websites from some guys like on odesk.com, elancer.com, technicalwebsite.com, freelancer.com, etc. etc. and ask them to create a website for you and/or a product.

In terms of traffic, you will need alot of targeted traffic and that will be KEY to this online marketing business. I currently pull in around 5k unique visitors per day on some of my websites and that's sometimes even not enough to pull in good income (for me).

I think Rod Cortez gave you some GREAT advice and perspective above, but just wanted to add a couple of things:

1. Don't start buying lots of products, sites, etc. until you've built a few yourself. You don't really know what you need until you try it and and only then you'll be able to find the useful products that will give you shortcuts and save you some time. If you buy sites and don't know how to add content that will earn additional revenue you might not know what you're getting.

2. Start off slow. I'm assuming the 20K you have is for mentorship, products, etc. ONLY and not required for living expenses so, if you're not in a rush, don't rush into it!

Best of luck to you!

I personally think you should invest in both options.

To get yourself off the ground and making some profits, go ahead and outsource. While having others working on your early projects, it should give you enough time to go out and find a good mentor. Learn as much as you can. I feel in this businees that you can never know too much (not saying information overload is good, your lessons need to be properly spread out/tested). Once you feel confident in your abilities you will have a lot of freedom. You can do as much of the leg work as you want to do, and then outsource the rest.

I'm going to piggyback E. Brian Rose here and say be careful with anyone offering you investment oppurtunities. From what you've described, you have enough information products and tools to get yourself to a good place. Stay away from new courses period.

With 20k startup capital you are in a very lucky position. Keep implementing your strategies, and don't let anyone else screw things up for you. It would seem you have a good head on your shoulders so I wouldn't worry too much

It took me 6 months to build a web development/seo business that's now making me $5k+ per month

Check out Flippa.com

Look for sites that have established history of making money (more then 6 months history). You can expect to pay about 10x monthly earnings (more if there is a longer history + growing revenues).

Find 5-10 sites making $100/month (would cost $5,000-10,000). You'll then have $500-$1,000 in month revenues coming in, but more importantly 5-10 sites that you can study and use as a blue print to build NEW sites. These will be your blueprint for building more successful revenue earning sites.

Figure out what seems to be working for those sites, copy and repeat in similar/new niches. You'll have money left to outsource the mundane tasks to grow your network of sites, and you'll be diversified by having 5-10 sites that are already making money.

I assume the OP has gotten what she was looking for as she stopped answering the post. I sent her a PM a while back...good for her what ever she decides.

I hope she made the right choice, only time will tell.

Hopefully, she'll post her success in the future!

The internet is high risk high reward environment. Someone new like yourself will most likely have to lose that $20K to learn the lessons and skills required to make that $20K back and then break even. Most will struggle at that. Lot of people get carried away just aimlessly pumping money into projects, and all these products and services that promise you the world and everything in it.

If you have a 'burning desire' and half an ounce of sense you'll learn the business, before you start pumping money into it. I mean anybody can gamble.

wow good budget to start out with

Also helps if you have an obsessive compulsive desire to make money and build net worth. Also helps if you're money smart, being in debt or buying the next fancy thing isn't how you build net worth. Most people struggle to live below their means, so that's the first skill to master. Being debt free is another thing to master, and then you've got a good foundation to seriously start building real wealth.

You need to leave the spending as much money as I can mentality behind and start getting into the saving and investing mentality and I promise you you'll start to get 'richer'.

You need to become your own financial master.

1. I highly recommend NOT spending another dime on any "course" until you have tested the waters and made some money online. There is enough free info in this forum... and the war room to help you get off the ground and make some initial $$.

That initial experience will help you tremendously.

2. If you do decide to make any purchases make sure its not based on getting excited after reading sales copy for some product you just happened to come across when you were browsing the WSO forum or reading some email newsletter...

In other words make sure its a product that you found because you were seeking a solution to achieve a specific goal or meet a specific need.

3. Budget at least $200 a month for maintaining your business. I recommend you take $2400 and set it aside to cover the following expenses:

A. Hosting
B. Email list management services
C. Shoppingcart and business automation systems

By putting that $2400 aside you guarantee you have money to pay your bills and keep your business rolling which is far more important than buying courses.

4. Set aside $2000 for product and website development. Come up with several good product or service ideas and develop one of them. When doing your first product creation project I recommend investing $1000 into creating the same product twice with two different creative teams. This will help you understand how to pick winning outsourcing and drive creative inspiration. Pick the winner of the two and invest more... after you have made money with it. $500 for product development and $500 for minisite desgin and incidentals is good.

I wish I had more time to write... but hopefully you get the gist of what I am suggesting... invest in DOING not courses filled with crap, hype, and imagined success.

The fastest way to success online is creating your own products and services and getting your feet wet selling... the WF is a great place to practice that as you have the WSO section where you can run your initial offers and get some practice as well as pick up some affiliates if you do well.

Even if your first product or service idea is a flop the money you invest in creating it will be great eduction (within reason... don't be an idiot with money) and you will unlock a flood of new ideas from the experience.

I understand where your coming from. Being so overloading with info you don't know which way to go. For me, creating my success online started with me sitting down and honestly asking myself, "what business model do I really want to pursue?"

I don't particularly like dealing with people(even though I did in up doing some offline consulting because my professional background is in sales). I like having lounge time, and not waking up til noon. So, right there I knew affliate marketing was for me. No, dealing with customer service, no speaking to anyone, just drive traffic and get paid.

From there everything else opened. So, I suggest before you spend a dime of that 20k make sure you know which business model you want to pursue and go for it. And, JUST ONE! Trust trying to be superman(or superwoman) and luanch into 5 business models at once significantly decreases success rates.

Good luck, and let wise decisions be your guiding light.

Put your money away.

You've bought a couple of courses, you've found the Warrior Forum, you're keen ... that should be enough for you to generate enough income to be self-funding now.

Take your $20k and invest it in a brick and mortar business. I'm sure you can find something you can get into for that amount. You'll blow so much of that on absolutely nothing that you'll regret ever getting into IM.

If you really want to have your own online business, look into creating an ecommerce store with a private label company of some kind & promote the site with media buys, etc.

My suggestion is to delete your account. Create a new one, lurk and read everything you can - don't spend any more cash money - then slowly start talking IM/SEO...when you are sure you won't be asking any stupid questions that have been asked 847 times before you arrived.

Deleting your account is the only way to ensure you won't get scammed out of that 20k you have saved up by the many, many sharks in these I.M. seas.

I've spent exactly $99 on software, and subscribe to another $143.95 in monthly services that help my my life easier (and the occassional WSO - thank you Matt). The only piece of software I found valuable worth paying for is AMR. I subscribe to BMR, SEScout, and Backlinkindexer.

The only course you need is practical application. I'm making money, slowly but surely headed towards working full time in IM...but taking advice from some electron who claims to be an expert is a recipe for getting ripped off.

Good luck!!! I'm sure you were already warned of all these things before my reply, but I am short for time and didn't have time to read through.

I really don't believe that there is any substitute for just rolling up your sleeves and getting experience and that doesn't take $20k.

Honestly, having money to invest can SLOW you down because it can lead to the false comfort of believing you can "buy experience".

The recommendation to put $19,500 in the bank and use $500 for the basics, is probably the best advice of this thread...

Great job on reaching out Jennifer and good luck with Tristen Bull program, I have heard some good things about it.
My advice for you would to embrace yourself in Social Media and brand yourself as a leader in which ever Internet Marketing based niche/angle you chose. It's all about being You Inc. to be successful or you will forever be selling someone else product.
Lastly, learn Search Marketing like Google, MSN and Facebook PPC at an expert level as well as Media buys/Ad Networks.
Good luck with your venture !!!!

This is the problem with many newbies stepping into IM, there's just way too much info that can get a person doing too much. If you could find a particle avenue of promotion you are interested in such as writing articles, and follow that until you get the required results, then once you have mastered that, move onto to other avenues

Put $19 000 in the bank use the other 1000$ on things you actually need. Domains, web hosting, outsourcing cash, aweber service, scrapebox, article spinners. DO NOT PURCHASE everything that comes up in your inbox.

If you want to invest, look into purchasing a site off flippa that is already a decent income on autopilot.

Once you have a few of your 10 sites producing profit, use some of your money to outsource the exact tasks to replicate those sites in different niches. I think replication is the key to big success in this industry.

wow....sounds like you are serious about making it work, but be careful...the internet is full of sharks just lurking to get your money. I've learned the hard way like a lot of newbies. I started an online business and had no idea about marketing. the company is amazing is teaching all the white hat tactics and even Social media and all you need to succeed but I thought I new it better and wanted to reinvent the wheel......I ended up loosing a lot of money. I should have listened to the people above me and truly only do one thing and that is duplicate what they have done before me as they have already take out the negative from the path to success. If you are interested in personal Development and want a successful and proven online business I can only suggest what I am doing.....the products are life changing and the training is second to non! Let me know if you if you are interested or if you have found what you have been looking for....I am curious if there is anything I don't know about!

Don't just burn out your money . Just Stick to one plan first and take massive action . You will succeed with smart work.

A lot of good advice here. I wish I had found this forum when I started. It is easy to spend way too much money in the wrong places. It took me three years to learn that I need to focus on one project until it is successful before moving on to more. I had way too much going on and did not make any money when I started. Best of luck.

ANSWER: Slow Roll It!

While I enjoy your enthusiasm, I would suggest you take just ONE of those niche sites and launch it first.

Then, I would go in and perform as much of the work as possible on that first site... (can anybody say "learning curve")

Make sure your site is clean, relevant, adds value & loads super-super fast.

When you are more familiar with the "WHOLE" process, then you will be better equipped to put a team together.

Otherwise, you won't really know what to ask for when outsourcing!

As a sidenote: I sincerely hope you hooked up with the right folks for your SEO work.

There are very few individuals who actually know how to get you top search results (and keep you there).

And when it comes to content, NOBODY writes like Jimmy Brown... ( ie: imstitute(.)com/TheCopySystem/ ) - accept maybe Nicole Dean.

Seriously, go read the sales copy and then pattern your content after that.

Inform, entertain, educate and build a brand for yourself (and future company)


Just remember: Slow Roll It!

Well I'm not one of the gurus and to be honest much of IM doesn't thrill me So I'm going to read between the lines and say that you obviously had a job and career that produced some cash but you didn't really like it. Saving up that kind of money just to start would indicate to me that you wanted to start something beyond just making money doing something just for the pay but something you enjoyed and had meaning to you.

You are unlike most IMers that start out. You can move into a niche you really like create solid content on your site and in your offers and create a web presence of substance. The only thing that would be missing is the authenticity of doing something that people can sense a mile off you are passionate about and immerse yourself in that niche to be an real expert.

So to me its not about the techniques and the tools and frankly even the mentoring . You already bought stuff so you already knew that it wasn't going to cost you $20,000 to get that. So theres more to this. Its going to be you choosing something that you care about and will immerse yourself into beyond just finding some random CPAs , affiliate opportunities etc.

If you do that I think you will be set.

I would first invest in some good coaching, spend couple of grands on it and it will be the best investment you will ever do. Let someone who did 6 figure business show you exactly how it needs to be done. I think its the easiest and quickest way to succeed in IM.

Come up with a decent online business plan and work towards that plan daily. With that kind of cash, it makes sense to outsource where you can and gain leverage right away. Too many people spin their wheels trying to do everything themselves. Not enough time in the day to do everything or be a control freak. Concentrate on those things that make you money instead.

I do not know if there tax efficient savings available to you (similar to the cash ISA in the UK). I would probably invest that kind of money into tax efficient long-term savings and focus a % of it producing a product of your own, or choose 1 product (and 1 product only) to focus on. Thats the way I'm intending to do it.

test 3 ways of making money online which are 100% outsourcable.
Make a choice after your test and upscale big time !

A lot of good things have been said. With $20K you have a huge marketing budget. You just need to figure what it is that you want. Especially what excites you. If it excites you, it will excite other as well.

You are already good at article writing, which a great skill to have. If it was me that kind of money, I would take it step-by-step. Try to be honest with yourself and try to figure which skills you lack. Then go out and learn each skill step-by-step. If it is SEO you need/want to learn more about, then go out and don't just learn become an expert be as good as you can be in SEO. Instead of trying to gain a lot of different skills at once, it is better to stay focused at one thing at a time. If it is SEO, Copywriting, Article Writing, Programming you name it.

You're getting a lot of bad advice.

People are telling you to do some PPC, CPA, product development, affiliate marketing, etc. They say you have more than enough money to succeed. WTF???

Success isn't a matter of throwing money out there and hoping it grows. How much money you have has no bearing whatsoever on whether you can succeed. There is an old saying: A hungry dog hunts best. It doesn't sound like you want to be a "hungry hunter". Sounds more like you want to pay someone to hunt for you.

When people ask me how they can succeed online I always ask them the same question, "What are you willing to sacrifice in order to succeed?"

You can't buy your way to the top in this business. Money won't buy you friends, partners, or relationships--all of which are needed.

Alyonafrendo, above, took the words out of my mouth. There are a lot of people on this forum who have been working their ass off for months, even years, and have yet to make a dime online. And then people come in here with stories of how they have tens-of-thousands of dollars to dump and try to buy their way to success. Just saying.

I'm not ragging on your desire to succeed. I hope you do, really. But I'd suggest keeping your personal finances to yourself--they have very little to do with whether you succeed online. People here have started with only $50 and turned that into $20,000-a-month businesses. But they did it with hard work, making sacrifices, learning the ropes and taking some hard knocks along the way. I respect that approach!!! --Mike

True. It is a matter of either time or money or at bit of both. Money doesn't gurantee success. You still need to know what it is you are doing.