Why I’m Starting This Blog
Hi, I’m ShariLyn.
If you’ve found your way to my first blog post, welcome. I’m glad you’re here.
I decided to start this blog because I’m starting fresh, and I want to document the process honestly.
I’m not here to tell you that I’m an online business expert. I’m certainly not.
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve figured everything out, and I’m certainly not gonna promise that I’ve discovered some magic formula for making money online.
What I am is someone wh decided that it’s time to learn something new and build something of my own. With help, not what I thought I knew.
My working life has taken me through a few different chapters.
I started out as a waitress. Then I became a young mom. Later, I became a cashier, a job I stayed with for 36 years.
That’s a long time to spend working for someone else.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with working a traditional job. In fact, working for many years taught me plenty about responsibility, showing up, dealing with people, and sticking with something even when I wasn’t having the best day.
But eventually, I started thinking about what I wanted the next chapter of my life to look like.
I wanted to learn how to build something online.
Something I could work on from home. I could continue learning and improving. Something that could potentially become a source of extra income.
That’s what led me to affiliate marketing.
Why I Chose Affiliate Marketing
When I first started looking into online business, there seemed to be an overwhelming number of choices. Create products.
- Start a store.
- Become a freelancer.
- Create courses.
- Offer services.
- Build a membership.
- Create content.
- And then there’s affiliate marketing.
For a beginner like me, affiliate marketing seemed like a reasonable place to start because I didn’t have to create a product before I could start learning how online marketing works.
The basic idea is fairly simple. A company or product owner has something to sell. An affiliate promotes that product using a special tracking link. If someone purchases through that link, the affiliate can receive a commission.
Of course, simple doesn’t mean easy. There’s still a lot to learn.
You have to understand your audience, learn how to create useful content. You’ve gotta learn about traffic, email marketing, landing pages, follow-up, and a whole lot of other things that I’m still setting up.
But I like the fact that I can learn these pieces one step at a time. I’m getting started with ClickBank affiliate marketing.
ClickBank is a marketplace where affiliates can find products to promote, and that gave me another reason to explore affiliate marketing as I begin this new journey.
I’m approaching this differently than I did years ago.
Instead of jumping from one opportunity to another because somebody says something sounds exciti
ng. Now I wanna learn the fundamentals and build a foundation.
That means understanding what I’m doing before worrying about how fast I can do it.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned, is the importance of building an email list.
Why List Building Matters
This is probably one of the biggest lessons I came across since getting started.
When you’re new to affiliate marketing, it’s tempting to think the whole process is simply:
Find a product → Get someone to click → Hopefully make a sale.
But there’s a problem with that approach. What happens if that person visits the offer but doesn’t buy? They’re gone.
You’ve spent time creating content or finding traffic, only to send that person directly to someone else’s website.
You don’t have any other way to reach ’em. That’s where building a list started to make sense.
An email list gives me an audience I can communicate with directly, rather than depending on someon
e else’s platform or sending every visitor straight to an offer.
That doesn’t mean everyone on my list will buy something. It doesn’t mean I should bombard people with spam messages. And it certainly doesn’t mean collect email addresses and treat people like numbers.
To me, building a list means creating an opportunity to develop a relationship.
Say someone finds my content useful enough to join my list. I have the opportunity to continue providing helpful info, share what I’m learning, and occasionally introduce them to products or resources thats possibly relevant to them.
That feels much more sustainable than constantly starting from zero.
I also like the idea that my email list is an asset I have more control over.
- Social media platforms can change.
- Algorithms can change.
- Accounts can have restrictions.
- Traffic sources can disappear.
But having a permission-based email list gives me a direct way to communicate with people who’ve chosen to hear from me. That was an important realization for me.
I don’t wanna spend all day chasing traffic, sending people directly to offers, then watching those visitors disappear. I wanna learn how to build something that can grow over time.
Why I Joined The ClickBank Profit Club
This brings me to the reason I joined The ClickBank Profit Club.
As someone just getting started, one of the hardest things was figuring out where to begin. There’
s so much information online.
You can search for affiliate marketing tutorials and find thousands of videos, blog posts, courses, opinions, strategies, and conflicting advice.
One person says you need a website, another says you don’t. Someone says you should focus on social media, another says paid advertising’s the answer.
Then somebody tells you email marketing’s the most important thing.
For a beginner, it became massive information overload.
I wanted something that’d give me a clearer path to follow.
That’s what attracted me to The ClickBank Profit Club.
This program provided training, a setup process, follow-up emails, and a structured path for getting started with ClickBank affiliate marketing.
For me, that structure’s important.
Who needs another giant pile of information sitting in front of ’em. I needed to know what I should work on first, what came next, and why I’m doing each step.
And I like that the process involves building a list while promoting a system. That fits with what I’ve been learning about email marketing.
Instead of simply sending people directly to an offer and hoping they purchase immediately, the goal is to build a relationship and have a way to follow up. That made more sense to me as a beginner.
Does that mean I expected instant results? No I didn’t. I understand that joining a program doesn’t magically build a business.
There’s still:
- Work involved.
- Learning involved.
There’ll probably be mistakes, and almost certainly things I don’t understand the first time I try them. And I’m sure there’ll be days when I wonder why I decided to do this in the first place! But that’s okay. I’m starting with realistic expectations. Not looking for a get-rich-quick system. Just looking for a starting point. And right now, I finally feel like I have one.
What I’ll Be Doing Next
So, what happens now?
I’m going to:
- Learn.
- Follow the training.
- Work through the setup process.
- Learn more about ClickBank affiliate marketing.
- Work on building my email list.
- Learn how to create content that people actually find useful.
And I’m going to document what happens along the way. That last part’s important to me. I want this blog to be about the journey, not just the destination.
I’m sure I’ll make mistakes. Discover things that work better than others. I’ll probably have plenty of questions. And I’ll have plenty of things to learn.
Rather than pretending that I know everything, I’d rather share what I’m actually discovering.
Maybe you’re considering affiliate marketing too.
You’ve maybe been working a traditional job for years and wondering whether there’s something else you could learn.
You possibly looked at online business before but felt overwhelmed by all the choices.
Or maybe you’ve already started and you’re trying to figure out what to do next.
If that’s you, I hope you’ll follow along.
I’m Not Promising:
A shortcut or a certain income.
That everything will work perfectly.
I’m simply starting.
And sometimes starting is the hardest part.
Wanna Take a Look at The ClickBank ProfitClub?
If you’re curious about the system I’m using to get started, you can check out The ClickBank Profit Club through my affiliate link:
Check Out The ClickBank Profit Club
Take your time and look it over for yourself. I’m sharing it because it’s the system I’ve chosen to learn from as I begin my own affiliate marketing journey.
If you decide it’s right for you, great, if it’s not, that’s okay too.
The important thing’s to find an approach that makes sense for you, understand what you’re getting into, and be willing to put in the work.
A Quick Disclaimer
This post contains an affiliate link, which means I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through my link, at no additional cost to you.
Results are not guaranteed. Affiliate marketing and building an online business requires effort, consistency, learning, and other factors. Individual results will vary. Please do your own research and make decisions based on what’s appropriate for your situation.
This Is Just The Beginning
This is my first blog post here, but it won’t be my last.
I’m excited to see where this new journey takes me.
After spending 36 years as a cashier, I’m ready to learn something completely different.
I know I’m starting at the beginning. Honestly? I’m okay with that.
Everybody who knows what they’re doing today started somewhere. This is my somewhere.
I’m gonna learn, work, make mistakes, adjust, and keep moving forward. If you’re interested in building an online business too, I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
I’ll share what I’m learning. The good, the confusing, the frustrating, and hopefully some of the fun, exciting moments too.
No pretending, no overnight-success stories. Just one beginner taking the next step.
Welcome to my journey.
