Juggling Affiliate Marketing, AI, and a Day Job: 

A Chaotic (But Doable) Adventure? 

Note:  My apologies...I said I would post weekly, probably more like bi-monthly.

The past few weeks have felt like trying to ride a unicycle while juggling flaming torches… blindfolded. Between my 9-to-5 job, diving headfirst into affiliate marketing, and wrestling with AI tools that sometimes act like rebellious teenagers, let’s just say my coffee intake has doubled. But hey, chaos is just progress in disguise, right? Here’s the messy, exhilarating breakdown. 

1. “Affiliate Marketing + Full-Time Job = 🤯” Let’s start with the obvious: balancing affiliate marketing with a regular job is like being a part-time spy. You’re sneaking in keyword research between Zoom meetings, drafting product reviews during lunch breaks, and side-eyeing ClickBank stats in Excel. Is it crazy? Absolutely. But here’s the thing—it’s doable if you treat time like a rare Pokémon. 

 My secret weapon? Time-blocking. 

Mondays are for content creation, Tuesdays for analytics, and so on. Does it always work? Nope. Last week, I spent 2 hours hyper-focused on designing a logo for my affiliate site… got lost in a bunch of minutia, took a hard left spinning in circles, only to realize I’d misspelled “luxury” as “lukury.” Classic. 

2. AI: The Overhyped Robot Assistant I’ll admit it: I fell for the AI hype. I imagined myself sipping margaritas while chatbots wrote viral blog posts and MidJourney whipped up Picasso-level graphics. 

Reality check: AI is less “genie in a bottle” and more “overenthusiastic intern who needs constant supervision.” 

The Good: Tools like ChatGPT and Deep Seek can brainstorm catchy headlines or outline articles faster than I can say “ROI.” Grammarly saves me from embarrassing typos (see: “lukury” above). 

The Bad: Left unchecked, AI will happily generate content that sounds like a robot wrote it… because it did. I once asked for a “funny intro about affiliate marketing,” and it gave me a knock-knock joke involving the word “cookieID.” Cringy at best. 

The Ugly: AI image generators are a rollercoaster. Request a “joyful woman shopping online,” and you might get a three-armed influencer with a laptop growing out of her head. Did a few Videos using Robot people, they were horrible and I could not use them “As I do have expectations of my work staying at a high level”, crazy right. 

Lesson learned: AI is a tool, not a replacement for human brains. You’ve gotta study the prompts, tweak the settings, and double-check everything. It’s like training a puppy—reward the good stuff, ignore the chaos. 

3. Affiliate Programs: The “Let’s See What Sticks” Phase After weeks of analysis paralysis (“Should I promote yoga mats or tax software?!”), I finally picked two affiliate programs to test: 

1. A mushroom company (more on that, once I actually launch some advertising 😊.  Note:  were talking about health based mushrooms as opposed to getting high and wandering about aimlessly). 

2. A Download app for Coupons (because who doesn’t need help saving money these days?). 

Why these? 

• They align with my interests (sustainability + health, I take Lion Mane mushrooms daily and they are helping my cognition, so why not sell things I believe in, and helping people save money on life's basics which is crazy these days in Canada and the USA). 

• They’re not oversaturated. Right now, I’m in the “throw spaghetti at the wall” stage: 

• Building simple landing pages. 

• Testing Facebook ads with a $5/day budget (RIP, my avocado toast fund). • Stalking Reddit forums for organic promo ideas. Is it glamorous? Nope. But I’ve accepted that affiliate marketing is a slow burn—like microwaving a frozen burrito instead of ordering DoorDash. 

4. What’s Next? For now, I’m focusing on these two programs. My goals for the next month: 

• Stop overcomplicating: No more 10-step funnels. 

Start with basics: content + traffic. 

• Learn from fails: If my FB ads flops, I’ll dissect why, come up with something better, as opposed to crying into my keyboard. 

• Automate the boring stuff: Let AI handle email drafts and social media scheduling (carefully). 

Final Thoughts If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing in affiliate marketing (or AI) works on autopilot. It’s a mix of hustle, curiosity, and laughing at the chaos. I dreamed of CTRs last night… but I’m weirdly energized. Stay tuned for updates—and if you’ve got tips on calming down AI art generators, please slide hit me up. 🙏 

P.S. Shoutout to my caffeine dealer (aka my Keurig coffee machine) for keeping me alive.  

P.P.S. My apologies...I said I would post weekly, probably more like bi-monthly, in light of my new reality.

1 April 2025

OPENING BLOG POST # 1 - 14 March 2025

Being honest and straight forward has been my thing for quite some time. Not to get into a life story scenario about myself, but like many I have struggled with my worthiness. I was no saint in high school, was referred in my family as the jock, which of course inferred I was not that sharp, so I basically had a Chip on my shoulder and a bad attitude. Ended up getting high school done I joined the Army. Did 13 years in the Regular force, travelled around, mostly Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Got to a point that I knew I truly needed to come home to my love, Vancouver Island, get a life etc. etc. Ended up going to University for a Masters Degree, and wondered the whole time while attending. Why am I here, how could they have even let me in, I must be the dumbest one in the room, how can I be worthy to be in a higher educational setting... Got a very high GPA, shocked myself.

So my journey in affiliate marketing started a long time ago, I have been losing money for years at Affiliate Marketing. I wrote a book on Dog Training back in 2017. It did poorly at best, but my marketing was horrible. I tried virtually everything on the net, I sucked, just lost money. In my defense: I was also Married with two kids, working a full time job, still in the Army but the Reserve's (took a lot of my time anyway). At the same time I was trying to be a good husband and dad to my wife and kids, so this was always more important than my third job, my home based business. Talk about set up for failure. But I am thick, so I bashed on. Of course how could I have ever been successful giving the Marketing Biz so little of my time and just running around like a lunatic. Yaaa, I failed miserably, but I kept trying, stopping and starting, driving my poor spouse a little kooky. Enter 2025, ...the kids are older, I am no longer in the military, spouse still puts up with me :) All I have is a day time job and plenty of time to launch this business with very little excuses!! So, if your interested I will journal once a week to simply say what I am up too. Follow me if you will. Cheers.  14 March 2025.