All Collections
List Building Lifestyle
Do I Have To Spend Extra Money On Traffic After I Join?
Do I Have To Spend Extra Money On Traffic After I Join?

How Much Money Will I Need To Spend On Traffic?

Olivia Ross avatar
Written by Olivia Ross
Updated over a week ago

There are two schools of thought for traffic within the internet marketing community. 

FREE TRAFFIC SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
These marketers aren't willing to pay clicks/leads, so they're willing to work extra hard and be extra patient to get it for free. Typically they work for 3-5 years, putting in 4-8 hours a day writing articles, building links, publishing books, uploading terabytes of videos, recording podcasts, negotiating joint ventures, optimizing their website for the search engines, researching keywords and much more - all in hopes that some day, some how, they start getting traffic. About 0.01% succeed at building a big email list as a result. 99.99% fail miserably and give up within the first 90 days.

PAID TRAFFIC SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
These marketers prefer to buy their way into traffic. Most start with a limited budget and gradually work their way up. They go through lots of testing, before they can dial in a campaign that works and quickly try to rinse and repeat their success. 90% of people don't get past their first campaign, however, those who stick at it, even though may lose a bit of money at first, end up developing predictable quality traffic systems for themselves.

WHAT TRAFFIC SCHOOL DOES IGOR SUBSCRIBE TO?
Having started out a broke 18 year old in internet marketing, Igor was an avid believed in free traffic. He felt he couldn't spend money, because he had none. He didn't even have a credit card. He bought his first GetResponse account on his dad's card promising to pay the $19 back from his profits. 

He then spent 3 and a half years trying to master every form of free traffic from article marketing, to forum marketing, to organic YouTube video marketing, to launch sniping, to search engine optimization for keywords, to product launches, social media and much more. Eventually he concluded, after realizing he had less than $150 in earnings to show for 42 months of daily effort, he concluded that free traffic isn't working for him. Besides all the time he spent, he also spent over $5,000 on keyword research software, article spinners, social media bots, WordPress themes and plugins and other nonsense. 

Igor concluded there's no such thing as "free" traffic and switched to paid traffic (paid ads). After switching to paid traffic, within just 6 months Igor scaled to $10,000 per month in his online business. He eventually scaled his paid traffic to being able to generate 1,339,261 leads in a single calendar year.


WHAT BUDGET DO YOU NEED FOR PAID TRAFFIC?
When Igor decided to start using paid traffic, he needed to start slow, because he had no budget. He followed the steps outlined below to scrape some money together for his first campaign of $60. It failed and he lost money. Second campaign Igor spent $50 failed too. But less, so, because it showed some sales. Third campaign was more expensive at $90 but more successful, bringing back 50% of his ad spend. After some additional tweaking, Igor finally started to break even as he was growing his email list. Soon he built enough momentum to reinvest his profits and no longer be spending out of pocket money on traffic generation.

HOW TO START SLOW AND SCALE FAST - LIKE IGOR?

If you're starting out with a small budget, you need to start with a traffic source that allows small investment, but at the same time has the potential to scale. Igor teaches such traffic source in his trainings. 

Every one of our successful students started out with very little money to play with. Which is also true for Igor. At one point Igor had two jobs. One to pay bills and one to fund his online business that required $150/mo to maintain (before it made him any real money). 

Here's what Igor had done to get money for his online business

  • Got a job - jobs have a bad rep on the internet, because everyone's selling the entrepreneurial freedom. But if it wasn't for working low wage jobs, Igor would have never been able to find money tools and traffic. During the first 3.5 years when Igor miserably failed with every online method he tried, he worked in a hotel where he took on any vacant position offered to him. He started out in housekeeping, cleaning toilets and soon moved up to the reception desk where he worked 8 hour shifts, before taking the 40 minute bus ride home to work on his online business. He would often request the graveyard shift in order to be able to work on his online business on his laptop during work hours, so he could get paid to build his online business. He later did the same when he picked up a security gig at a local factory.

  • Became a Freelancer - after several years online, Igor taught himself through buying courses and mentoring programs (as well as watching free YouTube videos) how to build capture pages, install WordPress themes, write articles and other useful online marketing skills. He then offered his services in a form of packages (5 articles for $20; 2 capture pages for $50; etc) to other people who paid him for his time and expertise. He was able to make an extra $250-$500 per month doing that.

  • Wrote emails and marketing copy for other marketers - after realizing copywriting is very important, Igor also noticed that most people knew enough about it to value it but weren't willing to actually sit down and write. So he started offering email writing, capture page copy writing, sales page copywriting, video script copy writing  and other copywriting packages for bargain prices. He felt great doing it because it allowed him to get paid to improve his skills while at the same time creating another source of income to fund his online ventures.

  • Cut expenses - at the time of starting his online business Igor lived with his parents. He chipped in on rent, but was still able to save money from his day job. Later on, while still unsuccessful at internet marketing, Igor moved in with his girlfriend (who is now his wife and mother of his two children) Anastasiya. He now had to pay rent. Both him and Anastasiya got jobs in the hospitality industry that didn't pay well. So they kept track of their food budget, avoided buying anything other necessities, never dined out, avoided wedding invitations and birthday invites (so they didn't have to buy gifts) and basically kept their spending down to a minimum. Doing so allowed them to save 10% of their income, while covering food and rent, while leaving a bit of money for Igor to buy traffic and tools for his online business (which Anastasiya didn't believe will pan out, but didn't get in the way either). 

HOW TO MAKE POSITIVE ROI ON YOUR TRAFFIC BUYS
The only thing that sets you up for success with paid traffic is building an email list. Common mistake affiliate marketers make is they direct link to offers from their ads instead of singing people up on their email list first. Igor explains why that's a mistake in the following tutorial.  

HOW TO MASTER TRAFFIC BY BUILDING AN EMAIL LIST

For any further questions, please email us support@listbuildinglifestyle.com

Did this answer your question?