15. How Long Before I See Results?

Right, you’re probably thinking, “This all sounds wonderful, but how soon until I actually see any money coming in?”

Honestly, it depends. If you only have 1-2 affiliate links hidden on a couple of old blog posts, it could take months, even years, if they are blog posts that are rarely visited.

But if you take a proactive approach, look at what content is doing well and how you can get it in front of as many people as possible, then your chances of seeing some income from the time you have invested are going to pay off significantly.

Here is an example of a post I created at the start of the pandemic, when many people could not visit shops in person, that is performing well:

This post was first published in early 2020.

In the first 12 months, income from it was slow, at around €10-20 a month, after about 3 months.

After 1 year, the post was averaging around €250-300 a month. And 2 years later, it’s closer to €800 a month, just from this single blog post.

However, the post was not simply published and left. It gets updated 1-2 times a year and is also shared in other places, such as Pinterest, my email list, and in client resource libraries.

…

If you are creating affiliate content that works alongside your SEO strategy, and you are taking the time to do thorough keyword research, optimise your content, and share it across multiple platforms, you should start seeing results in 3-6 months.

While it could happen sooner, it’s important to be patient and not expect to become flooded with affiliate income overnight. I’m not going to tell you that putting a handful of Amazon or other affiliate links is suddenly going to bring in thousands each month, because the amount of commission you receive from most sales is between 1-5%, so it’s not a lot of money. But slowly it starts to add up. I have found that it can be a snowball effect. It starts off small, but if you continue with the momentum when you start to get it, it can grow really well.

It’s taken me about 2 years to get to an average of just over €1k a month from affiliate income, and this income is primarily from just 2-3 top-performing blog posts on my wedding photography website and Pinterest traffic linked to those posts. While this might seem like a long time to wait, all I had to do was create the initial content and check it was up-to-date every 6-12 months. So the time investment was, in my experience, much less than that required to create and market a new product or service. Now I can pretty much just sit back and let the content do the work and enjoy the rewards.