Side-Hustles From Scratch #16 — Affiliate Income Growing

created by HungryMinded using Midjourney AI

Intro

Another Thursday and another progress update. No miracles, just real, slow progress. Get future updates 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:

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

Update #16

This has been a good week! My affiliate income is slowly growing. I am uploading new designs. And looking forward to the future progress of the series.

I have learned a lot, acquired new skills, and transformed myself from a consumer to a creator. But this is still just the beginning of the journey. I have a lot of ideas for the future.

I want to try my hand at creating digital products, I want to create a newsletter, maybe a course and I want to focus on growing a YouTube channel in 2023.

Earnings

Total: $95.90

Breakdown:

Print-on-demand: $0.61

Affiliate marketing: $95.29

This Week:

Affiliate marketing: $43.03

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

The number of referred members on Medium has increased from 5 last week to 8. Now I will be receiving $17.90 every month as long as they keep their subscriptions active.

This is not a lot in itself. But it will add up over time. And lately, I have been witnessing handsome growth with the amount of referred members doubling each month.

screenshot by HungryMinded

My strategy on this is currently unchanged. I do 3 things to acquire new referrals.

Call to action — in the footer section of my articles
Writing about Medium and sharing these articles on other writing platforms
Promoting my Medium article to external audiences, such as SubReddits on Reddit and groups on Facebook.
Here’s an example of an article I wrote about Medium. It also explains what I do to reach external audiences:

Promote Your Medium Articles Like A Pro

But this week I made another $36.48 commission from Pictory.AI (affiliate link).

screenshot by HungryMinded

In total, I have made $75.48 from this Affiliate program. And all the traffic is coming from one Medium article that I wrote back in July. It is still getting pretty solid traffic. Here’s the article:

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

This article has also earned over $120 here on Medium. And it’s still earning today. It has earned $35 so far in October.

screenshot by HungryMinded

I don’t include Medium earnings in this series, but if you are interested in checking them out, you can do so by clicking here.

Print-On-Demand

I’ve been having a lot of fun with AI image generators. Midjourney AI in particular. I’ve done a lot of creative experiments with Midjourney. And I also created a lot of cool designs that I am slowly uploading to RedBubble now.

I have only made one sale on RedBubble so far. But the number of followers and favorites my designs are getting is steadily increasing.

screenshot by HungryMinded
Hopefully, all of this pays off in the long run.