Hi there,

Starting an online business on a budget can be done.  There's no question, its tougher and will take a little longer to see results, but it can be done.

Here's some suggestions and/or food for thought which could be helpful when starting your online business:

Remember don't over complicate things....

• Whatever business you are in your focus should always be to share what you are offering. 
• You need fresh eyeballs on your ads all the time. 
• You need people to know your business is open.  To do this you promote what you have to offer to as many people as you can using as many marketing methods possible.  Some of the marketing methods you can use to promote your business are discussed below:

Social Media is free, so make the most of it all. 

Focus on one, learn it, share it (by posting what you've learnt maybe) and be consistent. 

Offer your audience something that could solve a problem.  Three Free Tips about a subject relating to your business and/or a tool you are using to market your business.  i.e. maybe Fugly to create fun free banner ads.  You should be posting something at least once a day.  It takes time, but it has been proven to work.  You want people to get to know you and trust you.  You want to brand yourself.  Always brand you!  If you change your business people will still know its you.

A free tool I use to capture and cut images is Jing. 

Some examples of social media are:  Facebook, Google+, Linked In, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, UTube - to name a few.

Banner advertising and text advertising are great advertising methods to use if you have a job (just above budget), because you can promote your business when you are busy doing other things; you just set them up and forget them.   These are great to set up just before you go on holiday!  And whilst you are at work your business is still getting fresh eyeballs. Click here to view some places where  you can promote your banner ads.

I always test my text ads in 1TAE first because it has a huge audience so if I'm getting results there I then go and promote my text ad elsewhere.

Remember whatever marketing methods you decide to use you need to track your ads; you want to focus on what's working and dump what's not.  Hits Connect is a good tool to use for tracking your ads.  Free members can track ten sites.  

Email marketing is another awesome marketing method to use, especially if you are short of time and  you are on a tight budget. 

Personally I use Referral Frenzy as an email marketing tool as I can set up my emails ahead, to go out over the next few days.  I schedule them to go out at 08:00, 13:00, 17:00, 20:00, 23:00 - that way I ensure as many people in different time zones get to see my ads.

Another great tool I use for email marketing is Viral Mail Profits.  However, if you are on a budget and just starting out you might wish to check out Ninja mailer.  Both give you the opportunity to pop in your email once and use it again and again to promote your business to as many people as you can, saving you time.  Both give you the CTR (Click Through Rate) so you can see at a glance which email is getting you results.

Click here for some places where you can blast your ads out today and click here for  some email sites that get great results.

TE's (Traffic Exchanges) are another marketing method you could use to share what your business has to offer. 

TE's are a great way to brand You.  You create a squeeze page, using Instant Splash or a similar tool, pop in a pic of yourself; letting people who you are and grab a form from your Auto Responder, like Rocket Responder  -so you can collect as many emails from people who are interested in more information.  This is building your list.  Building your list lets you promote your business on auto pilot.  Building your list gives you the opportunity to send emails to a target audience of people that want what you have to offer.

For example:  Lets say I have a Health and Fitness business and this business gives you an auto responder.  If I was using TE's to promote my business I would create a form in my auto responder.  I would set up a number of follow up messages in my auto responder - offering something of value maybe more information and/or just saying hello and asking if they needed help.  I would then put the form on my squeeze page, along with a pic of myself and some thing that would offer value to my target audience; but they would need to put in their email to receive the information. 

A great tool I use for TE's is TE Command Post.  Free members have the opportunity to see how many credits they have in up to ten sites.  It's worth mentioning TE Command Post offers days where you get double credits for your surfing, so if you are a free member in TE Command Post just simply change the sites you have int TE Command Post for that particular day.

TE's can be time consuming but work and are great to use if you are on a tight budget.  Many TE's offer cash for surfing and/or have promotional days where you can get extra advertising credits.  Remember when you join a site, fill in your downline ids and if you have upgraded promote it until you are in profit.

The other topic worth mentioned when starting your business is try and attend as many free training webinars as possible.  At least three a week.  This will keep your business moving forward.  Nobody knows everything and plenty of people like sharing information for free.

Three sites where I attend training webinars are:  Affiliate Funnel, Know How Guys and MLSP (My Lead System Pro).

Hopefully you have found the above information useful.  Remember give me a shout out if I can help at all.

Rgds

Maureen

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PS If you are in Now Lifestyle you have an auto responder, all the capture and squeeze pages all ready to go, and set up for free!  Just share them!