Starting out your own business is something that can really take it’s toll on your bank account as well as your psyche. You are most likely going to have to work in endless hours for a long time before you start seeing any real income. Usually entrepreneurs are people who don’t want to be making money for someone else, but are willing to put in as many hours as possible to make the money for themselves. I count myself in the previous category even if I am not completely like that.
Do I need money for my business
When I first started out with internet marketing I really had no idea what it was. There were quite a lot of different websites giving away information – some for free and some for a price. I seriously think that the best decisions that I ever made are related to actually not buying anything before I knew anything. There are a lot of internet marketers like problogger.com that are willing to promote something to you that is not going to make you any money. Some of these guys make a living off selling stuff to newbies who don’t know what to buy – easy markets because you can tell them what you want and they won’t know anything better. They are likely to trust you as the expert in the area since you are the first one who put impressive sentences together about the subject, in a manner that makes you feel special for even considering buying something off from them.
At the time I was starting I was eager to learn the free way to make money. And the day I found Grizzly’s website I thought that all my questions were answered and it did not involve a price tag. The problem with methods like this is that many people don’t really trust them because he is not charging any money to teach it, neither does it really involve any spending of money when you start off. It is only going to take a lot of time and work, but when you eventually start seeing that money, you can laugh your way to the bank, because you are not investing anything to produce your income. I have come to realize something, and that is that I am spending way too much on the wrong things. It might sound weird to some people but I am spending 110% of what I earn online, back in to my business. This time in fact I am using the money on completely the wrong things and I am going to cut down my expenses and try to shift them towards the correct things.
I have not been good at budgeting and that is why I have decided to start doing it to some extent. Last week I was doing some calculations about where I am spending my money and I realized that I am spending 75% of all my online income to something that is not content. I have been writing about not spending money on content previously, but that is only when you don’t know what you are doing. I think that I have some faint idea of what I am supposed to do, and that is why I am shifting my spending towards buying high quality articles. I basically have hired a “personal” writer who can produce great quality researched articles to me in a reasonable time and at a reasonable price. I am going to start a project – or I already have – which is going to be a quite targeted website with a lot of articles and my plans are to make it an authority site. If I can have one in the niche that I am targeting, It is going to be a good place to sell stuff 
I am a bit off tracks here… So lets get back to the I need money for my business part of this post…
The online marketing business is a great thing to be a part of since you are not risking too much with it. If you keep spending only the amount that you earn you are not going to file bankruptcy and if you don’t quit your dayjob you are not riskin anything. The investments that most people are making are not that huge, but at the same time they think that they are always going to get off by not paying anything. Don’t be a cheap bastard when it comes to building your own business – if you think something is really valuable for you to advance, don’t start counting the pennies if you can afford it. Remember that there are methods like the keyword academy that are going to give you great advice on how to get that business started with as little investments as just getting a hostgator hosting account and a few domains. I have been a member of TKA and I can say that they are really an easy way to get started in this business, but for me It was not something that I feel is useful anymore and I will explain myself.
It is important that you justify your decisions to yourself and for me I could not find that many reasons to stay signed up, because I think that I was not using the services enough to pay the ridiculously low price that they offered. They do give you access to some really good stuff but once again you need to be using it to make a difference. I have been a subscriber to one of the networds that they openly promote but just recently realized that I am not using it as much as I should to pay for it. I just find it way too tedious to be writing the articles for that particular service to be able to get enough out from it. And that is why I need to re-budget and try to shift my spending towards 50% services/networks, 25% domains and 25% content. I have quite a few hosting accounts on budget services like 2gb hosting who are offering a SEO package for under $10 a month. Check it out at least! I also have a fatcow account and a lot more. Most of my hostings I have paid for one or two years in advance so I don’t count them in my expenses.
So I have to write a to do/not to do list for my near future to get the right things done and get rid of extra expenses.
- Don’t get any more hosting accounts – the ones that I have right now are going to be enough to provide me a decent number of C-class IP’s.
- I am going to stop paying for one of the networks that I am involved in – writing two rewrites of an article is just way too booring for me and I don’t really appreciate too much the results to be honest. It can be great for some websites but I prefer to do it differently and less… spammy.
- I am going to stop buying aged domains for now – unless something really great drops by. I have a few which I should be able to take “to the next level” and there is already too much updating to do.
- I am going to set a daily schedule of what I need to get done. Write a specific amount of posts on my blogs, and do a specific amount of backlinks on my support sites. If I can do more, I will.
- Planning is nice and I am going to do more of it. Instead of doing drawings about building my network (I have been doing quite a lot of that at work LOL) I am going to do something that really matters.
- For the next month I plan on not buying any more domains. Unless I find a really promising keyword and that is the only situation where I am going to get a new domain. I have a lot of updating to do and that is why I need to spend my time on my current websites instead of new ones. I have neglected a few websites completely even though I am ranking on page #2 for the main keyword, I have not been doing the extra work to get them on page #1 – silly me.
So I really do need money for my business, but I am not looking for a loan or anything. I just need to get my spending habits under control and start raking in more! And by the way, if you did not already read the latest on MMOFB then do so! He drops a bomb once again and ends all suspicions about authority sites.
Inspired by Griz I am going to start 2 authority projects. One is going to be on an aged domain which already has an .edu link and quite a few of pr4 links to start with – this is going to be a very general site and I am going to write the content mostly myself. The other site is going to be on a new domain and it is going to be in a quite a large niche and I am mostly going to outsource the content. This way I can see for myself what needs to be done to get the authority, and how much it actually rakes.
