Online Side-Hustles From Scratch: Update #8: Affiliate Sale
Highlights of the week — 1st affiliate sale and learning about SEO
designed by HungryMinded
Intro
On April 21, 2022, I decided to start a series of articles to document the process of me trying out popular online side-hustles from scratch. I will share with you my struggles, successes, and learning process along this journey.
I will post updates on my progress and what I’ve learned along the way every Thursday. If you would like to follow along, use this link to get these stories directly to your inbox. If you just stumbled upon this you might be interested in reading some of the previous updates. Here is a list of all the articles in the series so far.
Update #8
Exciting week, a lot of learning. First affiliate sale aside from Medium referrals. And overall a good week. I focused on learning basic stuff about SEO (search engine optimization). Experimeted a bit with AI art, and started a Pinterest account. Feeling good about the future, the progress is not fast but it’s steady. And that's what I am going for. I am playing the long game. Learning new stuff along the way and slowly implementing it in my processes.
Earnings
Total: $41.42
Breakdown:
Print-on-demand: $0.61
Affiliate marketing: $40.81
This week: $34
Breakdown:
Affiliate marketing: $34
Accomplishments
Series started — April 21, 2022
First photos accepted to Shutterstock — April 26, 2022
First video published on Youtube — May 5, 2022
First sale on RedBubble — May 10, 2022
First referral on Medium — May 12, 2022
First actual affiliate sale 34$ — August 7, 2022
Affiliate Marketing
Great news! I’ve made an sale. And the commission is 34$. I have been making some content about text-to-video software Pictory.AI(affiliate link). Several people have sign-up using my link. And one of them made a purchase.
And I have also generated some clicks and sign-ups for the only other affiliate product I am currently promoting. It’s a text-to-video software called Pictory.AI(affiliate link). Here’s a screenshot the e-mail I received.
Screenshot by author
Whats great about this affiliate program is that I can get recurring income for the duration of the subscription of my referral. So hopefully this persons will like pictory as much as I do.
They also gave me a 20% off coupon code, which will help getting more referrals in the future.
Here’s the code if you’d like to use it: TDWIZ20
Another thing I love about this program is that you can get sub-affiliates. If your referrals refer new people, you will get revenue from their sales at no extra cost to them.
If you’d like to give it a go. I’d appreciate it if you used my affiliate link.
You don’t even have to purchase the product to become an affiliate. But I would advise you to at least try the free trial to get a grasp of what the software can do.
The traffic for this sale came from my article on Medium.
I Turned My Medium Stories Into YouTube Videos and You Can Too! Here’s how I did it.
On other news, I learned quite a bit about SEO and will now slowly start to implement this new knowledge. What I already began doing is adding alt text to the images I use in my articles. And I also discovered that there are settings dedicated to SEO on Medium.
You can access these settings here:
screenshot by author
On Medium article titles need to be eye-catching, and kind of click baity. But on search engines articles do best if they contain certain keywords. I will talk more about keywords another time. But this setting menu let’s you change the title for your article on search engines.
Print-On-Demand
I’ve got to admit I was slacking a bit with new designs. But I still made some. I also started a Pinterest account to promote my designs. But I still need to get a hang of Pinterest as I haven’t really used it before. I should Pin my existing designs next week. But the highlight of the week was playing around with AI art generators.
First, here’s a new design I like a lot my self. This is all made by me on Photoshop:
Abstract Space Beach Framed Art Print by HungryMinded
Now, let’s talk about AI-powered image generators.
While doing research for the article below I stumbled across several image generation tools. And actually got a hands on experience with one of them my self. There is a youtube video in the article explaining step-by-step how you can do it too. And I highly recommend you to try.
Is AI The Future Of Creativity?
Let’s just say. I was impressed. The one that I tried out was MidJourney.AI. All you need to give it a go is Discord.
Not only was it better than I imagined. It was also incredibly fast. Here you can find a public gallery of images created using this AI.
And while doing research on print-on-demand. I discovered that people use these tools for print-on-demand. To be honest It’s a bit discouraging. With me working on my designs for quite a while. While others simply input a text prompt and have their designs ready in seconds. But I ain’t going to quit improving my design skills.
And I will also try using the tools for designs myself. I just need to do some more research on copyright. I don’t want to break any laws. And if I do this I would probably create a separate shop for AI designs.
Goals For The Week
Overall goals:
Keep going. Get things done. Apply the newly learned skills. Try using new tools. Bring more traffic to my work.
Affiliate marketing:
Write more content on Affiliate products
Print-On-Demand
Drive more traffic to my store
Make new designs every day
Longer term:
After uploading 100 designs on Redbubble branch out. Maybe create an Etsy store.
Closing Thoughts
The hard part is starting to work on things and being consistent. When you get the ball rolling, it gets easier.
In Future updates:
A transparent look at my progress
I will share what I have learned
I will share other valuable sources of information
Here is a list of all articles in the series
Feedback
If you have any suggestions, questions, or just want to share your thoughts, leave a comment below.
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