Programmer that also does Affiliate Marketing

Why would affiliate marketing (or any kind of marketing) be different just because you are a programmer?

This sounds just as exciting as affiliate marketing for milk men.

No need to answer, just want to give you something to think about.

I would drop this thread in the Programming sub forum as you will have like minded souls

https://www.warriorforum.com/programming/

I am a professional corporate software tester who does programming as a hobby. I launched my affiliate site about a year and a half ago and it earns enough to nicely supplement my day job. It would need to continue growing at the same rate for seven more years to earn the same amount as my day job. I really enjoy learning about my niche and I get great pleasure from having developed code that so many people find useful.

I feel my programming background gives me an advantage over other affiliate marketers in that I can add complex features to my site without needing to hire someone to do it for me, features that other sites do not possess.

Yes, I have a college degree in computer programming.

I went to a job interview, they showed me the contract, I had some objections to several parts of it. We discussed a few things and when they told me what my salary would be, I laughed in their faces and walked out.

- what was life before getting into affiliate marketing?

I made a bunch of money with email spam before the year 2000, with a custom mailer I coded and a few other tools. I got worried I was going to get into trouble since I don't think what I was doing was completely legal, but I don't think there was a law against it until can-spam. I had my first 10k day, decided that was the end and I went to college after that.

- what got you into affiliate marketing?

A guy telling me my salary would be 25k a year.

- what do you promote (doesn't have to be specific if you don't want to)?

Private sorry. Edit: not make money online.

- how is it so far with affiliate marketing? how much do you make? -- are you making a killing, is it supplmenting your current programming work?

I own a small company and that's private. Significantly more then most people. I have over 100 sites that I maintain and generate a profit, these were all built since 2010, since basically every site I owned in 2007 was penalized by Google for blackhat link building. Note: I have not spammed anybody or anything since then. Between 2007 and 2010 I drank a lot and played video games while working a crappy part time job.

- are you are freelancer, or do you work a job?

No, people work for me. I hire freelancers every day.

- do you still do programming works?

Not completely sure what you mean but I code little things from time to time. If I think it's going to take more then a few hours, I bust the project up into pieces and outsource it.

As a programmer, I see a lot of things that affiliate marketers struggle with and programmers are like "uhm duh?" Example: subids. I saw those and I was like "oh that's so cool" and I see a bunch of people who are completely mystified/confused by them. When I try to explain them to non-progammers they just look at me like "what dah fuq?" Or prosper202, somebody asked me awhile back why I still use it and I'm like "well I modded this and that" and they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about or even knew that it was php code you could manipulate.

@irawr @shellerik

Thanks for your input. I really appreciate them.

My reason for starting on this article is that, for some affiliate marketers, they would feel that things would be easier if they know how to program. But some programmers I know are clueless about generate money online, other than Fiverr, Freelancer.com, etc .... where you will always be trading time for money.

@kidino
Can you link your blog?