Some friends and family are skeptical that I will ever make money blogging, let alone make money with affiliate marketing. I do understand their trepidation. Making money with affiliate marketing might sound too good to be true. Maybe it sounds like some get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme. But I’ve done the research, I’ve read other people’s stories, and I think I can do this. So I will begin with this challenge to myself: I will update this post when I start making money with affiliate marketing. I will keep updating it to show that it works, and also to show how long it takes me.

Ever since I lost my summer job, I have been brainstorming alternate ways to make money. I launched this blog on July 1, 2024, and started learning everything I could about how people make money blogging. There’s quite a few different ways, including ads, sponsored posts, selling ebooks, and creating courses. I decided I would try affiliate marketing first.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is when an affiliate (such as a blogger, YouTuber, or influencer) advertises another business’s goods or services. In return, the affiliate earns commissions based on customer traffic and/or sales.

Have you ever hopped on a blog or website, and seen a statement like, “if you click on this link and buy XYZ product, I may earn a small commission”? That’s a disclosure, and it indicates the site probably uses affiliate marketing.

Why Become an Affiliate Marketer?

The main thing that attracted me is that it’s a fairly passive way to make money. I’m all about the soft sell. I’m not, and never have been an aggressive salesperson. But if I really like and believe in a product, I want to tell you about it. And if I had a coupon code for it, I would share that with you. Whether you click on the link is 100% up to you, and I don’t need to pressure you into doing it. Sooner or later, you might be in a place where you ARE interested in the product, and you’d want to help your friend Julie out, so you’d come back to the page and click on the link. You get a product that you’re interested in, I get a commission, and the business gets a sale. Everyone wins!

Here are some other reasons why people may try making money with affiliate marketing.

• It doesn’t cost a lot to get started. I personally spent $35.64 for the web hosting, and $30 for the domain name “lurkoandjulie.mx.” Then you just get your affiliates and set your promotions up.
• You can promote in a lot of different ways. Blog, YouTube channel, Pinterest boards, social media posts, email lists. Whatever you’re comfortable with.
• You can do it from anywhere. I’m doing it from Nayarit, Mexico!
• It doesn’t require a lot of maintenance. Keep the page up-to-date, check links occasionally, stuff like that.
• You get to promote a product that you believe in. I’m excited about getting paid to talk about something I use all the time. After Amazon (which has a huge affiliate program), some other companies I’d like to approach include Skechers, Instant Pot, Columbia (hiking clothes), Swiftwick (socks), Lume (deodorant), Lifestraw, and Nuun (electrolyte drinks).
• Any blogger can do it. That’s what’s difficult for a lot of us to wrap our brains around. You don’t have to be this huge influencer with a million page views a day. You can even do this when you’re brand new, like me.
• There are so many options of products and services you can promote. The examples I gave are mostly physical products, but you can also promote apps, e-books, services, courses — many of these also have affiliate programs.

A Real-Life Example

Here, let me give you an example. (Bet you can see where this is going!) I learned all about affiliate marketing from a gal named Michelle, who writes an extremely successful personal finance blog called Making Sense of Cents. I spent two weeks going through her online course, and when I finished, she invited me to be an affiliate! How meta, right? But also, what better way to practice? The most terrifying part of affiliate marketing (to me) is asking companies if I can be one of their affiliates. Michelle said yes! So maybe others will also say yes. It’s worth a try, right? I’ll be sure to update y’all and let you know how that goes.

And now, the disclosure statement:

THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. THIS MEANS I GET A COMMISSION IF YOU DECIDE TO MAKE A PURCHASE THROUGH MY LINKS, AT NO COST TO YOU. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE PAGE FOR MORE INFO.

The Products

I have two products to plug:

1. THE FREEBIE – Affiliate Marketing Tips For Bloggers eBook. Great introduction to what affiliate marketing is and how it can help your blog or email list. Cost: $0 plus consent to join Michelle’s very helpful email list, which you can unsubscribe from any time. Not sure? Read my review!
2. THE AFFILIATE MARKETING COURSE – The online course is called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. It’s pretty extensive and took me about 2 weeks to complete. But it’s worth the time to better understand how affiliate marketing works, and more importantly, how YOU can do this too. Cost: $197. I wrote a review for this as well.

If you’re not interested in making money with affiliate marketing at this time, no worries! I appreciate you taking the time to read the whole post. Please do come back to this space from time to time and see how I’m doing with my affiliate marketing challenge. I’ll also post updates in the usual places. For now, I will add Michelle to my Affiliate Marketing Tracking spreadsheet, and work on adding some more businesses. Michelle says to start with ten businesses — more than that gets hard to track. I’ve got nine more to go. Stay tuned!