This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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We have previously looked at the world of remote work a couple of different ways, including a woman who handles the logistics of getting set up. That was episode 529, project manager helps cubicle workers see the world, as well as two British guys who invent a standing desk that costs just $37. That was episode 569. Well, today's story, our special feature is all about an Australian woman who starts a resource portal, which is basically a fancy word for a website, an informational website, and earns affiliate commissions on referrals. She actually earns up to $3,000 a month from these referrals.
Most of that income is passive, and she gets most of her traffic through Pinterest, which is a bit unusual in this space in this industry. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and at the end of this episode, I'll also deconstruct this affiliate commission model a little bit, give you a range of what you can actually make for different referrals, which is something that not a lot of people talk about. So I'm gonna go into some details and specifics, as always, because you deserve details and specifics, practical information that can truly help you and make your life better. Here's a quick thank you to our sponsor, and then all that stuff is coming right up.
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When Sarisha Narumanchi first started looking online for remote work opportunities 10 years ago, she found herself at a loss. The concept of remote work was still in its infancy then, and such opportunities were scarce. The few opportunities she could find produced more questions than answers. Was it legitimate? Did it pay well?
What was the next step? Those were just some of the questions that Sarisha had to wrap her head around. Nevertheless, she kept searching. With two young daughters, Sarisha believed this was the best way she could spend time with her family while earning a living. Her patience and persistence paid off as she eventually found a job that was suitable for her, but not everyone is as fortunate.
Several people she knew quit searching for remote job opportunities, abandoning the idea forever after encountering an obstacle. Over the next couple of years, Sarisha noticed that interest in remote work opportunities grew substantially. More and more people were looking for careers where they wouldn't be bound to their desk from nine to five, even if they wanted to continue working for a company. By now, she'd gained a lot of experience and had the potential to save others countless hours of frustration. Apprehensive and excited at the same time, Sarisha launched Crowdwork News in 2016.
Apprehensive and excited is how I feel about launching every project, by the way. It's a good place to be. The first step was to conduct research to determine what was missing in the remote workspace. This gave her ideas for different kinds of content that would appeal to her forthcoming audience. For instance, she knew that those new to remote work wanted ideas on the types of services they could offer to companies.
She also remembered that she struggled with determining the legitimacy of jobs when she first started out. So she made that a highlight of the new site, linking out to trusted platforms where many of these jobs could be found. So how did she get the word out? How did she bring traffic to the website and how did she get paid? Initially, she focused on a lot of social media channels.
In particular, she used Facebook. In the first month of her blog launch, she managed to get over 16,000 page views on Crowdwork News. Encouraged by the success, she started experimenting with other platforms. And her big break came when she discovered she could actually get a significant amount of traffic from Pinterest if she was active and pinned to boards manually, as opposed to using some kind of software that will pin for you. This was a platform that most of her competitors weren't using, or at least they weren't using it well.
And Crowdwork News became a premier resource for those looking for remote work opportunities on Pinterest. Today, her Pinterest referrals account for 90% of the social media traffic. So that's how she gets people to come to the site, but how does she get paid? Well, given that Sarisha spends so much time creating content and getting traffic to her site, you might think that she started monetizing her blog only in the later stages. But that's not the case, because from the beginning, Sarisha was sure that she wanted to make money through affiliate marketing.
She would include affiliate links in the resource pages that she wrote, and then earn a commission each time someone acted on her recommendation. That was how she made her first dollar in the third month, and it's increased considerably since then. These days, she's earning well over $2,000 a month from affiliate marketing, and another $1,000 a month from display advertising. Her only cost is the $10 a month she pays to host the site. The best part of all of this is that it's all passive.
Sarisha could take a week off, never touch the site, not write any new articles, and still make money. Moving forward, she hopes to make the transition to travel photography. So she'll no longer just be creating remote work opportunities. She'll be going to remote places to see them for herself. [Music]
Okay, let's talk briefly about affiliate commission.
Oh, but first of all, congrats to Sarisha. It's pretty fantastic that a stay-at-home mom in Australia is able to make $3,000 a month from this blog. Now, the percentage that you can be paid for referring somebody to a program, a product, or a service are gonna vary quite a bit. Okay, so let's start on the low end and I'll go up to the high end. Amazon.com is the easiest affiliate program that you can join.
In fact, anyone can join it, and everyone probably should, because there's no reason not to. If you ever include a link to a book or any other item on Amazon in your blog or social media or anywhere, you can earn a small commission from that if somebody clicks through it and purchases. Now, the commission rate's pretty low. It depends on the item, but it can be around 6% or so. So you're not making a whole lot of money on a $5 ebook that you refer someone to.
But again, it's easy to set up, no reason not to. And sometimes, as well, you can get lucky, because I don't quite know how it works, and Amazon also changes the rules all the time. But at least for a long time, it was the situation where you could refer somebody to an Amazon landing page, and let's say they didn't buy that item, but they went and bought something else on Amazon, you would get commission for that item or for that whole set of items. So in some cases, people would be buying a lot of stuff and you would have essentially earned 6% on all that. And the story that I'm thinking of, there's a friend of mine who discovered, 'cause at the end of each month, you get a little report of all the items that you've referred and how much you got paid for it, what the commission was.
A friend of mine ended up referring someone randomly, like he didn't know who it was, it was just from his website, referring someone who purchased a diamond engagement ring from Amazon. And I forget exactly what the numbers were, but I think his commission was something like $400. So that's nice. But again, overall, pretty low commission rate. Now, if you are referring people to website hosting or to some kind of financial service, those referrals can be significant.
Those can be $100 or $200 or more sometimes. And they're often a flat fee as opposed to a percentage. Now the episode 247, I was thinking about this episode because this guy does this too in a greatly ramped up manner. This episode was called Target Store Manager Makes $45,000 a Month. And that headline is completely true.
This is a guy who started a blog about investing and it's called The College Investor. He started it when he was in college and he's grown it and worked very diligently on it for years and years. So it's not an overnight success. It took a long time to achieve those numbers, but he has so much traffic and he's referring so many people to these valuable financial services that he's making a lot of money. So those referrals can definitely be significant.
All things being equal, if you're gonna choose between investment and I don't know, making strawberry cheesecake in the kitchen, you might wanna choose investment. Not that strawberry cheesecake is not awesome, but just in terms of the incentives. Now I took a look at Sarisha's resources page because that's where she's doing a lot of referrals from. And in her case, she's mostly referring people to courses for sale. So courses on marketing, on Pinterest, on being a virtual assistant and so on.
Now with those kinds of referrals, you usually receive a percentage of the sale, which is typically much higher than say Amazon, it's usually 30 to 50%. So if the course is selling for a hundred dollars, let's say, and you're on a 50% commission model, then every person you send to that course, you're gonna make $50. So if you're thinking about starting any kind of project, you know, remotely similar to this, at least in the world of affiliate marketing, let's say, it might be helpful to you to kind of take the back of the napkin and think about, okay, what are you referring? And how many people do you need to refer to make X dollars? I usually do that in a little spreadsheet myself if I'm setting up a new project.
So I hope that is helpful to you. Of course, we can go into much more detail about it. We might talk about it in the Sidestal Society for those who are part of that, but that is a general overview. Thank you for joining me today. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.
This is episode 6.15, so our show notes can be found at sidehustleschool.com/6.15, that is 6.15. If you've got a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle hotline. That number is 844-9-HUSTLE, or 844-948-7853. I'll be back again with you tomorrow. Do come back, do subscribe, do tell your friends.
My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
