Building an affiliate blog to $100/month — Week 1 in public

Tam Nguyen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:30:29 +0000

The goal: $100/month in recurring affiliate income. Constraint: Hostinger hosting + Namecheap domain — everything else free tier.

Why this niche

ElevenLabs has a 22% recurring affiliate program. Their product is genuinely good — I use it. And there's a whole search cluster around it: pricing questions, comparisons, "is the free plan worth it", alternatives. Every one of those is a searcher 80% of the way to buying.

I'm not targeting head terms. I'm targeting the bottom of the funnel — people comparing plans, comparing tools, reading before they upgrade.

What I built in week 1

7 articles in 9 days:

ElevenLabs Pricing (Jun 1)
ElevenLabs Review (Jun 3)
ElevenLabs Alternatives (Jun 5)
Best Text-to-Speech Tools 2026 (Jun 8)
ElevenLabs Free vs Paid (Jun 10)
ElevenLabs Free Plan Limits (Jun 12)
ElevenLabs vs Murf AI (Jun 10 — today)

Each is 2,000–3,500 words. Rank Math scores: 80–92/100. All have affiliate CTAs, internal linking, and Read Next cards pointing to related articles.

The honest numbers (Day 9)

Revenue: $0
Affiliate clicks: 0 — no meaningful traffic yet
GSC impressions: collecting since Jun 6, too early to read
Pinterest: 7 pins live (Rich Pins active)
Email subscribers: 0

Also launching on Product Hunt today. No idea if it'll go anywhere.

3 things I learned the hard way

1. WordPress's wpautop filter will silently break your CSS.
It wraps inline elements like <a> buttons in <p> tags — making <p> the actual flex child, not your button. So margin-top: auto on the button does nothing. Fix: target p:last-child in a <style> block at the top of your post HTML. Lost 2 hours on this.

2. Affiliate programs decline without explanation.
Murf AI rejected my application even though I already wrote the article featuring their product. Always have a non-affiliate fallback link ready.

3. Rank Math 80+ doesn't require keyword stuffing.
Keyword in first 100 chars of intro + in one H2 + in meta description. Done. Chasing density past that hurts readability for zero SEO gain.

What's next

4 more comparison articles (vs Descript, vs LOVO, vs Speechify, vs Play AI)
GSC check ~Jun 20 to see what's actually getting impressions
Reddit: start adding contextual links in late July when account karma is built

The real talk

7 articles, $0, no traffic yet. I'm giving this 90 days before drawing conclusions. If Google doesn't reward the cluster approach, I'll pivot to lower-competition long-tails.

If you've done affiliate SEO before — what actually moved the needle in the first 90 days?

Site: clarratools.com — honest reviews & comparisons of AI voice tools