Online Side-Hustles From Scratch: Update #9

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Written by

'If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.' — W... [more]

1 year ago

In community: Just Write(e5e5)

Topics: Side Hustle, Productivity, Marketing, Redbubble, Affiliate Marketing, ...

Earlier this year I decided to start a series documenting my journey of side hustles. And these truly are just side hustles for me. The time I spend on them is limited. And the progress is slow. But what I show you is genuine.

No get-rich-quick schemes. No fake promises. Just pure, regular progress. And if I can do it by not spending that much time. You can probably do it even better. I will share everything. My failures, my successes, lessons learned, my thought process, and exactly what I did. So if you are interested, follow along on my journey. Better yet join in. Get this e-mailed to you every Thursday by signing up for my mailing list.

And if you missed the previous updates, here is a complete list for you: Trying Popular Online Side-Hustles From Scratch

Hopefully, in a year or so, we can look back at this list as a roadmap to a successful side hustle.

Update #9

No new sales this week. Some new lessons learned. Working, making progress getting better. A bit discouraged in the design department, but not giving up. All of this takes time, and starting from scratch isn’t easy. I will keep going. And I hope this encourages others out there to also keep going.

Earnings

Total: $41.42

Breakdown:

Print-on-demand: $0.61

Affiliate marketing: $40.81

This week: $0

Breakdown:

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

No new sales this week. But I wrote a new article including some affiliate links. It’s about ways I get free crypto while doing the things I do online. I am not very hard trying to sell these because crypto is not for everyone and currently isn’t among the main subjects I wish to cover in my writing. But I actually use the things I mentioned in the article and someone mind find these useful and I might earn a commission.

Here’s the article:

4 Ways I Get Free Crypto Online and You Can Too

Other than that I am still trying to increase my Medium referral count by writing about Medium and posting it on several writing platforms. This week I wrote:

Essential Reading For New Medium Writers

It’s part 2 of a series where I explain the ins and outs of Medium. I will keep writing at least one story a week covering Medium.

And as the last part of my affiliate endeavors, we have Pictory.AI(affiliate link). Which has made me the most money so far. And the story I wrote and included this link in has got quite a traction here on Medium.

I Turned My Medium Stories Into YouTube Videos and You Can Too!

Thanks to this story my affiliate link is getting clicks pretty much every day. So far 4 people have signed up using my link. And one of them has purchased a plan. One of the other 3 has become my sub-affiliate but hasn’t made any sales yet.

I hope to expand the list of affiliate products that I really like and use myself and build a steady cash flow by promoting them in the future.

Print-On-Demand

I currently have my designs up only on RedBubble. And what I have learned during my time on RedBubble is that it’s very competitive. There are tons of designs. And lots of truly amazing artists. But there are also a lot of copycats, tag spammers, and bots which make it even harder to compete. And now the AI art is starting to flow in pretty fast. I find it quite hard to compete.

This week I pined most of my designs on my newly created Pinterest account. RedBubble makes it quite easy to do. But I did have to do it one by one for each design.

Here’s how to do it: Go to the manage portfolio page, select a design, press promote products or designs, and then you will be able to easily share your designs.

Screenshots by HungryMinded

I also connected Google Analytics to my RedBubble store, this might help me analyze the traffic sources better in the future. If you are interested on how to do this let me know.

If I want to succeed with this print-on-demand thing, I will not only need to make more designs, and improve my design and SEO skills, but also I will need to branch out. Post my designs on other platforms to increase my chances of getting noticed.

I will also probably try creating a separate store for AI-generated art. I have an idea in mind but more on that next week.