Choosing a business to work from home after retirement can be a daunting task. The reason why I chose Affiliate Marketing for my Home Business was really a blessing in disguise.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
What I want to do right now is define briefly what Affiliate Marketing is.
Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then promotes that product, and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make.
If you are like me, you have heard of being an affiliate and affiliate marketing for a long time. While I knew what it was, I thought that it was just for big established companies and marketing gurus. I didn’t even consider affiliate marketing when I first tried my hand at blogging. I never consider blogging “selling”. I just wanted to help people on my blog and for my followers to love reading what I had to write. And somehow by doing this I felt that I would make money. To be honest, my first blog was no more than a personal post, that highlighted what I was doing in my part-time videography business. However, with it, I was just hoping that our clients would read it and get to know us. That was its main purpose. And believe me, 10 years ago you could write about anything and people would follow you. But still, I was not that lucky. So, I felt it was a waste of my time and I quit doing it. Fast forward to 2020. In 2019 my family and I decided that since I was retired I should start up a home-based business.
Work At Home After Retirement
So, I began my research on businesses that you could startup after retirement, and of course, ones that you could do from home. I collected a large list, that I will share with you later. I had worked that 9 to 5 government job for over 20 years, so I was really ready for my own business. After much research, I came up with two ideas I liked for working at home. Selling on Amazon and Online marketing. Again after going a little deeper, I realized that being a seller on Amazon was going to cost me money and a lot of startup time. However, online marketing seemed to be good for a after retirement business because it opened up many avenues, which appealed to me, blogging and ways to make money, especially with affiliate marketing,
Determined to Make Money
Well, this time I decided to learn about what it took to make money and succeed in an online marketing business, especially blogging using affiliate marketing. One thing I learned was that you could make money blogging if you wrote enough content and people liked what you wrote. I started reading and looking for information all over the internet, to find out how to get started writing quality content. I found a few sites that promised me the world in a very short time. (eg. How I made 100,000 in 3 weeks, blogging) So I followed them and paid to take some of their courses. You know they say it takes money to make money. I was determined that I was going to learn about blogging this time and make some money. But after a couple of months, I was still taking these courses and my blogging skill was not where I think it should have been. I found out the reason later, that they were just giving me a list of things to do that they had done, but, did not tell me how they went about doing them. No concrete step-by-step instruction on writing a blog.
Getting the Help I Need
From going thru that process, I realized that I needed guidance and step-by-step help. The free website that I set up had no visitors. My blog attempt had no comments. It seemed like I was at square one. I did learn why later. But what I also learn was that I was trying to put the cart before the horse.
I learned that to be a good affiliate marketer, I needed to have good content and know-how to target my audience.
Again, I understood those things, but they were coming together too slowly as I went along. I really needed help to get my online business up and running.
The first thing I thought of was how could I learn to write good quality content? I understood that there was no way I could promote the affiliate marketer’s products without good content. At first, I tried learning all I could from YOUTube, but it was so piecemeal that it confused me more than helped. However, I finally, ran across a course called the “Paid to Write Club” that promised to hold my hand while I learned the skill of writing quality content. It did what it said and I learned a lot in a short time and became more confident. But still, I didn’t know how to make money using the affiliate marketing process. So, again, I scoured the internet for the best affiliate marketing courses. Believe me, there were a lot of them, claiming to be the best. However, a blog I read seemed to have an insight into one course that would not cost me anything to try. So I decided to try it.
Finding the Real Next Step
From the beginning this site let me know that it was for real. One of the things it said was “Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes commitment and consistency to earn trust and build an affiliate business. The beauty of becoming an affiliate is that the rewards are incremental. Once shared, an affiliate link can continue to perform and earn commissions over time.’ I liked that. And after taking some of their free lessons that actually helped me, I joined. It was called Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate was more than a course on how to make money in affiliate marketing. It was a course about learning the things you needed to do to grow the best affiliate marketing business and make money consistently. I was finally on my way. I had found the real next step to building my business. It had a step-by-step process, with many detailed courses, that also included mentors, trainers, and community feedback to help you move to the next level. This is just what I wanted. I could not believe my luck. With Wealthy Affiliate, I have made great progress, in learning about my online business. Even though I still have a way to go, I am now a good blogger and have some affiliate products under my name. But if I have learned anything, from this experience, it’s to have patience. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day” Sometimes during the process, I even wanted to give up, but that is when the support and mentoring kicked in. So, I am still on my journey to build my affiliate marketing business, but this time I know I will accomplish my goal. Because now, I am a writer!