When considering doing business online, consider the Internet marketing expenses you'll encounter. Sure, headaches will come but you can maybe avoid this one.
Understanding Internet Marketing Expenses and How to Manage Them
First, many online businesses (and I’m sure offline businesses have it too) quickly engage in a battle between time vs money. Sure, you can write your own content (time). Or, you can hire someone else to do all your website business stuff for you (If you have the money.).
Internet Marketing Explained
In an attempt to explain Internet marketing, I went over the the wiki site and they said:
"Online advertising includes..
- email marketing,
- search engine marketing (SEM),
- social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.),
- different types of display advertising (including web banner advertising),
- and mobile advertising.
Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves a publisher. This person (or agency) integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser.
In turn, they provide the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content."
Since time equals money, then technically all of these are monthly or regular operation expenses.
But, I’m just going to go over a few Internet marketing expenses that cost you your hard earned cash. Here goes...
Internet Marketing Expenses and the Things You Absolutely Need
Let's assume at this point that you’ve got a WordPress website set up. Whether you:
- paid someone to do it for you,
- built it yourself from scratch,
- or a mixture of the two.
I assume that you have the basic content, a domain name, some images, a well-thought strategy, and the site is pretty much finished.
You Need Professional Looking Images
There is no substitute for posting good, professional looking photos & graphics on your website or blog, do you agree?
Truthfully, I've used up hundreds of hours trying to find good free pictures I could use legally. Even when I did, the site never looked very professional.
I normally use a Stock images subscription and never look back. My expenses are pretty high there (close to $100 a month), but most of you only need images occasionally or on demand.
You'd probably spend around $20. to $25. a month, give or take $10.
Include Good Content Articles
These are only “probably should have” expenses because you can write content yourself if you want to save money. If you choose to have the articles written, you'll most likely pay $10 to $20 an article for 1,000 words.
Assuming you are outsourcing quality articles, I’m going to chalk this up to $20-100 per month, depending on the quantity and frequency you publish.
What about an Email Autoresponder Service?
Okay, you might put this on the “Must have” list, and you could be right. But, the main reason I added it to the “probably” list is because you don’t 100% need an email list to make money from your website.
Although there are several good list and autoresponder providers out there, I have used Aweber from the very beginning. I like their system, the customer support and, it's not very expensive to maintain a professional looking email list.
You can get started with Aweber for free after you read the review. But, after your first month, there is a monthly charge.
Frankly, I don’t recommend going with MailChimp or other free service providers, because many don’t permit affiliate marketing.
Let's Add It Up - What are Your Internet Marketing Expenses?
So once your site is set up, the mandatory costs are pretty small.
With the actual set up costs, it’s more a case of investing time over money.
Of course, the sites I set up use some of the same products over and over. So it doesn’t take quite as much time or initial work.
I'm going to leave it to you to decide how much you want to spend - and, what kind of budget you can afford.
But, no matter what the monthly Internet marketing expenses, be sure your sales handle the cost - and make you a tidy profit! That's the bottom line!
If you've set your budget and it's working, let's us know in the comments if you feel there are "must have" products or services needed to run a website. Thanks and I'll see you again soon!
