1Snapshot
Lasso helped full-stack marketer Virginia Buechel scale her side hustle’s affiliate marketing efforts, going from under 5 clicks per week to over 150 per day.
Lasso also saved Virginia time manually editing displays and made them feel more high-quality than previous affiliate displays she had tried.
2Introduction
At Lasso we power over 8,000 affiliate websites. Our previous case studies have mostly focused on the revenue gains we’ve driven for large portfolio companies doing 7 figures per year, such as Niels Zee, the largest product affiliate marketer in the Netherlands, with almost 5,000 live Lasso displays.
But we’re equally proud of the smaller sites that we’ve helped, especially when they were previously skeptical about affiliate marketing.
Updated 2026.
Virginia Buechel is a multi-talented, full-stack marketer by day, but hadn’t seen big results from affiliate marketing before on her side projects.
“My name is Virginia Buechel. I’ve been a marketing director working for my family business in the scrap metal recycling industry.
“There are many brands involved in the family business but overall, I see over 400,000 visitors per month, manage over 50,000 email subscribers, and over 215,000 app users for those brands.
“Also, since 2015, I’ve been freelancing on the side to help small businesses with online marketing, specifically Google Ads.
“In 2015, I also started NJspots, an Instagram account focusing on places to visit and see around the state of New Jersey. That account has grown to over 86k followers and over 30,000 visitors a month online.”
Virginia also runs BuiltToOptimize.
“Fast forward to 2023, I consider myself a “full-stack” marketer because I strategize everything from SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, and much more for all of the business projects I’m a part of.
“I have started to hone my skills together to start a new niche-focused site this year too which is testing my knowledge. As well as continue to grow NJspots as a side hustle business with more affiliate and display ad revenue flowing in.”
3Virginia’s Problem
Virginia was looking for a way to earn more
“I didn’t have any experience with affiliate marketing. So I was always intimidated about setting it up and learning about it.”
So, rather than wanting to maximize revenue and CRO on existing affiliate efforts, Virginia fell into a large category of Lasso customers who are still discovering that affiliate marketing can, in fact, be a lucrative income stream. If that sounds like you, our guide to affiliate marketing for beginners walks through the first steps without the overwhelm.
“I was listening to a blog course that I purchased and Lasso was mentioned. I learned a bit about it in the course and was happy with the interface and the ease of use. I felt confident it was going to be a great tool for me to implement in my site.
“I wanted a tool that would make affiliate marketing easier for me, on top of running the SEO, marketing, social media, and other projects for my brand.
“One factor I needed to consider was time. If my time was going to be dramatically saved with managing the affiliate program, I was going to be interested.”
When Virginia spun up a new WordPress site on SiteGround, she paired it with Lasso and WP Rocket from day one. On April 3, 2023, she posted on X (@fullstackmkter) that the WordPress plugin was an instant success, letting her connect her Amazon Affiliate account and start organizing links. She called the displays “fire” in her own words.
4The Solution
“I had very few affiliate links before Lasso. I was lucky to get 5 clicks a week.”
If you’re trying something new, like affiliate displays in your content, you want to see results quickly to give you the confidence that this is a viable path for your site. Then you can scale once you see it works.
This is exactly what Virginia did with Lasso and affiliate marketing.
Virginia had also been disappointed when trialing other affiliate displays and how difficult affiliate link management was previously. For WordPress operators starting with Amazon, our Amazon affiliate WordPress plugin guide covers the setup path Virginia followed.
Lasso saved Virginia time editing these blocks to look better, as well as with the link organization tools within our plugin:
“Organization of links, customizing the look of them so they weren’t so “old” looking like original Amazon embedded displays. My time was saved significantly with Lasso.”
5The Results
“Now I get over 150 affiliate clicks per day!”
At 150 clicks per day, this is a 210x increase in affiliate clicks from 5 per week.
“I also love the out of stock and broken links feature. It is so helpful to ensure that I can make changes when necessary.
“It has helped most with a more affiliate-focused approach with my content and integrating affiliate links into where they make sense. I think improvement wise, I would love to be able to test CTAs in the displays.”
That kind of click volume only matters if you can see what’s working. Our post on click tracking tips for optimizing your website’s user data covers how to turn raw clicks into placement decisions.
How long did it take to roll out across the site?
“I’m continuing to roll out more and more Lasso links throughout the site, but the overall initial set up and formatting took about 5-6 hours.”
6What advice would you give niche site owners looking to earn more?
“Consistency is key.
“If you give up on a site (which I did from 2021-2022) you will lose and continue to lose. When I was able to pick my site back up in Spring 2022 and then implement a better strategy for both the content being delivered, ads being displays, and weaving in affiliate links, that’s when I knew I need to make sure my speed was set to cruise control and I didn’t stop.
“So, as soon as you stop, you’ve given up. Lasso was a tool that came along once I was already being consistent with my strategy, so my investment in using it was something I knew I would be able to regain with the consistent routine I had already established.”
Great advice from Virginia, and we’re proud to have helped her scale her affiliate marketing efforts on her site.
7Ready to scale your affiliate clicks?
Virginia had the traffic. She needed the tooling. Lasso gave her organized links, better-looking displays, and click volume that proved affiliate marketing was worth the effort on her side projects.
If you want to find undermonetized product mentions sitting in content that already ranks, run a free Opportunities Scan on your site. It surfaces programs and placements mapped to pages you already have live.
When you’re ready to connect your accounts and start building displays, get started with Lasso.
Jamie I.F.
Jamie heads up marketing at Lasso, runs a portfolio of niche sites, and tweets a lot about affiliate marketing and SEO.