Introduction:
In early 2021 after my brother-in-law passed, leaving my sister a single Mom with 3 young kids, my husband and I decided to move our family to Las Vegas, NV to help my sister raise her 3 young children. At that time I was working in San Francisco as a Registered Nurse and knew that I didn’t want to work nursing in Las Vegas. I had been there, done that, knew how stressful it was, and did not want to subject my mind and body to the stress of working during those times.
I always knew I wanted to make passive income, make money while I sleep, but didn’t know how to do it. I dabbled in real estate but I didn’t have the capital to invest in that. I dabbled in Network Marketing, AKA MLM or Multi-Level Marketing, and finally accepted after trying different companies, that that business model was just NOT for an introverted person like me… I did health coaching, but that took up more time & energy than I had to invest in at the time. I’m the primary financial provider for our family, so I needed something that I could do on the side without it sucking the life out of me, something that didn’t conflict with my career, and something I could start as a side hustle.
So in early 2021, after quitting my nursing gig in SF, I started searching for a way that could make me passive income working from home. I found the concept of affiliate marketing and was excited to get going.
In this article, I’m going to share with you why Affiliate Marketing ticks all of the boxes I was looking for:
- Potential for Passive, Unlimited Income
- Work From Home, or Anywhere in the World
- Complete Control Over My Time & Schedule
- Start as a Side Hustle
- No Products or Services of My Own
- Business – Tax Deductions
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
In short, in affiliate marketing, you are basically someone who helps to market a company’s product or service, and you get paid a commission on what is sold. You don’t have to create products or services of your own, you simply look for products or services that you align with, believe in, ideally something you’ve purchased or experienced in the past… and because it’s not your own product or service, you don’t have to service anyone after a sale is made, which is thee best part for me. If customers or clients have an issue, they contact your affiliate company’s customer service department. This is perfect for someone looking for a side hustle because you don’t want to take extra time doing customer service or fulfillment after working your job full time, and then hustling to market your affiliate product.
What Do I Like About Affiliate Marketing?
What I like about affiliate marketing is that it really ticks ALL the boxes I was looking for to begin to create passive income.
- Passive, Unlimited Income: I was looking for something that had no glass ceiling on income. You can make however much you want to make. The sky is literally the limit here. Even better, as you learn how to do affiliate marketing effectively, you can make money while you’re sleeping or doing things you enjoy. Over time, you don’t have to work as hard if you don’t want to. No longer do you have to keep working overtime in order to keep up with your lifestyle. With affiliate marketing, you learn how to do the work – do the work – and then tweak your work to make it a super effective money making machine.
- Work From Home, or Anywhere in the World: I wanted to be able to work from home, or anywhere in the US. I love being in the comfort of my own home, taking care of whatever needs to be taken care of in between work, and traveling to see my family.
- Imagine being able to care for your family when they’re ill, or being able to spend time with your aging parent(s) or loved ones at the near end of their lives. You won’t have to worry about how much PTO you have left in your bank.
- Complete Control Over Time & Schedule: This one is a big one for me as my children are growing. My husband and I find ourselves driving them around town for baseball & ballet practices throughout the week… and since my sister is a single Mom of 3 kids, we often help her with her 3 kids. Between school pickups, sports practices and games, birthday parties, and school events… we almost need to hire someone to do the driving for us! I’ve also missed the majority of my son’s baseball games because I work a lot of weekends. With 12 hour shifts, I either miss the game entirely, don’t get there on time, or can’t stay up too late if I have work the following day.
- No Products or Services of My Own: With this, you can literally start making money in less than three to four months with the proper training and resources. What I love most about not having my own products or services is that I don’t have anyone to service. I did health coaching before I had children and between creating content, managing and operating the business – I didn’t want to do it. I was left with absolutely zero time for myself, between family, work, and starting and growing a business. If someone has questions or issues with what you’ve sold, it goes to your affiliate company’s customer service.
- Start as a Side Hustle: Because I make more than my husband, I pay the majority of our bills so leaving my job without a net is not doable. I do like stability and security… and I like that I can start and grow my online affiliate marketing business while still working my full time job. No conflicts. I don’t have to sell products or services to anyone at work because I do it all online and heck – they don’t even have to know what I’m doing on the side.
- Business – Tax Deductions: If you’ve ever read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. I look at it as a foundational book to read if you’re interested in starting any type of business, including an online affiliate marketing business. To summarize the book in one sentence… if you want to be wealthy, stop being an employee and make your way toward becoming a business owner and investor. Business owners have far more tax deductions than employees
- I make 6 figures a year – and have no tax deductions other than my mortgage, really. Nothing that makes a significant impact on my taxes anyway. If you’re just starting out though, be mindful of how long you’re claiming business tax deductions as an employee. After like 2-3 years, my tax guy didn’t want me to even claim business tax deductions while being a 6-figure income earning employee. From what he told me, it wasn’t wise to make all those claims because I wasn’t making a significant earning from it – which made it more of a “hobby” as opposed to real business, and the IRS would only see that as a way for a 6-figure income earner to offload taxes. **So be careful with this one and speak to a tax advisor or your CPA.
What Do I NOT Like About Affiliate Marketing?
- Steep Learning Curve: When I first found affiliate marketing, I was SO excited that I had found something I could do as a business that really suited my personality and goals. I was ready to get going and learn what I needed to learn in order to start making money. I invested $1,000 to learn some initial things like where find affiliate products, creating a sales funnel, and some basic information about google advertising, landing pages, and email marketing. There was a very general A-Z overview of what I needed to do in order to be successful, but it didn’t walk me through step by step. Additional resources were not available with this particular program I purchased so I was left to my own devices to learn about affiliate marketing.
- Too Many Products to Choose From: When I looked at all the lists of different companies that had affiliate programs, I was overwhelmed with the amount of choices available. You can literally choose what category or niche you’re interested in – and there are SO many! From Health – to Finance – to Fashion – to Software – to Relationships – to anything you can think of. The good news with this is that you can choose whatever category or niche you are passionate about! So at least you have some interest in what you’re promoting.
- No Personal Experience or Knowledge Of Many Products: What I don’t like most is not having much experience or knowledge about certain products, which can make it difficult to promote. There are higher paying affiliate products than others – and of course, from a financial standpoint – you want to market the affiliate products with higher commissions. In general, it doesn’t feel good to promote something you don’t know much, or anything about.
- Requires Marketing Knowledge: In order to be successful with affiliate marketing, it’s important to understand marketing principles. As mentioned above – I signed up for a program to learn how to do the affiliate part, but KEY aspects of marketing was missing. I didn’t feel like I had ALL the tools and resources to make it happen. Specifically, how to market to specific clients who might be looking for what affiliate product(s) I had to offer. There wasn’t a CLEAR PATH or step-by-step guidance to success.
After a few months of my first go round with affiliate marketing, I dropped the idea because:
1.) I was marketing an affiliate product in an industry that I didn’t have real passion for.
2.) I was being told that we needed to invest a minimum of ~$500 per month for Google pay-per-click (ppc) advertising and I just didn’t want to blow that money on something I really had no real knowledge on how to do.
3.) While the information was there – the HOW TO was not. I didn’t know what I was doing and I couldn’t risk more time and money into experimenting with learning affiliate marketing at the time.
My Current Journey:
What Revived My Desire To Do Affiliate Marketing Again
In June 2023, I reached my 19th year career anniversary as a Registered Nurse. I couldn’t believe how time had flown by! I vowed I would never see a 20th year anniversary in this career – and there I was, one year shy of my 20th year anniversary. It’s not a terrible job… I don’t absolutely hate it or I couldn’t have done it for this long… but I really, really hated the idea that I hadn’t moved up or moved on from the same damn thing I had been doing.
I knew more than 10 years prior that I didn’t want go go back to nursing school to get my Masters (that’s what everyone else does). I didn’t want to go back to formal education. Period. I no longer feel like there is much value in formal education these days. I can’t believe I even entertained the idea again! Damn it – by the end of 2023, I was mad at myself for not making things happen, for still being a freaking bedside nurse, with no exit plans to transition out of my career.
Just after Christmas 2023, I was scrolling through Instagram on a late night the day before work, dreading to go back… when a reel of a girl dancing popped up. The reel caption mentioned something about being an affiliate and making money with Hobby Lobby. The light bulb went off in my head! I hadn’t thought affiliate marketing since my last affiliate marketing experience and so I googled “affiliate programs for travel.” An ad popped up with a picture of a girl that said something about her being a previous mortgage broker who was burnt out and exhausted. She made the hard decision to leave the business and had made her first 5 figure month, within seven months, doing affiliate marketing. (I’ve since emailed back and forth with this successful lady and learning how to do it too).
I was taken to a video of this guy talking about “authority marketing…” and I was hooked. I can’t remember the details of it all as I was consuming the information on the way to work, on the way home from work, before bed after a long 13 hour day… I was a bit in a daze. But the information captured my attention. This was complete and total effective marketing at play, and I wanted to learn what these guys were doing.
Conclusion:
To me, affiliate marketing is thee answer to working the side hustle I’ve been looking for to make the UNLIMITED, PASSIVE income I’ve been searching for – for what seems like my whole life! Well, really since I read the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” book by Robert Kiyosaki. It ticks all the boxes in terms of financial freedom, time freedom, and business benefits. I couldn’t be more excited to restart my journey… I KNOW I’m going to be successful this time around. Why?
Because I now have what I didn’t have when I first tried out the affiliate marketing journey. I see the overarching path that I mentioned above, the A through Z picture, and this time – I also have the step-by-step How To’s on how to be successful, along with an endless amount of training and the option to cut your learning curve if you desire, with mentoring and coaching available. Literally, in this program that I started… it’s a one-stop-shop for how to be successful – not just in your affiliate marketing business, but with an online business, or any business, in general. This program will help teach you the skills and knowledge you absolutely NEED to succeed in business.
If you know that you want to start a side hustle while working your full time job and affiliate marketing sounds interesting to you, click below to…
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