The market is super saturated now, and there are a lot of people with actual talent now too, which is a big win for the market as a whole so I'm glad!
My affiliate career wasn't very long lasting though. Right now I am trying to make my internet dollars with SaaS instead.
And also someone ended up sending me money since they found my content really helpful
Good times.
My first real "somebody paying me for my product" dollar, came in January of this year. I launched IndexGuru - solves a super common issue I had been dealing with on my blogs. Posted it to show HN, and had two separate people sign up and pay me money :)
Pretty great a-ha moment. Business is doing well, but nothing to write home about, I unfortunately do not have yacht money yet.
I had this guy contact me on Reddit about whether I could customize a daily planner for his kids and gave me a general idea of what he wanted. I delivered the design and he loved it, and commissioned three more.
I charged him $2 USD per planner (didn't know how to price it + it took me an hour tops, but he insisted on paying more which was nice). Ended up earning $15/planner.