Frank Lam Sheung – Creator of The Side Hustle Site

My Story (How a Hot Summer’s Day in Hanmer Springs Changed Everything)

Hi, I’m Frank Lam Sheung. These days I’m a full-time affiliate marketer – but it didn’t start out that way.

Here’s an old photo (2009, to be exact): my wife Vicki and our two boys, Jackson and Jacob, standing on top of Conical Hill in Hanmer Springs.

Jackson’s on the right, Jacob’s on the left. Back then they were just kids – now Jackson’s is taller than me (6’1), and Jacob’s already passed Vicki (she’s “five-foot-something” and would kill me for saying that).

So why am I showing you this throwback instead of a recent shot?

Easy.

That day was one of those classic New Zealand scorchers – sun blazing, air still, the kind of afternoon you never forget.

And it was around that same time, sweating under that blue sky, that I stumbled into affiliate marketing.

But, truth bomb: it didn’t begin with success.

It began with failure. A big, fat, epic one.

The Wrong Detour (a.k.a. My Real Estate Misadventure)

Before the “make money online” rabbit hole, you know the days of 56k modems, slow loading HTML, Napster … maybe you’re too young to remember.

I was a software developer turned IT manager.

Solid career.

Decent money.

But, honestly – I just wasn’t feeling it.

Whilst, I loved software development, being an IT Manager was just a lot of bullshit.

Internal politics – covering of arses – nah – not me bro.

Deep down, I wanted out. I wanted to work for myself.

Problem?

I could start a software company, but starting one felt like jumping off a cliff blindfolded – too risky with a young family and zero sales chops.

So I made what I thought was a smart move: I went into real estate.

How hard it is to sell a house.

I had sold one before, at least I saw my real estate agent do it, and it looked pretty easy – haha.

I figured, hey, I need the sales experience. If I want to be an entrepreneur, I need to learn how to sell. And what better way than real estate, right?

Wrong.

The first six months were exciting – new industry, new challenge.

I even made a profit by year’s end.

But by the second year, the cracks were showing.

Six months in, it was a financial disaster.

Every day felt like dragging myself through mud.

Cold calls.

Door knocking.

Buyers nitpicking.

Lawyers, inspectors, endless paperwork.

Not the dream that I thought I signed up for.

The Photocopier Moment

And then – strange how life works – I’m at the office photocopier one day, grumbling about what I’d rather be doing, when a colleague turns to me and says:

“So why don’t you just do it… why don’t you make money online?”

I initially thought – wtf?

Then I laughed.

In those days, making money online was a pipe dream. These days, you literally see every man and his dog making money.

The 22 year old Youtuber, the stay at home mom, even toddlers (charlie bit my finger – surely you’ve seen that clip).

So why not you.

Anyway, for whatever reason – the seed was planted.

At that point, I had three options:

1. Keep suffering in real estate and hate my mornings.

2. Crawl back to the 9-to-5 IT grind—tea breaks on schedule, annual leave signed off by a manager, Mondays that feel like jail.

3. Or… roll the dice, chase the dream, and figure out how to make money online.

Wanna know which one I chose?

None of them. I froze. Did nothing. Which meant, by default, I chose option #1: misery.

Wrestling With Myself

Still, my brain wouldn’t shut up. Every day it was like a tennis match in my head:

• “Come on, man, you’ve only got one life—how do you want to live it?”

• “This is your time, go get it!”

• “Don’t be a coward.”

Versus:

• “But what if you fail?”

• “What if you’re not cut out for this?”

• “What if they know something you don’t?”

Round and round, until finally—I snapped.

I can’t even tell you the exact moment.

I decided. No more fucking around.

I was going to make this online thing work.

I’m all in.

The First 20 Cents (Yes, Really)

My first taste of online income?

Google AdSense.

The logic was simple: build a website, stick ads on it, get a trickle of traffic, and make a few bucks.

Scale it up, site by site, until the income stacked.

I launched my first site, got it indexed, and after a couple of weeks—I made twenty cents. $0.20.

I was ecstatic.

Laughable?

Maybe. But that tiny amount of money proved it had some legs. (My wife wasn’t impressed, though—twenty cents doesn’t buy groceries. Fair.)

Then something cool happened.

Google indexed more pages.

Twenty cents became two dollars the next day, then ten, then thirty, and then at it’s peak – $800 to $1000 per day,

By this time I had well over 300 sites.

Momentum, Finally

From there, things snowballed. I moved into Google AdWords, then ClickBank. Within six months, my ClickBank account was showing $20k a month. RevenueWire, CPA networks, PayPal balances—I was stacking streams of income.

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

I’ve face-planted in this business more times than I can count.

But here’s the thing: if you stick it out, if you keep tweaking and testing, the wins outweigh the losses.

Because that first sale?

It changes something in your mind.

Suddenly, you know this is possible.

Not theory, not wishful thinking – real.

And once you know, you can’t un-know.

Final Thought

I’m living proof you don’t need to be a genius, or have an MBA, or start with millions.

What you need is clarity, persistence, and the guts to get started – even if your first payday is just a lousy twenty cents.

If you want a proven way to start your own journey, stick around.

I’ll show you what works, what doesn’t, and how to avoid the dead ends I banged my head against.

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Frank

I’ve been earning a full-time income online since 2004 - mostly by trying (and failing at) a lot of side hustles so you don’t have to. The Side Hustle Site is where I share what actually works. Want to know what I use myself? [Check out my top picks.]

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