Another day in my affiliate marketing journey — and today is going to require more coffee than usual.
I woke up feeling pretty slow and tired this morning, so this is definitely not one of those days where I jumped out of bed full of energy and ready to conquer the world.
My affiliate earnings are currently unchanged from my last update, and the number of subscribers on my email list is also exactly the same.
So from a numbers perspective, nothing exciting has happened since yesterday.
But that does not mean nothing is happening.
A lot of my time yesterday evening and again this morning has gone into trying to finish my second YouTube affiliate video.
And I think I am finally getting very close.
My second YouTube video has taken a lot of work
If you have followed my affiliate marketing journey for a while, you already know that YouTube has probably been one of the more time-consuming parts of what I am building.
In my previous update, Affiliate Marketing Journey: Another Sale and Subscriber, I shared the latest progress in the business.
The first YouTube videos are taking much longer than I originally expected.
There is the script.
The voiceover.
The visuals.
The editing.
The captions.
The thumbnail.
The title.
The description.
The keywords.
And then there are all the little details that you only seem to notice after watching the same video over and over again.
That has definitely been the case with this one.
I also wrote about some of the changes I have been making in Affiliate Marketing Journey: Better YouTube Videos.
The encouraging part is that I can already see that I am learning more with every version.
I am beginning to understand why seemingly small details matter.
And hopefully that means the third video will be easier than the second one.
Two small things I noticed after uploading it
Last night and this morning I finally got the new version finished and uploaded it to YouTube as an unlisted video.
Naturally, that was also the exact moment when I noticed two more things I could have done differently.
The first was the thumbnail.
The thumbnail is the clickable cover image people see before they open a YouTube video.
One recommendation from my mentor was to also use that same visual as one of the first images or scenes inside the actual video.
The idea is that someone clicks on the thumbnail and then immediately sees something visually familiar when the video begins.
That creates a stronger connection between what they clicked on and what they actually get.
I realised that after the upload was already finished.
In my particular video there is another complication, though.
The people shown in the thumbnail are different from the person shown at the beginning of the video.
So simply inserting the thumbnail at the start might actually make the video feel less consistent rather than more consistent.
That is something I will discuss with my mentor today.
The second mistake is even smaller.
Toward the end of the video, the voiceover says “five and one” instead of “five in one.”
Not exactly a disaster.
But once you hear it, you hear it.
There will probably always be something to improve
This is something I am starting to understand about content creation.
You could probably spend forever improving a video.
Fix one thing and you notice another.
Change an image and suddenly another image looks slightly weaker.
Improve the script and then notice something in the captions.
At some point, you have to decide when something is good enough to move forward.
That does not mean ignoring obvious mistakes.
It means accepting that perfection is probably not a realistic goal.
For someone like me who is still learning YouTube affiliate marketing, I think the more useful goal is to make each video better than the previous one.
If that happens consistently, the quality should improve naturally over time.
Another mentor review today
I have another mentoring call today, and a large part of that conversation will probably be about this video.
I have put quite a few hours into the new version since the last review.
The script is more conversational.
The video is less like a commercial.
The visuals have been selected more carefully.
The title, description and keywords have been researched more carefully.
The affiliate link is placed more prominently.
And I have tried to apply the feedback I received from the previous session rather than simply making cosmetic changes.
So I am genuinely curious to see what he finds this time.
There will almost certainly still be things to improve.
That is part of the reason I have a mentor in the first place.
But hopefully the list is a little shorter this time.
The numbers are flat, but the work is moving forward
There are no new affiliate sales to report today.
There are no new email subscribers either.
And that can sometimes make a day look completely unproductive if you only look at the numbers.
But I do not think that tells the whole story.
Yesterday and today I have been building another piece of content that can potentially keep working long after I finish creating it.
I have also learned more about YouTube SEO, thumbnails, scripting, affiliate links, editing and how to structure a recommendation without making it feel like an advertisement.
Those things are harder to measure than a sale.
But they still matter.
That is one of the recurring lessons from this affiliate marketing journey: sometimes the visible result comes later than the work that created it.
The systems I am building around
The ClickBank Profit Challenge is still where I generated my first meaningful affiliate marketing income and where a large part of this journey started.
It gave me something extremely important early on: proof that affiliate marketing could actually generate real sales.
The Challenge has now ended. For the current offer, explore ClickBank Profit Club – join for free.
Now I am also working through the Coaching Profit System, which represents the next stage for me — building my own product and creating assets that I can control for the longer term.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Affiliate marketing gave me a way to start generating income without having my own product.
Building my own product is about taking the next step and creating something that can become an asset of the business itself.
One step at a time
Today is not a big sales day.
It is not a big subscriber-growth day either.
It is another building day.
The plan now is to have the mentor call, see what still needs adjusting in the YouTube video, publish this blog update across my usual social channels, and then get through the regular workday.
And if I still have enough energy after all that coffee, hopefully I can fit in some training too.
One step at a time.
Affiliate disclosure: Some pages linked above may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of those links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
