“How to Make at Least ₹30,000 per Month

on the Side”

- Deepak Kanakaraju

Table of Contents:
● Chapter 1: The Purpose of This eBook 
● Chapter 2: Making a Plan to Quit Your Job 
● Chapter 3: Is it Possible to Make ₹30,000 per Month? 
● Chapter 4: 3 Different Ways to Make ₹30,000 per Month 
● Chapter 5: Conclusion 
Chapter 1:
The Purpose of This eBook
 
If you are reading this eBook, I believe that you are interested in making some 
extra money on the side. And I believe you are interested in becoming a full 
time entrepreneur sometime in the future. 
 
Though this report is titled “
​ How to Make at Least ₹30,000 per Month on the 
Side”, i​ t is not about just making ₹30,000 per Month. It’s about 
entrepreneurship and how to become a full time successful entrepreneur in the 
near future. 
 
One of my goals in life is to transform at least a 1,000 people in India to become 
self-sustaining successful entrepreneurs. I hope you will be one of them! 
 
You have made the right decision to download this report and invest time in 
reading it. You will realize sometime in the future, this report changed the 
direction of your life. 
 
Before we get into learning about the actual methods to make money on the 
side, we need to talk about the purpose of this report, why I wrote this report 
and how it is going to help you in the long term. 
 
I am writing this report from 10 years of personal experience. I have done 
projects on the side, been a full time entrepreneur, been in five different jobs as 
a digital marketing manager, been a consultant and then I am back to being an 
entrepreneur. You can check out ​my story in my TEDx talk​ if you haven’t 
watched it already. 

Why Entrepreneurship?
 
If you want to become really rich in life and build a lot of wealth, the only way 
for us (and for me) and people like us is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is 
the only chance we have at getting rich. 
 
And Entrepreneurship is not always about getting rich. If you are working on 
your own business, you will have a lot of work satisfaction, you will be able to 
create a lot more value for the world than being an employee and the most 
important of all… you will not have a boss that is giving you a hard time. 
 
There are two ways to lead our life… one is to be in a corporate job, move up the 
ladder slowly, literally sell our soul in the process and earn a decent living for 
ourselves and the family. 
 
Or we can become an entrepreneur. 
 
But how does one become an entrepreneur?  
 
Is there a “safe” way to ease-in to entrepreneurship from being an employee? 
 
Truth be told, becoming an entrepreneur is a risky thing. But if you can 
manage your risk properly, you will be able to get into entrepreneurship 
without having a bumpy ride along the way. 
 
Look at the positive side… we could really get rich with entrepreneurship. The 
benefits are far bigger than the downsides or the risk. 
 
There are two risks we need to manage here. Financial and Career risk. But I 
will tell you how you can get this risk covered. Once you have no financial or 
career risk, jumping into entrepreneurship will be an easier thing to do. 
 
Here’s a long list of benefits that you will get if you become a successful 
entrepreneur: 
 
● You will be able to support yourself very well 
● You will become rich in the future 
● You will be doing the work that you love 
● You will not have a boss 
● You can travel when you want and work remotely 
● You will be the boss and you will be proud of a team you have built 
● You will be able to contribute value to your customers, give a job 
opportunity for your employees, and be able to contribute back to the 
society in the form of philanthropy. 
 
I don’t know anyone who has not wanted to be a successful entrepreneur.  
 
Many self-made businessmen are way richer than celebrities, sports stars and 
politicians and they lead much more authentic and satisfying lives.  
 
A recent poll that I posted on the l​ earn digital marketing group​ reveals that 
most of the people want to become entrepreneurs for financial freedom and 
wealth. 
 
And the next reason is that they believe they can create more value as an 
entrepreneur than as an employee. Some people said they wanted to enjoy their 
work and want to have a better quality of work-life. (​ That’s one of the best 
benefits of entrepreneurship to be honest). 
 

 
 
But let’s not be kids and not see the downside of starting a business. No one 
can have a cake and eat it too. Everything in life has a price.  
 
So what’s the downside of entrepreneurship? 
 
● You need some capital to start a business.  
● Most of the people do not have money to invest in a business and even if 
they have some money, they are not ready to risk it. 
● Entrepreneurship requires a lot of hard work in the beginning stages. 
Most of the people do not have the capability to do such work due to 
family commitments, habits and sometimes people are just lazy. 
● Most of the people who start a business fail within a few years.  
● Many people lose the money they have invested. 
 
We now agree that the positives of entrepreneurship is really awesome and we 
all want those benefits.  
 
But the downsides and risks are also very high. By the end of this report, you 
will understand that how we can reduce the risk with proper financial planning 
and enjoy the long term benefits of your 1-2 year entrepreneurship stint ​(even 
if you business fails in the first 2 years). 
 
What’s next in the process? 
 
Entrepreneurship is awesome.  
 
But no one can become an entrepreneur, unless they quit their job first. And 
that’s the purpose of this report.  
 
The very goal of this report is to help you make a plan to quit your job, and 
become an entrepreneur. 
 
So the next chapter is about the financial plan that you need to quit your job. 
Chapter 2:
Making a Plan to Quit Your Job
If you have just graduated, live with your parents and if you can start a 
business with a small investment funded by your family, by all means go 
ahead.  
 
(My first business project was a blog about motorcycles which I started with an 
investment of ₹10,000 sitting at my parent’s home and I had no living expenses). 
 
Right now, there is a high chance that you are stuck in a job or haven’t joined a 
job yet. You’ve probably graduated and moved out from your parent’s home. 
 
Once you are independent, you have to support yourself and your family if you 
have one. The income from the job is what supports you.  
 
And that income is very important. You cannot avoid those monthly bills like 
rent, groceries, apparel, electricity and so on.  
 
A job takes away all our time and energy. No one can become a successful 
entrepreneur while having a full time job.  
 
More than money, building a startup requires a lot of time in the initial few 
years. It is almost like taking care of a baby.  
 
To get that kind of time, you need to quit your job. To quit your job, you need to 
make a financial plan. 
 
Most of the people just dream about quitting the job and becoming an 
entrepreneur someday. They will keep dreaming and will never achieve their 
goals of quitting their job and starting a business. Because they don’t have a 
plan in place. 
 
Once you have a financial plan, you will be able to plan your exit. And that’s 
what this report is going to help you with, apart from giving you ideas of how 
to make money from a side project.  
 
The first question to ask is: If you quit your job today, how long can you survive 
with your current lifestyle? I asked this question on the ​Learn Digital 
Marketing group​ on Facebook recently, and most of the people said that they 
need at least ₹50,000 per month to support themselves. 
 

 
  
For people who are single and in Tier 2 cities in India, ₹50,000 per month 
might be enough.  
 
For people with families, with kids, living in Tier 1 cities, ₹1,50,000 per month 
is a more likely number. 
 
Since most of the people have answered ₹50,000 per month, for the rest of this 
report, I will take this number as the target goal to be achieved for monthly 
survival. 
 
(If your monthly income requirement number is different, you can still take my 
ideas and apply the same concepts, just with different numbers, I have added chart 
towards the end of this chapter that helps you plan according to your financial 
requirements). 
 
Time to do some MATHEMATICS... 
 
If you need ₹50,000 per month to survive, that’s ₹​6 lakhs a year​. And for 2 
years, it is 12 Lakhs.  
 
Let’s say that if you start today, it takes 2 full years for you to become a 
successful entrepreneur. By end of 2 years, you should have a successful 
project running that brings in at least ₹50,000 per month in profits. 
 
To quit your job today and start a project full time, you need 12 lakhs in savings 
- to pay your monthly bills for 24 months. (₹50,000 x 24 months = ₹12 Lakhs) 
 
First of all, 12 Lakhs is a lot of money for a lot of people. It takes some time to 
get to that level of savings.  
 
And I would not recommend quitting your job, even if you have 12 Lakhs in 
savings because you have no experience in making money with a side project.  
 
Without the side-project experience, your success in a full time business is also 
not likely. 
 
If you are capable of making money from a side project, it gives you a lot of 
business skills that you should put to 100% use when you quit your job.  
 
And you learn the business skills while you keep your day job. 
 
That’s why my advice is that, first start an online side project and start making 
₹30,000 per month on the side. DO NOT quit your job until you reach this 
number.  
 
If you can make ₹30,000 per month with a side project online, then you are 
already making ₹3.6 Lakhs a year.  
 
Which means, if you have ₹2.4 Lakhs in savings, you can survive for an entire 
year. ₹20,000 per month x 12 months = ₹2.4 Lakhs. (For 2 years you need ₹4.8 
Lakhs) 
 
 
 
 
 
So here’s how the math looks... 
 
₹30,000 per month (​ from a side project) 
+ 
₹20,000 per month ​(taken from savings) 
= 
₹50,000 per month needed for your survival. 
 
The savings required for 2 years of survival now is just 4.8 Lakhs. Let’s round it 
off to 5 Lakhs.  
 
So here’s your first goal… 
 
Have 5 Lakhs in savings and make ₹30,000 per month from an online side 
project. 
 
Having 5 Lakhs saved up is a very realistic number for most of the people.  
 
Once you quit your job, you will have plenty of time and energy. If you can 
achieve ₹30,000 per month from a side project while you are working on a job, 
then you will double that income within a year if you work full time.  
 
You have another two years to start making ₹50,000 per month from your 
online side project, and by that time your savings will run out.  
 
But if your online side project income reaches ₹50k to ₹60k per month, then 
you never need to go to a job again.  
What if you fail?
Just in case, your projects do not work out as expected and your savings run out 
in 2 years, you can still get a job after 2 years by showing this as work 
experience. Most startups nowadays value people who have done 
entrepreneurship because that’s what the startup wants.  
 
Entrepreneurs get into the habit of getting things done, coming up with new 
ideas and inspiring people around them. There are enough reports that says 
that such people are highly valuable. 
 
So worst case, if your startup project doesn’t work, you can always go back to a 
job, highly valued and have the chance to do a startup again sometime in the 
future. Check out this news report from Economic Times which says the same 
thing. 
 

 
 
The two major risks of trying entrepreneurship are career risk and financial 
risk. If you plan as I have mentioned, the career risk is zero and the financial 
risk is also zero. In fact, as discussed above, your career can become better in 
the long term if you are a failed entrepreneur. 
 
If you succeed, you will achieve all the dreams you’ve ever had. If you do not, 
you still wouldn’t have wasted your time. You need to set your first goal as 
starting to make ₹30,000 per month from an online side project. And this 
figure of ₹30,000 per month is also not something I pulled out of thin air.  
 
In a survey done in Learn Digital Marketing group recently, most people voted 
that ₹30,000 per month from a side project is enough to give them enough 
confidence to quit their jobs. 
 
Conclusion & Recap:
 
So far in these two chapters we have clarified the purpose of this report and 
how to start making a plan to quit your job. Before we jump into the exact 
methods of making money, let’s refresh the numbers.  
 
It would help if you take a print out of it and post it somewhere where you can 
see it everyday so that you are constantly reminded of your financial goals. 
 
So here are the numbers you need: 
 
First 2 Years after Quitting Your Job 
 

Total Money You Need  ₹50,000 ​(per Month)  ₹6 Lakhs ​(a year) 
Per month to Survive 

Income from Side  ₹30,000 (​ per Month)  ₹3.6 Lakhs ​(a year) 
Project 

Funding from Savings   ₹20,000​ (per Month)  ₹2.4 Lakhs (​ a year) 

 
 
Transitioning to Full time-entrepreneurship:  
 
● By the end of 2nd year of quitting the job, your online side project should 
start making ₹50,000 per month or more. By end of 2nd year your 
savings will run out, but since your online project now makes ₹50,000 
per month or more, you don’t need a job again.  
 ● And you can slowly increase this income to ​₹60,000 per month​ by the 
3rd year, ₹
​ 70,000 per month​ by the 4th year and so on… ​(you will never 
need to look for a job again in your life!) 
 
As mentioned before, these numbers are for the majority.  
 
Depending on your monthly financial requirements, your numbers will be as 
follows (​ a
​ lso available in this Google Sheet​) 
 

 
 
You will be earning 60% of your monthly financial requirement from your side 
project and funding the rest 40% from your savings. 
 
If your financial requirement per month is ₹1.5 Lakhs, you will be funding 
₹90,000 per month from your side project and ₹60,000 per month from your 
savings. You would need ₹14.4 in savings before you can quit your job.  
 
If you are spending ₹1.5 lakhs a month, then I believe you are making more 
than that from your salary. And if you can get to this level of salary, I am sure 
you are capable enough to make ₹90,000 per month from your side project.  
 
Reaching ₹90,000 per month from a side project is definitely harder than 
reaching ₹30,000 per month… and if you feel ₹90,000 per month is too high 
for now, then you should reduce your monthly spending to pursue your dream 
of becoming an entrepreneur.  
 
Giving advice on where you should save money is beyond the scope of this 
ebook. However, having a general mindset of frugality is a base ingredient for 
becoming an entrepreneur. 
 
Now that we are clear about WHY we should become an entrepreneur and HOW 
to plan for it… let’s now dive into the practicality and possibility of making 
₹30,000 per month.  
 
Is it easy, is it possible?  
 
Let’s find out... 
 
 
   
Chapter 3:
Is it Possible to Make ₹30,000 per Month?
If you are in a job and if you are making money, it is a proof that you have 
something of value to provide to your employer. Your employer is making at 
least 20% more money than what is he paying you else, he would be in loss.  
 
If you can create so much value for your employer - you can definitely create 
that much value through a side project.  
 
But another self-doubt many people have is that “
​ I cannot spend my full time on 
the side project, I can do it only part time”​.  
 
But even if you can spend 1 hour of quality time per day on your side project, it 
should be more than enough. Because you are NOT DOING A SIDE JOB. You are 
doing a side project. 
 
There is a huge difference between doing a job and a project. In a project you 
create assets and it builds a momentum of its own. With a job, you trade your 
time for money, and you will not be building an asset. 
 
Consider that you are trading your time for money and you are putting in extra 
efforts after work hours in a job. 
 
If you are making ₹50,000 per month from a job and you spend some extra 
time doing a part time job, you might make another ₹20,000 per month and 
your total income might be ₹70,000 per Month. 
 
But this part time income cannot go up, because it is a part time job, not a part 
time business / side project. 
 
Here’s a small sketch I did to help you understand what I am talking about. 
 

 
 
However, if you start a side project, your income will not be much in the 
beginning, but it will increase slowly. 
 
Because side projects are business projects and businesses as a general rule 
have momentum that is built slowly over time with reinvestment of time, 
energy and money. 
 
The project will take a life of its own and after a certain point, you will be able 
to earn a passive income from your business projects. 
 
Look at how the following graph is different from the one above. A side project 
will start slow, not make any money in the first few months, but the 
momentum will build slowly.  
 

 
 
You keep your job’s income coming in. Save money by spending less than you 
earn. Build your savings, work on your side project, until it reaches ₹30,000 
per Month in earnings.  
 
Then quit your job, focus full time on your side project for 2 years and use your 
savings to support yourself… and then once you reach ₹50,000 per Month, you 
can continue working to get the orange line even higher. 
 
That’s the difference between a part time job and a side project. Jobs - both 
part time and full time are slow growth activities. Businesses grow fast after a 
certain period of time, but needs a lot of time and energy in the beginning 
phases. 
 
This side project will also help you develop a “
​ business-mindset”, ​where you 
will start thinking along the lines of - how can I invest my time, money and 
energy intelligently so that I can create passive income streams.  
 
People without the ​“business-mindset”​ and with a job-mindset,​ w
​ ill think like: 
“How can I work harder and spend more time working, so that I can make more 
money”.  
 
With a job, you are not building any assets, so the momentum at which the 
income can grow in the future is not going to be there.  
 
You have limited time and energy in a day… you will not be able to expand that. 
With a business, you have more money to invest as time goes on, and there is a 
possibility to grow exponentially. 
 
If you still do not believe that you can make ₹30,000 per Month just with a side 
project, I will show you plenty of case studies where people have made this 
kind of money with internet side projects. May be that will help you believe 
that this is POSSIBLE. 
Chapter 4:
3 Different Ways to Make ₹30,000 per Month

In the first chapter, we talked about the importance of entrepreneurship.  

 
In the second chapter, we learned how to create a financial plan to quit your job 
and safeguard your finances and career.  
 
In the third chapter, I showed you how to get into the “
​ business mindset”​ and 
BELIEVE that you can do this. 
 
Now it is time to get to the core of this book: H
​ ow to actually make ₹30,000 per 
Month with an online side project. 
 
The different ways that I am going to mention here are based on my experience 
of what has worked for me and what hasn’t. If you know some other method to 
make ₹30,000 per Month, go ahead with it. It is not necessary that you have to 
follow one of my methods. 
 
You can even put up a small shop outside your home, if you think you can make 
₹30,000 per Month and follow the plans outlined in the first 2 chapters to 
move out of your job and become an entrepreneur.  
 
If you don’t have any existing ideas or methods, then read on… I will tell you 
the best methods to make such money on the side. And as I discover new 
methods, I will add them to this ebook as updates.   
Before I explain each method, let me lay out all the possible methods first: 
 
1. Start a Blog and Sell Advertisements​ (​ Sponsored Posts, Display Ads…) 
2. Start a Blog and Promote Affiliate Products​ (​ eCommerce Products, 
Internal / private Affiliate Programs) 
3. Start a Blog, build a personal brand and sell products & services 
(freelancing, training, consulting, design, copywriting, speaking, content, 
ebooks, courses, reports, books, merchandise) 
 

Method 1: Start a Blog and Sell Advertisements

Out of the 7 methods mentioned above, 5 are through blogging. Blogging is one 
of the best free marketing channels for online entrepreneurs and I would 
recommend that you start with blogging whatever you want to do in the future. 
 
The first method of making money through a blog is to sell advertisements. 
When you publish content on your blog, you will get traffic.  
 
This is people paying attention to the content that you have published on your 
blog. Now you can sell a part of this attention to advertisers who might be 
interested in reaching out to your audience. 
 
Selling ads on your blog is not as difficult as it might sound. You do not need to 
reach out to potential advertisers to get them to advertise on your blog.  
The best way to start selling ads on your blog is to sign up with an ad network 
that can help you run ads on your blog. 
 
The ad network will manage advertisers, collect payments from them, take a 
commission and give you your share for running their ads on your blog. 
 
The No.1 Ad network for display ads is Google AdSense. If you sign up for 
Google AdSense, you will get a code that you can place on your website. Once 
you place the code on your website, the Google crawler will figure out what 
your website is about and serve ads that might be interesting to your audience. 
 
For example, this is a medium rectangle ad which measures 300 pixels by 250 
pixels. You might have seen such ads across the web.  
 

 
 
These ads either pay your for every click (CPC) or they pay you in CPM (Cost 
per thousand impressions). 
 
The earnings depend on the topic of the blog, the country from which the 
audience visits from and a lot of other factors. 
 
I have a Google AdSense account, and you can see that my blog 
DigitalDeepak.com has earned $167 so far. This was just an experiment and I 
have my ads only on two pages of my blog.  
 

 
 
It has generated $167.39 from 926 clicks exactly and that makes each click 
worth $0.18. That’s ₹13.08. 
 
To make ₹30,000 per month, I need to get approximately 2,300 clicks per 
month. If I have a CTR (​ click through ratio) ​of 1% on page views - which means 
that out of every 100 page views, 1 person clicks on the ad, I would need 
2,30,000 page views on my blog every month. 
 
That’s 7,000 to 8,000 page views per day required for my blog every day. To 
build a blog to this level of daily pageviews, it takes a lot of time.  
 
It is easy to generate such page views if your blog is in a mass market topic like 
Politics, Entertainment, Movies and News. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In the last 30 days, my blog has received 1,11,000+ page views. 
 

 
 
I made a lot more money than ₹30,000 per month from my blog with much 
lesser page views because I sell products to my audience directly (​ this method is 
discussed in the 5th method of making money later in this ebook). 
 
But it is also difficult to generate page views on a topic like marketing. It is 
much easier to generate traffic from social media and search on a topic which 
has a broader appeal.  
 
Though making money from Google AdSense is definitely a straightforward 
and a simple looking method to make money online, it is not an easy one.  
 
I wouldn’t personally recommend Google AdSense / Display Advertising 
method because there are much better ways to monetize your website 
audience, which we will discuss in the future methods. 
 
Another method that falls under advertising is selling sponsored posts on your 
blog. People will contact you to publish a blog post on your blog about their 
product / service and they would pay you for it.  
 
One can charge ₹5,000 per post or more depending on the traffic that the blog 
gets. At ₹5,000 per post, one needs to post only 6 sponsored posts on the blog 
to make ₹30,000 per month.  
 
I wouldn’t go deep into this method yet, because selling sponsored posts are 
also not yet THAT great of a method to make money. The income is not going 
to be consistent because some months you might get a lot of sponsored post 
offers and some months, you might not be contacted by anyone. 
 
Large publications sell their sponsored posts with a sales team and they will 
have much more consistency. As a small individual blogger, it might not be 
possible for you to consistently reach out to potential advertisers and get 
projects. 
 
Also, sponsored reviews are not very popular right now because Google 
penalizes anyone who tries to buy sponsored posts and build backlinks to boost 
their SEO. 
 
So if Google AdSense and selling advertisements on the blog is not such a great 
method, then what is?  
 
That’s why we have to read about the rest of the methods, which are much 
better than Google AdSense. 

Method 2: Start a Blog and Promote Affiliate Products

In this chapter, I am going to tell you what is Affiliate Marketing and how it 
works, what are the existing programs that you can benefit from and how to go 
about it like a pro.  
 
I will also take you through my personal affiliate accounts and show you my 
real earnings in order to give you some inspiration to get you started (not 
boasting here). 
 
Let’s begin by understanding What is Affiliate Marketing all about and how it 
actually works. 
 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a commission based revenue system where a third party 

(an affiliate) brings leads/sales to a product owner/company website. 
 
It is a process of earning commission by promoting other people’s / company’s 
products. 
 
In simpler terms: 
 
● You find a product you like, 
● You promote it to your audience and, 
 ● For every sale that is made because of you within your audience, you 
earn a profit commission from the product owner. 
 
According to Wikipedia, 
 
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business 
rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s 
own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also 
known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to 
choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as ‘the 
affiliate’), and the customer. 
 
Lets understand these four core players better: 
 
Merchant:​ The one who owns the product / the creator of the product. The 
product can be anything ranging from SaaS applications to physical products 
(like shoes), it can also be a digital product (like ebooks). So basically, a 
merchant is someone who is selling a product online. In order to increase his 
sales online, a merchant is most likely open to get affiliates on his website. 
 
Publisher/Affiliate: ​The one who takes up the product links from the merchant 
and promotes it within his own audience to send traffic to the merchant’s 
property (website). He uses different Digital Marketing campaigns and tactics 
to sell more of the merchant’s product and earns commission for doing the 
same. 
 
Network: ​A platform or a place where both Merchants and Affiliates co exist, 
Merchants sign up to list their products in the affiliate program, and Affiliates 
sign up to find the products they like and enroll in the affiliate program. This 
network (platform) also settles the payments between merchants and the 
affiliates in a structured manner. 
 
Customer: T
​ he one who makes the purchase on the merchant’s property 
(website) and completes a sale. This is the end customer who doesn’t know the 
relationship between an affiliate and merchant in most of the cases (though it 
is recommended for affiliates to disclose that they are promoting) 
 
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? 
 
Let’s say you have a website. You are driving traffic from various sources like 
Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Organic Traffic because of branding, and there 
could be many other sources like social media marketing, community 
engagement, etc. 
 

 
 
Now there will be a time when you will exhaust the sources to gain more traffic 
or sales on your websites. More often than not, a digital marketer alone cannot 
drive all the possible sources of traffic to the website. 
 
This could be due to: Running out of marketing campaign ideas or exhausting 
different traffic sources to source from. 
 
In this case, what should you do? This is when companies/websites rely on 
Affiliates to outsource more traffic. You could do revenue sharing with others 
who have traffic with them and benefit out of that. Now how will you do that? 
 

 
 
 
Usually the format for affiliate links looks like this: 
 
www.website.com?affiliate=1 ​(for say Affiliate #1) and
www.website.com?affiliate=2 ​(for Affiliate #2) 
 
The part after “?” in the URL is called tagging the URL so that the website 
owner can understand which Affiliate sends him the traffic/sale.  
 
Based on this knowledge, the website owner will give commission to the 
respective affiliate. 
 
 
 
Now lets see an example: 
 

 
 
Affiliate 1 and Affiliate 2 both sends traffic to the website www.website.com but 
the sale was made through Affiliate 1. 
 
The website owner comes to know about this through the link with tag 
www.website.com?affiliate=1. 
 
So, the affiliate commission is sent to Affiliate 1 because his traffic converted 
into a sale. It’s that simple. 
 
Note that in most cases, Affiliate programs are not based on earnings per click. 
It is based on earnings per Lead or a Sale. 
 
You will get a clearer idea when I show you the affiliate programs. 
  
 
 

How to become an Affiliate? (Affiliate Networks and Programs)

 
There are four different ways to become an affiliate and start earning from 
them on a regular basis. 
 
1. Look for Affiliate Links in Homepages: ​In many SaaS company websites or 
Product company websites, within the homepage (mostly in footer or Top 
Navigation Bar in some cases), find the link saying affiliate and click on it to 
learn more about their internal affiliate program. When you know the products 
you want to promote, this method makes more sense. 
 
2. Join Affiliate Networks (Commission Junction, Impact Radius, etc): 
Affiliate Networks are those platforms who have a lot of merchants and 
affiliates both registered with them. I have personally had better success with 
Affiliate Networks because their process is better than individual programs. 
Within Network, it is easy to manage the affiliate program than have individual 
affiliate accounts because in affiliate networks, all your payments are 
consolidated according to different commissions from different merchants. 
 
3. Apply to become an affiliate with companies (some have hidden programs): 
Some companies have a hidden affiliate program which they do not reveal on 
their website. But are open to new and qualified affiliates – because who does 
not want an increased revenue in the end? In this case, just send them an email 
inquiring about the affiliate program and if not in place, would they be 
interested to have one in place with you. Opportunities are endless here. 
 
4. Have a well known blog and let people reach out to you (my personal 
method): ​Since DigitalDeepak has become a well known brand among Digital 
Marketers, a lot of affiliate program owners reach out to me to ask if I can 
promote their product on my website. This helps me select the right products 
to promote as an affiliate and saves me time from reaching out to various other 
websites. Again, this is also what I am planning to use for my SaaS product 
company OptinChat. I am going to reach out to popular blogs and give them an 
affiliate link to grow my revenues and share it with them. 
 
There are a lot of networks available online these days but I suggest these 
networks to be the best 5: 
 
● Commission junction (CJ) 
● Amazon Associates 
● Impact Radius 
● ClickBank 
● ShareAsale 
 
If you want an India-specific affiliate network, vCommision is a good affiliate 
network. 
 
There are a lot of affiliate networks that you can search on google and find.  
 
When you have narrowed down your list of affiliate networks, go ahead and 
sign up and complete the process of on-boarding with them including 
payment info and basic details.  
 
Once you get started, you will start seeing your affiliate commissions grow as 
your audience starts making sales. 
 
The first time I ever got an affiliate commission was through Commission 
Junction in 2008 – and it was the first time I ever made money using the 
internet. It was a cheque worth $25.  
 
Now a days, these companies send you money directly to your bank account if 
it is in India. There are a few technical documentations required to get paid in 
your bank account. 
 
You have to submit a form called W8 BEN Form (so that you can receive money 
from US to your Indian bank account and comply with tax regulations. All this 
you will be able to figure out once you sign up for these affiliate programs. 
 

Some Inspiration 
Passive income is the best. Every morning when you wake up, you want to see 
how much you are making passively with just a little effort online. 
 
I am not boasting but I am going to share my real screenshots with you to 
actually show you the commissions I made using Affiliate in different affiliate 
programs so that it inspires you to start earning your own commissions. 
 

How I made $2,128 USD (1.37 Lakhs INR) in April from Commission
Junction (CJ)
 
I have been advertising a few products on CJ and the results have been really 
decent. Just to add here, I really love CJ’s dashboard. I can just click on 
Advertisers in the top navigation and get a list of products I am promoting. 
 
Clicking on Links gives me a list of links I created and I can create more links 
there. Anyway, this should be a part of another blog post where I tell you how 
CJ functions for affiliate marketing. 
 
For this chapter, let me just click on Reports and show you the numbers 
 

 
As you can see, the payments issued to me for the last month was $2,128 which 
has come to my bank account. Also, there is $3058.70 more as balance amount 
which I will get in next settlement. 
 

 
 
I am not really active on Amazon associates but I have definitely put some links 
in a few blog posts here and there to earn a little amount from Amazon 
associates (Amazon’s affiliate program). 
 
As you can see in the screenshot, I have earned Rs. 899 last month from 
Amazon associates India.  
 
This is not really good but better than nothing at least. Back in 2010-2011, I 
was earning close to $12K-13K from Amazon Associates Global as you can see 
in the screenshot below: 
 
 
 
 
  
 
So, you can see how there lies a huge potential in earning commissions from 
affiliate programs – not just in India but globally. 
 

Next Action Steps for you:

 
1. Look for the top affiliate programs and networks and join them: 
 
This requires a process of Signing up and adhering to some technical policies 
by uploading some forms. The approval process might be tricky and will be 
based on how good your online record is.  
 
If you are a well known blogger, this will be a piece of cake. Make sure you are 
being compliant to all the steps required in the signing up process by the 
network. 
 
2. Start a niche website to get approvals in place (email a request for 
approval): 
 
Most of the times affiliate networks do not give approval because of a lot of 
fraudulent activities happening these days. People try to sign up using their 
own affiliate links and sometimes send fraudulent orders as well. So, to get 
approval, you need to have a good reputation and following. 
 
Otherwise you can email them explaining: 
 
● How are you going to promote their products, and 
● What are the channels you are going to use to promote, etc. 
● This will make them gain trust in you and your approval will be easy. 
 
It is better to have a niche website (like I have digitaldeepak.com) and show 
them the funnel for your website to get approval easily. 
 
3. Make your first sale! 
 
After you are approved for a few affiliate programs, go ahead and use all the 
Digital Marketing efforts to promote your links. 
 

5 Mistakes to Avoid in Affiliate Marketing

 
Over Selling:​ Too much promotion is a bummer, it distracts and irritates your 
audience. You should rather help people with useful products that is relevant to 
them and let them buy as per their need. 
Sugar Coating:​ Don’t sugar coat around the product too much – be genuine 
about the products you are promoting. If your customer do not find the product 
useful as described by you, you can lose your own audience. So, be aware of the 
words you use. 
 
Too many Products: A
​ void selling too many products – choose only those 
products that will be relevant to your target audience. It takes time to set up a 
regularly paying affiliate system for yourself but it is fruitful when started 
small. 
 
No Product Comparisons and Reviews: ​Make use of your promotion space by 
including comparison between 2-3 other similar products also in your 
reviews/promotions. Coming out with product reviews and comparisons and 
updating them with time will make sense for your audience and will make 
them buy more of those products from your affiliate link. 
 
No Testing and Tracking of Links: ​Not testing the flow of your promotions is a 
bad idea. You don’t want a broken flow. Also, never miss out on tracking your 
affiliate links. It is easy to get separate affiliate links for different pages (or 
different channels), this will help you in knowing which channel is working the 
best for you. 
 
 
   
Method 3: Start a Blog and Sell Products & Services

Selling ads on your blog is usually the first way to start making money for most 
of the bloggers. This gives a belief that it is POSSIBLE to make money with 
blogging.  
 
But if you want to make a little more money for every visitor that visits your 
blog, an affiliate program is going to fetch you more revenue than display ads. 
Because you are getting paid when people actually buy a product after they 
click on the link and not just when they click on the link. 
 
Many affiliate programs pay as much as 50% on software and information 
products that it can become a great revenue source for a blog. 
 
But above all, the highest revenue from the visitors to your blog will come from 
selling your own products and services to your audience. Your blog becomes a 
marketing channel for your products and services. 
 
The primary way my blog DigitalDeepak.com makes money is by selling 
training programs to my blog’s visitors. 
 
But you cannot sell information products without building a personal brand 
first. Though your blog becomes a marketing channel to attract visitors to your 
blog, your personal brand is what will turn visitors into subscribers and fans. 
 
1. Building Your Personal Brand

For any student to learn from a trainer, he/she should first look up to the trainer. 
And the students should know that a trainer exists. 

If you are planning to become a trainer online, the first thing that you should work 
on is your brand positioning. What do you want to be known as? 

There are going to be many trainers in the market, and you need to differentiate 
yourself. 

I have positioned myself as a digital marketing and blogging expert and this has 
been my focus for a long time. As I keep having the focus on this niche, it becomes 
stronger over time. 

That’s why I went out of my way to acquire domain names like… 

● www.LearnBlogging.com 
● www.LearnDigitalMarketing.com 
● www.BloggingTools.com 
● www.DigitalMarketingClub.com 

And I invested all my savings into these names long back. 

People look for indicators of authority and expertise. 

Some of the indicators include: 

Being an author of a book which has sold a good number of copies. And the book 
should have good ratings. I’ve done that with ​one of my books on Amazon 
  

Being a public speaker helps a lot in authority.  

 
I have done a TEDx talk and this talk has more than 100,000 views. 
 
  
 
Have a good number of followers on Social Media channels also helps a lot in 
authority. My Facebook page has 250,000+ followers. 
 
 
 
 
 
Branding has 3 major components to it… 

a. Brand Awareness (Reach)

The first is the reach of the brand. 

Being a book author, being a public speaker, speaking at events done by other 
brands, doing interviews with other experts in the same niche and so on will help 
with the reach of the brand. 

Brand awareness is important. 

That’s why Facebook has a separate ad type for brand awareness. They also give 
metrics for brand recall. Which takes us to the next point… 

b. Brand Recall (Engagement and Frequency)

And the brand becomes a more familiar brand for people when the frequency is 
higher. People will forget about the brand if it is shown to them once. Deeper brand 
engagement with higher frequency is what makes a strong brand over time. 

If you are reading this line right now, you have spent at least 5 minutes reading this 
article to come up to this point. That’s deep brand engagement. And if you have 
read 10 articles on my blog before this, then this is the 11th time you are reading… 
that’s frequency. 

So my brand “Digital Deepak” is becoming stronger, because it is getting a higher 

mind space with you than other bloggers. 
  
 
Frequency to some extent can be measured using Google Analytics. Here you can 
see that I have 1000+ people who have visited my blog for the 5th time in the past 
30 days. 

My best customers are going to come from this segment. Many people have visited 
my blog only once in the past 30 days and that’s OK. Not everyone will come back 
for more content all the time. 

When you are starting out the reach of the brand will be low. 

But make sure that you have a higher engagement and frequency with your 
audience even if it is just 1,000 subscribers or followers. 

 
c. Brand Perception (Positioning and Authority)

The way your followers perceive your personal brand is very important for them to 
become your students in the future. 

Your followers should see you as a successful person and they would want that kind 
of success for themselves. That’s when they will be motivated to become your 
students. 

If you are reading this right now, there is a good chance that you want to become a 
successful blogger and trainer. Else why would you be reading from me right now? 

And as discussed above, indicators of authority like being an author and a public 
speaker gives a good brand perception among the audience. 

Sharing your perspectives and what you believe also gives you a cult status as a 
personal brand. 

There are many trainers who have built a cult status within their market and they 
have a strong tribe of people who follow them and learn from them. 

Positioning also involves whether you can position yourself as a premium brand and 
be perceived as the best in the market. 

Now let’s look at the most important flowchart of this article… (click on the image 
to expand it in a new tab) 
  

In this flowchart, you can see that branding comes last. 

But in this chapter, I talked about branding first. 

That’s because, the whole point of creating a marketing funnel is to build a strong 
brand with maximum reach, engagement, frequency and perception. 
If I am being perceived as the best digital marketing trainer in India, I wouldn’t need 
to do any marketing activity. I will just get sales, because I will become the go to 
person. 

Think about Google. They don’t need to advertise they are a search engine 
anymore. Everyone knows them, and everyone knows that they are the best search 
engine around. So now one uses any other search engine. Google doesn’t NEED 
marketing at all. 

That’s the goal of every brand… to build the brand using marketing, but to get to a 
point where marketing is not needed. 

But until you become a well known, well perceived brand, you need to do 
marketing. And the way we can do it is what the above flowchart is about. 

For a personal training brand like me, it might take forever to be perceived as the 
best digital marketing trainer. So a Google like brand is just an ideal scenario and 
not a practical scenario. 

But it helps to think like that because that’s the direction we should be taking. And 
eventually the trainer can become someone like Tony Robbins one day. Or maybe 
not. But the path and the direction should be clear. 

2. Lead Generation

To have good brand engagement and frequency, it is important to generate leads. 

Without lead generation, we cannot reach out to the potential customers again. 
Retargeting is one method, but leads help us get a deeper brand engagement. 
As you can see from this flowchart, the traffic sources give brand awareness, but it 
also gives leads. Google ads, Facebook Ads, Content etc. helps with brand 
awareness to start with. But with the traffic that is attracted, we can convert them 
into subscribers using lead magnets. 

A lead magnet converts a visitor into a subscriber by giving an ethical bribe. Here 
are the lead magnets that can be used by people in the training industry: 

● Webinar registrations 
● eBooks 
● Free Course delivered via Email 
● Reports 
● Quizzes 
● Contest entries 

All the above lead magnets quality a visitor into a potential buyer. 

Traffic to these lead magnets can be driven via Facebook Ads, Google Ads and via 
content on the blog. 

The major way that I drive traffic to lead magnets is via Facebook Ads. I’ve spent 
more than $55,000 on Facebook Ads until now and have generated 100s of 
thousands of leads. 
  

I also use an exit popup on my blog so that visitors to my blog come via the search 
engines can have an opportunity to optin. 
  

This exit popup is shown only to the people who are browsing my website on 
desktop. In the most recent campaign, it has generated 1252 leads for me at 8.92% 
conversion rate. 

So for every 100 visitors to my blog on desktop, I am able to convert 9 people into 
subscribers for my Free Digital marketing course (that’s the lead magnet). 
  

Now that we can discussed on a few different methods to generated leads 

(subscribers), what to do next? 

If you have the email IDs, can you send a offer to purchase your training course to 
these people directly? NO! 

That’s like a door-to-door salesman presenting a product for a purchase directly. 

New subscribers do not know the trainer and there needs to be an opportunity to 
build brand engagement and frequency. That’s where we get to the next point in 
this chapter... 
3. Nurturing:

Nurturing is the process where brand engagement and frequency happens. You, as 
a trainer, shouldn’t ask for the sale in the beginning. 

Instead, deliver free content and valuable stuff for your leads / subscribers for free. 
That’s what I do with my subscribers for almost a month. 

I add them to my ​drip marketing campaign​, which delivers value via email over a 
period of time. 

 
I am using ActiveCampaign for my drip marketing and I deliver content via emails 
over a period of time. The above screenshot shows one such automation that I have 
setup with ActiveCampaign. 

In the nurturing sequence, I am increasing the brand engagement and frequency. 

Generating leads and delivering content through email is the best method for 
engagement. But I can also retarget my subscribers (or even visitors to the landing 
page) with ads.  

I can run campaigns on Facebook that is shown only to previous visitors and 
subscribers. This also increases the engagement. 

In this flowchart, you can see that nurture happens parallel via Ads and Email. 

Once the nurture sequence is done, we have good engagement, frequency – which 
leads to good brand perception and brand recall. 

Now the subscribers are ready to convert into students of your online course. 

But they will not convert as soon as you present the product to them. You need to 
remove their objections that is preventing them from converting into a paid 
student. 

 
  

4. The Sales Sequence

You can pitch your online training program to anyone who has expressed interest 
in learning a specific topic.  

The sales page is the main asset in making a sale online. 

You can check out a few of my sales pages for my products: 

● The 100-day Blogging Course 

● The Digital Marketing Mastery Course 
 ● Social Media Mastery Course 

I drive traffic to these pages using retargeting ads, but the ads are run only for the 
people who have already engagement with my content. 

If new people come to this page, it doesn’t convert well. It makes sense to send new 
visitors to a lead magnet, nurture them, increase brand engagement, frequency and 
perception and then present the product. 

Apart from retargeting ads, the traffic is also driven via email. In fact, the email 
sales sequence is the best converting channel for converting existing leads into 
buyers. 

The sales email sequence is triggered when someone clicks on the landing page 
(which shows that they are interested) and doesn’t purchase immediately. 

The sales sequence will contain emails in the following topics: 

● Reasons why this course is for them 

● Testimonials from existing customers 
● What they will get from the completion of the course 
● How the course is delivered (structure and resources) 
● The learning community 
● Scarcity or urgency (like limited slots available and last day to enroll). 

With such a sales sequence, prospects will convert into paying customers (in this 
case, students of your course). 
The sales sequence leads to the sale, and you can also upsell other products to the 
same audience if they are ready for a higher commitment. 

I’ve used this automated sales method to sell the blogging course to more than 
3,000 customers and it has brought in more than 62 Lakhs+ in revenue. 

And I am not even including the other courses that have been up-sold to the people 
who have bought the 100-day blogging course. 

5. Delivery

If you want to be a truly invisible trainer, then you have to setup the delivery of 
your products. I collect payments using the Instamojo payment gateway and 
connect it to my email marketing account using Zapier. 

As soon as the purchase happens, the access to the online coaching is sent via 
email. 
  

I use Teachable for hosting my online courses. It has an inbuilt international 

payment gateway, but it doesn’t have good options for payments from India. So I 
use Instamojo payment gateway as an alternative solution and connect the two. 

Teachable connects to my domain’s subdomain using CNAME records and I have 

hosted the LMS at learn.digitaldeepak.com. 

And if you open a specific course, the lessons are laid out like this… 
Every lesson can be marked as complete once the student finishes the lesson. 

There are many learning management solutions available in the market. 

I use Teachable. Podia and Thinkific are also good alternative options for online 
trainers. 

6. Brand Advocacy

After the course delivery, and after a certain period of time where I am sure that 
the student has consumed at least 30% of the course material, I ask for feedback. 

Along with feedback, I also ask for ratings and testimonials. 

Apart from asking feedback for specific courses, I also ask my audience to give 
ratings on my Google My Business and Facebook Page. This automation has given 
me ratings like these… 

Reviews from existing customers is very powerful for converting new customers 
and it strengthens the brand image. Here’s where the brand perception is 
improved! 

And with brand advocacy, we are completing the flowchart. 

Automate Everything

You can see that in the above 6 steps, everything is automated. 

● I have paid campaigns that are running everyday. 

● Retargeting campaigns for content and sales running everyday. 
 ● Email marketing for both nurturing and sales keeps happening. 
● Sales keep happening. 
● Delivery keeps happening. 
● Reviews and brand strengthening also keeps happening. 

The only area where I might not be able to automate is support. I have a dedicated 
member of the team working on support tickets and it is usually related to 
payments and access. 

Most of my courses are very affordable and self serve courses. At such price point, I 
can’t give individual attention to each student’s questions. And students also 
understand that because they know the pricing of the courses is very affordable.   
Chapter 5: Conclusion

I hope this ebook helped you gain confidence to become an entrepreneur. Our first 
goal is to reduce financial risk by saving money and doing a side project. 

Once you start with a side project, your journey into entrepreneurship begins. Even 
if you make ₹500 rupees from your blog, it will motivate you to work on the blog 
more.  

My first income from my blog was ₹500 for one hour of digital marketing 
consultation for a startup. 

But now my blog and my business makes more than ₹1 crore in revenue every year. 

The most important thing for you to do is get started. Right now, even ₹30,000 per 
month will look like a huge goal to be achieved. But once you get started and make 
your first ₹1,000 from your blog, your confidence and excitement will go up. 

If you want step by step guidance on how to create and grow a blog, check out ​my 
100-day Blogging Course​. In this course, you will get 100 video tutorials covering 
various topics like how to setup a blog, how to market it and get traffic, how to 
make revenue from the blog and so on. 

All the best!  

I hope this ebook helps you think out of the box and start your side project as soon 
as possible. 

- Deepak Kanakaraju (DigitalDeepak.com)