A Basic Internet Marketing Startup Budget

It’s a classic mistake starting up a new business without proper planning.

Despite the claims and the erroneous perceptions about who can pull it off and how easily it can be done, an internet marketing business is no panacea to financial strife. Most of the internet marketing gurus who tout putting up a website in a few days and earning thousands of dollars a few weeks later…they’ve been in the business for years and years. They are the outliers.

Starting any business…including an internet marketing business is hard work and it requires careful research, thought and planning…if you want a straightline to success that is.

I am not one to be pessimistic. In fact, I am an optimist. I believe in the power of thought and quantum physics…the idea that you create with thought alone…positive or negative…an energy that can propel you to (or away) from your goals. But even thought techniques require a disciplined method.

As an optimist I’ve wasted a lot of time and money because I didn’t start with or follow a detailed and disciplined business plan.

Truth be told, I still haven’t mastered the art of developing and following a plan. Good gawd I hate all that boring detail. I just want to make money! Do I really have to write it all down? Yes! It is essential to make a plan. You want to wake up tomorrow with full knowledge of exactly how you’re going to spend your time in the coming days, weeks and months to achieve your goal. Not to mention that if you do subscribe to the principles of positive thinking or quantum physics and all that dreams-come-true jazz…these philosphies also prescribe that you write it down! Your chances of success are higher if you write out a plan. At a bare minimum you should write down your goals. But I am advocating that you should write out a detailed business plan before you go off half-cocked.

Naturally I expect you have some financial goals like I want to make $50 per day every day through the internet. Let’s see 30 days x $50 = $1,500 per month. Not enough to quit your day job…as they say?

Maybe not. What if we double it? Now we’re talking about $3,000 per month. Not bad. Some of you are used to living on less and might consider quitting your day job. But let’s kick it up another notch. Let’s say you want to earn $200 per day every day through the internet. Now we’re talking $6000 per month or $72,000 per year.

Okay good. We have a financial goal. Now what? And when? Precisely! You have to develop more detail. You have to make a plan.

Let’s look at the Affiliate Marketing Model. This is one of the simplest internet business models. (I didn’t say easiest. I said simplest.) In fact affiliate marketing is so simple that you can get into it in a relatively low cash¹ way and without a website. I have one Squidoo page that I put up as part of a backlink strategy to one of my affiliate webpages. When I created that page 3 years ago I didn’t know exactly what I was doing so I threw in a few affiliate links and Voila! To my utter surprise that pages consistently makes money. Not heaps. Not $200 per day but almost enough in a year to pay for my email responder.

But I digress. Let’s get back to your goal and the task of making a plan for an affiliate model. Here are just a few of the critical questions that need to be answered by your plan:

• How many affiliate sales (X) do I have to make every day to earn $200 per day?
• How much visitor traffic do I need every day to make X number of affiliate sales?
• How am I going to get that traffic?
• How long is it going to take me to get that traffic?

There are a whole heap of other questions and issues that you need to cover in your business plan. There is the question of which market niche(s) to pursue. How to do test and confirm that there truly is potential in a market opportunity.

It is not my intention to cover all of these details on this page. My objective is merely to impress upon you the value of a detailed business plan and to motivate you to formulate one before you go off half-cocked, waste hundreds of hours and perhaps thousands of dollars learning the lessons the hard way.

A financial plan is just one element of a complete business plan. Below you’ll find a download-link to a zip file that contains an excel spreadsheet with a basic framework for formulating your monetary goals and budgeting the time and cash estimates. Take some time to do this analysis. Then go off and learn all the other stuff you need to make further decisions and to flush out a detailed plan for developing an internet business.

Go to Internet Marketing Sample Financials download page.