Main picture is credited to smartpassiveincome.
I have done affiliate marketing before, many, many years ago, but unfortunately, life sort of jumped in front and I had to put it on hold. Of course, with social media blowing up, such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc., it has become a whole different level of side hustle.
I began by watching videos on affiliate marketing for beginners, the videos I watched were free. I went ahead and listed some below, in no specific order. These videos are all for beginners. Now, I have to say the first one was a bit more detailed, but after viewing at least 10 videos ranging from 5 minutes to 60 minutes, they all pretty much say the say exact thing. The second video was a lot of repeating the same thing as the other videos.
- Affiliate Marketing Tutorial For Beginners 2023 (Step by Step) – Santrel Media (Nate O’Brian) At 9:25 he starts talking about the how.

- How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners in 2023 ($1000/Day Step-By-Step Guide) Not really a step by step, but my opinion.

What I got out of the videos and article, were all the same, which was (1) Identify the audience; be that audience, (2) build trust, (3) of course find a niche, (4) and most say that you should start with organic traffic, not paid. Now I did get one piece of good advice from one YouTuber (Whitney Bonds), they said this, “Most people like me do not like to give out their social security number, so they recommend that you get an Employer Identification Number (EIN).” I took a look, and it is free and it doesn’t look like a lot of work. I will post an article on how it went.
Now, the videos also refer to the Amazon Associate program as being the first best thing for beginners to sign up for when starting their affiliate marketing journey. The next affiliate suggestion that is very common among videos, is CJ.com, which is known as Conjunction Junction.
The thing you also need to understand is that some companies will not allow you to sell for them if you do not have enough visitors or a lot of followers. They look at your site and the type of traffic you drive and unless you already built a large following then affiliate marketing might not work completely at the beginning.
I am doing a lot of babbling here, but I wanted to just jot down my thoughts as I was going through this process. So what I am going to do next? First, I will apply for the EIN, then I will add a few plugins to my blog, like Pretty Links and WP Affiliates, to get started. I am also going to check out Linktree. I took a quick look and they do have a free subscription, so I will check that out. Sorry, what is Linktree, “Linktree is a tool that allows you to share multiple links on social media.” It seems to be very popular on Instagram.
I am sorry but I have come to realize that all or almost all of these so-called affiliate marketing gurus, are trying to sell you something, an idea, that everyone seems to simply repeat. I know affiliate marketing works, but maybe 15 years or more back it was a lot easier. I think with so many people on social media people are beginning to doubt what they see or hear and having people click on links isn’t that easy anymore, but I could be wrong.
I appreciate you stopping by and reading my babbling, but I am working on making some updates to my blog and of course, adding some links and some digital books that I have come across that have helped me better understand some of the side hustles that are out there. So, keep an eye out for new pages coming soon to my blog, maybe something there will help you along as well.

With that, I leave you with a thought that hit home today and made sense, so read over a few times and think about where you are right now in this moment in time, “There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” – Freya Madeline Stark (1896-1993)
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