A friend from Oregon read my blog post about the guy building a side-business using vitamins and asked if I could help him.  The project is far-fetched (that joke will make sense in a moment), but Ted is my best friend and I felt compelled to help.

Ted and I are dog lovers.  Heck 70% of America loves dogs, so we are not alone with how we pamper our fur babies.  When Ted read the blog article about the Vitamatic Zinc Quercetin supplements, he got the clever idea of trying the same thing with his dog walking group.  Here were the details.

Ted and a group of other senior citizens have a walking group.  During their walking time, they talk about the weather, local politics, and, of course, their dogs.  During their “dog” talk, they share ideas on products they each use for their dogs on a monthly basis.

I was ready to dismiss the idea when I finally read between the lines what Ted was actually asking.  Unlike Derek, Ted wasn’t asking about creating a podcast, Ted was asking to use a shared experience opportunity to earn some extra money.  I drilled down deeper.

Ted said he wanted to create a hot sheet (as we used to call them) with links to products everyone in the group buys.  Everyone in the group would use the links in the Amazon account to buy the products. He would then take the money earned and put it back in the group to treat everyone to lunch once the account had enough money.  He would then rinse and repeat.

I asked for a sample list of products, because I figured how many products could people be buying every month?  I figured dog food, but how likely would a group of people be to use the same dog food for all their pets?  Ted said Four Paws WeeWee Pee Pads.

I wasn’t thinking about the disposable products angle, because my two Golden Retrievers are not struggling with incontinence, and they are not puppies, so the business idea didn’t strike a chord with me until Ted mentioned the pee pads.  Ted was right. There are dozens of disposable products people use all the time that could, over time, generate a few sheckles.

So we are working on creating a hidden web page, just for his group—to add to the mystique of the process (as Ted suggested)—with a list of products they all agree to purchase from the link.

There are so many brilliant ideas for how to use Amazon affiliate links to generate a supplemental income.  If you’ve got an idea and would like to talk to someone about how to bring it to fruition, give Ed a call at (208) 209-7170 or email [email protected].