Affiliate Website Budget - Invest to Find Success!

May 15, 2008

Yesterday, I started a new series of posts aimed at the 20 Reasons you will FAIL with Build a Niche Store. Today, I will cover reason #2, setting a Budget for Affiliate Website Marketing! In order to earn money on the Internet, you do NOT have to spend an arm and a leg to get started, but the amount you DO spend will be reflected in your earnings along the way!

I get quite a few questions asking about about which directory submitter software to buy, which keyword research tools to buy etc, the bottom line is that you don’t HAVE to purchase anything except the software, hosting and a domain name, aside from that… the rest is up to your budget and the amount of work you want to do!

Assume for a moment you only have $200 to invest in your affiliate website budget in order to get started with Build a Niche Store for the first month. Where will that money go?

Affiliate Website Budget - Must Spend $114.10
The list below represents what you MUST have in order to get started!

$97.00 is going to cover the Build a Niche Store Software
One of the biggest benefits of this however, is that you can create unlimited affiliate websites for that single cost. You will never need to buy it again and updates (while time consuming) are free for the life of the product!

$7.15 for your first Domain Name at GoDaddy
I use GoDaddy for all of my domain names primarily due to the ease of management and discount codes that are always readily available here! Using OYH3 takes $3 off every .com and .com renewals! Domain names can be registered for any number of years… there are actually benefits to registering longer than just one year (more below) but 1 year is the minimum!

$9.95 each month for HostGator Website Hosting
Now that you have the software and a domain name, you have to have a hosting system, or webhost, in order to make your content available on the Internet. HostGatoroffers some of the most flexible hosting you can find and has a wide basket of free tools like blogs, ecommerce, forums, etc, ready to install on your site!

Affiliate Budget Surplus: $85.90

Since you have a few dollars left over for the first month, where could it be best spent? The items below are not required to get started, but if you do not do research for your site, you may as well fling poo at the wall and wait to see what sticks!

$14.30 To Extend your Domain Registration to 3 Years!
Google actually holds a patent that has a reference to this. On page 2, section [0099] is says:

• Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

$59/Month or $329 Annually: WordTracker Keyword Research - Since 1997, WT has been a consistent leader in keyword research. I have used WT for several years and find that my results come the quickest with WordTracker. WordTracker also provides a Free Research Tool you can use to test the waters…

Free: Google Adwords Suggestion Tool - If you are going to use ANY free tool, go direct to the reason we are doing this! Google does not provide exact metrics with raw numbers, but the slider charts are a good start if you do nothing else!

$24.95/Month or $197 Annually:  TeraPeak Auction Research - Since we are promoting eBay Auctions, it only makes sense to use their own metrics! There is also a FREE Research tool available through terapeak that provides basic information to get you started! Just go to TeraPeak and click on Free Research on the top menu!

I only list the three services above for good reasons! While I have my own subscriptions to 4 different keyword research tools, WordTracker always provides the most consistent and best results in my opinion! If I only had $60 in my budget for research tools, WordTracker would be choice! If I had NO budget for research, I would use the Google suggestion tool. For the product or Niche Research, TeraPeak is the only choice since their data comes from the exact marketplace we are building our fortunes with!

Monthly Expenses
After the initial investment for the Build a Niche Store software, you will have a monthly expenses.

• $9.95 Hostgator Hosting
• $59.00 if you choose to use a tool like WordTracker

See how easy that is? If you chose not to use any research tools, ALL you have to spend is the cost for your hosting account! As you begin expanding your pool of websites, you will incur domain name registration costs, but the level at which you add new sites can be controlled by your own ambitions!

Time is Money - Don’t Waste Either!

Everyone should be able to determine a dollar amount to what they think their time is worth. Personally, I consider my own time worth $50-$100 per hour depending on the project! It may sound like a large amount but when you consider everything it takes to run a business, its not much! (Research self employment tax) The point is… if you are spending 2 hours performing a task that can be purchased for $15.00, why? In the beginning of your adventure into affiliate marketing, you may think it is best to do all of things yourself and in some cases, if you have never done things like directory submissions before, it may be beneficial to at least know how they are done.

The items below are very nice to budget for:

$10-$15 for 100 PR2 or Higher Directory Submissions for each Site.
Yes, they make directory submission software… and it works well! The problem is that it takes quite a bit of time to keep the software up to date, enter the site information into the software, track the submissions etc. I think I used a directory submitter only one or two times, before I realized that paying someone $15.00 to do it for me was quite a bargain! It took 5 minutes to send them the information… and I was done with it! Within a few days I got a nice report with 110 directories that received my submission, all sorted by PR!

$10-$50 for Aged Domains
There are many places on the web to buy domain names people no longer want! For whatever reason, there are 90,000+ domains that expire every day! Some are 1 year old, some are 15 years old… I manage an ecommerce site for a wholesale closeout dealer who had 2 domains for 15 years. They always pointed the unpopular domain name at their primary site and used it for email purposes. When they got a renewal notice, they didn’t take heed to the warning that it was going to expire and let it go! It was picked up on a auction site for $35.00 and was an IMMEDIATE hit for the new owner! If you can find a deal on an aged domain, Buy It!

$20-$50 / Month for High Speed Internet Access
I thought everyone had high speed access and I was wrong! Since the beginning of this blog, I have seen hundreds of emails from dial-up users asking about posting the videos in text format. High Speed access is not required, but looking back at the “time is money” statement, when it takes 3 hours to upload a 5 mb file… you will quickly realize the benefit!

Ongoing Monthly Budget - How to Spend Your Earnings!

Kim will be the first one to tell you that I am a firm believer in reinvesting at least 50% of my gross earnings back into the business during the growth process! If we earn $100, I have already spent $25 and have a plan in place for the other $25!

When I review earnings for a given period of time, I first look to determine my most profitable site and decide what can be done to help it grow even more popular! If I need to get content, I may pay a Ghostwriter to provide custom articles that can be submitted to article directories. If I need more inbound quality links, I look to one of my resources for farming relevant websites and work out a linking strategy. For example if the site earns $150 in a month, I will reinvest the following:

• $30 on 3-4 custom articles which I provide the topics and target phrases
• $25 for 25 1-way highly relevant inbound links to 5 different site pages
• $25 for a new niche website domain name, focusing on the most popular category of the existing site!

When you find a niche that works… invest in it! The bottom line in your affiliate website budget is that it will cost you at least:

• $114.10 to get started with Build a Niche Store
• $60 each month to equip yourself with the tools to succeed
• 35-75% of your monthly earnings, to reinvest back into your business.

What else do YOU plan for in your affiliate website budget?

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