This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
The purpose of side hustle school is to help you create extra income without quitting your job, perhaps to help you eventually quit your job, or perhaps to just help you create extra income. It's good either way, either way you have options, either way you're building something for yourself. So our overall theme, even though I'm talking about money, ultimately it is about freedom. It's about economic empowerment. It's about being able to do more of what's important to you.
Now, in today's story, I'm gonna tell you about a long time customer service rep who spends 10 years learning the affiliate marketing ropes. He eventually cracks the code with a site providing reviews of CBD products. CBD as in cannabidiol, the non-psychoactive substance that's used for pain relief, anxiety treatment, all kinds of things. You probably know about CBD, it's everywhere. And this business is bringing in thousands of dollars a month in net income with almost no marketing spend since the source of traffic is organic search engine results.
We're gonna talk about that in the story. Also, try, try again. If you're out there struggling, if you've had an idea that hasn't worked, try, try again, but try something new. This guy in the story, he had a dozen failed attempts, but fortunately he didn't stop at number 12. And so as you might suspect, this story is about attempt number 13.
Customer service agent becomes CBD affiliate, very successful CBD affiliate, we should say. That's the story. It's coming up in just 30 seconds after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Michael Primack is far from an overnight success. In fact, he's probably spent more time failing on his side hustle adventure than he has succeeding.
But that's exactly why we're interested in him because sometimes your first idea or your 12th, let's say, isn't your final one. For Michael, it all started in 2008 when he first became interested in internet businesses. A young man at the time, he had heard stories of people making a living online. Whoa, so weird. He knew if you had a website with enough traffic, or he believed, I should say, you could find a way to make money and turn your site into an ATM.
It sounded so easy, and yet it took him 10 years and a dozen failed projects to make that idea a reality. But let's go back a bit because back then, Michael was working as a customer service agent for a software company. With one foot in the tech scene, he was able to learn valuable skills on the job. Combined with his own independent study, he learned to design and code websites as well as how to market an idea. The problem was none of the ideas he tried worked.
By the time 2018 rolled around, a decade had passed, he was a father to a newborn, and a whole family of failed experiments. Unfortunately for him, and for the sake of our story, he decided to have one more go at it. On attempt number 13, he would finally turn his dream into a reality. 2018 was the same year the CBD boom took off in the USA. Again, CBD, cannabidiol.
With the rise of popularity of products like oils, gummies, and vapes, Michael saw an opportunity, and he decided to bottle it up. His first thought was to start an e-commerce store selling actual CBD products. But once he started looking into it, he realized the upfront costs would be prohibitive. He'd have to purchase inventory, as well as source fulfillment. He'd have to deal with banking options that were still accommodating a new industry.
It all seemed difficult. Instead, he pursued affiliate marketing. He noticed that several of the products sold online had affiliate programs. That is, they offered a percentage of each sale to those who referred customers to them. Being familiar with this business model from all those experiments, Michael felt it was the perfect way to try out the market before taking the plunge and launching his own store.
He purchased the domain CBDdelivery.co, as well as a yearly hosting package. All told, this cost him around $70, which was all he needed to get started. Next, Michael got to writing. He wanted to get content online right away so Google could add the site to its index. The more age to site, the better it will perform in the rankings, which was especially important in this case, since his whole strategy was to drive traffic using SEO.
He spent the remainder of 2018 filling the site with CBD-related content. He wrote about its benefits, how to purchase it, and most importantly, reviews of available products. Michael had to be careful about what he wrote because there are some legalities surrounding this market. For example, it's illegal to make health claims like CBD oil helps with pain, since this hasn't actually been proven or approved by the FDA. Once the site looked semi-official, Michael reached out to companies who were only too happy to send him free products to trial.
He used these to create in-depth product reviews, which really helped to drive traffic to the site as people searched online for those product names. As 2019 rolled around, Michael continued with the same strategy. One smart choice he made, this is good, pay attention, on top of his general purpose and product-related content, he made pages about all the different countries where CBD was legal. For example, he made a page called CBD in Germany and highlighted products that shipped to that country. He did this for 28 countries in total.
By the end of 2019, he was generating over $500 a month. A good start. Even so, Michael had bigger plans. All the while in the background, he was working on a relaunch of the site. At the end of that year, he unveiled this newly designed blog with even more content, including best of lists, dozens of new reviews, and even more useful information for people outside the US.
It was a hit and the site's traffic began an upward incline into March, just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. However, far from negatively impacting his site, the pandemic and lockdowns actually increased the traffic. It delivered a huge spike in accompanying sales as well. So much so that by the middle of the year, the site was making 10 times as much as the previous year, around $5,000 per month. In fact, Michael is now making so much profit as an affiliate that he has abandoned the idea of an e-commerce store altogether.
He views that as a far more complex and expensive business with nowhere near the simplicity of affiliate marketing. This 13th attempt at a side business has enabled him to quit his full-time job, spend more time at home with his two-year-old, and enjoy life. [Music]
Congratulations to Michael. I love the persistence, the persistence, along with the adaptation. 'Cause as I've talked about before, you can't just persist.
You have to be able to persist and try new things. So good work there. And we wanted to actually hear a bit more about Michael's attempt at an e-commerce shop. We thought this was really interesting because when we first started talking with him, he was actually planning to turn his affiliate marketing shop into something where he's selling his own products. But he actually changed his mind.
And he told us, I have here my notes. He said, I think I'm actually going to pivot back into affiliate marketing, go all in with that. E-commerce has about the same profit margins, but it turned out to be four times more work due to the customer service and managing various partnerships and such. E-commerce also has significant overhead costs depending on your setup, which affiliate marketing doesn't. And the last thing he said was, I don't think I appreciated the freedom that comes from just being an affiliate marketer.
So lots of lessons there. I'm going to leave you with that today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Listen, if your idea hasn't worked out, well, try another one, just keep going. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1564.
We're going to link up Michael's website, anything else I mentioned in the episode. If you have a comment or question for the show, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Thank you so much for joining me today. It is an honor to bring you these stories. I look forward to bringing you more.
Do come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
