Day 1: Getting Started

Today I began navigating the world of affiliate marketing.

I set up a Notion page to organise my journey of creating a passive income stream, and began by writing a rationale to remind myself why I was doing this, in case I felt like quitting at times.

I told myself that my other options are:

• Use my savings to travel and relax and do all the things I love right now, and take care of making more money later

• Pick out more corporate jobs that my skillset aligns with and start preparing for interviews.

If I chose the former option, I knew that this half-exposure to the field would keep popping up in my head and I would keep thinking of ways to earn passively in the background. And if I got another job, I wouldn’t have any time left in my days to use the money I earn to pursue my hobbies.

By setting up an online business like this one (and potentially using a couple of other ideas going around in my mind), I have a chance at securing my financial future.

And if after working at it for a few months it still does not work out, I will have gained valuable marketing and technical skills and have made an online presence. In that case, I can then pick up where I left off and proceed to apply for my next job, with a gap year’s efforts justified.

After writing this rationale, I made a list of admin jobs that I thought would be good to start with, from my limited knowledge of the field — setting up a business bank account, creating a new email address to use throughout the platforms I use for my business, researching and signing up for an online course that can guide me through the setup of the business.

I also added a table of ideas I had for content I could create to establish my online presence, such as travel blogs of all the places I’ve visited in the past year or two, book reviews, thoughts and feelings around graduating university, and this — my affiliate marketing journey.

I then created a brief section for the other ideas I had around earning a passive income, which were mostly different digital products that I could sell on sites like Etsy.

Next, I wrote a section titled ‘Core Work’ containing what I thought at this point would broadly be the steps in the process of establishing an affiliate marketing business. Note that the keywords here are ‘I thought’ — this is not actually what I ended up doing

I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about half of these steps. I’d heard words like sales funnel being thrown around in a couple of guides I’d read and just spilled out a half-baked plan of action to get me started.

By now it must be clear that I am a person who likes to plan things. Correction — who needs to plan things. And although I had this rough self-drafted plan now, I didn’t feel ready or sufficiently equipped to properly start.

The Google Digital Marketing course on Coursera was on my list so I began by going through the first week of material it offered. But while it contained useful information from a digital marketing perspective, it didn’t completely align with my goals of becoming an affiliate marketer.

I proceeded to do what I always do in times of confusion - hop on the internet again and started reading blogs about other people’s experience and journeys. It was during this time that I found a referral to Jade & Kev’s Freedom Affiliate Launch. It was described as a ‘high vibe’ course, and the blog author indicated that rather than scour the internet for all the free resources available, he had chosen to go for the Freedom Affiliate Launch in order to save time and energy during the setup part of his journey.

I knew from countless advertisements that there was a $7 course by Legendary Marketer that existed for the same purpose, but I’d seen conflicting reviews about it online and honestly did not love the video pitch on their web page preceding signup. It would have been a much more affordable option, but since I was only half-sure about it, I jumped over to Jade & Kev’s website — The Freedom Formula — just to check it out.

I discovered they had a free 90-minute masterclass, which I thought would be a great way to judge if this is something I’d be interested in. After watching it, I was pretty much convinced.

The community size was naturally a lot smaller than the $7 course, which I liked, since being in a Facebook group with other people trying to achieve the same thing you are is a valuable resource in times of need, and being in a small community would mean more personal attention rather than getting lost in a huge crowd.

Furthermore, I found Jade’s way of speaking naturally encouraging. She acknowledged that the journey ahead was bound to be difficult, rather than making it sound as easy as some of the influencers I saw did, and I felt like being coached by her would make things a little easier to get through.

One thing I did hesitate about was the fact that Jade clearly stated that their course was not for someone who did not want to show their face online, since the focus of the course is to develop a personal brand and market around that.

I am not a person that’s comfortable talking to the camera. I don’t mind posting pictures, or videos where I’m performing music or doing an activity, but talking to an audience scares me. Promoting products by talking scared me even more — I wondered what my friends or family would think if they saw me. Would they think less of me, doing something that sounds like a scam at first, after being sort of an overachiever my whole life?

Maybe it was reverse psychology, but when Jade said her course was not for someone like me, it made me want to change. Showing my face didn’t have to be a bad thing, and I would make sure I stuck to my values and did not go about promoting things I didn’t believe in. After all, if that was what affiliate marketing was going to come down to, I wouldn’t want to do it at all.

I’m simply trying a new thing, and if I’m scared of even stepping into that because of what people might think, I’m the biggest loser of them all.

I ended up making the purchase for their bottom tier course, the Freedom Affiliate Launch (all their students have to start here, and later have the option of upgrading to a higher package if they wish), and briefly skimming through the contents before going to bed, feeling a little less lost now that I had a general sense of direction.

I was always willing to put in the effort to get to where I wanted, but it was important to me that I put my energy in the right direction instead of wasting time trying out a hundred different things. By choosing a course that had a well-defined path, I could get started the right way.

This already changed most of the plans that I had drafted on my Notion page earlier in the day, but that was fine. I went to bed excited to start making progress on the course the next day.