This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up, welcome to Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Got an amazing story for you today. This story features a blog that brings in $30,000 a month in affiliate commissions. It's a blog about women's fitness.
And you might think, well, this blog must be run by a big company, or at least a big team. Well, if you did think that, you'd be listening to the wrong podcast. Because again, this is Side Hustle School. We're all about regular people out there who have lives, who have other jobs sometimes, other responsibilities, all kinds of stuff, but yet they still find a way to create something, again, amazing for themselves. Now, even if you have been listening for a while and you knew it wasn't from a big company, you might think, well, this person, this side hustler, has been at it for a while.
Well, here's the thing. She has been at it for a bit more than a year, maybe technically close to a year and a half. But still, to get to $30,000 a month in such a short time, I just think it's spectacular. So I was really excited to work on this story. How did she do it?
What's her number one tip? If you'd like to start a similar site, all of that is coming up in the story. Stay tuned. [Music]
Tammy Smith spent seven years working as the office administrator for a physical therapy company. Around half that time was spent working from home, which was a great perk.
But even the time saved from commuting wasn't enough for her to achieve true work-life satisfaction. This became clear after the birth of her second child in late 2018. Tammy soon realized that to keep her full-time job, she'd have to put both her kids into daycare full-time. It was either that or figure out a way to make money at home while also being a mom. After a short stint running fitness classes for pregnant and postnatal women, Tammy ruled it out as a long-term play.
She lived in a small area and her service was aimed at a small market. So the demand just wasn't there. She quickly pivoted and discovered the concept of freelance writing. Although in this case, her husband takes some credit for getting things moving. They had talked about the concept and he created a profile on an outsourcing site without telling her.
Needless to say, Tammy was surprised when her first order came in. But she got over it when she started making money. Over time, she built up a steady client base and it seemed like the right fit. Throughout the next year, Tammy wrote dozens then hundreds of articles, but soon hit a ceiling. One person can only write so fast.
So she knew that to grow, she'd have to start hiring writers of her own and become a manager or turn away work. And neither option sounded appealing. Around that time, Tammy started writing for a women's fitness site. This was one of her assignments. And that client soon became Tammy's favorite since she loved the topic and found that the writing flowed effortlessly.
That's when an idea came along that gave her a run for her money. She'd been writing articles for that site and earning a one-off fee. That site would take those articles and continue to make affiliate commissions month after month. She realized she could build her own site and produce her own content and probably earn a lot more, at least potentially. So on November, 2019, she registered the domain fithealthymama.com to do just that.
Tammy didn't take it too seriously at the beginning. She just posted a few articles over the first few months, but in April, 2020, she really started to sprint. The COVID-19 pandemic hit and a lot of her clients stopped offering work. With her writing skills and the newfound free time, she took a closer look at the blog. Over the next few months, Tammy cranked up her content production, posting on that blog every day.
And the content wasn't just random. She targeted article topics where she knew there was potential to make money. Her timing was perfect because with so many people locked down in their homes, many were buying new exercise equipment to stay in shape. This coincided with the rise of smart gyms and other products cashing in on the trend, mirror, peloton, et cetera. Tammy began reviewing them all, even going so far as to forge partnerships by contacting them directly and obtaining the actual products for review.
The aim was to direct her visitors to the company's websites and earn affiliate commissions for each sale she referred. And it worked, at least somewhat. Her first commission came through for $5. Small but meaningful. Tammy was hooked on the concept of using her own blog for affiliate marketing.
After all, she could continue to earn commissions long after those articles were published. Summer of 2020 rolled around and she was now earning a couple of hundred dollars a month from the site. It was then that Tammy realized she had a first mover advantage. These direct-to-consumer home gyms were gaining even more traction. But there was very little content available that offered unbiased reviews.
She doubled down, edited her existing articles to improve them, and began focusing on popular keywords. She also started a YouTube channel and began cross-posting her content there in video form. All this output took the site from those humble beginnings and $5 commissions to over 100,000 visitors a month and $30,000 in income today. Quite the transformation in one year's time. Not surprisingly, Tammy wants to focus on growing Fit Healthy Mama even more.
She's since created a private Facebook group and worked to build a community of like-minded people who value her reviews and opinions. Down the line, she may introduce a course or program to help others achieve what she has. One word, one article, and one affiliate commission at a time. [Music]
Congratulations to Tammy. Definitely a huge success in a pretty brief period of time.
But as you heard in the story, there were some key factors choosing that topic, really focusing on SEO, understanding the right keywords to target, then partnering with the companies, actually getting the product to review, and just kind of putting in the work. We asked her like in a couple of sentences, how did you do it? And she said, "I created a lot of content." Like there was a time that I was writing and posting one article a day on the blog. It was a lot of work, but I think it helped to build my site up and get traffic. She said, "I also tried to cover brand reviews from all angles, writing comparison style posts that were made to help the searcher make an informed decision." So as you can tell, it's actually very helpful.
She's not just creating a random article. There's so many of those out there, so many of these kind of content farms that just put up dozens of articles from freelance writers without a whole lot of editorial direction or review. So she's really trying to put in quality work. I think that makes such a big difference. So I hope this inspires somebody out there, but as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.
Today's show notes, including links to Tammy's site and anything else I mentioned in the episode, will be at sidehustleschool.com/17181718. Thank you for tuning in today. There's something out there for you as well. I just know it. So keep listening, keep exploring different ideas, and together we'll see what happens.
I'll be back again tomorrow and I hope you'll join me. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
