Okay, the official start off, day 1, first on the agenda, get signed up with an affiliate program! Why did I choose an affiliate income, one it is a great way to learn huge amount about the Internet Marketing and Multi-Level Marketing business, and the residue income ability of it. (Residual meaning you are repeatedly getting paid for from your people who have joined through you. I decided on one mainly because of the sponsor, he seemed to have a lot of information to share with me and he there was access for questions and additional training. I will share my affiliate program in my blog in a few days, for now this is about getting our feet wet and going through the setup process.
First of all don't get rooked into believing you are going to start making money today! Do not set your expectations too high, too fast setting yourself up for a quick let down and immediate frustration; like any new job it takes time to learn the business. So count on spending some time to get set up, I recommend you do this on a day you can commit to 5 to 6 hours, because if you are like me you are going to thorough the basics of this process. (I spent 5 hours in this process.)
So the first step was to sign up, join my affiliate program, that does not take a lot of time, because to be honest its about taking out your credit card and paying to join. I chose one that the sign up is only $25, a small investment for starting a business. Remember, I wanted to see how far and how much time was involved to start making money online with as little of money out of pocket as possible. Also take note there are a few other expenses that will be involved, no one needs to be spending their rent or grocery money on this.
The next step is to set up an Alert Pay Account, and/or Pay Pal account, they are both free and I really suggest you do both. The Affiliate Program I signed up with wants you to have Alert Pay, but you will probably need a Pay Pal Account as well later on. Also, you will need a bank account to marry up to your pay accounts, I recommend you use a separate account used only for your online business and the same things as well if you are going to use a credit card. If you are going to use a credit card, set a low amount of what you are willing to go in debt for, I mean like around $100, don't go crazy, we are not trying to go for the big bucks right out of the gate, we need to learn the ropes and know what to do with what we are spending our money on. We want to be conservative because we don't won't to get frustrated with the time needed to really get to the point we are making money. If I make money in a week or two I am happy, any amount of money, but I am going to conservative and say from my experience in working in commission sales it takes 3 to 4 weeks to get commissions coming in.
Both my affiliate program and my sponsor provided step my step video on how to set up my Alert Pay Account. Pay Pal has an excellent tutorial to walk you thorough the process. Alert Pay took some time, for one thing I did not follow the video to the "T", and I had to go back and change my account from a Personal Pro account to a Business. There also are a couple of hurdles right now with Alert Pay, for what ever reason they are not able to do credit card or bank verification, so there is a phone verification and you have to email copies of a photo ID and proof of address. I have not scan anything on my computer in a while so that took about 30 minuets, don't scan the items as pictures it needs to be a scan as documents.
FYI-For those who are not familiar with Pay Pal and Alert Pay accounts they are basically, an online pay service, you can buy and sell online using their services, they do charge a very small processing fee. In my research, it is recommended to set up an merchant account, you can accept credit cards and the processing fee is lower. We will get back to that another day, there is enough to process already today.
Then the next item that needed to be taken care of was to set up an Aweber Account. Aweber is an awesome service that allows you to track your opt ins, as well as allowing you to marry together capture messages, and follow up email to your potential opt ins, (those who sign up or buy from through your website/landing page, and just as important it allows you to create a list, which important in this industry. But for now we just need to get our Aweber Account set up, now here is really a great thing about Aweber you only have to spend $1 to sign up, yep $1, out of pocket for your first month and then it is $19.95 every month, worth every penny of it. So I'm up to $26 out of pocket investment.
It takes some time, to get the Aweber account set up and running and you have, have to have someone who knows what they are doing to walk you through it because if it is not done right, nothing is going to work right and you probably are going to loose some opt ins over it. So this is also why it pays to go with an affiliate program the knowledge and education you will gain is worth quit a bit more then the $25 you are paying every month; I would even go as far to say that most people would be willing to pay $25 a month for 6 months to learn the process of MLM/Affiliate Marketing. So hopefully we are hitting to birds with one stone, we are getting an education and we are more then likely going to bring in some money that is going to pay for that education and then some.
I also went to GoDaddy and bought a couple of domains for $2.99 and $5.99. (GoDaddy has .coms on sale for $2.99 right now. I will talk more about this later, and why we need domains, but for right now my affiliate has provided with a domain to the affiliate landing page, so I'm good for now. So at the end of my first day I have invested $29.00 to start the first phase of my online business.
So, with few a challenges, being a "Newbie" not so bad. But the one thing I have to say is, the one word I must put out there is "PATIENCE", for God sake have 'PATIENCE", and when you see yourself getting really frustrated, get up and walk away, take a break from it, take an hour or two or even just leave it for the day and pick it back up the next day. You have to give yourself the time to get acclimate yourself to the routine of this process; it is like learning a new skill, or how to roller skate, you can fill off balance or like a fish out of water, EXPECT THAT...if you have never done this before. It is a mistake I feel someone to promote this as being so easy a kid can do it, is it easy? Yes, once you have learned the process and have created a routine, that has become second nature to you, and you are no longer having to follow training videos and reading instructions each step of the way. In other words I think it definitely takes practice, and not setting yourself for big a disappointment, making you want to quit before you even get started. I dabbled once before in this and that is exactly what happened to me. So I've learned from my failure and now I'm ready to start a new being a little more wiser, and knowing "Where There Is A Will, There Is A Way".
Because I only decided a couple of days into this project that I was going to blog my first 60 days, the blog is a couple of days behind on the daily posting, but in the future I will not be blogging on Saturday and Sundays, I am committing to 5 days a week, an average of 4 hours a day. If I can't allow myself two days off, then what kind of business is this to be in, I have had jobs that required 6 and 7 day weeks, I don't want another one. Remember my ultimate goal is to have more time to do the things I enjoy. So I strongly recommend take two days off, enjoy, rejuvenate start fresh every week, your energy and effort will go much further.
See You On Day 2, and know that your efforts of the day creates tomorrows pay days,
Margaret
"Making Money Now Online"
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