Back from Afghanistan, now what...Looking for partners/ training.

Setup an optin page and go after other soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Help them with internet marketing. It would be a great niche to dominate

Start building a list, starting yesterday.

First off, thank you for your service to our country. People may say that a lot, but I have a very deep respect for what you've done to secure our freedoms.

Now, about affiliate marketing. You're nowhere near ready to start buying ads and trying to drive traffic to make easy money. It takes a lot of time and effort to make money online, and your first job is research. So get out there and do your recon, study the other sites within your niche that are doing well and decide how you can do it better.

Marketing is all about communication and making others trust you, so your real goal here is to build a genuinely helpful site that just happens to also have great products at a great price. If you can do that, then you'll be successful in any niche.

Thanks again for serving- I'll keep an eye on this thread and try to answer any questions you may have.

I dont even know what to research? how to research really?

I am looking to get into affiliate marketing and am fairly new as well. if you would like to discuss ideas and talk about some questions we might have I think that would be awesome! PM me if you are interested

I really like that idea. At the same time I dont want my face in uniform being passed around the internet more than it already is plus exploiting my time in Afghanistan for money feels a little weird.

Thanks for your service. Since you're still really new, I'd recommend you check out Affiloblueprint by Mark Ling. It's really thorough -- as in you're not expected to know anything. There are lots of resources, and it has a community feel. He takes you through the course by showing you how to create a site from start to finish.

Finally, research is key to having success with this. Depending on the niche you plan to go into, you may or may not be able to use the domain you've already got. However, if you've got unlimited hosting, where you can host as many sites as you want, you'll be able to keep the same hosting package without having to pay more.

Good luck,
Joey

Very encouraging information!!! I think i should pick one thing and own it. Maybe look though the WSO and find a program and learn it?

I don't necessarily have better advice for you than the others have offered, but I would encourage you to really think about yourself.

What makes your experience so special, so unique, so valuable, that you can justify building a business model around it?

It could be the military experience, or it could have nothing to do with that. You are a multifaceted individual. There are probably 20 things you could come up with, if you try, that could be fleshed out into good story.

Yeah, people crave stories. Don't just throw up a storefront and wait for people to rush in - because they won't. Give them a destination worth getting emotionally invested in.

Need some ideas? Here is a list that took me about 30 seconds to come up with for inspiration - and this is just the B's... backgammon, bird feeders, burgers, buildings, bards, beer, bees, banks, bullies, bamboo, basil, Brazil, bars, brassieres, bartering, behavior, baseball, bread, boondoggles, bongs, booze, bionics, baklava, bombshells. Get the idea? You can build a web site around just about anything that people are interested in, and once you get into your groove, start exploring the many ways to monetize it.

What makes you happy? What are you good at? The closer you can hit to those positives, the more motivated you will be to really invest yourself into this project. And the more motivated you are, the more it will show in your online personality.

This is a starting point, and it is not necessarily realistic to expect to make money at the start. But if you are thoughtful, patient and methodical... and you are willing to research and evolve... there is no reason you can't grow something that is just an interest today into a business tomorrow.

And once you have one that works, you have just opened the way to use that experience to build a better one alongside it. And then a better one after that, if that excites you.

This is not the only way to go (actually, it is not the way I did it, to be transparent), but if I was where you are now, it is certainly the method I would be exploring.

Good luck. If you can survive the discipline of the military life, IM should not intimidate you one bit. Just stay far away from "get rich quick" ideas. They are a giant waste of time and ethical purity.

At least everything in the military is laid out for you. You are shown everything you need to do and how to do it. Then through a crawl-walk-run phase you are up and running doing it yourself and teaching others how to do so your self

Its so broad lol. Explore I will though. Im coming up for reenlistment. I really dont want to reenlist but we will see how it goes!

If you want to get going with affiliate marketing, I would suggest affilorama, Mark Ling has been doing this for a long time. The site is free to join, they do have paid products, but the free part of the site is loaded with information to help you make an informed decision.

al

Welcome home. I was in OIF during 05-06.

I will outline a very simple business model for you. Don't buy any WSO's or products until you perfect this process. Seriously, this is the whole process that you need to master to start seeing results. Once you start making decent money from this, then buy products that help you build on to this model I'm about to give you.

You are going to build what is called a self liquidating offer.

First, find an affiliate offer for a product that you trust. If you have purchased anything in the past that you felt was high quality and the sales pages was enticing, then use that one.

Second, get a squeeze page up on the website you own. To get set up quickly, just use something like clickfunnels, which has a free 14 day trial.

Third, get an autoresponder. Use Aweber or Getresponse because they have free 30 day trials. Create a new web form and put it on your squeeze page. Use your affiliate link as your thank you page so that your subscribers instantly go from hitting the subscribe button to seeing a paid offer. This allows them to potentially get a product that will help them solve a problem and gives you an opportunity to profit or at least make some of your ad spend back. Win - Win scenerio.

Fourth, Write 7 to 10 emails that educate your prospects on a related topic to your affiliate product. Put your affiliate link at the bottom of the first 3 or 4. Use 2 or 3 to explain why they need to check out the affiliate product and then write at least one more telling them that the product offer will be closed soon.

Finally, send traffic to your squeeze page. I don't know if you have ever spent time or money of building traffic but this is where you want to keep things very simple. I often see people try to do to many things at once and ultimately they don't get results because they are spread way to thin. Master 1 or 2 traffic strategies and you will not have to worry about money, unless we are talking about taxes ;-)

The best traffic source to start out with, in terms of simplicity and speed, is probably Solo ads. You are basically buying an email to a segment of an established marketers list. You should always do your due diligence on each solo ad seller because when money is involved there will always be a scammer or two.

Buy small solo ads at first, buying 100 to 300 clicks from each seller. The will usually guarantee a certain number of clicks so if you don't get at least the number that you paid for let them know and they should have no problem sending you more.

Next, I would use a free traffic source to get more traffic. This really depends on the amount of time you have and your personality. I hate my voice and don't really enjoy writing articles so I often outsource content but I wouldn't suggest doing it when you start out.

You can do videos, podcasts, articles, ebooks, social media, etc.If I were starting out again, I would do ebooks. Post those ebooks on amazon kindle for $3 so you can earn small amounts of money per sale, which is a pretty nice profit center. Each book would have a small ad in, either in the very end or very beginning, which would send them to my squeeze page.

No matter what you choose to do for traffic, when you see results, do more of what got you the results. Also, track everything. You should know how many clicks you get, how many leads you get and how many sales you get from each traffic source.

This is kind of simplified but all of the information that I've given you should easily get you started. I don't know much about the whole amazon drop shipping thing that everyone is doing these days but I would start here before I do amazon. That way you can send traffic to your amazon store anytime you want to make a good increase in cash.

You've been given some excellent advice here, (and some not so good)

msm24 business model is spot on but as you are brand new even that may be beyond your skill level right now (no offence meant)

I would recommend getting into a good training program and/or get a mentor if you want to get things rolling in the right direction. There are too many distractions and blind alleys to get lost in and before you know it you'll have wasted a year or more.

As you said "At least everything in the military is laid out for you. You are shown everything you need to do and how to do it."

Not so in the IM world and there is a sniper on every corner!

In the IM world there are a million and one ways to earn money and you will need to figure out what suits your style, your temperament.and your initial investment in your business.

You will need to go through the "crawl-walk-run phase" and with someone like Mark Ling or Rosalind Gardner or Andre Chaperon for example, you will progress faster.

Learning one thing at a time in an orderly fashion would, I imagine. appeal to you. So do some research on who you want to learn from first. You'll save yourself a ton of time and money in the long run rather than picking up WSO after WSO which by their nature, offer one part of the puzzle at best but not the whole picture.

Lastly I'ld keep away from teaching in the IM niche for obvious reasons! There are plenty of lucrative sub-niches elsewhere in health, relationships or finance for instance.

I hope that helps and I wish you all success with your business.

Met many people in your shoes, find what you love most, and learn to make money from it. Someone introduced me to the Amazon thing, but I just want to enjoy life. Not do boring things on the Ethernet for a dollar. There's many marketing companies out there! Just have to find one your passionate about! And it's easy from there!

Hahaha Id go back for sure. We kicked Taliban ass until dec when the war officially ended. It was boring from then on. Im not driven away yet! I really appreciate all the comments to! By no means am I a hero, but I did things and seen things and places most will never see or do! I keep reading the comments over and over so i can understand what you guys are telling me!

I would like to find a mentor though! I am very hesitant though. We had a lot of down time and personal time while in country and as you know we dont make a lot of money in the military and while deployed. I came on to these forums looking for help and thought i met some mentors. What happened was they took my money and left essentially. I lost over 3000 dollars. A month and halfs pay if you will!

Welcome home .

Use WordPress to start building out niche shopping sites (i.e. Jewelry, Cell Phones, Electronics, etc.) and monetize with AliExpress.com and/or Amazon.

Depending how you place them, you could also monetize with some CPM networks such as Adsense / Outbrain. Don't look spammy though.

Facebook is good because you can share your content with your friends - but you're going to have to build that up obviously. Make your sites have high valued content and consider blogging to expand your audience virally.

Make sure to have an email capture on your site to collect leads (in return give them a coupon).

To keep it short, make sure you're building an asset (i.e. a website). Don't get trapped into the fast money world of direct linking affiliate offers.

very much appreciated!!!! Still pretty confusing haha!

I have a few niches in mind related to military gear and apparel. Seems like tactical stuff is becoming more popular. Many big name tactical companies have affiliate programs.....What are ways I can sell their stuff? With out a website? PPC? Facebook ads?

You should seriously consider CPA Lead Generation. With leads there is nothing to buy (no credit card required). All the user has to do is fill out a form, so conversion rates are often much higher. There are good paying leads that you can get $20-$60 and more depending on the vertical that work well on a front-end campaign.

The downside is that when your first starting out, most networks won't payout weekly unless you are doing like $1K per week. So you have to be able to float all you expenses until you get paid. The other downside is that you ideally want to sign up with many networks, because your going to want to split test offers between the networks to find the ones that make the most money. So this thins out how much your making per network when testing. Once your rolling, none of this matters.

For me, nothing beats email for generating traffic. Plus for some leads, the advertiser won't allow anything other than traffic from email. Simply because any traffic source that is available to you, is available to them (so they are probably already using it), but your list isn't available to them.

All I do is build lists and buy lists. I don't spend a dime on anything other than email acquisition. This way it all comes down to how many emails do I need to send to break-even on my list acquisition costs and when to transition to another offer and how aggressive I can get away with being. Which all just comes down to watching your stats.

Unlike IM/MMO, with lead generation lists you don't have to build a relationship with your lists. It's not going to make much difference in your conversions. So this makes for less work. You just mail until they unsubscribe or remove them after they don't engage for X period of time.. While this may sound bad, it's not. A good percentage will stick around for years.

I have been thinking about starting a couple coaching programs in the future, one would be beginner level and the other advanced, but they will be high ticket programs and the advanced would be real high ticket. I remember your original post about how you got ripped off. So, If I decide to move forward with the coaching, I would consider teaching you (beginner level) at no cost up front, but you would need to pay me at some point in the future from your profits and only your profits and there would be some stipulations that I would want in a contract, but the stipulations would have nothing to do with money.

However, it is really up in the air on me doing the coaching, because I'm really not 100% sure it's something I really want to do. If I do, I will PM you about it. Also I would need to make sure that your a good fit for doing this, because some people just aren't cut out for it. Obviously it would also need to be something you want to get in to, who knows, maybe it's not.

In case you are wondering what what type of income potential exists. I know no one that does this, that actually know what they are doing and doesn't do 6-7 figures. Granted that is a huge gap and there are many factors that get you from one end to the other.

can you run through real world how people get to you with your method? like an example?

To throw in a couple cents... And to keep the conversation going, I think you may be on to something with the tactical gear idea, which can get into the prepper niche, self defense and more. These are trending massively and there is plenty of room at the top!

Now, I'm laying out a potential path/roadmap here with a focus on building what can be long-term, consistent income with very little cost... No PPC needed (but it can help), maybe $100/year if you have a decent video camera, which you can get for under $100 if you don't.

Take what works for you, leave the rest.

This plan has worked for us, for friends and is really a great business model once it gets rolling. The trick is that it takes lots of effort before seeing results. Think flabby kids turning into ripped soldiers... It takes time, hard work and you will have to break through your own mental chatter of doubts, questions, and B.S.

The only thing I can say is that it is 100% worth it, but most people quit before they see results. Perseverance is the ultimate 'trick' to success.

The first thing to ask yourself is... Do these areas (tactical gear/prepper nice) intrigue you? Would you consider yourself to be passionate about the little things, like tactical knives/flashlights/skills? If you walk up to a magazine stand, do you find yourself looking at the guns and ammo mags flipping through browsing the latest gadgets?

The biggest benefit I see here is that your background and experiences put you on a level for that niche, ahead of 99% of the pack who have never seen or done what you have. This is good. There are SOOOOOOO many wanna-be's out there in every niche who look up to the pro's. You are a pro, so your advice and input can stand out and when you recommend something, it would hold more weight than if I tried my hand at this niche.

With that said, if you couldn't give an eff about this niche and want to change your focus on to new things, stop and find the niche/topic that will keep your interest for 3 - 5 years. This is the biggest trick, because it sounds like you are looking for a new career, not a make some $$ fast to have it fall out from under you in 6 months.

Lets just say you are stoked on this niche... (or lets say you know of another one that you feel would work)... Next step is to build your audience. But I want to reiterate here... NOTHING WORKS until you have the niche that truly interests you and is in alignment with topics you are interested in.

From here the 'how to' can vary based on how you would prefer to create content... But you will have to create content... Starting by reviewing all of the tactical gear you have that civilians can get (at least similar versions of) and also how-to content for the gear you have.

If you are comfortable speaking on camera, YouTube videos would be a great start (3 minutes each is best, keep them under 5 minutes each, we humans have attention spans of gnats, these days)... Then, have the video transcribed/worked into an article and post that to a WordPress site.

If you are a deer-in-headlights on camera, hopefully you can write! Just write out the content. Then read it and record the audio, add slides and make YouTube videos.

Last way would be to record the audio and have someone transcribe it and turn it into an article, then add slides and turn it into slideshow videos for YouTube

Then, start a facebook fan page and publish a link to every video or WordPress post to that fanpage after you create it.

That is the 'job'... Content, content, content. The more you publish the better you will get at it, the easier it becomes and the faster you will build an audience. Consider it your basic training in IM and publish 90 videos and blog posts in 30 days...

When you run out of your own gear, borrow gear from your friends/family.

Once you have this content creation machine running, you will want to build an email list with an opt-in for a training series on how to be a badass, or whatever you are focusing on.... Lol. Not trying to come up with the exact options, just a rough road map.

And obviously, how do you monetize it? Well, I'd say that getting an affiliate account with Avantlink would be my #1 starting place as they have a ton of merchants in the prepper/tactical space.

You will want to have a site up and a YouTube channel going before you apply to Avantlink... they deny lots of wanna-be's so you gotta look a bit like you have taken some steps forward. If you get denied, don't worry, just re-apply, or reach out to their support (get a hold of Chad there and let him know you are serious and dedicated, he'll let you in).

Amazon will only pay you 4% starting out and AdSense is going to fill your site with less-than-relevant ads for not enough money.

If you go in this direction, get into Avantlink as they are the leading affiliate network for all things survival/prepper/guns & ammo... And you will be able to earn 8% - 15%+ working directly with the vendors.

Then, place banner ads from the Avantlink vendors in your site instead of AdSense. It creates much more of a brand and allows you to stay in control of your content (while earning way more!)

Also, build a list, build a list, build a list! Come up with a give-away "5 tactical tips every prepper must know" and use that to get people interested in your niche/topics to subscribe to your email list.

That list is the true asset for you, because it becomes a distribution channel where you can post a review on your site for a new whatever-widget and then email your list to check out your new post... Which links them to an affiliate offer.

Keep it simple and take consistent steps in the right direction and you will get there!

Hey brother, thanks for your service first of all, and yes, the quickest way to success is to start building a list and go from there, will take some time but you will get there! You already have ability to focus

Hey,

I was in the British forces. You should show yourself in uniform, it's part of who you are.

There is a solo ad seller who is a good looking woman. Christ she's hot. She doesn't sell herself exactly, she offers the same kind of service as most other solo ads, to the same standards, but she promotes what she's got and shes pretty successful. She has a good service but her looks give her a USP.

You should have the same attitude. Americans are hot for supporting their armed forces, it's pretty similar in the UK, which is exactly as it should be. You should embrace it and use it, that's the hand you've been dealt. People are slightly more likely to listen to what you have to say than others, use it!

In other words, do what the pretty girl does but in a uniform. Use the materials you have.

She creates a squeeze page with her pretty little self explaining how she's going to give away some report for FREE. (standard stuff but because she's hot I wouldn't surprised if she has a slightly higher opt in rate)

She follows it up with a OTO (one time offer) for a small price

Then she sends photos of herself in normal everyday situations with something like Here is something for FREE just for you (link)

but she lives somewhere hot so of course she in shorts, a bikini etc. Of course it's nothing provocative, these the same photos she shares with friends on FB, but she is a beautiful woman and nice to look at. I bet she has a great click thru rate all the same.

From time to time she adds 'real value' by sending her list something she's probably bought and made her own (if you don't know about PLR products that is something you need to know about)

If you haven't guessed it, those links go to other people's offers, she sells clicks for people. The general rules for solo ads is that they go to a FREE offer. This works out really well for her because she's saying something like "hey guys, click this" and makes it sound like she's done them a favor"

I completely see you doing something similar. Use your image as a member of the armed forces. People trust their armed forces. Create a large email list, email them offers from time to time but most of the time email them freebies.

You buy a list using solo ads, then you use adswaps to continue to increase your numbers and if you're able to invest another $2-3000 dollars (after split testing everything first) you can grow that into $150-200 a day in 2 months, maybe more as you've got a unique angle.

I started doing this a while back, after watching some videos and reading some blog posts. I can break it down into a bit more detail if you like and send it over, if you see that as something you might like to try.

I'd be happy to do that, because like most people here, I respect our armed forces too so it's nice to help out when I can.

Guy called Igor Kheifets is offering some training on this on WSO

I don't know the guy, never bought anything from him or done his training. But he's done a lot on the forum and you can make your own decision about him.

Just thought I'd mention it cause he's someone known for selling solo ads.