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Making money online is a lot more complicated than most people think, and when a new marketer begins the quest to make money online, they may soon realize that there is a lot more to it than expected. Then, they are bombarded with tons of offers for infoproducts, membership programs, tools, services, coaching… all to help them make money.
Sure, I totally recommend you get help, and if that costs money, so be it. A lot of these things can greatly speed up your learning process, or even become quintessential in your online affiliate marketing endeavors. But, while most tools do help, we don’t always need them.
I’m sure you frequently get tempted, and probably indulge, in many internet marketing related purchases, but ask yourself, do you really need this?
Read more tips, and where to look for money drains after the jump!
It’s quite simple really, to prevent bleeding money, ask yourself a series of questions to determine your actual need for a product or service:
- Does this product help me with something I am having trouble with NOW?
- Will I USE this product to it’s full extent?
- Do I have TIME to apply this product?
- Is this product within my BUDGET?
This is just a sample list; you need to analyze what your priorities and needs are, and decide according to those.
Now, a simple reminder like this gets the picture across really fast. Preventing frivolous spending in this field can be pretty easy. And, if not, then just avoid any offer being made to you 
A bit harder to eliminate in my opinion are pre-existing money bleeds. These frequently come in the form of memberships and services. That’s because once you get over that initial spending hurdle, it’s much easier to just let technology take over and rebill you at will.
Heck, I’ve taken part in a few money bleeds myself, and it’s the worst looking back and realizing how much you’ve wasted over months. But of course, when things only cost 10-20$ a month, they don’t seem so bad at the time, when you are due for a rebill.
Here are a couple of common sources that may be costing you hundreds a year in useless spending:
Web hosting
I really hope you are using web hosting and building sites, and if so then obviously this isn’t wasted. But the problem is, that sometimes you could be paying for multiple web hosting plans, and may not even be using them all to their full extent.
I actually have 4 hosting plans over 3 different companies right now >< 2 are on GoDaddy, from way back when I first started online marketing, which only cater to one site; but luckily they did pull in enough money to pay for themselves. Another is from HostGator, which I use every day and love.
But there is one rogue web hosting plan, that I sort of thought I needed, so I let a $100 year long charge go through… Big mistake. The sites hosted on that plan aren’t doing anything, and I’ve pretty much completely lost interest in them.
Of course I’m going to cancel this before another rebill, but if it were for say $7 a month, I might forget, since it’s such a small figure.
Autoresponder
Autoresponders are great, but ONLY if you use them to their full potential! I’ve had a membership to AWeber for months now, and while I constantly renew because I always want to build a list, I have not yet done so.
I guess I’m an optimist 
What I should have done (and will now do), is just cancel the service until it is absolutely needed. Not in the pre-build phases of a website, or in the planning stages; only at the exact time needed.
Membership Programs
Are you in a membership program? How important is it for you? I know a long time ago, I won a subscription to a membership service for 6 months, and I barely visited.
You might be lured by knowing one day, something useful may be offered to members, but really until that happens, perhaps you shouldn’t be paying them.
So these are just a few common money drains I’ve noticed, what have you seen? Have you had many money bleeding experiences? Leave a comment so that others can hopefully avoid the same situations!
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Your story sounds close to mine.
I have a virtual server, but it would be cheaper if I eliminated the sites I am no longer interested in and just paid for individual hosting for those.
I do have a nice number of subscribers in my Aweber account and have some of my lists loaded with a years worth of messages. So I am getting some value from that, but probably not the $20 a month I pay for Aweber.
I am a member of Wealthy Affiliate and they have some great tools. I visit weekly. It only took me 2 months to get 2 other people signed up, so my monthly cost went to $2 quickly. Now I have more, so I make a profit just being a member.
Like you said, it is trial and error. Set aside some money to spend that you don’t mind loosing and just read and try.
Michael
Yes I agree that you do have to go through some trial and error to find things that work, but not too much
You also have to be sure to give it enough time for it to actually work, so many people jump from this to that trying to find the instant silver platter solution. A costly practice.
WA looked pretty interesting to me, although I think I’ve got my hands full at the moment
P.S. Congrats on the $200 at WTW, wanna trade for my WP-Auctions prize? LOL
A wise man once told me “You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time”. This is the way I look at affiliate programs. I think that if you try to spread yourself too thin, you’ll end up wasting money as well as time. Slow and steady wins the race…
I completely agree. If you don’t need it or have the time to use it properly, don’t sign up!
Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin
The perfect expression for this sort of situation. If you’re going to buy something to help you make money, at least give it the time it needs to actually work!
And yes, focus on smaller goals and project first, instead of jumping all over the place. Great analogy!
I host all my blogs off one account because I’m allowed an unlimited amount of add-on domains with bluehost. I just make sure I don’t exceed any cpu quotas and I’m good. As for wasting money, I’ll piss away $5 to use the extra $30 or $50 AdWord or Yahoo bonus coupon. The other expense will be an occasional $20 I’ll give to an advertising company. I get a review or 2 out of it, spend the money on ads to try to make some cash, and usually get a few referrals off the articles. The result is traffic/clicks, and then I try to write it off at tax time as an expense.
Oh yeah, this is my favorite feature. Once I got HostGator, I was in love
My wasteful hosting plan I mentionned above only had 11 add-on slots, and that made me look for a better hosting plan. I should have canceled it though >< lol
HAHA the picture!
I’m very guilty of this as well. As I mentioned in one of my blog posts, I paid for hosting on a site for over 2 years before making anything of it. My problem is once I hit a road block, I just move on to the next latest and greatest idea I have. I usually shy away from paid membership sites, so I’ve saved some money there.
Haha the picture was the first thing I noticed. xD
Very helpful!
Hi Tim,
i pity you …*-)
Please stop bleeding all over the place / affiliate marketing, as it might get too slippery then …lol
To be serious again:
I mostly agree with you. Nobody should fall into a buying frenzy just because …
Perhaps it’s our nature as hunters and collectors that leeds us towards this?
Anyway, this is not about human nature …
I’d like to give a different angle to some of the questions you put.
Imho, if you only focus on the here and now, you might jump to short.
It all depends on your situation of course.
What you have to do to avoid “bleeding money” is to set up a sort of business plan.
Develop goals for your business, a strategy and an action plan.
Layout your roadmap:
Where do you want to go with your biz, what do you want to achieve personally?
Then ask what do you have to do to get there?
Are there any tools that can help you to get there?
Are there free tools that do the same?
Like for instance help you to work more efficiently? Automate your system? Track your advertising? Get you some traffic? Build your list?
Is there a special offer for any tool you might need on the way? Like for instance a free trial or a discount?
Take into account fx exchange rates too.
Like for instance: i’m from Germany. Our currency is Euro, which is quiet strong against the US-Dollar right now.
So even if i buy some tools i might not need or implement fully right now i save money on the purchase.
An entrepreneur sees investing as a pay in to get future payouts …
So perhaps you should put it this way:
Will this tool / ebook / membership etc. help me to reach my goals (save time, automate my system etc.)?
Is there a chance for (future) pay outs from the investment?
What will be the benefit if i buy it NOW?
Then check your budget and decide reasonable.
Perhaps to buy it now, perhaps to buy it later, or perhaps to don’t buy it at all …
With the right mindset you know there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
You have to put something in - time, efforts, work .. and even some money too, to get something out of it …
As long as you have a roadmap, you can set up some signposts on the road ahead while you take step by step towards your goal or destination.
Without falling over your own feet and the risk to hurt yourself or “bleed money” …
Regards,
Michael
Wow Michael, thanks for this amazing comment!
You ask some really great questions, and you are absolutely right in saying that developing a business plan (yes, business!) is a great way to plan spending and budget properly.
I’m actually sort of just starting to learn this myself. Up until just recently, I had only a long term goal in mind, but no plan in place to achieve it really.
Now, I have begun working with short term goals and planning, and it’s been working wonders so far. In fact, I’m sure I’ll post about it soon enough
The “make money online” market is highly based on impulse spending, and strong marketing/sales talk, so it can be so easy to get caught up in the moment and impulse buy, looking for that miracle.
But if you have these goals and plans in place, I’m sure it would be much easier to avoid these temptation.
Great food for thought!
I spent a lot on eBooks and software the first 6 months blogging, and haven’t really for the last 18 months. It took me a long time to realize it’s all online for free - you just have to find it.
Infoproducts are as simple as time vs. money
You can spend money to hasten your learning process, or find and put together all of the free resources out there to learn and achieve the same results.
The only problem is finding those GOOD free resources can be very time consuming, and even difficult to sift through.
I would highly recommend hosting with Bluehost. With them, you are able to get unlimited domains under one hosting account.
I have been seeing all of these huge product launches from the “Gurus”, $2000-3000 a pop, and then nothing. I haven’t been seeing people coming out and saying, yeah this program paid for itself in X months. Rather, I think that most of these are just what you get HYPE. It seems like most of the best stuff that I have found about internet marketing is from great sites just like this one
First of all, thank you very much for the compliment
Second, I totally agree with you; and the worst part is that it is very hard to trust most IM reviews, since everyone just wants a commission, and will lie through their teeth to get it. Especially with those kinds of big ticket items.
I can’t agree more. On the autoresponder, what I did was open a free version with Getresponse. The free one is somewhat limited as it only allows you to run one campaign, but as soon as my list gets big enough to justify it, I’ll upgrade.
Anyone who has more time than money can always just set a “zero-dollar budget” to begin with. It’s a lot of research and work, (boy, that’s an understatement) but with time and effort, most of the tools needed to start making just a little bit of money are available for free.
I started with the zero-dollar rule and as I got a few sales, I CAREFULLY looked at ways to invest in useful tools.
Hey great tip, I didn’t know getresponse offered that. Heck I’ll probably give it a shot until I need Aweber for real haha.
Zero-dollar budget is definitely possible (although, I like to think you can spare at least few bucks for hosting and domain etc.), but there will be more work and more time required.
It’s all about time vs. money.
HostGator. I use them and the unlimited sub domain feature was one of the main reason I went with them when I was looking for a hosting plan. I also agree about keeping your expenses to a minimum (i.e.: foregoing a paid auto responder until needed) so you don’t end up wasting money that could be spent more effectively.
Do your research properly to find 1 reliable affiliate program that you focus on.Work with this affiliate program until it starts generating an income so it pays for it self.Then, you can move on to the next one and so on…
Don’t spread your self too thin or you will fail.
Yeah, I always meet people who bought this or that package and a)don’t really know how to use it b)it’s way more than they need at the time. When I got the idea to do a newsletter, everybody was like “aweber.” And don’t get me wrong paying for quality can save you so much trouble down the line. But I believe in keeping the option to “scale up” open. So I ended up with a free, online email management tool that worked great.