Someone recently asked me if affiliate marketing is a legitimate side hustle.
I assumed the person refers to a side hustle as a side job, program, or hobby they work on for perhaps 1-2 hours a day.
It made me think of my own situation in affiliate marketing.
I run this website businessbuildingonline.com as an affiliate marketer selling digital products that help people grow an online business. It is a true side hustle.
I spend about 1-2 hours a day on average. It is intellectually interesting, I am learning new skills, and my focus is on incorporating passive income strategies to eventually make more money and work less.
Overall, I think affiliate marketing is one of the perfect side hustles. Here is why.
No boss is telling me what to do or when to work. I make my own schedule.
I create my own desires and dreams about where I want to take this business. The sky is the limit.
There is no ‘deadline’ I need to meet, except my own expectations for results. This means that I am okay with spending just 1-2 hours a day when I have the time to work, whether earlier in the morning or later in the day. No one is putting a gun to my head saying, ‘You need to sell $1,000,000 of products by the end of this year or else.’
Affiliate marketing is so creative, that sometimes I find a lot of joy sinking into the creativity part of it with designing product offers, putting together opt-in pages, and creating marketing and sales content. This might take extra time some days, but the rewards are intangible. There is always excitement around affiliate marketing, never knowing when the next great thing might happen.
The problem, however, is there is no crystal ball as to when an affiliate marketer will make money. Will the first affiliate sale happen tomorrow? In a week? 6 months? It is hard to know for sure.
But the interesting part is that affiliate marketing is like building a house. The foundation is the hardest part to start and build, but every time I work, I am adding to that foundation. I never start from scratch. Everything I learn, create, and do builds on top of itself. Eventually, a huge house is built.
For these reasons, I believe affiliate marketing is a great side hustle that many people should at least consider and see what opportunities they might find.