The Debrief: An Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle

In partnership with

Welcome to The Debrief. This week we interviewed Rachel, digital marketing professional who turned her passion for health and wellness into a thriving affiliate marketing side hustle. If you didn’t catch it, feel free to check it out here before diving into this edition.

In this mid-week newsletter, we are going to investigate what we covered in our interview and breakdown the key takeaways and share some actionable advice for you to work on in your business venture.

Each debrief is designed to give you something to work on each week based off the advice given by our featured entrepreneur.

Let’s get into it!

Affiliate Marketing

Key takeaways:

1. Start with Passion, Not Just Profit
   Rachel emphasized that affiliate marketing works best when it's rooted in genuine interest. She chose the health and wellness niche because it's something she personally cares about. This authenticity helps build trust with her audience, making her product recommendations more impactful.

2. Email Lists > Social Media Alone
   One of Rachel’s biggest lessons was the importance of owning your audience. While she initially relied heavily on social platforms, she later realized the power of email marketing for long-term stability and consistent engagement—an insight many beginners overlook.

3. Consistency and Patience Are Essential
   Rachel took over a year to earn her first few hundred dollars and about three years to reach $2K–$3.5K/month. Her journey underscores that affiliate marketing isn’t a quick cash scheme, but a long-term commitment that rewards those who stay consistent and keep learning.

📣 Something from our sponsor:

There’s a reason 400,000 professionals read this daily.

Join 400,000+ professionals at Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and more who start their day with The AI Report — the #1 B2B AI newsletter. We cut through the noise and show you exactly how to use AI tools to save time, boost productivity, and stay ahead at work.

No hype. No fluff. Just real-world use cases, expert prompts, and actionable tools.

👉 [Subscribe Now] — and start working smarter today.

How to start this business?

Subscribe to our premium content to read the rest.