Money to invest in Internet Marketing, advice? Do not inbox me offers. Give me valuable advice on this thread and then pitch me.

I'm not an affiliate marketer, but here is my two cents.

First and foremost, your post reeks of someone who has done a lot of research but very little actual business building with the numbers, percentages, formulas, etc. All that will go out the window when YOU build YOUR business - since not all business are created equal with a wide range of niches, products, funnels, offers, and marketing ability.

In my opinion, you're on the right path here...

However, I'm not a fan of solo ads, personally... I prefer Facebook ads. Drive that to a landing page, capture emails, then to a one time offer to ideally break even on your ads, then promote a medium ticket item ($97 per month, $297-497 one time). Then have a product between $2,997 and $9,997 in the back end. If you're doing something like a service that's done for you, you can outsource the work and profit a lot.

y suggestion would be to click on the advance tab and the edit tab and change the headline to "i have money" and not the 5K will stop the sharks form circling

In my opinion:
1, Deverlop your webside and concentrate to your core values ( KEY WORK)
2, PR your KEYWORK to customer ( use ads FB, post on famous person fanpages ...) -> need a ads have quanlity
3, Use email ( I think you need 3-4 email for : Male, Female, Young,....) and make sure your email can got their attention,

1 and 3 you can do it yourseft ( i think that )
Inportant note: Pls Work with team

That my opinion: If you have any Reviewe, pls let me know.

in my opinion ,create a nice website,outsource of some high value contents,rund ads both in fb and PPC,you will get a decent amount of traffic.if your content is so convincing you will get leads and sales.

Hi this was my advise
Almost all internet marketing strategies require more of your time and less of your money compared to traditional marketing and advertising solutions.

Try to get by with that now - at least on this forum...and YOU would be deleted

To the OP:

I commend you on saving money to invest in your business - but if you've been studying for a year you KNOW what to do. Don't go off the rails now by trying to find only products that pay high commissions. You can do that as you learn but the focus right now should be on the right niche, getting a site/blog set up, planning your activity and sales (building a funnel) and setting up an autoresponder for list building.

Don't get distracted by going back into 'research' mode - get started. You can add product and more sites later - you can add other niches - you can move to higher priced products. Until you START, nothing happens.

If people are PMing you with promotions ...use the little exclamation point/red triangle on the top right of the PM (on the black tool bar) to report the PM spam.

You don't say what niche you plan to work in - best advice is to stay away from the MMO (make money online) niche. Build a wordpress site (just follow one of the many free 'how to build WP' online.

You can expect success or failure or anything in between....if answers sound redundant and regurgitated chances are you already know enough to be doing something. No one can tell you what to expect - what happens depends on what YOU do...scary, isn't it?

I do not buy solo ads, but I have been promoting affiliate/CPA offers (mainly PPL) for over16 years via email.

1. You simply will need to test and see how solo's work for you. Building a list is in no way overhyped. However, there are plenty of people that have built lists and made very little money. So it is in no way a guarantee that you will make a living from it.

I think .40 is a bit on the low side for solo ads. I also think 30% or better opt-in rate is good.

I have little doubt that testimonials are not typical results. So I would be skeptical of all of them.

$1 per subscriber revenue per month is a number that someone pulled out their ass one day. You can make much more or much less. It is in no way an average that anyone should expect.

2. I don't think anyone can go wrong with learning Facebook. They have the most extensive micro-targeting abilities.

3. I think you will just have to test to find which providers are good. I would also expect those that have found good ones aren't likely to tell who they are.

4. After getting an opt-in you could offer a tripwire (low cost / irresistible offer...impulse buy) to try and convert subscriber to buyer. In MMO, most will price their trip wire at like $7 (but anywhere from $1-$20). Also, you want the tripwire to be closely related to the opt-in freebie.

For the most part, a person is most likely to take you up on an offer right after a previous offer...upsell. If they take the tripwire, then present them with another offer. Keep doing this until they decline an offer.

Getting some to take you up on the tripwire is key. A paying customer is something like 10X more likely to buy from you than a subscriber that has never purchased anything. Also at the point of sale, endorphins kick in and they feel good about their purchase, so you want to hit them with an upsell.

5. Initial sales after opt-in with solo ads. No idea. I suspect it is probably more common to not get sales than getting them.

6. You should mail them as often as you can without getting unacceptable unsubscribes / complaints VS revenue generated. You just have to test.

If you are sending content, I would try and include an offer that that is related to the content. If you have nothing to offer that is related. I would at least put a tag line for something at the end of the message.

Also, keep in mind that there is a big world outside of MMO and even selling products / services.

I heavily promote PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers. This is because there is no credit card / purchase required to complete an offer. All a user has to do is fill out a form, so conversion rates are typically much higher compared to offers that require a sale to be made.

I favor offers that have a make, get or save money benefit to them, as they have overall worked the best. They also tend to have the greatest mass appeal (will be of interest to a large general audience), so the potential exists to produce high volume and they are fairly easy to cross promote on the back-end.

Some of the verticals (niches) I have done extremely well with are: education, insurance, loans, debt, credit, mortgage, assistance, discount offers, homeowner offers, etc...

Bottom line: it's far easier to get someone fill out a short form than to get them to pull out their credit card and make a purchase. So why struggle with trying to sell this or that, when you can provide free information that users want/need and get paid well doing it.

Online lead generation is a multi-billion dollar industry. Done right it can be far more profitable than many imagine. Everyone that I know that is in the business and knows what they are doing, for the most part, does 6-7 figures. While that's a huge range, much comes to one's ability to scale and effectively build / manage the infrastructure needed to scale.

Something to think about.

My advice in bold.

.
I have 5k to invest. I am looking for some combination of quick ROI, and long term income.

Quickest ROI I've been involved with was a 25,000+ first 30 days on sales of a report, on HEADLIGHT Cleaning which sold for 97 bux. It took 21 days to write the report and shoot the video. Let me clarify.

This ROI for ONE person, newbie to IM, without experience in marketing. I've seen and participated in product launches where 5 times this amount came in the first month.


I plan to build a real affiliate marketing business of some sort.
WHY? Why today and now? Can you find someone who has spent the year you spent on research, only they jumped into affiliate marketing, and have succeeded?

I am a complete noob to both internet marketing, and this forum. However I have researched and studied this tirelessly for 4-5 hours/day, 5 days a week, for the past year. This sounds dubious to me. What exactly have you studied?

I am ready to finally dive in, and I want to avoid noob mistakes as much as possible. I am aware that most programs are scams, so all of my investments will go towards traffic and software, and other tools that are required. No info products; most of the info is free anyway.

My plan for now is to build up a website in one of three niches,
Do you have expertise, knowledge or experience in any of these?
and use the 5k for solo ads to drive targeted traffic????

to a squeeze page, combined with a back end offer to help make some if not all of the ad spend back, and if I'm lucky, some initial profit.

I know that solo ads generally go for about 40 cents/ click, and assuming a 40% opt in, I will be paying $1 per sub. Depending on what I choose to promote, I should be able to make a few sales and hopefully cut that cost in half.

I am going to do a lot of research on testimonials, including direct messaging some of these people on Facebook to get more details on their results. Even still I will test small, to see what quality of traffic I get, before I scale. I want to eliminate any possibility of stupidly dumping money on bots, or poorly targeted, non buyer traffic.

From there, I will build relationships with the list, and try to meet their needs so that I can produce true buying customers who deem me trustworthy.

I hear a lot about the $1 per subscriber average per month in profit, but honestly, I'll be happy with and am expecting more like 25 cents/ per. I think the average for lists is about 1-2% of people who open the email actually buy. If I build a 10k list and get $50/sale, with a 25% open rate and 1% cr, that's 1,250 per sales email. I don't want to spam my list with crap, as that will be detrimental long term and probably not very effective short term.

I will continue to optimize my offer and squeeze page and test different methods, until I am making all of my money back and eventually getting free traffic. Maybe this is unrealistic, but I will definitely try my best.

So...thanks for reading, and I have a few questions.

1. Is this a waste of time? Should I try to learn the ropes of cold traffic, and drive ppc to cpa offers instead? Is building a list overhyped?

2. Would I be better off using bing or Facebook ppc to drive traffic to my squeeze page, instead of solo ads? Would the traffic be better quality?

3. Any other recommended definitive methods to find quality solo ads that is very targeted? I'm willing to pay for what works. I just know that the nature of people who will allow you to buy solo ad from them are in the business of that specifically, and therefore may be less concerned about the quality of their list, thus poor traffic source.

4. Thank you page, or offer page directly after opt in followed by a thank you email? Maybe a bit arbitrary, but what have you had better results from?

5. I'm aware that a good aim for opt in is 40-50%, but what about initial sales? I know, I know, it depends, blah blah, spare me. (In before "no one can tell you what results you will have, *insert redundant regurgitated inconclusive answer here*. I'm aware of the unpredictable nature of it. I just want an idea of what to expect) What are some results that you can vouch for with your solo ad runs, as far as actual conversions?

6. How often should I email the list? I don't want to be spammy, but at the same time want to weed out freebie seekers, and also want to stay relevant. Should I attach a link to the product in each email, or just send emails daily/every other day and send a sales email once a week?

Thank you guys so much for your insights. Feel free to follow up with a question of your own, if you need me to clarify any of my questions.
****************************
OK. I couldn't read any more. You are putting all the wrong questions out here. Let me make this easy for you:

What is your PRODUCT? (or service)
Who is your PROSPECT?
WHERE will the two intersect?

Most of the time, they meet at your PROMOTION. Or ad/offer. HOW do they find it?

IF they want it, how do they pay for it? How is it sent/shipped or downloaded?

So, you need something to sell, a place to sell it, and a way to take money and then deliver your goods or services.

You have spent a year and you don't have a clue to your PRODUCT???

You have studied someone's MATH, and have a very unrealistic idea of your future. But feel free to prove me wrong. HOLD tightly to your money, until you have a fully fleshed out plan and KNOW exactly what you want to do, then find a model, or someone who has done it and learn from them. On your own, you will LOSE all your money and have nothing to show for it.

GordonJ

PS. It is just FREE advice ON the forum, if you paid me 5k, I would tell you the exact same thing, you are not ready to spend (and LOSE) your savings, it would be a total waste of your time.

Paid traffic beats out any SEO at this stage for you because it will take a long time to build significant seo traffic.

First, trying to sell a product on first touch is not the way to go. Nobody knows you well enough to buy from you or give you their email address.

Second is that whatever method you use to drive traffic MOST of them are going to bounce without taking any kind of action like buying or signing up.

So, the solution to significantly reduce that loss and greatly increase your ROI is to retarget your visitors with ads and bring them back again.

Building a sales funnel will be essential to move your prospects from cold to warm to hot leads who are ready to buy from you.

Build your first sales funnel to target your biggest target market, and optimize that funnel to get the most sales.

Then build a new funnel for prospects in each stage of the buyers cycle. Link your funnels together so prospects entering lower in the funnel moves through in a logical manner.

Over time as your funnels grow, use retargeting to segment your customers to move them through your sales process. Segmenting and speaking to them on their level will greatly increase your CTR.

Each of these steps requires advanced skills. But having a well designed sales funnel that captures leads, brings them back, and gives them what they need depending on what stage of the buyers process they enter your funnel will get you all the success you need.

It is important to note that strong copy skills, knowing how to write headlines, the intro, the body, down to the CTA and conversion rate optimization is essential for a strong funnel.

If you'd like to know more I'd be happy to help you any way I can. Feel free to message me if these techniques resonate with you and you feel this is exactly what you need to get your business started on the right foot.

You have done your research for a year but the only way to truly learn is by 'doing'.

We as humans only learn by experience.

Now will be your real learning experience...by trial error and even using that money up.

I am not saying to purposely lose your money.

What I am saying...there's no exact method that will guarantee you make profit no matter how serious you feel you are (or who gives you helpful info).

You will make mistakes, you will lose money, you may even get frustrated and even quit.

But that's all part of this make money game.

i think theres a WSO that for $4000 you will be allowed entrance to the coaching system and in 6 months or so you will be making money without even having to work.
sounds legit, right?

Not a fan of solos, you can build a large list of subs, but the responsiveness is crap. Plus, you mention "one of three niches". A lot harder to find solos in niches outside of mmo - although could be done. Ppc and fb ad would be my go. Good luck sir!

1. Most traffic would be cold unless you are re-targeting those who have shown interest in your ad. So building a list and a relationship will never be over hyped.

2. Regarding ads. Starting with solo ads are good because the people who opt in are already those targeted for your niche and it is more straightforward. However, learning and mastering one other traffic source at a time would be good. Don't focus on too many as you will see your money fly away if it's not done right.

3. The only way to know an advertising works is to test them against your own campaign. What works for one marketer may not work well for the other marketer.

4. You will still get sales if you redirected them to a front end offer. Using a thank you page can however build your brand. It depends on your marketing strategy.

5. I am looking for 1 to 2 sales from every 100 solo ad clicks. I am still mastering the art of creating a good funnel to increase the earnings from every campaign.

6. Email them everyday. Emailing them everyday does not mean spam if you can provide your readers with what they want.

Note about email marketing.

As long as you are emailing your subscribers, you will get unsubscribes, so do not worry about unsubscribers. If they are not interested in your mails, they will eventually unsubscribe.

I try to email my list everyday. This will strengthen my relationship with those who loves opening my emails and weed out those who are not interested (it cost me money to keep them on my list too!)

Just my 2 cents. Hope that there was a little help along the way.

If i was in your position, i would only be buying knowledge on how to build lists and selling your own product. Traffic is obviously an important factor to. So it would be useful to learn how to promote on social media and forums.

1. Building your list is not over-hyped. Create your squeeze page and test 2-3 traffic generation methods and see which one works best for you. Some people love solo ads, some people love facebook ads, some people love youtube ads. You won't know what works for you until you try it out and see for yourself.

2. Facebook ad traffic is pretty awesome when you get the targeting right. That would be my #1 pick for paid traffic. I haven't really tested bing ads so I can't speak on that.

3. If you're going to do solo ads and you want to know who the best solo ad sellers are, you will have to go through trial and error, or hire an expert who can point you in the right direction.

4. Squeeze page => Thank You Page. Send people to a squeeze page and then redirect them to a thank you page after they opt-in. Thank you page should have access to the free gift they opted in for, and you can have a promo to a relevant low-ticket offer.

5. My experience with solo ads hasn't been great when it comes to initial sales. However, I did make future sales from the list.

6. Email every day but send more free value emails then promotions. Value, value, then promotion, value, then promotion. Always alternate free value emails, with promotion emails.

Good Luck!

I have read your original post and your responses to replies given. What I see is tunnel vision. You appear to have made your decision before you really got started on your research, and like most people, sought advice (and research results) that would reinforce your decision.

So..... I just want to suggest that you look for a moment outside that tunnel. I can't disable my signature just for this one post, but if you look at my AMA in the eCommerce section you will see that I have a habit of trying to be helpful.

One of my former franchisees (I sold out a few years back) wrote to me: "It's nice to get that occasional $50,000 for half a day's work." Not a bad ROI considering the goods he sold for $57,000 cost him $7,000. By the way if you care to report this to fair trading authorities as a dubious claim, I will happily show them the original letter.

He did better than my best, which was only when I bought a quantity of a bespoke product in China for $3,000 and sold them all in one sale for $21,000.

The point I am making is that there is money to be made in selling physical products. On this forum there are plenty of gurus in training who would happily take your $5,000 to teach you how by using their foolproof system.

I don't teach how to sell physical products, but as a disclaimer I must confess that I do sell a book teaching how to source and import physical products. I certainly doubt that you would be interested, I am just prompting you to think outside your self-imposed square.

Walter Hay

I agree that your idea to start small to test any online marketing concept is a sound plan.

I was not criticizing you, just wanting to alert you to other possibilities that you didn't appear to have considered.

May I just add that it is also possible, and in fact I strongly advise it, to import small quantities of inventory at ex factory prices. There is a myth that you must order huge amounts to buy direct from manufacturers.

As you have done so thoroughly in researching the aff marketing model, it is also essential that anyone planning on selling physical products should do their market research before they jump in.

Walter Hay

With this much study and research, you should have all the information, ideas, methods, and know-how you need to get started in affiliate marketing. Don't wait any longer. You're always going to have questions and some uncertainty going forward but I can tell you this ... getting started is half the battle ... getting that first campaign off the ground and earning your first commission doesn't need to take anywhere near a year.

Don't wait until everything is perfect. Set a goal to earn your first commission in 24 hours and get after it!

Steve

Here is what you need to do.

This is what I do, it's what I taught my wife and daughter to do.

1. In everything I'm about to say you must follow one piece of advice; You are paid in direct proportion to the value you deliver to the people on your list.

Read that again.

2. Build a list.

3. Give them insanely valuable and actionable content.

4. Offer them your own product that you created.

5. More content.

6. Offer them a continuity program (membership site)

7. More content.

8. Offer them a larger ticket item.

9. More content.

10. Rinse and repeat.

Figure out what you want to do in life.

This is something you alone can figure out. Nobody can decide for you.

Next, map out the steps you need to take to get there.

Once you come to this conclusion, you'll know exactly what your next move must be.