How Adrian Diaz is Building Affiliates Sites on the Side as a Full-time Construction Worker

I'm excited to share the story today of Adrian Diaz from Hasta La Vista Boss.

I love the hustle of Adrian.  And his motivation is infectious.

Adrian still works full time as a crane operator in the construction business.  Yet, after working long days, he still finds the time to work on his online business.

He's building affiliate sites.  He's trying to rank in Google.  And he's also building a personal brand on his blog and on Youtube!

In fact,  he's done some great interviews with some online entrepreneurs on his Hasta La Vista Boss Youtube channel.  

Overall, Adrian share's his story and his strategies for how he's built a side income ranging from a few hundred dollars a month to $1,500 a month.  

Tell us your journey. 

Hi Spencer, hello Niche Pursuits community. Thanks for having me on Spencer. This is a dream come true. It wasn’t long time ago I was going through the NSP playlist on youtube and listening to your podcast learning how to get started in how to make money online and today I have the chance to be ON the podcast … WOW !

I'm Adrian, a regular dude who works 14-16 hours/day shifts in construction as a mobile crane operator. I have a beautiful wife and a 4yo little angel. These 2 are my blessings. My all. The reason I want to build an online business and achieve the freedom to spend more time together.

I got into IM about 2.5 years ago. My wife was 6-7 months pregnant and she told me she doesn't want to go back to work when our baby is born. So I said:”Ok, what do you want to do?”

Her idea was to sell something online. She's from Brazil and her suggestion was to bring merchandise from Brazil and sell it in Europe or viceversa.

None of that happened by the way, BUT that was the TRIGGER that got me into typing in Google and YouTube: “how to make money online,How to create an online business,etc”

So I found a lot of gurus selling crap on how to make money online and all that, but after a loooot of research I found a guy called WP Eagle on Youtube, Doug Cunnington and yourself with your NSP series.

I got into affiliate marketing and SEO mentored by guys such as Doug Cunnington and Kyle Roof. Almost 3 years later, I'm still in the trenches…

I've learned A LOT in such a short time and I proved myself that making money online IS REAL and it CAN actually be a full time source of income.

I have a few projects going on currently

Amazon affiliate
Lead gen
Merch
Youtube
Property

and much more lol … but my main focus is to build one or a few succesful affiliate sites that will allow me to quit my job and dedicate myself full time online.

How successful is your business today? 

I'm still in the rat race. I still have a full-time day job doing crazy hours…even so, working maybe an hour a day on my side hustle, I'm able to generate some money online, passively.

The problem is, it's not consistent. Sometimes I make as low as $200 p/m and sometimes as high as $1.500 p/m or more … and that's one of the reasons I can't quit my job just yet. (Plus the corona virus situation didn't help. At all. Actually, I was very badly affected by it)

I make that money with

1 website that's almost 3 years old and monetized with Amazon. It has less than 5k visitors p/m, about 60 articles (many are very bad in terms of the quality of the content, structure, etc)

Youtube channel that has some affiliate links in the description.

Advertising some courses that I personally gone through and tools that I personally use (good commission %, between 25%-40%, but I'm not doing too much unfortunately due to my very limited amount of free time)

What failure did you experience that perhaps made you doubt your future as an entrepreneur?

It depends on what you consider failure … although I've done a lot of mistakes so far, I can't remember making one so bad that I could not fix it.

One recent silly thing I did was, I advertising a high ticket item, a course. After a month or two sending people to the product sales page … I find it strange that NO ONE bought a course!

I thought to myself :”ok, I've sent a few hundred people to this sales page and no one is buying?!?

I'm aware that not many people will convert. Especially because it's a high ticket product.

BUT NONE out of hundreds?!

So I've reached out and talked to them about it.

*** Apparently, I wasn't using the right affiliate link (OMG). THAT WAS DUMB ***

But after a little bit of back and forth with their team, they were kind enough to credit me for about 10 sales, which was about $1k in total.

So that was a silly mistake…

I do have a lot of bad days though where I feel tired because of my work, stressed about the bills and worries being a dad and wanting to provide the best of the best for my family. Sometimes I feel really demotivated because I can't get the results I dream about….FASTER!

But I have a big vision (for me anyway) I have a strong drive, I'm self motivated and I know where I'm going and why I'm doing what I'm doing. That vision helps me to keep pushing through those shitty days.

The worst days (thank God I don't have too many of these) are those days where for whatever reason I'm starting to compare myself to others. I start to talk myself down:” I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't speak English good enough”…blah blah blah.

None of these things I consider them to be a failure. Being a failure is something like boxing. You're not a failure just because the opponent knocked you down. You will be a failure though … if you don't get up.

What are 1 or 2 strategies that have made your business successful? 

Targeting low volume keywords. That's not a secret but that's what I believe to be the thing that most of us, beginners to intermediate affiliate marketers tend to forget. Yes, we want those big and juicy keywords of course… but we'll probably never rank for them without a nice and healthy budget behind us.

So I've applied keyword research techniques such as KGR (keyword golden ration) a term coined by Doug Cunnington. I was able to rank very fast with a very small site. And make my first buck online within a week of launching the site. (I got lucky I guess haha)

Where do you hope to take your business in the future? 

I see myself doing a lot of different businesses online. I'll own websites in a few different languages because I'm lucky enough to speak more than one (4 actually)

Most of these websites will be in the affiliate marketing space. Maybe monetized with Amazon or other program, maybe Ads or lead generation.

Before I'll be able to say to my manager :”Hasta La Vista Boss” I'd like to be able to generate at least $4-5k per month consistently from a portofolio of websites.

After that … I have a looooot of plans and things I want to build lol

Like for example, I'm building a brand called “Hasta La Vista Boss”. At the moment is just a YouTube channel mostly and a FB group where I share/document my journey from full-time employee to full-time digital marketer.

I have awesome LIVE hang outs with successful people and with people in the trenches as well for motivation and inspiration porpuses. I create LIVE case studies, LIVE income reports and much more! Once I feel like I can teach something … I'll probably create my own digital products. I prefer to wait a little bit more (even though people are reaching out for training and consulting) I feel like I'm not ready until I MAKE IT OUT OF THE RAT RACE!