Affiliate Marketing | Make Money Blogging Tips

She Earned $5 Million Affiliate Marketing Income, Doing This

ByChelsea Clarke | HerPaperRoute.com September 20, 2023 Reading Time: 12 minutes

She Earned $5 Million Affiliate Marketing Income By Doing This!

Michelle Schroeder Gardner is a Finance Expert and the founder of Making Sense Of Cents – a blog that has generated over $5 million.

Michelle has been featured on Oprah, Reader’s Digest, CNBC, Business Insider, and more. She teaches the well-known course Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing.

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She is on the HerPaperRoute podcast today to share today the specific elements and strategies that have helped her reach success. 

Including:

• The most important high-income high-reward blogging tasks she swears by
• The one thing she thinks has been the most influential reason why her blog has earned over $5 million
• Lesser-known affiliate marketing income tips that have worked for her
• How she encourages her affiliate team to actively promote her products

Affiliate Marketing Income: Resources Mentioned 

All of the resources and bonuses mentioned in today’s episode: 

• Free beginners guide – Learn Affiliate Marketing
• Start A Blog Course – Free Access
• Michelle’s course Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing + Affiliate program Database bonus – Get this deal here
• ConvertKit free trial + Email marketing mistakes workshop bonus – Get this deal here

Unlock free access to the HerPaperRoute Affiliate Program Database when you use our partner link to enroll in Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing! Details here.

Q. Welcome to the Show Michelle. What’s your start-up story?

Thank you so much for having me! I started Making Sense Of Cents back in 2011.

Back then, I had no idea what a blog was, or how blogs make money or anything like that.

I was actually reading a Cosmopolitan magazine one day, and they were featuring a personal finance blog in it.

And I just started reading that personal finance blog, I started reading the comments on their blog and stuff like that.

I realized that there’s like this huge personal finance community. So I decided to start Making Sense Of Cents, just like on a whim that day!

There was no plan for it or anything like that. It was all just as a hobby, just a way for me to talk about my own personal finance situation, share how I was paying off my student loans.

And it all just quickly grew from there. Around two years after I started my blog, I actually left my day job to blog full time.

I’ve been blogging full-time ever since 2013.

Q. That is so awesome. You mentioned your student loans. I have to mention that you paid off $40,000 of student loan debt when you were 24!

Yes, through the personal finance community, I learned a lot about different people paying off their debt quickly.

I realized, from seeing all the financial freedom, lifestyle freedom stuff, that they were able to get by paying off their debt quickly.

And if other people could do it, I figured why couldn’t I be able to do it as well?

It just sounded so amazing not to have student loans hanging over your head for the next decade or two.

I just decided to pay it off as quickly as I could.

There were numerous reasons why I wanted to pay it off quickly, not just for just financial freedom. It was also so that I could blog full time.

But I didn’t want a huge monthly debt payment over my head.

I mean, I already had a major mortgage. But I didn’t want my huge student loan to be hanging over my head as well.

I gave myself a goal to pay it off quickly, by working side hustles.

So when I would make the leap to blogging full time, I wouldn’t be worrying about my monthly bills as much.

Related: Lucrative Side Hustles Ideas You Haven’t Thought Of!

I paid off my student loans quickly in seven months. And that meant I was side hustling a ton.

So of course, I had my day job as a financial analyst. But before I’d get lunch, and after work, I was doing a ton of different things to make money.

I was doing all different kinds of things. I was working 90 to 100 hours a week between my day job and all the different side hustles that I had! I was:

• Blogging on Making Sense Of Cents, of course.
• Writing for other personal finance blogs.
• Managing social media for companies online.
• Selling items on eBay.
• Mystery shopping.
• Taking online surveys.

Q. You definitely had your hands full! When did you decide that you were going to streamline, focus and just niche down on that one thing that you wanted to do?

Oh, that’s a great question. It was around 2015.

At that point, I was blogging full-time for around two years. Also, I was freelancing a ton.

But I wasn’t spending much time focused on Making Sense Of Cents. I was spending all this time growing everyone else’s businesses.

I finally realized that my own business was really sacrificed in that process.

So I decided to actually fire all my clients.

I gave them all notice, of course, but I decided to not freelance anymore and just focus on my blog.

Really, I just focused on growing my own income from the blog – and pretty soon, that changed everything.

Income grew through the roof! Everything grew!

It felt really good. Sure, I know a lot of people love freelancing, but for me, it just wasn’t for me. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, so being able to pursue my own passion was definitely really amazing!

Chelsea: That is such a good feeling! I did that too, when I realized I needed to just niche down, fire all my clients and no longer do service provider work. So that I could just focus on passive income streams. Everything just changed for the better! 

Get your copy of the Affiliate Marketing Profit Planner »

Q. As your blog was growing towards earning $5 million, what things have been the most influential in its success? 

Well, I have published about 2000 blog posts, and I definitely think that lots of content helps with growing a blog.

Because of course, when a reader has been reading Making Sense Of Cents since 2011, they want to continue to read new content.

They don’t want to just read the same things that I wrote back in 2011.

Which, by the way back in 2011 my content was not very good!

It’s definitely grown a lot over the years, which I would expect from any blog.

But one major reason for my blog’s success is this.

When it comes to growing your blog, make sure that you engage with your readers.

I feel like a lot of people don’t spend much time building that really loyal readership base. They don’t respond to comments, respond to emails or anything like that.

And for me, I really pride myself on the fact that I am very active when it comes to engaging, networking, and talking with my readers.

I respond to all emails, comments and I always end every blog post with a question to engage readers even more.

I try to be active on social media. Growing an email list is important. But mostly, just engaging with readers. I think that goes a really long way when it comes to a blog.

Q. Absolutely! That’s so important. As your business and your audience have grown, how do you manage your time now so that you can still provide that personal engagement?

Oh, it’s definitely been a lot more difficult. Especially over the past few years, keeping up with emails and such.

If the email is more technical or more about my Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing course, I have a virtual assistant who helps me with emails like that.

But if it’s like more of a personal email that is directed at me, or they have a question like “how can I change my financial life?” or something like that, those are emails that I will answer.

But usually, because there’s a lot of blog posts on my site, I can usually direct readers to a post. So I don’t have to type of 1000 word replies. Most questions can be answered by one of my blog posts. So that definitely helps.

However, if I get a lot of questions from readers that are on the same topic, I will turn those into blog posts.

Because that’s just the best way for me to get everything out and really help them.

Chelsea: Yes! Really listening to what your audience is saying, surveying them and turning it around and creating content from what people are literally telling you that they need and want.

Q. Great advice! On the topic of list building, what advice do you have for growing an email list of loyal readers who are also customers?

My advice is to start right away! I think I started my email list near the end of 2015.

It was years after I started my blog! Nearly five years later when I finally started to spend time on growing my email list.

All those years I just think back, oh just all the emails I lost out on, all the loyal subscribers who could have been.

So, just start right away. I know list building can seem super overwhelming in the beginning. But just dive into Convertkit or what other email subscriber newsletter service that you’re looking at.

And just start right away. It becomes easier once you play around with the system and once you learn it once.

My second tip would definitely be to create freebie lead magnet opt-ins!

For me, I have my affiliate marketing course. So, I have freebie lead magnet opt-ins that talk about the topic. Such as

“What is affiliate marketing?” Affiliate marketing cheat sheets and stuff like that.

That helps get readers on your email list and warms them up to you. Because, of course, we can’t just like sell a course to them what if they have no idea who you are. 

So freebie opt-ins definitely warm up your audience.

And people love free things so that’s a great way to build an email list!

Related: 10 Attention-Getting Freebie Lead Magnet Ideas To Grow Your List

Free Bonus!

I have been using ConvertKit to manage my email list for a number of years. ConvertKit just makes it so easy to collect subscribers send out freebies, send newsletters and manage all of my funnels. I love ConvertKit so much that I created a video workshop of email marketing, funnel mistakes, and easy fixes. And I want to share this workshop with you. So when you use my link to sign up for ConvertKit on this page, not only will you find a free trial of ConvertKit there, so you can sign up for free and start playing around testing it out. But, if you decide to upgrade to a paid ConvertKit plan, I will give you free access to my email marketing funnels workshop!

Q. How does affiliate marketing play into your overall revenue strategy?

Affiliate marketing is the top way that I make money on my blog. And it’s been the top way since I don’t know since about 2016.

It’s also my most favorite way to make money on a blog.

Since I travel full time, it can be super difficult to make sure I always have an internet connection that it’s good enough. I can’t be online all the time.

Affiliate marketing makes it so that I can earn an income when I’m on the beach when I’m sleeping or something.

I know that sounds super cliche, but it’s true.

It just allows you to be able to make an income when you’re not just on the computer working eight to five like you’re able to earn a pretty passive income.

And that’s what I really love about it.

Related: 21 Amazing Passive Income Ideas You Can Try This Weekend

Q. Yes! Passive income is what we are all about here. Can you share some lesser-known affiliate marketing tips that you have found to work?

My top advice for anyone who is interested in affiliate marketing is to go into Google Analytics, take a look at your top 10 blog posts.

I say your top 10 because if it’s your top 10, it’s probably been your top 10 for a while.

Then, go to your top 10 blog posts, edit them and see how you can add more affiliate links to it.

See how you can promote something better.

If you’re talking about something on a blog post, there’s probably something that you can share that people can buy as well.

Just add more affiliate links.

But of course, you want to be careful, you don’t want to come across as super salesy or anything.

Just try to include affiliate links naturally, maybe one to three times in the blog post.

Related: Affiliate Marketing For Beginners – Free Guide!

That’s a really easy way to make affiliate marketing income from blog posts that you already have. Edit your top 10, take a look at how you can improve them.

It doesn’t take a long time to just edit an old blog post.

Chelsea: That is a great tip. I think that a lot of the time, people will overlook that they don’t look into search console or Google Analytics. They are always trying to create new new new content. But if you really look back and you see what is really resonating with people, what is your top 10 most popular articles, they could really be built out to generate more affiliate marketing income.

Q. You also have a very active affiliate team of bloggers promoting your courses. Can you share some tips for anyone who is trying to grow their own successful affiliate team?

That is a really good question.

If you were trying to grow your own affiliate marketing team, to promote your own course or product, I always recommend reaching out to the network that you already have.

Because those are the people who are probably going to want to promote what you have.

So if you have online friends, other bloggers, or people in your niche, just send them a quick email and ask them what it’ll take to get them on your affiliate team.

• Such as what commission are they looking for?
• Are they looking for any freebie links?
• What can make it possible for them to want to be on your team?

And if you don’t have people in your network already, just reach out to people who fit that target market.

Do a quick Google search, look for people who are talking about the product that you’re selling.

Reach out to them and see if they want to become an affiliate for you.

To encourage promotion, a few times a year I’ll have an affiliate promotion where I will give them a really good deal to give to their readers.

I feel like that really helps get the affiliate team excited, while getting their readers interested. Plus, I allow them to offer their own bonuses and stuff like that.

So just things like that, things that make it easier for people to become an affiliate for your product.

Related: How to start your own affiliate program

Q. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your affiliate marketing income story here today. Michelle, where can everyone find you and connect with you?

The best way to find me would be to go to my personal finance blog MakingSenseOfCents.com. And inside my Facebook community for people who are interested in personal finance. 

If you want to follow more of my travel lifestyle behind the scenes, that would be my Instagram.

Special bonus:

$5 Million Affiliate Marketing Income Strategy – Conclusion

Are you ready to majorly increase your affiliate marketing income this year?

We have something to help you. Unlock free access to the HerPaperRoute Affiliate Program Database when you use our partner link to enroll in Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing! Details here.