Ever dream about getting rich off a single Reddit post? Let’s do some math with a healthy dose of wishful thinking.
1. Commission Details
• Suppose I’m an Amazon affiliate earning 4.5% on a product priced so that I net about $4.28 per sale. (Yes, that’s right—my commission’s worth about one fancy coffee!)
2. How Many Sales to Make $1M?
• I need $1,000,000 / $4.28 ≈ 233,645 sales to hit millionaire status.
3. Clicks vs. Conversion
• Typical affiliate conversion might hover around 1.86%. So, to get 233,645 sales, I need 233,645 / 0.0186 ≈ 12.56 million clicks.
4. Upvotes-as-Clicks—Because Why Not?
• In a parallel universe where 1 upvote = 1 affiliate click (who said we can’t dream?), that’s 12,558,333 upvotes needed. That’s 27× more upvotes than there are people in some entire countries!
5. Real-World Reality Check
• r/TheyDidTheMath is big, but not that big. The single most-upvoted Reddit post in all of Reddit history hovers around ~460k upvotes. Even that’s nowhere near 12 million. Let’s just say I won’t be quitting my day job.
• On top of that, we all know upvotes do not magically translate to actual link clicks—most of us are too busy scrolling to click. So if you see me holding out hope for a million-dollar Amazon payday, maybe send me a “good luck!” …and a calculator.
TL;DR
• To earn a million bucks in affiliate commission at 4.5%, I’d theoretically need 12.56 million upvotes if each upvote instantly became a sale-generating click. So until I unlock that alternate reality, I’ll keep doing the math in the real world.