Starting an Online, "Virtual" Business from Scratch -- Three Easy Methods

[Damon the Marketer]

This will be a 3-part series. I hope to introduce people new to online businesses to some of the easiest ways to get started fast. These methods are easy and mostly free. But most importantly, they are scalable. I've tried these all myself in the past with decent success (around $1,000 per month per method, working part-time), but don't do any of them full-time (I'm running a "real" marketing business in Japan, at the moment).

Anyway, here we go:

Method 1: The “Double-Whammy”

1. Get an Amazon Affiliate Account at Amazon.com.

This allows you to place ads for Amazon products on your website. You will get a percentage of the profits for each sale.

2. Set up a website.

The details have been done to death all over this forum. But the basics are that you need hosting and a domain. The details of neither of these are especially important. Just hurry up and get a website up. If this is your first website, just use Wordpress, as it’s pretty much all automatic.

3. Get a Youtube account.

You probably already have one. You are going to need one to upload videos, which is easy anyway.

4. Get a Youtube Downloader.

A Youtube Downloader is a piece of software that allows you to download a Youtube video from Youtube. This is great because it basically gives you the ability to "copy" the video of someone else.

5. Go to your Amazon Affiliate account and get some product codes for some movies.

These are the movies you will be "selling" through your site. Choose movies that are:
a) Not fully available on Youtube
b) Have good previews (this is important!)

6. Paste those Amazon codes to your site.

We haven’t talked about how to structure your site because it’s a mere detail. If you’re confused, just do one movie per “post” on your Wordpress blog. The more movies you post, the better. I recommend you start with around 12 movies that fulfill the criteria in step 5.

7. Download the movies’ previews from Youtube.

Use your Youtube Downloader to get all the previews for the movies on your site. Download the previews to your computer.

8. Upload the previews to your own Youtube account.

Just reupload the previews you just downloaded. Now they’ll be under your account. One thing you might want to do during this step is to change the thumbnails of the previews so that your videos stand out in comparison to the previews you just downloaded (of course, they are the same videos, but people on Youtube looking for previews will often click on multiple previews in the thumbnails look different – this can help you make a bit more cash in the long-run).

9. Monetize your Youtube account.

Youtube will allow you to monetize your Youtube account in “settings.” In this way, when people view your previews, Youtube will play advertisements. You will make money for allowing those advertisements to play. This is the first part of a “double-whammy” money-making system.

10. Add the Youtube links to the video previews to your website.

For each of your Amazon movie “posts” on your website, link or embed your Youtube preview for the corresponding movie. Now you have two ways of making money when someone comes to your site:
a) Clicking on your Youtube preview – You make advertising money.
b) Clicking on your Amazon ad – You make money if they purchase the movie.

11. Get traffic

You have many options here. But for the absolute newbie, my recommendation is to put forth a bit of money to buy some traffic. Here are my recommendations for traffic, in the following order:
1. Buying or renting an email list. Send a mass email to the list.*
2. Posting classified ads in a place like Craigslist.*
3. Run some SEO to your site under long-tail keywords such as “comedy movie collection for sale.”
* For the first two methods, your email or ad will basically be the same. State that you have a load of movies for sale at a low price and link to your website. The people that click will be people interested in movies and likely to at least click on a couple previews, if not buy one or two movies.

There it is, an 11-step, “double-whammy” method to getting money via Youtube and Amazon at the same time. This works well because the people who don’t buy from Amazon still give you some money through watching your Youtube videos.

If anything, starting your IM career with this method can give you some initial capital to start a faster business. When you’re ready for something bigger, send me PM.

Stay tuned for part 2 (btw: should I post in another thread or this thread?)

[ken1drusa]

You mean starting an online ADVERTISING REPLICATION SITE for POPULAR MOVIES & DVDs.

It's hardly a business in the traditional sense, but it sounds like it can generate cash flow — if you don't mind spamming others to generate traffic to your site.

[Damon the Marketer]

I admit that it's not 100% whitehat. But I imagine many of the people coming to this forum don't understand how easy it is to start generating cashflow without initial startup costs.

Many of these less-than-legitimate businesses can turn into legit businesses. For example, after finding that this business model generates money, you could slowly turn it into a movie review website or online magazine. Most people with such a goal would start out simply writing articles, making $0 for the first few months. At least this way, you're building upon something that is already bringing in cash.

I understand that the people of this forum might not like such methods. If that's the case, I won't continue posting such methods.

As we all know, starting a "legit" business from scratch takes months and months of hard work. I don't work with new businesses simply because they don't have the money to pay me. But at the same time, I'd like to encourage those young to the field by proving how easy it is to make money without a job.

Anyway, I would like to add some value to these forums. Do you have any topic ideas? I'd gladly post some content-heavy threads on whatever you're interested in.

A little about me:

-I work as a marketing consultant
-My clients primarily have the goal of expanding (either offline-to-online or local-to-global)
-I'm fluent in English, Chinese, and Japaneses
-I have a MS in psychology
-I worked as a fulltime freelance copywriter before starting my consulting company

If you think I have any info that could help you guys, let me know and I'll start a series on it.

[ken1drusa]

I certainly don't want to discourage you. I'm posting here because many other business-related forums are either dead or flooded with nothing but ads. At least here there's some activity.

So I really do appreciate that you took the time to write what you wrote.

Remember the Pet Rock? What a profound concept for a business! It was also started by an advertising guy. Almost same field as you. He was an executive that first played with the idea as a joke among friends. Then it was just too easy for him to take it seriously, to actually market the idea, sell it, and ultimately make millions from it.

I cannot despise him. I can only admire him.

There's no lesson here. It's just business. And business is nothing but making money.