A friend asked me tonight, how much money do I need to invest in order to start an online business and make some extra income?

This is a pretty regular question, as many of us starting out do not have tons of money to invest for Internet Marketing and we are desperate to break free of the 9-5 and work at home.

In reality an online business is very unique because unlike the usual business models, you can literally start and make money whether it’s full time or extra income, without investing a ton of money or even a single dime.

Eventually, I think you will need to spend some money, at the very least on a web hosting account but you can get started right away without spending a cent. And, you can use the money you make from bum marketing to finance future online campaigns and go on to build your own sites and blogs and bum marketing will teach you a lot about how to make money with Google Adsense, or with affiliate marketing and all for free!

Internet Marketing for Bums

Bum marketing is a nickname for launching online campaigns that are completely free of start up costs, not even hosting that will allow you to make money!

While you can use paid software to create websites, such as BANS, there are venues that allow you to build your own mini-sites that are hosted by someone else, but allow you to create your own piece of Internet real estate and launch your Internet Marketing campaign.

Some Benefits of Using Free Venues to Build Webpages

1. Great way to gain experience and learn the how-to’s of Internet marketing affiliate marketing, creating a web page and more before engaging on a grander scale.

2. These sites allow you to make money online without spending any. They are easily integrated with many affiliate programs, such as eBay, Amazon, Adsense, or you can use whichever you want and these venues share their revenue so you can make some cash directly from them.

3. These venues rank on their own, and so you will piggyback off their rank and your pages can rank in the SERPS (search engine page results) much quicker and with a lot less work than a site launched from scratch giving you that magical search engine traffic.

Free Webpage Venues for Internet Marketing:

Squidoo Lenses – Building free Squidoo lenses to promote the products you choose is one of the best places to get your feet wet in Internet Marketing and start to make money online completely free.

In fact, even those of us who have been in this biz for a while continue to use Squidoo, I have 15 lenses myself, and several of them bring in a regular monthly income.

There are some tricks to build a lens correctly that will rank high in SERPS as well as promotion and easy code resources, learn more at my guide How-To Squidoo Steps to Building the Best Lens that will show everything you need to know to build a lens the right way as well as the important promotion techniques for lens rank to make money.

By the way, for those of you with sites, building Squidoo lenses is a great way to promote those sites and you can give yourself 100% do-follow backlinks from them. Several of my lenses are PR2, 3 and 4 and those are A+ links.

Hub Pages - Hub Pages rank very high in SERPS, depending on how competitive the keywords are. Basically the same concept as Squidoo, except that Hub Pages are more strict and monitored than Squidoo by their admin for quality content and spam. There is less flexibility in placing affiliate links and having the Hub Page be too commercial.

They LOVE fresh content at Hub Pages so focus on that and use your products to support the content. Integrate your Amazon, eBay, Adsense and Kontera affiliate accounts. Just read the TOS, and make sure to follow the rules.

The key to Hub Pages is really networking with other authors. Visit, comment and become a fan of other Hubbers and they will visit you. If you keyword optimize your Hub page properly, same as a Squidoo lens, then you can rank high in SERPS for those keywords.

I recommend Squidoo over Hub Pages, much more flexibility and no one nagging you about what you add to your webpage.

Step-by-Step Internet Marketing for Bums

1. Keyword Research

Do some keyword research to find good keywords for your webpage. Aim for low competition keywords and focus on long tails. These are keyword phrases within a main keyword. Example, main keyword “laptop”, long tail keyword: “Used Cheap Laptops.” Long tails and micro niches can be found with a good amount of searchers and much less competition. Learn more and get tools at Step-by-Step Niche and Keyword Research.

2. Build a Webpage

Use one or more of the free venues to build webpages. As previously mentioned, I recommend Squidoo.

3. Article Marketing

Write a few related articles and link to those webpages from the resource box. Article marketing will bring traffic as well as backlinks.

• Use different keywords so you do not outrank yourself

• Submit to these top article sites:

Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
Go Articles
Article City
Article Alley
Amazines
Articles Factory

4. Social Bookmarks

Use social sites and submit your content, see 70+ Social Bookmarks Sites.

5. Anchor Text

Make sure to use your keywords in the anchor text for any backlinks to your webpages, while Squidoo and Hub Pages rank on their own, those backlinks will just increase the ranking power. Learn more at: The Importance of Anchor Text in Link Building.

6. US Free Ads

Use US Free Ads classifieds to promote your webpages and drive traffic, traffic that is well targeted as those visitors are looking to buy! Free account gives you 2 adds with unlimited content. $10 a year gives you many more.

7. Internet Forums

You can also use Internet Forums to promote your webpages and get some links. Make sure they are relevant to your topic and then the traffic is very targeted. Use this list of 144 Do-Follow Forums by Niche to find some.

Be patient, keep at it and good luck!!!

As with any Internet Marketing campaign some testing is needed. Not all Bum Internet Marketing campaigns are big successes, as is with any online venture.

Some of my Squid lenses have never made a cent, while others are doing great. But, no matter what, you cannot beat the hands-on free Internet Marketing experience and the extra income potential with these resources.