Hi there,
One thing I wanted to take a look at today is the very basics you will need to be a successful online webrepreneur.
Despite certain quarters telling you that you never have to spend a dime there are some basic monthly costs you will have to consider. Don’t worry now they’re not all essential but they all need to be considered and some can’t be avoided.
First up is hosting and buying domains. Its always good to have at least one domain and some hosting. Don’t get me wrong, web 2.0 properties such as Squidoo and weebly are free and can be better SEO optimized in the short term but it’s best to have some form of hosting anyway. I use hostgator for hosting and I get my domains via Namecheap. Both are really easy to use and have great helplines if you do get stuck. Hostgator have the “hatchling” package for, I think 5 bucks a month. TOTAL COST $5 PER MONTH + APX.$10 FOR A DOMAIN
The second essential item that must be had by all successful marketers is an autoresponder. I’m not going to teach you how to suck eggs but in case your unsure what this is, it’s a way of setting up a list of follow up emails for new subscribers, so that when they sign up to your list they automatically get a set of emails over a period of time. This saves a huge amount of time. Aweber, who I’ved used for nearly 3 years are the industry standard. Favored and used by most they make it very easy for a total newbie to go in and create a sign up form on there site and have automated messages going out that very day. They have excellent tutorials and they will show you step by step exactly what to do. TOTAL COST $17 PER MONTH
Thirdly, you will need some kind of budget. Mainly for advertizing if you decide to use Adwords (Pay Per Click) or any other form of advertising. Realistically if you want to test a market out you will need to have a small PPC test to see if the markets viable. A niche may get a ton of traffic but they may not be buyers. We don’t want browsers we want buyers. A small PPC test can show you whether the traffic is hungry or just window shopping. This essential and overlooked by a lot of people. Not all traffic is equal. TOTAL…OPTIONAL.
Basically, these three things are all you need to get started. You will need other things as you move upwards but these are the basics. So on that note I’ll leave it up to you. If you would like to ask any questions on what we’ve discussed email me at vanstratums@googlemail.com
All the very best,
Richard
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Hey, nice post, very well written. You should write more about this.