How I Make Money Online to Pay for My Boat

Let me tell you a secret: I own a 32-foot Catalina 320 sailboat, and I pay for it all with what I earn online. Not a penny from my regular job goes towards it. I started in 2018 with an affiliate marketing website to earn extra money. Since then I’ve tried websites, Youtube, Facebook and a few other things.

It started like this. My wife complains a lot that I have very expensive hobbies. Sailing and skiing in the winter. She hates any family job income from paying for that sort of thing. In her mind any extra should go straight to savings and investments so she (not me) can retire early.

I started looking for what I could do in my spare time and to earn money doing stuff I regularly did anyways. Spending a lot of time browsing the internet and social media. I stumbled on a site explaining how to do affiliate marketing with a website and it started from here. That was 2018. By 2020 I was making over $10,000/month in extra income. Way more than I need to pay for my boat and skiing.

Here’s how I do it.

The Cost of Keeping a Sailboat Afloat

Boats aren’t cheap. Each year, I spend about:

$3,500 on marina slip and winter storage fees. This includes an annual haulout.
$1,500 on winterizing, shrink-wrapping, and basic maintenance
$2,000 on upgrades and repairs

Total: $7,000/year. This is approximately what I pay every year to keep this boat. Not a small chunk of change. That works out to about $583 a month. My original goal when I started down this path was just to make an extra $1000 every month.

Affiliate Marketing: From Hobby to Buy a Yacht Money

I started my first affiliate marketing website in the fall of 2018, which was mostly focused on downhill skiing. It had some 10 best reviews, such as 10 best ski goggles. That started making some money from Amazon Associates. After a few months it was earning a consistent couple hundred a month. By 2020 it was making a consistent $2000-$3000/month which was way past my original goal. I kept expanding and growing it

To explain how this was done. Affiliate marketing is where you recommend a product on your website or YouTube channel and make a link to the product. Anytime anyone clicks on your link to go to the vendor and then buys the product, you get a percentage of the sales. It can be as high as 20%.

When you see something like this below, it’s an affiliate marketing link and the website is making money if you click on it and buy anything afterwards.

Smith 4D Mag Ski Goggles

See Best Deals!

Amazon

By early 2023, my affiliate marking site or blog peaked at $14,000/month. I bought my Catalina 320 in the summer of 2023 and used income from this site to buy it.

Facebook: Bonus Cash from Sailing Memes

Facebook’s not just for memes and cat videos. The people producing a lot of content on Facebook are doing it with a purpose. You can earn money from just making content through the Facebook Content Monetization system. I’m not part of that yet.

The other way is by getting people to click through to your website to read articles. That’s what your doing right now and I earn from the display ads on this page and any affiliate marketing links. The more viral something goes, the more clicks it gets. A couple thousand clicks to an article is worth $500-$1000. Given the millions and millions of people viewing Facebook every day, you only need a very tiny fraction to view something to get real amounts of money.

I average about $1000/month right now from income related to my Old Boat Sailor Facebook page. This was something I started this past summer. I feel good about $1000/month after only a few months on this Facebook page.

YouTube: Talk about Sailing, Make Money

My next income stream is Youtube. I started the Old Boat Sailor Youtube channel this past summer. It’s only about 6 months old right now.

You say you need a hot chick in a bikini to make a Youtube channel that gets any views. WRONG! There isn’t a hot chick in sight on my YouTube channel. It got monetized after only 6 weeks and 6 videos. All I do is nerd out and talk about boats with background b-roll because no one cares about seeing my ugly mug. This is what is referred to as a Faceless channel since I never or very rarely ever show myself.

One good video can easily earn $500 with only a couple hours of effort to make it.

How Much Time Does This Take?

I spend 1-2 hours at night on a couple of nights a week and then around 4 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. That’s it. I take a lot of images and videos while I’m out on my boat in the summer or out skiing in the winter.

It’s all about learning a system and learning how to work the system. There is tons of how to videos on Youtube for any popular money making system out there. Once you find something that is working for you a little then rinse and repeat.

The key is using AI to help write articles and create images. Think of it as your employee. Your goal in any business you create is to be the manager or owner and not the burger flipper doing all the grunt work.

Other Benefits of the Side Hustle

The biggest thing is that it makes you feel a lot more secure at your regular job when you know you’ve got a fall back. It doesn’t bother you so much when you hear a ton of bad news about your company in the news. The company I work for is always in the news here. More negative than positive.

The second benefit is taxes. I’m not expert in this subject. You can write off home office expenses and some other things relating to your home business. I’m not so bold to write off my marina bill. I know some people that do.

Not all Sunshine and Roses

Online businesses can be a bit feast and famine. It’s all about learning a system that works. The systems change and evolve over time.

Sometime the internet goes through drastic changes. That website I mentioned at the beginning that was earning $14,000 per month in 2023. Google released a change to their search algorithm called the Helpful Content Update. It completely wiped out that website. What was making over $14,000 now makes less than $100/month at the end of 2025.

That’s okay. I am learning Facebook and YouTube and those are growing and replacing what I was making. You have to evolve as the system evolves. It can be a bit of a roller coaster. So can any 9 to 5 job with disruption in industires and even big corporations getting wiped out overnight.

Want to Try It Yourself?

Here’s my advice:

Start sharing what you love. Boating, hiking, travel—whatever it is.
Launch a YouTube channel and Facebook page.
Build a website and write helpful articles.
Join affiliate programs that fit your niche.

You don’t need to go viral. You just need to show up consistently. It may not work on your first try. My Old Boat Sailor YouTube channel was my second attempt at YouTube. It was my 4th or 5th try at a Facebook Page. Try something for a few months, if it isn’t showing any signs of potential, move on and try something else.

For me, it’s not about getting rich—it’s about making my sailing lifestyle sustainable. If you’ve got a passion, a camera, and a bit of hustle, you can do the same.