I won’t lie – my husband and I have a pretty healthy combined income. But we also have a pretty healthy mortgage with plenty of bills to pay. And we started our retirement savings oh so late in life. We always wonder if we can catch up on those savings to have the retirement we dream of. We also want so many other things – we want to fence the yard so our huskies can safely run wild. We want to double the size of our deck and add a patio with a firepit. We’d like to take two vacations a year and build an ADU for my mother. I also may have a bit of a shopping habit and a love for thoughtful gift-giving. Did I need a working mommy side hustle?
Following a bit of Dave Ramsey’s wisdom, I have multiple savings accounts, each earmarked for something. It still never feels like enough and I panic every time we drain the vacation account for a vacation. I don’t want to spend wildly, but I do want to spend moderately without guilt or fear. Seriously, what did I have time for? Balancing motherhood with career is difficult enough, but mompreneurship seemed impossible with my lack of crazy schedule.
A couple months ago, I noticed an Instagram account with a mompreneur claiming to make over $10,000 a month with affiliate marketing. She made it sound so easy… a working mommy side hustle for beginners! And I was instantly envious of the lifestyle share shared in her videos, which all seemed to be filmed in luxury accommodations in fabulous settings. I scrolled through them seeking more specific clues to her success. Well, Instagram’s algorithm loved that and immediately started feeding me similar posts.
Lost in the Land of Affiliate Marketing Opportunities
Instagram shared so many different programs promoting a working mommy side hustle and for a full week, I stayed up well past my bedtime to research the ones that seemed the most appealing. Don’t get too excited – I’ll share what I’ve looked at but it’s still too soon to tell what works and what doesn’t. While each offered a “free guide” or “free training” on IG, I only clicked on a few.
Then I decided to take advantage of my hour-long commute to listen to affiliate marketing podcasts. Most podcasts and reels talked about using Chat GPT and Canva to create SEO-friendly blogs that were sure to capture the attention of strangers around the world. Most of the podcasts featured a client that the host had coached themselves and although it was meant to be interview-style, I found the host doing most of the talking. It was an awful lot of humblebragging.
The reels, thanks to the search algorithm, clearly had a “working mommy” thing going. Most of the women were in their 30s, thin, fashionable, and beautiful with gorgeous homes, claiming to work 2-3 hours a day while spending the rest of their time with their small children or going on dream vacations. I even saw a few humblebrags about retiring their husbands. In contrast, I’m 50 years old and about 45 pounds overweight with an average home and a TJ Maxx wardrobe; I’m working 50+ hours a week for someone else with plenty of paid time off but also an inability to find a non-busy time to take vacation.
Option 1: Legendary Marketer $1
To start, I chose the least expensive option. My first purchase was a $7 course entitled “15 Day Business Builder Challenge.” I accidentally clicked out of it and then website offered the challenge for just $1. Sold!
Overeager, I completed Days 1 and 2 immediately. It consisted of watching videos and completing small questionnaires. It wouldn’t let me advance until I had a call with a business advisor. I scheduled that and sat through a long 30-minute call with a polite man who appeared to be sitting in a basement with a privacy screen and fake tree behind him. The Zoom call was recorded and he said that “the program” required the recording so I turned off my video, which seemed to upset him. He asked me the same questions, just reworded, and I was instantly skeptical. Afterwards, he unlocked Day 3 for me and I continued through to Day 4. Another call was required to advance to Day 5, and I still had not received the freebies I was initially offered. The day of my scheduled call, my son was sick and I happily cancelled. It felt like a waste of time and I never went back to finish my $1 challenge.
Option 2: Digital Worth Academy $497-797
Honestly, this one was the most appealing to me. The posts from the women in this program seemed to really get me, and they were so down to earth. This program offers Master Resell Rights (MSR) to the course. It seems to be “working mommy” friendly. Essentially, the moms took the course and learned how to sell it. Then they replicated the steps and sold it to others (funny that they each sell it at a different price point). I’d call it MLM-adjacent. Most also offered digital products they created on Canva – resume templates, wedding-related items, downloadable planners, etc. But it seems the bulk of their income came from reselling the course. “Sell it once and you’ve made your money back,” they claim. The issue in that is that there are costs associated with setting up a website, sales funnels, and other tools. I continue to regularly browse the posts from women who use the DWA system and I’m always tempted. I’ll admit that I’ve requested the “free guide” from most of them and skimmed through a handful. But the course price tag keeps me away.
Option 3: ODI Productions $197
When I was searching for “beginners affiliate marketing” podcasts, I went through some real doozies. There was a woman who had put herself through college selling used cars and eventually created a course on DVD to sell. There was some guy who clearly thought really highly of himself and talked more about his luxury items than the method in which he had afforded them. And then I came across this one. The title was “Top 10 BEST Affiliate Marketing Niches in 2024! (Ranked by Earnings).” He was knowledgeable without humblebragging, and he didn’t ramble on unnecessarily. I listened to two more of his podcasts, watched one of his YouTube videos, and then purchased his course. Here’s why – this course was a remake of his first course. He admitted that the original version suggested spending too much money upfront on unnecessary tools. So he redid it from the perspective of a beginner with no traffic or followers. His podcast and paid training course really made me believe I could do this and on my commute days, I make a habit of listening to one of his podcasts on the way to work and another on my way home.
Lessons from my working mommy side hustle
Admittedly, I haven’t gone very far in my training yet. Building upon the lessons I had learned in the aforementioned courses and podcasts, I built two websites. It was HARD and I could not have gotten them running without my husband’s assistance. He taught me that as a beginner it’s best to purchase domains from Namecheap and to use a specific DreamHost package to host my sites using the included WordPress module to design them. Then he had to set up DNS for me and troubleshoot every time I got stuck (which was often). Inside DreamHost, I added the free AIOSEO and MonsterInsights plugins to help guide me. I used the paid version of ChatGPT to write a few blogs but found that my SEO scores were higher when I wrote them myself. I also learned about focus keyphrases, which is why I’m obnoxiously stuffing “working mommy side hustle” into this blog everywhere I can. (sorry!). I also learned that blog titles should include your focus keyphrase yet still be under 60 characters (oops!).
Website 1 – local service business
The first website I built is designed to bring in leads for a small service business. The intent is to build up traffic, start generating leads, and then lease the site to a local business owner I know who’s been asking me to be his “marketing girl”. I’ve created supporting social media accounts, tested SEO principles, and built a form to capture contact information. Then I linked it all to Yelp, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to identify what’s working and what isn’t. It turns out (IMHO) that success in Yelp is mostly driven by two things: pay-to-play upgrades and reviews. The Google platforms are total mysteries to me so I need to make time to sit through some online tutorials.
Website #2 – affiliate marketing blog
The second website is this one. I know from my minimal training that I’m supposed to microniche down. As an example, travel is a niche. Travel in Mexico is a microniche, but a better microniche is solo female traveling through Mexico. Ladies, I have no idea what my microniche is. I’m a marketer by trade. I’m a very busy working mommy. I’m experienced in foster care and adoption. I’m attempting to launch a new small business. So I don’t think I’ve found my microniche yet. If I’m going to be authentic, I can only write about what I know. I’ve decided I’ll just keep blogging until a microniche magically shows itself. That’s realistic, right?
*deep sigh*
Next Steps
Not surprisingly, my working mommy side hustle is not making money yet, though I have just recently celebrated breaking double digits in traffic on both sites after launching 2 weeks ago. On the service page, I’m starting to get spammy comments on my service website so at least I know the keywords are working… kind of. On this page, my intent is to join the Amazon Affiliate program once I have better traffic to humblebrag about. Technically I can join without traffic, but in order to stay in the program, you need three sales from your affiliate links within the first 180 days. Because of that, I’m waiting to join the program. My Affiliate Marketing Millionaire training taught me that you can’t come out of the gates trying to make money. You first have to build your brand and your audience. This is me doing that. You tell me – is it working? Also, I’d love to hear what’s working/not working for you in your working mommy side hustle! (ha! I squeezed one more in!)
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