This is my affiliate marketing journey.
In hindsight, I would have done many things differently, but I am very grateful for this bittersweet experience in the making for over a decade.
This is the story of how I built a passive income “empire” with affiliate marketing.
Chapter 1: The Unsatisfied Employee
It was the second half of 2012, and I was 30 years old. After living abroad for a while, I was back in Johannesburg (the City of Gold). Job hunting wasn’t going too well, and I was pretty close to packing up and leaving… again.
I landed an offer as a website manager for an e-commerce company that sold alternative health products. The office was cozy, and the atmosphere was relaxed—a nice mix of health-conscious people working together with one motto, “prevention is better than cure!”.
I hurled myself into the role and quickly learned what it takes to run an online store. I handled everything from server setup, website design, product import, member migration, payment gateway integration, and, and… and. It was all-hands-on-deck, and I can definitely say, I picked up a lot of know-how about the world of e-commerce.
The remuneration was good—it was above average—and yet I was left very unsatisfied.
Greedy me!
My First Encounter with Passive Income: Google AdSense
I often caught myself wondering:
- Is this amount of money all that I will ever be worth?
- Is there a way to make money without “trading” my time for it?
- How do I break-through the salary ceiling?
That’s when I stumbled across the idea of passive income. I started looking for ways to make money “in the background”, while I was at the gym, while I watched TV, while I slept…
Drum-roll, enter Google AdSense.
AdSense lets you monitize by showing ads on your website, blog, or YouTube channel. After a bit of research, I discovered a list of the highest paid keywords in industries like insurance, loans, and law. That’s when the lightbulb turned On!
Building the Pilot Website & Testing the Waters
By the end of 2012, I’d built a few simple 20–30 page websites focused on loans and insurance. I used SilverStripe CMS to set them up, worked with some affordable freelance content writers, and had the websites deployed to a cheap web hosting provider.
Once the sites were live, I applied for a Google AdSense account, copy/pasted their code into my web pages, and waited for approval. Within a few days, ads were running on my sites.
I remember obsessively checking the monetization dashboard to see how much I’d earned (every minute, of every hour). Free-money, in my pocket!
Blueprint for Success: Let’s Replicate
Throughout 2013, the goal was to go bigger, and bolder. “Greedy me”. I replicated my process in other countries, and I set up websites for New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. As these were first-world countries, these markets had a much higher cost-per-click (CPC) rate for loans and insurance adverts, which meant a higher earning potential.
I kept working after-hours and on weekends, and wherever else I could slot in an extra hour or two. By the end of 2013, my network of five (or so) websites was bringing in an extra salary. Not life-changing, yet quite notable.
I formally registered the business with South Africa’s CIPC.
The Turning Point: From Hobby to Real Business
Between the years of 2014 and 2015, I pushed further (down the rabbit hole):
- I grew each site to around 300–400 pages of content, I’d like to believe this content was insightful and useful information to the public.
- I focused heavily on improving technical SEO, user experience (UX), and the overall look and feel (UI) of the websites.
- I also started capturing visitor email addresses using a simple form-to-email, which quickly grew my database to over 50,000 active leads.
In August 2015, I started using email marketing to drive traffic back to the websites. This was by far a game-changer. More traffic meant more clicks, and more clicks meant more revenue. By the end of the year, I was earning a consistent “extra salary” month-after-month.
September 2015 was a milestone—the month my AdSense revenue matched my full-time salary. By December of that year, I made almost double my full-time salary.
I am in Business!
Quitting My Full-time Job to Run The Side Hustle
It became clear to me that I could afford to leave my full-time job in order to focus on my established side-hustle. The feeling of this achievement is incredible and indescribable—what started as an on-the-side gig had turned into my primary source of income, and more.
Catapulted into New Levels
From 2017 to 2019, I hired people, and eventually ended up with a small remote team to scale my operations; content writers, developers, data administrators, and a team lead to be my right hand, and to help me run all of this. Each website was carefully designed to find loans online, with a focus on quality UI and UX design.
You will end up remembering notable months, like December of 2017—with little overheads—I made an excess of +US$20k per month.
Surviving the Pandemic: A Lesson in Resilience
Then came 2020, and like many businesses, mine took a massive dump during the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue plummeted, and I had to pause operations. For a good few months, I thought it was the end.
By late 2020, things were slowly recovering. Email marketing resumed, and revenue jumped back up. A year later, I was operating better than ever!
The Fall of an Empire
By late 2022, the AdSense revenue started to decline from a series of Google Algorithm Core and Spam updates. Finally, Google HCU (Helpful Content Update) drove a stake through the heart of it all. It was now dying a slow and painful death. Fewer rankings meant a substantially lower CPC, which meant very-little-to-no revenue. In fact, the revenue bottomed to an approx. 98% loss.
I had read many, MANY stories from affiliate marketers that lost their business models overnight. I had become part of this statistic.
By end of 2023, I had to dismantle my team.
It was a super tough pill to swallow, but I remain eternally optimistic that things may take a turn.
The Conclusion
Despite the many challenges, endless failures (and lessons), the late nights and early mornings, the bridges burnt, the countless Cease and desist lawyers letters (haha)—I don’t regret a thing.
This journey taught me resilience, consistency, discipline, what it means to lead a team, and exactly what it takes to earn money without trading your time for it!
At the end of this journey, I can say that most of it was quite unpredictable, and it was extremely challenging to make any business, financial, or personal plans further than a month in advance. There was always a lot of stress—when exactly the next Google algorithm update would hit, and would I be a victim to that.
For a little more than 10 years, I lived month-to-month and tried to grab as much as I could, with two handfuls. This allowed me many, MANY spoils in life!
A huge Thanks to the people that made this journey possible for me.
I leave you with a quote that stuck with me through the years.
“You’re only as strong as the team that supports you!”
