$100 Affiliate Marketing Strategy: How I Turned a Budget Campaign into Profits!

The $100 Affiliate Marketing Strategy!

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

A few months ago, I gave myself a strange little challenge.

What if I had only $100 to build an affiliate marketing campaign from scratch?

No email list.

No fancy funnel software.

No ads budget to test at scale.

Just one product, a tight strategy, and the commitment to execute it like my life depended on it.

I picked a product I had used and loved: Hostinger, a web hosting platform that’s beginner-friendly, easy on the wallet, and pays recurring commissions.

And this small, scrappy campaign turned out to be one of the best learning experiences in my affiliate journey.

Let me walk you through the full breakdown – wins, losses, and what I’d do differently now.

Why I Picked This Affiliate Campaign

Back when I was just starting out in affiliate marketing, I kept hearing this advice:

“Promote what you know. Promote what you’ve used.”

Back in those early days, I was bouncing between providers like GoDaddy, Hostgator, and Bluehost. Each of them felt clunky in its own way – long wait times for support, confusing dashboards, and servers that seemed to crawl whenever traffic spiked. I still remember one late night when a site went down, and I sat staring at the spinning support chat icon for nearly an hour.

Then came Hostinger.

The contrast was night and day. Their servers were lightning fast, their customer support actually solved problems instead of deflecting them, and the pricing almost made me do a double take. For the first time, I felt like the hosting company was on my side rather than just taking my money.

That’s why, when it came time to run this $100 experiment, choosing Hostinger over the others wasn’t even a question. It was the obvious choice.

That personal experience made the decision simple. If I was going to put my $100 and reputation on the line, I wanted a partner that wouldn’t let me down. Hostinger fit the bill perfectly, and it aligned with what I wanted this experiment to prove.

It offered three big advantages that mattered for this test:

1. Low barrier to entry – At $2.99/month, almost anyone starting out could afford it.
2. Recurring commission – Which meant I wasn’t just chasing one-off sales, but building long-term income.
3. Mass market appeal – Bloggers, podcasters, and solopreneurs all need reliable hosting.

But here’s the catch: even the best product in the world won’t sell itself. The magic happens when the right strategy brings it to life.

And this time, I wasn’t interested in casually dropping links on social media. I wanted to be intentional, to see how far a lean but focused approach could really go.

My $100 Affiliate Marketing Strategy (Step-by-Step)

Before I dive into the steps, let me pause here. Because here’s the truth: a good affiliate marketing strategy isn’t just about picking a product and pasting a link.

It’s about weaving together research, content, and conversion paths so that the effort actually pays off. Without strategy, even the best product can fall flat.

So in this section, I’ll show you how I approached the campaign with intention and structure.

Let me break down the exact process I followed, from idea to launch.

1. Product selection & offer research

Before locking into Hostinger, I researched 4 other affiliate offers.

I compared:

• Commission % (upfront + recurring)
• Payout threshold and cookie window
• Product reputation and ease of use
• Search demand for the brand

Hostinger came out on top for all four.

I also studied their landing pages and emails to understand the conversion flow. This is something most affiliates skip and it’s a huge mistake.

Knowing where your traffic is going is as important as knowing where it’s coming from.

2. Keyword planning

I used Ubersuggest and Google’s “People also ask” section to explore search intent.

Here are a few long-tail keywords I noted:

• “Is Hostinger good for beginners?”
• “Best hosting for WordPress under $3”
• “How to set up a podcast site on Hostinger”

These gave me real insight into the type of content I should create.

My goal: Blend SEO with relatability.

3. Content creation

I created 2 main content assets:

• Blog post: A detailed tutorial titled “How I Built My First Website with Hostinger (Step-by-Step for Beginners)”
• YouTube video: A 7-minute walkthrough of me setting up a simple site using Hostinger

These were educational, not salesy.

I included my affiliate link at key points but always wrapped in value.

To improve content monetization, I embedded a free downloadable checklist: “5 Things to Set Up Before Launching Your First Website.” This gave me email sign-ups and warmed up cold traffic.

4. Funnel setup

I used ConvertKit’s free plan to build a simple 2-email sequence.

Email 1: “Here’s how I messed up my first site build (and how to avoid it)”

Email 2: “5 Tools I Wish I Had When I Started” with Hostinger at the top

Budget: $0, thanks to free tiers and some elbow grease.

What Did It Actually Do? (Real Metrics)

After all the setup and planning, it was time to put the experiment into action. This was the true test of whether my lean strategy could deliver results without bells and whistles.

I ran this campaign over 28 days.

Here are the numbers:

• Content views (combined blog + YouTube): 1,420
• CTR on affiliate link: 9.6%
• Opt-in rate for the checklist: 28%
• Sales: 13 confirmed signups
• Total commission earned: $166.25

Now, that’s not earth-shattering money.

But it was more than the $100 I started with, and more importantly, it was 100% repeatable.

What I’d Do Differently Next Time

Let’s be real.

No campaign is ever flawless, especially when you’re working with tight budgets and learning as you go. And that’s why this part is so important because the lessons hidden in the mistakes often teach you more than the wins ever could.

Looking back, I realized there were clear gaps in my approach that could have made the campaign perform even better.

I made a bunch of mistakes and if you’re about to try something similar, here’s what I’d tweak:

1. Promote on more than one channel. I focused too much on search. A simple Twitter thread or LinkedIn post could’ve brought in 20–30% more eyeballs.
2. Test content formats earlier. My blog post converted better than the YouTube video but I didn’t know that till the end. Next time, I’d A/B test headlines and thumbnails in week one.
3. Better follow-up email sequence. Two emails weren’t enough. I should’ve added a third email with common mistakes beginners make and tied it back to why Hostinger makes it easy.

Here’s the big takeaway though: the real lever for conversions lies in the email list.

If I had focused more on growing that list and nurturing it with consistent, valuable messages, the sales numbers would have looked very different.

The lesson?

Don’t underestimate the compounding power of an engaged list. It can turn a small campaign into something far more scalable.

Your Takeaway: Small Campaigns Can Build Big Muscles

Before we wrap up, it’s worth pausing on one of the biggest levers in affiliate marketing – the email list.

Having a growing, nurtured list gives you an owned channel where trust compounds. It’s not just about collecting names, it’s about building relationships.

Every email you send can educate, inspire, and gradually guide readers toward the right affiliate offers.

And when done strategically, that list can outperform even the best social posts or search traffic, because it’s where your true community lives.

You don’t need a 10,000-subscriber list or a $500/month funnel setup to build a profitable affiliate campaign.

What you need is:

• A clear affiliate marketing strategy
• A product you genuinely trust
• Useful content that serves first and sells second
• A simple but consistent follow-up plan that nurtures your list over time

This $100 campaign reminded me of something Jeff Walker says in Launch:

“You don’t need to get it perfect. You just need to get it going.”

If you’re stuck wondering where to start, start small.

Set a budget, pick a product, create one helpful piece of content, and send it to five people you know.

Test it. Learn. Iterate.

You’re not building a campaign.

You’re building the muscle of being a creator who earns.

Book Recommendations for Your Affiliate Journey

1. Launch by Jeff Walker – The blueprint for building hype around digital products.
2. Superfans by Pat Flynn – Teaches you how to build trust that converts.
3. One Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib – Perfect for solopreneurs mapping simple but effective campaigns.

Over to you now…

If you had just $100 to run your next affiliate campaign, what would you promote?

Try the challenge.

You might surprise yourself..

Recommended Newsletters

Here are few newsletters that I would recommend that you sign up to if you are interested in learning the art of running a side-hustle:

• Write, Build, Scale
• Why we buy
• The Book Bub
• The Stacked Marketer
• The Growth Bulletin
• Unconventional Productivity for Online Business Owners
• Side Hustle Weekly
• The Affiliate Guy
• How Brands win
• For the Interested
• Send and Grow

Sign up to these and follow them. You will get a lot of information and content for your blog posts, podcasts and even social media posts.

I will share more such ideas in my future newsletters.

I put in about 18 hours every month to create this newsletter, starting from researching to writing and editing it.

So, If you enjoyed reading this Newsletter, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could recommend it to others. You can send them to https://thegrowthcreator.com to subscribe to it for FREE!

What am I reading?

I absolutely love books and I read a lot.

In fact, I don’t just read a lot, but I also take notes on every book that I read.

I have pages and pages of information in my Notion Second Brain, so that I can find them and use them when ever I need.

I have added some of the newest books that I have been reading, to the Amazon store, so you might want to check it out.

Want to know more about the books I read. You can check it out here!

That’s it for this week!

Do let me know your thoughts, feedback, and opinions about this newsletter.

If you have a question or, simply enjoy reading this, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. You can use this link to do that.

If you are comfortable writing a review for the newsletter, you can do that here. Your support would be sincerely appreciated.