How I Earned My First $495.9 Through Affiliate Marketing Using Instagram — Updated

Not what many think it is

4 min readNov 7, 2022

In this article, I am going to show you how exactly I made money from affiliate marketing. I haven’t reached my goal yet. My goal was to reach $500 this month and then aim for $1000 which I think is going to take me a few more months or maybe a year to achieve. (Bad luck is with me all the time)

Note — I have an on-and-off relationship with Affiliate Marketing. I just wanted to try this out.

Before we go into an in-depth case study, what I experienced -

It is slow as hell. I could make money easily by doing a freelancing job than affiliate marketing.
Sometimes, the worst product gave me the most money. A few months back, I chose one product that most of the bloggers were promoting and I am yet to make my first sale.
Evergreen niches work better than trendy niches.
Micro niches don’t give enough income.
Promote only those products that you use and like.

Various Traffic Sources

I have tried Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. I never understood Pinterest. And I don’t use Facebook. I am mostly into blogging but wanted new this time. And so, I picked Instagram.

Why Instagram?

I don’t want to write. I have to admit after so many years that writing is too much energy-draining for me. I can create insta posts faster while writing takes a longer time.
Its mostly users are females, which I wanna target.
I was excited because it was completely new for me.

My Exact Process

I made a decent-looking account. I used Canva to make my logo and the posts.
I set up the scheduler for posting on my Instagram account regularly. I was using SocialChamp before as it was free. But using it on my phone was a little problematic for me. I advise you to use Meta Business Suit or some scheduler for it. Tailwind is another good option too.
I used all-hashtags.com for relevant tags. Someone on Instagram advised me not to add more than three tags per post. I tried spamming as well as the three-tags method. In spamming, my post was flooded with likes and comments. Sadly, those were just affiliate marketers and not customers. I settled for three only.

What I never believed in -

People always advise using the Follow4Follow method. But I avoided it. I wanted less but only those followers who were interested in the product. I don’t want my account to be flooded with thousands of followers without making any sales. I know a few Instagram Influencers who have few followers and still make a good part-time income. So I wanted to be in that category. Few but loyal customers.

The Game Changer -

For many days I didn’t receive many followers. Views were less. My messages were flooded with sellers pitching or promoting their products.

Finally, I searched for the top account in my niche. Around 300k followers. (don’t remember now. I think it was around 350k. I don’t follow accounts higher than 400k because most of them will be promoters or people looking for follow4follow).

I started liking and commenting on their followers. And the result was amazing. Not all will return the favor but many did. This increased my followers and I started to get some clicks.

The conversion rate was not much. 1.7% I guess. But the product was costly too.

What I Learned -

Stay for a longer period of time. I still have one blog for that but I don’t update it now. Hence, I don’t get any clicks too.
Choosing the proper product is the no. the thing you have to do. (apart from mastering the traffic sources).
No traffic, no sales.
Even high-rated products can give you low conversions.
Research before choosing any product.

I’ll end this here. Let me know if Instagram or Pinterest has ever worked for you. I now strongly believe that if I had stayed longer than my revenue would have been good and I would have written about my first $1000 here, on Medium.