When Should You Expect To Make Money Online?

So let's talk about a topic that everybody is interested in... MONEY! Now, let's get a little more specific and let's talk about reasonable expectations regarding making money with an online business, especially affiliate marketing.

Creating a Comparison

What I am going to do is create a comparison to a more traditional model of sales and demonstrate how this is different, and why you need to be patient when your not making money in your first month, or even three or six for that matter.

A Traditional Model

In a traditional business model, you have this thing called overhead... and it is usually quite a bit. You may have employees to pay, you may have rent, utilities, marketing expenses, inventory expenses, etc. However, I want to look at two components specifically to illustrate a point:

Initial Cost of Starting the Business

Depending on you business model, the amount of investment your business requires may vary. As an example, a decade ago I opened a retail location to sell various health related products. My initial investment was nearly 100K, and then I had to inject another 70K in the first year to keep the business afloat. So, even though I was making sales, I certainly wasn't making a profit. I was only paying the bank back what I owed them. In fact, I was paying the bank back for the next five years.

Think about this for a moment, you are starting an affiliate website, your upfront cost should be under $100 if you do things right. Even though it may take months to start making your first sales, and they may not be big, you are still way ahead of the game when comparing to retail. So take a deep breathe if you arent' making $500-$5,000 in your first month. It's Okay! In fact, you are financially in a much better place having made nothing and only spent maybe $100 versus making $7,000 and having spent over a $100K

Marketing Expenses

Not only do most traditional businesses have a lot of upfront expenses, they also spend a lot on advertising. In my case, I was spending an average of $3,000/month on advertising (which is small) in comparison to what a business can spend. One single full page add in your city's posh magazine will run $5,000 and radio is going to cost considerably more than that.

So, let me ask you a question? Are you spending money marketing your business? If not, then why would you expect the return that marketing provides. Keep in mind, If I spent $3,000 on marketing, the first $3,000 that came back was just paying a bill.

Think about this, If you paid $3,000 to Google Adwords to drive business to your site... I guarantee you would see traffic generated and sales that would follow. But that's not what we are doing here. So let's not expect to see the traffic in the first few months or the sales in the first few months when we aren't paying people to visit our site. It takes time to create a brand, it takes time for your content to rank organically, it takes time for your message to spread through the social hemisphere... be patient.

A Different Model

We aren't paying a bunch of money to start our businesses and we aren't spending a bunch of money on marketing. Therefore, we have to abort the traditional timelines and understand that what money we do make, we are keeping!

Be a Winner

I took the time to write the article because I wanted to share a different viewpoint in hopes of inspiring some of you to keep going when it gets tough. Most businesses fail in the first three years because they are under capitalized. Well, that will not be the case with your business, if your business fails in the first three years it will be because you quit. Don't be a quitter, be a winner! Keep your head up and your attitude positive! Time is in on your side.