About Aidan

The value isn't the wins.
It's knowing where the traps are.

I'm Aidan Booth. I've been building online businesses since 2005. I've built and sold companies, generated more than $100 million in sales, and made some very expensive mistakes.

Over time, you learn which decisions really matter, where things tend to go wrong, and when to keep going or change course. That's what I bring to the people I work with now.

Aidan Booth teaching a room of business builders at a live workshop — Teaching at a live workshop.

The short version

There was no overnight success, and no overnight anything. Here is how twenty years online actually happened.

2005
The first dollar

I grew up on a sheep and beef farm outside Masterton, New Zealand. In 2003, I spent a ski season at Lake Tahoe and met Carolina, now my wife. She lived in Buenos Aires, and I wanted to find a way to earn money from anywhere.

My first online sales came from importing SD cards from Hong Kong. I made $10 or $20 a sale. It wasn't much, but it proved this could work.
2006
Buenos Aires, and a lot of bad websites

I moved to Buenos Aires with no money and no Spanish. My first websites were genuinely terrible: a flower delivery site, then a little tango site that mostly earned me free steak dinners.

After that came affiliate sites in deeply unglamorous niches. When Google shut down my ad account overnight, I had to rebuild everything around search traffic.
2008 to 2009
Two years of 4 a.m. starts

Back in Auckland, I got up at 4 a.m. to work for three hours before my day job. Carolina and I had set a deadline: in 2009, we would leave for Europe, and either her savings or the business would pay for it.

On October 7, 2009, we left. The business paid our way, and I haven't had a regular job since.
Since then
From surviving to building real companies

With my business partner, Steve Clayton, I went on to build companies in affiliate marketing, ecommerce, software, and online education. Some became substantial businesses. Others did not work out.

None of it happened because we got every decision right. We made mistakes, changed course when we needed to, and kept going.

$100M+

in online sales across our
own brands and products

20+ years

building online businesses through every major shift in the market

Built & sold

multiple $1M+ eCommerce projects

Thousands

of offline retail stores across the USA have stocked and sold our products

Want to see how the numbers actually work? Get the free guide →

What twenty years taught me

I've made plenty of mistakes along the way.

Some cost money, others cost time, and a few only became clear much later.

You don't build businesses for this long without getting things wrong. What changes with experience is how quickly you recognize a problem, how you respond, and whether you keep going or change course.

I can't stop the people I work with from making mistakes. Nobody can. But I can help them see the risks sooner, think through their options, and make a better decision about what to do next.

That's the kind of help I wish I'd had when I started.

Why I do this

It started selfishly. It did not stay that way.

At first, it was about me. I wanted the freedom to live and work on my own terms, from anywhere. Building an online business gave me that.

Then I discovered how much I enjoyed helping other people build something of their own.

Since then, I've helped thousands earn their first dollar online and coached many who went on to build million-dollar businesses. The money matters, and so does the freedom it can buy. But so does being able to look at something real and say, “I built that.”

Helping more people reach that point is why I still do this.

Aidan Booth helping attendees at a live event

Working through members' businesses with Steve at a Blueprint Academy event.

Aidan Booth swimming the Capri to Naples open-water race — Mid-race, Capri to Naples, July 2025.

Away from the screen

Life on my terms

I'm a dad of two, based in Buenos Aires. We spend school holidays back in New Zealand, where we've built a home close to the farm I grew up on, and we travel around the world whenever we can. I can work from wherever we are.

I'm also a keen open-water swimmer. In 2025, I finished the 22-mile Capri to Naples race in Italy in nine hours and 36 minutes.

The hardest part isn't the first mile or the last. It's the long stretch in the middle, when you're exhausted and can't see land.

Building a business is not so different.

How the Money Actually Works, by Aidan Booth

Where to start

Before you choose what to build, read this.

I show you how ecommerce and affiliate businesses actually make money, what each one costs in cash and time, and how they fail. The numbers are real, including the ones from my own businesses.

This is not a quick read. It is the guide I wish someone had handed me when I started.

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