My $89,507.21 Side Hustle
I can’t believe I almost missed it.
I made $89,507.21 on this One Side Hustle This Year. It eventually became 2 side hustles earning 6-figures, and I nearly passed on it.
The opportunity of a lifetime. How could I have possibly known that this one relationship would eventually turn into a five-figure per month income stream? I was so close to blowing it, too.
The Side Hustle Introduction
I was in real estate. I still am, actually — in Las Vegas. As a natural-born marketer, I spent a lot of time testing and measuring lead generation strategies. Content marketing was, and is, my thing.
With a focus on creating SEO content that would rank on the search engines, I began teaching other real estate agents my methods.
My mentor called them “The Ballen Method”. (Not a far reach since my last name is Ballen).
I began teaching locally, and then, thanks to an invite from a technology trainer at the real estate company I was with, I began speaking at real estate conventions.
That trainer and I formed a relationship. We were kindred spirits of the geeky kind, you might say.
One day, we got together and brainstormed about some ideas we could do together. He was dabbling in building WordPress websites for real estate agents, and I had a large audience of real estate agents that needed real estate websites.
He explained to me that he got a bit of recurring income from the software he used to create the websites. This was the first time I had heard of affiliate income.
Affiliate income is money you make from promoting someone else’s product.
The Side Hustle Rejection
I didn’t want to hear anything else about affiliate marketing. I immediately thought it was an unethical process, and didn’t want to entertain it.
Guess I had my “Goody Two Shoes” on for real that day.
I felt that my recommendations should originate from a genuine source. I was concerned that earning money on the software sales that resulted from my teaching would jeopardize my credibility.
I failed to realize at first, that I could do both. I could recommend products that I used, and that were valuable, teach them, and get paid as a bi-product.
As long as I remained authentic, and genuine in my approach, I could dip my toe into affiliate marketing.
The Side Hustle Partnership
So in I went. I signed up as part of a developer program, which was a bit more in-depth than a standard affiliate agreement. Essentially, I would generate the leads, create a relationship with the customer, and provide a certain level of customer support.
The software was created, managed, and maintained by the company that developed it.
In so many words, I would integrate the software into a website. Now, here’s where it gets really interesting.
First, the agreement was a scaling one. When I reached a certain number of sign-ups, my commissions went up. And while most recurring software affiliate programs pay 15–25%, the developer program paid nearly double that.
It also had staying power. Here’s why.
The Side Hustle Stickiness
Recurring income is magical. It’s the true path to passive income. When someone purchases software that is a key component of their website, they aren’t likely to move away from it.
Unless the real estate agents dump their website entirely for a new one, they stay with the subscription year over year.
So what started as a $90 monthly commission in November of 2014, became a $7,906.50 monthly commission in November of 2021, and continues to climb.
So with just over 200 sign-ups in 5 years, I have a 5-figure side hustle for making the connection, creating the integration, and providing support.
But it even got better.
The Side Hustle Leverage
I love marketing. I do not love to provide support. I realized that the service industry was not where I wanted to spend my time. I want to live “poking the box”, testing new strategies, trying new things, and teaching what works.
Client communication is not my wheelhouse.
So, I recruited my brother to come to work on the service side of the company, so that I could continue to play in my content creation world.
Now, my side hustle truly was a hands-off passive income earner for me.
The only action on my part, to continue to grow the side hustle, is to teach my strategies.
Over the years, Youtube has become my top source for sharing my methods, and I have a channel for real estate agents.
I share the beauty, functionality, and success of my real estate websites, powered by the software I mentioned earlier, and sales naturally come in.
My brothers (my older brother joined us a few years after we started), build the websites, integrate the “side hustle” software, and everybody wins. The client is happy, I’m happy, my brothers are happy, and the software developers are happy.
And now, besides the software affiliate, I make a bit off the websites that my brothers build. They own the company, I earn a commission.
Between those two income streams, it’s a 6-figure income.
The Side Hustle Opportunity
Imagine this. You find software that offers a recurring commission. You promote that software by teaching how to use it. You find a 3rd party company that can help them integrate it, or just give them a link to set it up themselves.
You earn 5-figures a month in recurring income.
It took me 5 years to go from $90 to nearly $8,000 per month. If I knew then what I know today, I could have done it much faster.
If you are creative and can influence a buying decision, there’s a lot of money to be made in affiliate marketing as a side hustle.
