I’ve written about my foray into retail arbitrage and some of my dabbling in stock options, but oddly enough one of the the areas I’ve spent the least amount of time has turned out to be the most profitable! Despite the abundance of blogs out there, blogging can still be a very lucrative side hustle, or even a full time job. In 2018 I made a whole $2.85 blogging. In 2019 that number was up to $40.38 as of this writing. That’s a more than 1,000% increase!
Affiliate Marketing Recap – Is Amazon still the gold standard?
I’ve tempted to create specific niche web sites utilizing targeted affiliate campaigns. Some great affiliate programs are out there. Rogue Fitness has one, which I’ve used on my fitness blog to little effect. Primal Kitchen is another one that caters to a very specific, targeted audience.
Even HostGator, the hosting provider I use to host this site, and other sites, has a lucrative affiliate program.
All these programs are great, provided your audience is targeted effectively, and advertised to specifically. That kind of targeting comes with a lot of time and effort, as well as very dedicated upkeep and maintenance. They tend to reward you with greater return on affiliate sales and referrals, but those referrals are hard-earned.
Amazon on the other hand, trumps them all. Why? Because Amazon’s affiliate program pays you to cater to just about everyone. From getting people to sign up for Amazon Prime, to buying books on Audible, Amazon has something for everyone.
With Amazon, all you’ve got to do is get people to the site. From there, regardless of why the user visited in the first place, a qualifying purchase of ANYTHING gets you some kind of profit.
If a user goes to Amazon to buy something small or trivial, like, say, something from the Interesting Finds section, but ends up buying something huge, like an expensive massage chair, you get a commission either way.
You still need to target users, but their interests, regardless of what ultimately drives them to make a purchase, will still get you a commission. This is why being an Amazon affiliate is still king amongst the affiliate/referral programs out there.
2018 Was a Slow Year Toward Quitting My Day Job
On the timeline of getting toward FIRE (financial independence/retire early), I wouldn’t count 2018 as one of my most noteworthy years. In fact, it was one of the worst. While I found myself getting out of debt entirely, my family was also on the receiving end of Hurricane Florence in eastern North Carolina.
This brought with it a lot of financial burdens, as we had significant damage to our home. It wasn’t a setback, but it wasn’t exactly progress toward our financial goals, either.
On top of that, my shift in employment lead me to driving 75 miles 1-way on my morning and afternoon commute. This left me with very little time to do any kind of blog writing, and saw little, if any, growth from my online sites.
I did manage to write a post here, and a post there, but ultimately I even ended up paying someone on Fiverr to ghost-write a few posts for me.
At the end of 2018, I was thrilled that I’d made my first profits with affiliate marketing. And those profits were a lousy $2.85.
2019 – A year to reset
In 2019 something strange happened. I started getting clicks. Not a ton, but they were coming in steadily month after month. And then in March, I started making sales!
What did I do differently? Nothing!
So what happened?
Well, my best guess is that it takes time for search engines to effectively index your site. It’s pretty quick to get listed, but I think it takes longer for Google and other engines to understand the context of your site, and apply it relevantly to searches.
For most of 2019 now, I’ve been making on average $5.38 a month without putting any additional work into the site.
For the year that is more than a 1,000% increase in profitability.
Earnings… with a grain of salt
But to put everything into perspective, my profits this year are still coming up short of even covering my basic hosting and domain expenses. They’re certainly making a dent though. The most interesting part is that the effort has not increased proportionately with the return.
Going forward, I intend to see how the rest of the year plays out without investing much additional effort. I will continue to write periodically as subjects come to mind, but I’m really just curious to see if indexing efficiency continues to increase my revenue.
Conclusion, for now
This is an exciting time toward my financial independence and quitting my job. Not because I’m appreciably closer to it, but because I have tangible progress in a field I was pursuing.
For those of you out there who think it’s impossible, take it from me, it’s not! You need a decently target site, or even just a blog about your life. Make the writing interesting, diverse, dynamic and engaging.
Hire ghost-writers if you suck at writing (sort of like I do, sometimes!), and then let it sit, like a fine ferment!
What are your experiences with affiliate marketing like this? How much effort do you put into your site daily, weekly or monthly? What kind of monetary return do you get proportionate to the time you invest?