How To Gross $5K+ A Month (If I did it, so can you!)

(I wrote this for someone elsewhere, and thought I would repost this here - I included some screenshots because, for some reason, people love seeing how much money other people make... I did when I was there, lol. Let's work together and keep pushing on so we can all see these types of income reports!)

Someone asked me to write up a tutorial on what I’m currently doingand how I got there. So, without further ado, here goes…

I started affiliatemarketing all the way back in 2018. I was 21(?), still living with myparents, and had no clue what I was doing with my life. Affiliatemarketing seemed pretty good to go with because it all had low costsput into it – pretty much pay for hosting for a site, and write alot of content, and you can make money (that’s what it is in anutshell, not exactly works out that way, haha).

Fast forward toearly 2021, I had some extra cash (saved up as I had no expenses serving in the military), and so convinced two of my siblings and myfriend to ‘invest’ some money into a plan I had – and that waspurchasing a website that was being sold. It was previously a woman’spersonal blog (sort of) but had done well enough, that it had beenmaking consistent revenue.

By July 2022, I hadthat site I bought making enough to support myself and my familysince my current job (i.e. the military) discharged me because Irefused to get the covid vaccine.

How did this allhappen?

My Wife's Strategy To Get Us Where We Are Today

There is a lot thatI wish I had time to say and talk about (especially how my wife wastremendous in showing me how to get where we are right now and amgrateful to God for her every single day), but what she helped showme boiled down to the following:

Focus on what youwant/where you want to be in 10-20 years. Where do you want to be?What do you want to have? What are you moving forward in life toachieve? (For us, our 5-10-20 year goal is setting ourselves up tohave our ‘ultimate’ homestead, where we have 50+ acres to farm,build our own house, and enjoy the simplicity and self-sufficiency ofhomesteading)

The second step (oreven the first) is believing that this is all achievable, andpossible. Just search online for Jim Rohn or Earl Nightingale – listento them every single day, and I guarantee that you’ll get where youwant to. (A good place to start is The Strangest Secret:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5x-KjBME_E)

So now you’ve gotyourself believing that you can get where you want to be, and youknow where you want to go in life. These are the two biggest problemswith getting anywhere. If you don’t know where you’re going ordon’t believe that you can get there then it’s just not gonnawork out.

Now comes the funpart. This is where we backwards plan. You know where you are goingto be in 10-20 years, so now where do you see yourself in 5, where doyou see yourself in 2? What about 1 year? 6 months? (For us, our 5-year goal is to have a somewhat working homestead by then. Our 2-3year plan is to have enough cash to purchase the land that ourhomestead will be on. We’re going to be doing that by working hardwhile we create/purchase/sell sites and build our online empire, andpractice what types of homesteading we like. To practice types ofhomesteading, we need our own land, which brings us to our 6-monthgoal, finding a 5+ acre home (that we plan on paying off within 2years and then also flipping to have more money to pump into ourultimate homestead when we get there).

NOTE: My wife and Ididn’t figure all the above out overnight. And the first plan wehad to modify, which goes into the following point:

Be flexible withyour 6-month to 5-year goals – Always ask yourself (for whateveryou do) whether it brings you closer (or further) toward your 20-yeargoal. My wife and I were planning on van dwelling for the 2-3 years aswe saved up cash to purchase land. The Lord blessed us with a child(going to be born in October!), and so we decided to change up ourplans a little because of it (Note also, children are a blessing ofGod, but that doesn’t mean that you have to stop everything anddedicate your life to your child. I will pause my goals and be therefor my child when they need me, but my life doesn’t revolve aroundmy child, so will still choose to pursue my goals as I can).

After you’ve goteverything planned out, use your power of belief to get it all done.

Life isn't fair, people...

Life isn’t fair.But never use that as an excuse to not get where you want in life.Getting to where I am right now wasn’t (and still isn’t) alwayseasy. I married my wife back in October, and we’ve spent themajority of our marriage living in a van (yes, you can live in a vanwhile in the military). That van, I might add, didn’t have AC orheat (we would wake up with our mattress frozen, our breath makingfrost on our bed, and having to scrape the inside of the windshieldbecause of all the condensation would collect there. I’ve had tocool my pregnant wife off with various different methods because ofit being so hot at night and she couldn’t sleep.)

I’ve had my fairshare of ups and downs (getting ready to sell my site because Ididn’t think it was worth it, dealing withrelationship/marriage/self issues, being stuck in a job I hate butnot getting out since they weren’t discharging me fast enough). Allmy wife and I kept doing were putting our heads down, and pushing on.Even when it seemed like it was all hopeless, we pushed on. I felt asthough my marriage was over, and yet I pushed on. I felt as though mysite was going down the drain, and yet I pushed on. I pushed on andpushed on, and now I’m finally where I am (and am ready to push onto get where we want to be in the future).

I say all this toencourage anyone to just keep pushing through whatever you’restriving to do. It’s a tough world out there, and nothing comeseasy. But through consistent pushing, knowing what you want, and withthe blessing of the Lord, you’ll get there.

Now, some of you maybe interested in the steps to starting your own business, and how toget there. It’s pretty much the same as above:

Building A Business Is Just Like Building Your Life

Where do you seeyourself in the future? What do you want to be doing? Give yourself a2-5 year time frame for building your business.

Success doesn’thappen overnight nor within a year’s time. Plan for 2 years beforebeing financially stable. But once again, have a plan, and workbackwards from it.

After that, startgrinding away with the work that you can do. The military took itstime to discharge me, and so my wife and I worked on our site(usually) from when we could start in the morning till 8ish PM atnight. (There was nothing for me to do at work, so I used the timewisely and invested it into our site). We did that for about 3 monthsstraight – from April to the end of June. In July, I finally gotdischarged and moved to where I’m at right now (my wife’sbrother’s house). I’ve jokingly told people that since I hatedthe Rat Race, I no longer have a job and am self-employed and thatinstead of working 9 AM-5 PM, I now work 8 AM-7 PM, 6-7 days a week (thatwas in July – we’ve finally gotten to a point in August where wefinally, sort of, have our Saturdays and Sundays back to whatever wewant to do.).

Every month, my wifesits me down, and we talk through a money goal that we want to try toreach for the site/business. She tells me to give her 5 ways thatwe’re going to increase our revenue to meet that goal (bundling ourcourses to make more money, creating more idea pins on Pinterest tomake more money, working with affiliate partners to get more sales).We then talk about different things not related to money that we needto do with the site (like update certain posts, research PinterestSEO, etc).

Some months we meetour goals, some months we don’t. Our July goal was making $6k –we only grossed $5k. Whether you hit the goal, or you don’t, youkeep setting reasonable goals, and grinding out what you can to getthere and achieve what you want.

And you just growfrom there.

Not sure if thishelped or not, but feel free to ask questions, and I’ll get aroundto answering when I can.

Andy