This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Taylor Mitchell of Greenville, SC, who turned her financial life around by driving affiliate sales for Walmart and other retailers. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I was a young mom when I started a link-in-bio online storefront selling products for Walmart and other retailers. I’d been a paralegal and stopped working after my daughter was born. We made it work, but my husband had to sell his truck. For so long, we could barely keep $1,000 in our savings account.
I was already buying Walmart clothes constantly because it was all I could afford. I started to fall in love with the things they had, and I wanted to share that information with others. We all want to look really cute, but we all need to stick to a budget. So any time I needed to go to Walmart, I started to take pictures and share things, and it just started doing well. I don’t limit myself to Walmart, but that’s what works best for me income-wise and what I enjoy the most.
I started earning money in 2020. It was very minimal income for several years, but it was enough to help with diapers and groceries. Then things exploded in 2025 when I started pushing affiliate marketing through the Later platform.
It’s been beyond my wildest dreams. We were always living paycheck to paycheck. Now I’m doing around $100,000 a month, give or take. My husband and I are always pinching ourselves.
Developing a signature style
I love wearing bright colors and fun statement pieces. My style came out of my postpartum journey. I’d been posting on social media for eight years, sharing pictures and outfits. I went through a big weight loss — I used to be over 250 pounds — and shared that online as well. After my third child three years ago, I went on this health journey and took everybody along with me. I wanted to feel good, be healthy, and be able to shop for clothes and feel confident in them.
I’d been in the mom culture world for so many years, I think I have a really good eye for what would sell well. I posted about a hot-pink glider lawn chair I saw in Walmart the other day that was super cute, but for moms, it’s a justifiable purchase. Places like Walmart or Target are very justifiable for people to order from because they probably already have other things in their cart.
Switching roles at home
As my business grew, my husband left his job as a manager in the distribution center at Walmart to be my assistant and full-time dad. It got to the point where we thought his job was losing us money because there was so much he could be helping me with if he were home. Things really felt real when he left because we had been using his income as a security blanket. I was so scared I’d wake up one morning, and it would all go away.
Becoming the main breadwinner wasn’t uncomfortable for us because my husband and I have always been on the same page with money. We always had a joint account, and we were always just paying our bills and figuring out what we needed. I’d worried about not being able to provide things like karate, dance, and sports for my children.
The biggest thing that happened for us once we started seeing this money come in was that our stress melted away. His mental health has also improved, being able to be with our family so much. I feel like there are so many men out there who would excel in that role that’s traditionally more for women, but they don’t have the same opportunity to.
Dealing with social media’s pitfalls
Not everyone is nice online — I realized that when I started sharing my health journey. There’s the pressure of keeping up. And sometimes things will fail, and it has nothing to do with anything I did: It’s the algorithm. That stuff that is so frustrating when you’ve worked really hard on something. And with social media, when you don’t post as many times, you almost get put out of the algorithm. So it’s hard for me at times to slow down because I want to make sure that I’m not hurting my ability to reach people. I definitely have to keep reminding myself I need to chill out.
Long term, our hope is to do different things like invest and potentially take on rental properties, so we don’t have to rely solely on me posting. But right now, I’m loving every second of posting.
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