I Made My First Affiliate Sale! 80 Cents and Everything Changed

Honest Income Report — Month 1

Once upon a time… nah I’m just kidding!

It was a regular Saturday. I’d just got back from taking my girls to gymnastics, the house needed sorting and I had a to do list as long as my arm. Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary.

And then I checked my Amazon Associates account.

80 cents!

I know what you’re thinking. 80 cents?

That’s it?

But you don’t understand… I screenshotted it immediately, ran to tell my husband the second he got in from work and honestly felt like I’d won the lottery.

because in a way I had.

Not because of the money. Because of what it proved.

Who I Am and Why I’m Building This

I’m a stay at home mum of four, based in the UK, with ADHD, building three blogs simultaneously from my couch while raising my girls and trying not to lose my mind.

I left a nearly two decade career as a freelance hair and makeup artist because it was burning me out. The money was okay but the cost, weekends away from my kids, the emotional drain, the physical exhaustion was too high.

So I walked away and decided to build something different.

Something that could earn while I sleep.

Something that was mine.

I’m building three brands.

Shahena Beauty: my past self, the beauty world I came from.

Shaz Official: my present self, health, lifestyle, faith and real life.

And Veripassive: my future self, documenting the honest journey of building online income from scratch.

This is that honest journey. No fluff. No fake screenshots. No guru nonsense. Just a real mum figuring it out in real time.

Where I Actually Started From

I want to be honest about something. I didn’t start this month from zero. I’ve had my sites for around three years but I haven’t been consistent. Weeks of work followed by weeks of nothing. Three brands pulling my attention in different directions. ADHD making decisions feel impossible some days.

Sound familiar?

I’ve made every mistake a beginner blogger makes. Random posts with no structure. No keyword research. No content strategy. Pinterest pins that got saves but zero clicks. I even tried selling MRR and PLR products and quickly realised that wasn’t for me, well full-time anyway. Everything felt generic and I refused to sell something I didn’t believe in.

But recently something shifted. I got serious about strategy. I restructured my content around proper pillar posts, clusters and leaves. I switched entirely to text overlay pins on Pinterest. I started treating this like a real business instead of a hobby I dipped in and out of.

What I Did This Month

This month I focused on three things.

Content: I kept posting consistently across all three sites. Shahena Beauty now has 35 posts. Shaz Official is building with around 10 solid text heavy posts. Veripassive is in its early stages.

Pinterest: I started a brand new Pinterest account for Shaz Official and committed fully to text overlay pins only. No more pretty single image pins that get saved but never clicked. Within 2-3 weeks and around 50 pins I already had 5,000 impressions and 40 outbound clicks on a brand new account. That’s the strategy working.

Technical fixes: I discovered my Wordfence firewall was blocking Google from crawling my site. No wonder my AdSense kept getting rejected with a site down or unavailable error.

Fixed it.

Reapplied.

Fingers crossed. I also realised my analytics numbers were likely undercounting my real traffic because of the same firewall issue and cookie consent settings. Lesson learned, always check your technical foundations before blaming your content.

The Moment Everything Changed

86 clicks on my Amazon affiliate links across my three sites — all linked to one Amazon Associates account. I honestly wasn’t sure when or if a sale would ever come. My Amazon storefront isn’t the most aesthetic thing in the world. But it’s there and it’s working.

And then on a completely ordinary Saturday it happened.

Someone found my flapper and Great Gatsby themed content on Shahena Beauty. Got inspired. Clicked my Amazon link. And bought a flapper headband and shawl for their outfit.

80 cents landed in my account.

I told my husband the second he walked through the door from work. His reaction made me smile. Because he gets it, he knows what this means to me and what I’m building toward.

That 80 cents is not 80 cents. That’s proof of concept. That’s confirmation that the model works. That someone found my content, trusted my recommendation and bought something because of a post I wrote sitting at my sofa, in front of the TV watching friends.

That’s passive income in its smallest most beautiful form.

What This Proved to Me

A lot of people, people close to me, haven’t always believed in what I’m building. When you’re a stay at home mum with ADHD telling people you’re going to make a living from blogging, not everyone nods along enthusiastically.

But 80 cents doesn’t lie.

The business model works. Content drives traffic. Traffic drives clicks. Clicks drive sales. It’s slow at the start and then it compounds. I know that now not just intellectually but in my bones because I’ve seen it happen.

It also reminded me why themed and occasion content works so well for affiliate income. Someone reading about a Great Gatsby look isn’t just browsing, they have an event, they need an outfit and they’re ready to buy. That buying intent is everything.

What I’m Focusing On Next

The goal now is simple, more of what’s working.

More text heavy blog posts across all three sites. My target is 100 posts per site before I start heavily focusing on email list building and digital products. More fresh Pinterest pins for existing posts, I have older posts that only have one pin each and that’s leaving traffic on the table.

AdSense approval, once approved even pennies from ads alongside affiliate income starts confirming the model even further.

My first digital product, The guide is in progress and will be my first paid product on Shahena Beauty.

Month 1 Honest Income Report

Affiliate income: £0.64 Ad income: £0 Digital products: £0 Total month 1: £0.64 Goal for month 2: £5-£10

Yes I’m serious about that goal. £5-£10 next month. Small, achievable and building.

To Anyone Sitting Where I Was,

If you’re a mum reading this at 11pm wondering if any of this is actually real, it is. I promise you it is.

It’s not fast. It’s not glamorous. There will be weeks where you question everything and want to close the laptop and never open it again. There will be days where your ADHD brain can’t decide which brand to work on and you end up doing nothing.

But then there will be a random Saturday when you check your phone and see 80 cents and feel like the whole world just confirmed what you already knew deep down.

Keep going. Document everything. Stay honest. And don’t quit before the compound effect kicks in.

ان شاء الله — it’s coming. 🤍

Follow my honest blogging journey on Veripassive where I document everything… the wins, the losses and everything in between.