A ton has changed in the last 22 years as an affiliate marketer. I have seen trends and tactics come and go, and systems both great and not so great fail because the powers that be changed the game on us all. Brother Google and the new AI Searches of the globe today have once again changed the course of marketing for everyone.
Today is January 4th, 2026, and my business journey online started on this date in 2004. That’s a long time by any standard, and I have seen much success and thanks to a nervous breakdown and having spent the last 12 years relearning myself, I have enjoyed much challenge, strife, and struggles as well.
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Back in my early days as an affiliate marketer.
In those days, Facebook was a baby, nothing near its Google challenging data sucking search power it is as a social engine. Google was still driven by affiliates and a lot more friendly to publishers. Resources like Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Geosites, and Google Groups were available free of charge, and all packed more familiar tools and resources than Blogger/Blogspot. Twitter, now named X.com, didn’t exist, and MySpace was the best name in social media.
We used forum pages and discussion groups for person-to-person marketing. MLM thrived there in those groups and still does in many ways today on social networks worldwide.
My first site was actually a Yahoo Group on Gardening. I started to increase my knowledge for my JOB or Just Over Broke in the Wal-Mart Garden Center in Eastland, Texas. A Member of that group was familiar with affiliate marketing and turned me onto the forums at AdLandPro, where I could learn from other affiliates.
Through Adland, I learned of eBay Partner Network, then simply called eBay Affiliates, and started pairing images and text about garden resources sold on the site with my group posts, and made my first commission within 3 months. It was all of $1.80 from the sale of a Garden tool and some gloves, but you would think I earned a million dollars the way it felt. I knew money was to be made online.
My Next Affiliate Marketing Leap was as a Social Media Site Owner
I was learning about branding in my first year and had branded myself with my real work nickname as Andy Zeus Anderson. I was learning to design my own banners and graphics using tools like Paint and a few downloaded software programs that basically have not existed in so long I forgot their names. I was also learning about website hosting, the dotcom boom, Adsense Ads, and leveraging other people’s content through my then friend, the late marketing great Corey Rudl.
Using E107, which was a basic social networking script with all the bells of the early MySpace I built Zeus Team Concepts at the domain ztcusa.com where the focus was on building MLM teams in Strong Future International, ItsYourNet, and a couple of other programs and training them through my own learn, apply, and teach methodology and the energy of others seeking to brand themselves experts.
About 5 months into launching, I met Dave Gilbert out of Adelaide, Australia, who had a small search engine named EasySearchLive, and we got talking and one night decided that the Internet had search engines, Google, and Yahoo and a few alt search engines that were popping up nearly 1 a day, and they had probably 40-50 viable social networks and hundreds of forums but they did not have an integrated social media search engine and withing 2 months we had build Kooiii.com.
Kooiii, over the next 9 years, would grow to over 7,000 members and 3.6 million monthly page views on over 500,000 unique visitors, and would allow us to aim that traffic at any affiliate program and earn commissions fast. Case in point was our shining promotion of InstantBlogSubscribers, which was an affiliate-focused blog host, and in 24 hours’ time, we added 130 referrals with over 50 upgrades, earning us like $600 for a night of work.
Sadly, I was still holding onto my security blanket of a full-time JOB and working Kooiii over night and on my days off. After 9 years of 90+ Hour workweeks, my mental and physical health gave out all at once. I walked away from Kooiii in one bad argument over some outside influence and never looked back. Sadder still, without my marketing experience, Kooiii failed within a year.
The next 12 years have been about rebuilding me.
One smart thing I did was seek help both offline and eventually online. I needed the help, my mental state deteriorated into rages that left me hitting walls to avoid hitting people and screaming fits, crying fits with cold sweats, and long periods of total withdrawal into my video games and a few online tasks that kept me in business as I watched sales shrink every time a blowup made it online.
I found out that I have Bipolar Depression, hence the rages and mood swings from nice guy me to violent, angry me, and those moods where my brain won’t stop switching channels like someone is clicking the remote with 200 channels and too much time on their hands. The total withdrawal from people, both outside the home and even family, was diagnosed as Social Anxiety Disorder.
When your mental health fails to that extent, and I stopped going out, stopped exercising, stopped eating healthy, my physical health declined. A surgery for Diverticulitis led to a long-term healing process, and I was bedridden due to basically giving up for nearly 10 months. I gained over 130 pounds and, despite shedding a large amount of that weight, still weigh 310lbs and have type 2 diabetes.
I am working on all of this with my regular doctor’s visits, my psych, and my friends online.
I knew I didn’t want to fade to nothing as an affiliate and needed help finding myself and where I was going wrong. What was causing my loss of profitability, and I needed an outlet to rebuild my public image. I started with Wealthy Affiliate 11 years ago, last June, and have not looked back. I have been paid at their highest level, earning at least enough to pay my annual subscription each year out of profits.
My first blog was TheFreeGuru.com, a place to give back as I learned new things. When I was offline, healing from my surgery, I lost the domain name, not even thinking about it being due, and also lost my mega blog I had been building since 2004, MyViralBlog.com. That led to more decline and loss of self-confidence.
Today, though, is a new day, no more Zeus, no more FreeGuru, today theBlogMan.com is born.
I have had a blog for over 21 years, starting with a Blogger blog, Anderson Marketing News. I currently own 3 blogs and a social media network with nearly 11,000 members called KioskSocial.com. On Wealthy Affiliate, my username is IncomeLegion, which is the name of my biggest blog in the make money online niche. I own GrandSlamCity.com, which is a developing blog about sports mancaves with special focus on my Arizona Diamondbacks of the MLB and Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL.
The next big thing is tying in scattered promotions and training related to blogging and niche marketing, which I have become quite the expert in, having turned a profit from nearly every blog I have ever created, is the new Blog Man Branding of theBlogMan.com.
Over the coming weeks, months, and years, this project will take people from the first day deciding if they wish to start a blog to being a blog hero and a real thought leader. Part of our depth will be helping you choose a powerful niche through regular additions of Niche Case Studies, reviews of plugins and offsite tools for WordPress, design ideas, and our monetization game is strong. I fully believe this will be my best-funded project yet.
Monetizing the future with house offers and Affiliate Marketing
If you check out Affiliate Disclosure, you will see that the two main programs being promoted from day one will be Wealthy Affiliate, my home on the web, and the best affiliate training and tools package online. The second is RightBlogger, a set of over 80 AI-powered blogger resources for under the price of dinner for two a month.
I also own MyBizTees.com, which will be filled with business-focused apparel and merchandise for online business leaders. Also owned and launching soon is Webfire Site Design, where I will offer custom WordPress theming with installation and basic setup, complete with a brand-building logo if needed, and we own the already launched WebFireSite.com website Hosting Platform for those looking to self-host their blogs or non-blog websites.
Coming soon, I will be adding a Newsletter once per week, and we will offer limited ad spots once the newsletter reaches 2,000 subscribers and may intertain sponsored posts unique to theBlogMan as our audience grows.
Wrapping up this affiliate marketing journey
With these in-house products, all related to blogs, blog promotions, automation, and digital learning for affiliate marketing, failure is not an option, and the future indeed is so bright that shades will be required.
We have gone from humble beginnings, used many a free tool to get here, and have seen success and hard times both with a mission to prove mental illness and physical health are excuses to not do things or the power to conquer them and be a leader despite the challenge. Failure is for quitters, and we are lions here, not sheep.
Your Challenge: Should You Accept.
For the many who know me from the past 22 years online, please leave me a testimony, good or bad. If it’s good, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and if it is bad, I thank you twice as much because we grow from our mistakes once we are aware of them and accept we are not perfect and have a mission to at least be better each day!
Hi Andy, I haven’t been following you long. Strange as I have been on WA for 6 years now (as of this month). So I really liking reading your blogs as your expertise definitely shines through and for someone actively developing my own sites your work gives me a lot to think about. I will definitely be looking out for more of your posts – keep up the good work;
Alex
Thank you ALex, I have seen a few of your comments on my blog IncomeLegion and know you from around Wealthy Affiliate. It means alot to have your comment here and to work with you going forward.
How do mental health challenges practically affect running an online business day to day?
What systems do you use now to avoid burnout from repeating itself?
What advice would you give someone rebuilding after a long break?
Which blog or project are you most proud of and why?
What does success look like for TheBlogMan one year from now?
What mistakes should new bloggers absolutely avoid today (2026)?
The biggest thing about my own challenges is I now do less person to person and more stepping in front of traffic. My social anxiety disorder makes it a bit uncomfortable on video but I push through and am getting better at them. As to my bipolar the normal writers block seems to be taken more personal and take a bit longer to pass. I fight that by having a good list of writing projects pre-planned and where possible I get ahead in my writing and schedule posts to drop at a later date. SO FAR my record is writing 6 post and doing 1 video in a day but it was a very special 18 hour day.
To avoid burnout I am forcing myself to only work half days on the weekend and do something fun and with family every day. We all need work/life balance.
If you are rebuilding don’t spend all the time trying to recapture what was. This year and this blog is about cutting loose of the past and moving forward as a total reboot. After all if lightning does strike twice on what was it will probably include repeating the same mistakes.
My best blog ever was MyViralBlog.com but of my current projects I am most passionate on a professional level with this blog here and on a personal level my grandslamcity.com blog is a pure passion project that is therapeutic.
I want a minimum 150 articles, and steady traffic from organic sources, no hard number yet but I want the social channels’ to grow and I want our Skool Group to hit 200 members. This will be updated likely after we have our affiliate program going there.
As to best advice to avoid mistakes? Get in our Skool Community and Wealthy Affiliate. If you are trying to go it alone and without proper training you are stuck in 2004 when we had few mentors because most of this was new. If you have to pay by the month you are looking at under $120 a month to own a business that could change your life to have both memberships. If you can do like me and pay by the year your savings make this foolish to pass up.
That is an incredible milestone. Hitting a 22nd anniversary in affiliate marketing means you’ve navigated the industry from the “Wild West” days of the early 2000s through the rise of Google, the birth of social media, and now the shift into AI-driven content. Most people don’t survive three years in this space, let alone two decades.
To really tap into that 22 years of “in-the-trenches” wisdom, I have a question:
“Over these 22 years, what is the one ‘fundamental’ that has never changed, despite all the shifts in algorithms, platforms, and technology—and conversely, what is one ‘golden rule’ from your early days that you’ve had to completely unlearn to stay successful today?”
The one thing that has not changed since Moses was sent the 10 commandments snd shared them with his friends and family is that real human engagement can sell anything. Thanks for a great question.
Wow, what a journey you have been on. I appreciate learning what people go through and it’s amazing the transparency you shared. I appreciate the great detail you went into for each phase. Amazing blog post
Thank you Shawn, I want to champion those of us who the ability into disability. There are tons of us the medical world has written off who can still kick serious booty in business.