Week 1: Brainstorming, Affiliate Marketing, and Etsy?
Week 1! (Sort of)
Admittedly, this post is a little delayed, though right now there isn’t anyone checking in, so I don’t have to feel too bad. But I do want to go over what I’ve done this past week(ish), it’s really been longer than that.
In my journey to try out as many reasonable side hustles as I can, I’ve found two that caught my attention first. These will likely not come as a surprise to anyone, but of course affiliate marketing and Etsy are where I landed. If you’ve already tried these and don’t like ’em, don’t worry, I’ll be looking at plenty more. But these are up first.
Affiliate Marketing
If you’re already interested in side hustles and the making money online niche, then I’m guessing you already know what affiliate marketing is. But just in case you’re not familiar, here’s how I’d explain it to a five year old.
You ever see a video, a post on social media, or anything else online about a product or service and think “damn, I want that too!” and then you click on their link to go buy it? Well, that’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Basically, you’ve decided to buy a product and used someone else’s recommendation to get it. Because they helped lead you to the product, this reviewer/social media user/whoever gets a kickback from the company selling it. Pretty simple.
Another way to think about it is like a company outsourcing their marketing with a commission-based approach. The company isn’t having to spend a bunch of money on influencers and ad spend up front. Instead, they let others do the work for them, with no initial payment, and then pay them via a commission. It’s a pretty great system, honestly.
Oh, and normally when you use these affiliate links to products, there’s no additional cost to the person buying; it’s a win-win.
The Bad
If you have heard of affiliate marketing, then I’m sure you know there’s a ton of terrible stuff out there about it too. That’s understandable. People say it’s a scam. They say it’s a get-rich-quick scheme. They say you’re not providing any value, just taking money for doing nothing. Etc. Etc.
I’d argue that’s not the case (depending).
For this, I’m not trying to promote any sort of courses, that’s a big one in the scammy side of affiliate marketing. Though I’m sure there are plenty of genuinely good teachers out there, I’m spending neither the time nor the money to purchase courses and find them. And I don’t want to promote something that may clearly be nonsense.
The How
This is where things get interesting. “Affiliate marketing” is such a wide topic that it’s too broad to talk about. So let’s be more specific.
I want to develop some affiliate channels promoting physical products, without creating a brand around myself personally, and that I’m in no rush to grow inorganically. By that I mean I don’t want to dump money into advertisements to landing pages, or promote videos, etc. So here’s what I did this past week.
TikTok
Yep, starting first with the low-hanging fruit. I think TikTok is one of the most accessible ways to grow for new “creators,” and so it’s a perfect match to be one of many irons in the fire. Because of my job, I’m not too crazy about trying to build an online brand around me so I went with the faceless approach. This likely slows growth substantially. But that’s okay.
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First, let’s start with the numbers to show you what my first week looked like, then I’ll explain my thought process.
Here are my numbers from the first week(ish). As you can see, one of the accounts has done substantially better than the other. However, neither have really done “well.” I think that’s because I’m doing faceless content (at least for the time being).
What I actually did was super simple (read: lazy), and we’re just going to keep running with it until there’s a reason to stop. The account on the left doing better is just photo slide shows. That’s it. No talking, no face, nothing.
I chose a niche that I thought could do well for physical products and then spent some time finding product photos from the sellers. That’s really it. I threw the slideshows over some trendy music and basically branded it as “hey, here’s some cool stuff I found.” And then just let it run. On that account, we’re only up to about 20 followers and a total of just over 500 likes. I post once or twice a day depending on the time I have.
Now the second account is newer. It’s focused around the holidays, and this one is really just going after low-hanging fruit. I’ve found some copyright free stuff to use and toss some holiday music on it and then let it run as well. I’ve only posted three times on that one (vs about 15 on the other), so this isn’t surprising. I need to up my posting schedule on it.
How Do You Make Money on This?
You don’t! Or at least not right away. And I’m okay with that.
In order to have a “link in bio” that can lead to a Linktree page with affiliate links, you need to have at least 1,000 followers. That’s cool, I’ll work on building that over time.
When I started this project(s), I didn’t want to spend money on things like buying followers, so I’ll do it organically (which I’m sure is better for the account health anyway).
Of course, I could go the business account route, but I’m skeptical for a couple reasons. The first being that for many affiliate programs, like Amazon, you need to link to your social media presence. If I just switch the account to a business one right off the rip (so I can have a link right away), I probably won’t get accepted into the program.
I don’t think Amazon or other sellers are likely to approve an account with very few followers, low video views, etc. So that’s a non-starter for me.
The second reason I have absolutely no way to prove, it’s just a theory. But I’m not so sure about organic growth with a business account. I have literally nothing to support this, but I imagine TikTok views business accounts as prime buyers for “promote your videos!” ads. I’m not accusing the platform of anything, but it sure wouldn’t surprise me if business account videos don’t do fantastic on their own without any spending on promotions.
Maybe just silly paranoia, but I’m already out for the first reason so no biggie.
So What’s the Plan?
For the time being, I’m focusing on posting consistently. Because I’m being a little lazy (hey man, I’ve got a full time job and other responsibilities too, okay?), I’m just posting these videos once or twice a day and seeing if I can let these accounts grow slowly over time.
I timed myself for one video on the better performing account, and I only spent 22 minutes from searching to posting. The daily time investment is minimal, so I’ll keep up with it through the holidays.
Alright, I was going to get into the Etsy side of things this evening as well, but it’s getting late and I’ve got work in the morning. So I’m wrapping it up there.
I’ll take some time to talk about Etsy tomorrow and what I’m working on, what I’m excited about, and what I need to do to make it happen.
Spoiler: Going to have to break one of my initial rules on this one; can’t sell for free, sadly.
-SBZ
