Today is a huge milestone for my entrepreneurial journey.
I finally made my first dollar online!
It feels great to FINALLY break through that mental barrier of associating money with jobs. Up until this point, every dollar I’ve made has been through working for someone else.
So how did it happen?
About four months ago I became interested in affiliate marketing. For those of you who aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing it is basically marketing and selling other people’s products online.
After a few weeks of research, I decided I wanted to give it a shot so I thought up a product niche and decided to make a website.
I had made a couple blogs before (including this one, which by the way is super easy), but I’d never made anything as complex as an affiliate website. Luckily we live in the age of YouTube so I found a 3 hour YouTube video on how to make an affiliate marketing e-commerce site and I spent about 6 hours making the site.
What is the affiliate site and how does it work?
Basically, my website is gift ideas for White Elephant or Secret Santa gift exchange. If any non-Americans are reading, it’s where you buy random whacky gifts to give anonymously to co-workers.
Here is the URL if you want to check it out:
Basically, I find whacky gift ideas and compile them in categories. All the gifts are linked to Amazon under my affiliate account so when someone clicks to buy, they are redirected to Amazon to purchase it and my account is credited with the sale.
Right after making the website, I realized I had no idea how to actually drive traffic to the site and put it on the back-burner. It had been months since I checked the traffic to the site but this morning I logged in and checked.
To my surprise there has been a steady uptick in traffic. And to my greater surprise, when I logged in to my Amazon Associates account, I had sold 10 products!!!
I was blown away! I had put in work to build the site but figured it was a good experience but would just fizzle out. However, it seems to be getting more popular as time goes by.
So how much did I make off of ten sales?
My earnings are $4. Not anything significant but also not bad for neglecting the site for months.
But to be honest with you, that $4 has me absolutely stoked! I’m going to print it out and frame it on my wall like any small business would do.
Finally I broke through that invisible barrier and learned that I CAN make money on my own!