How Affiliate Actually Works — and How I Grew It to 70% of My Income
From the platforms I use to deep links and conversion tips, here’s exactly how affiliate works and what’s helped me grow it year after year.
I recently wrote about how I make money as a content creator, where I shared my revenue streams and the progression of what I've made working for myself over the last decade. It took me a year to find the courage to publish it.
Today, I want to go deeper into the part of my business that has become the biggest contributor to my income. Affiliate accounts for nearly 70% of what I make. This isn’t a story about going viral or finding a secret formula. It’s about building trust, creating content people genuinely find useful, and doing it consistently for a very long time.
I'm sharing all of this because I know I would have loved seeing someone pull back the curtain years ago. I hope it shows what's possible and gives you a roadmap if you're trying to build something online.
Behind the paywall I’m handing you my affiliate playbook:
The affiliate platforms I use and why
How affiliate grew year-over-year (with real numbers)
How ShopMy works and how I grew it by 4.6x in 2 years (you can sign up here)
The role SEO plays in affiliate
Why I moved away from LTK
Who Amazon is best for and why it converts differently than ShopMy
Which platform I’d start with if I were starting over
What I link and what I don’t
Habits that actually grow affiliate
The real numbers: what a good month looks like, when it spikes, and how I think about it as a percentage of my income goal
As of June 22, I've made $131,030 in affiliate income this year alone. These numbers represent more than a decade of work, and I’m sharing them because I know I would have loved seeing someone pull back the curtain when I was starting out.
