When you're building a side hustle, especially in affiliate marketing, it’s easy to get caught up in social media. But one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal is actually email marketing. The return on investment can be staggering—studies have shown it can be as high as $40 for every dollar you spend. Think about that. An effective email list isn't just a contact sheet; it's your own private gold mine.
Most marketers would agree that being agile is a good thing. We praise the idea of failing fast, we talk about being data-driven, and we champion simplicity. But there’s often a huge gap between saying these things and actually putting them into practice. We’ve all seen managers who encourage risk-taking but are quick to penalize the first person whose experiment doesn’t pan out.
Here’s a hard truth for anyone in marketing today: the old playbook is broken.
My story, and the story of my business, starts with my family. My dad passed away when I was six, leaving my mom to support us without a college degree. She took up cleaning houses because it offered the flexibility to raise my brother and me. We lived on food stamps in San Clemente, a beautiful Southern California beach town where it seemed like everyone else was jetting off to Hawaii for spring break. It was then I learned a hard lesson: money meant freedom. I was determined to build a life where my own family wouldn't have to worry about stretching a paycheck to cover new school shoes.
If you want to create content that actually gets read and sells your ideas, there’s one skill that stands above the rest: writing great headlines. Think of your headline as the ad for your ad. Its job isn’t to sell the whole product or idea, but simply to sell the reader on the next sentence. To pull this off, a headline has to nail three specific tasks.
The internet has completely changed the game for commerce. You can launch a business from your kitchen table and reach customers in Boston, Barcelona, and Borneo all at once. It seems easier than ever to build something that provides a comfortable living, maybe even an extravagant one.
The social media landscape can feel like a crowded party where everyone is shouting. With so many platforms out there, it’s tempting to just skip the whole thing, assuming you don’t have time to do it right. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to be everywhere. The real strategy is picking the right channels for your business and sticking with them. This is about being smart with your social media marketing, not just being loud.
If you're looking to start a side hustle, affiliate marketing often comes up as one of the most straightforward paths. You don't get bogged down with inventing a product, managing development, or handling customer service. Your job is simple: promote something that already exists. But getting that right involves a bit more than just dropping a link.
If you're looking to start a side hustle, affiliate marketing probably sounds like a great deal. You get to earn commissions by selling other people's products, which means you don't have to deal with creating products, managing inventory, or handling customer service. It’s a popular online business side hustle because it can supplement your income and you can do it from home, fitting it in around your main job.