Hi Alex!
I hear your heart and I have also heard the hearts of others. I believe everyone means well here. It's just a matter of perspective.
As human beings, we are all different and will have different views based on our frames of reference etc.

We can "judge" everything based on the fruit that is manifested. It is that easy. That has been my principle for years as an employee and as a leader.

Fruit from Bo's tree (group):
1. I have only been seeing progress on top of progress for those involved. From reading the many blog posts, everything Kyle has been saying has been cemented in my mind.

2. Bo has pointed his group straight back to Kyle's training from day 1 and seems to be reinforcing the general teachings of WA

3. Bo has declared that he is retiring from online marketing in three or four years so his intentions are, therefore, altruistic,

4.He is doing it for free within WA and has not gone off to start a faction.

5. Everyone in Bo's group is reporting all they do for the whole WA community's benefit (quite noble). Even the Skype "one on one" meetings. There is nothing closed about this group.

6. Bo is obviously very knowledgeable and has a lot to offer

I can go on but that is enough good fruit so far.

Fruit from Dave's tree (group):
1. Dave has made his proposal open and fully displayed his mission here for all to see. He has not lured anyone anywhere

2. His idea so far has been endorsed by Kye, though within parameters mentioned by Kyle here (FEATURED COMMENT) Proposal: Niche Support Groups By Interest for Wealthy Affiliate Members 3. WA is a training platform, not an e-commerce platform. Someone needs to pull niches together and get something happening here. This is very much needed and will only benefit the community as a whole

4. It is for all niches not just his own. The WA community can only benefit and be sustained. -1. This can keep members signed up to WA and 2. also see ROI from their niches

5. Dave has proposed amazing management, structuring & organizational skills in documenting and listing the proposed path for these groups.

6. Dave is obviously very knowledgeable and has a lot to offer as well


Alex, you have made some excellent points in defense of WA and its community and I have the deepest respect for you. I know your humble intention is to protect WA and I admire you for it.
You are right to speak your mind. However, I believe that the others truly mean well. The fruit speaks for itself.

What they may have done wrong as you said, is maybe they should have approached WA's leadership with a proposal and then come to the community. That's what I would have done. Having said that, they may believe that they are just taking initiative as mentors. To be honest, if you hadn't mentioned this, I would not have even considered whether it was an issue.

Everyone means well here, including you Alex! I guess Kyle will have to have the final say here.

Blessings!

David

As a newbie I'm confused. The program worked that Kyle and Carson put together and I plan to follow that. Anyone desiring to make changes should contact Kyle and Carson privately and get feedback from them.
This program has worked so well and I plan to follow the original steps. Thank you all, Alex you have opened up a discussion.

If I may, I would like to present a letter by Kyle & Carson, which if seen today, may make some folks think WA is going to the Devil and is factious. My point in showing this brings out...

1) The Wealthy Affiliate Platform has always been at times, the scene of new and exclusive opportunities - sometimes not by the owners, but by the members, though exclusive opportunities were also presented by the owners.

2) Anyone could take part in the application or trial process, but knew that only a few would be chosen.

3) Clubs? Now that's pretty exclusive if you ask me. But they had them here.

4) Anybody, in one way or another, was allowed to follow along, but knew they were not actually part of the clubs.

5) No, these were not mastermind groups, but lots of discussions in the Old Forum did go on in boards that were created exclusively for these groups' discussions and some elements of masterminding could be seen in the discussions.

6) Most everybody else worked with the Eight-Week Action Plan that was available to all. In the beginning, these too, may have been exclusive, but this I do not know. I do know that the locks on these courses were eventually removed so folks could go through them at their own speed and not have to wait after finishing a week's segment early to begin the next.

7) This isn't even the first time - there were Certification Courses that were available, and if I can remember, these Courses were originally set up for the select few at a time, but eventually became available for all.

8) The Clubs, most notably, the WA 30-Day Article Club became the forerunner of the Certification Course we have today, which has been updated several times since. Note also that the WA promotional sector was incorporated into the Boot Camp Course when it was created. This conversion is as I had witnessed or observed as having been an updated version of the older material that was in the Club segments, made to fit the OEP protocol in 2012. There may have been a time period betwixt the time the Clubs went out of existence to the OEP, when these Course materials were made available, but memory serves me that these did evolve from one to the other.

~~~

This is not criticism, it is just a statement of facts (or as I remember things from a long time ago here) and if I have made any errors here, then I stand to be corrected. What is going on today, in my mind, bears very little difference to what happened back then, except for the possibility that maybe BoTipon and DaveSw did not procure permission for the go-ahead to set up the specialized groups they have. Albeit, both may HAVE been in communication with the owners OR even if they have not, these groups are not in a corner, and are certainly not invisible to the owners. If this sort of thing were not permitted, the owners would have most likely put a stop to them by now, which would force the groups to go outside of the Platform..

What we see now, may very well become so incorporated into the Platform that members in the future would not even be aware of the groups as they stand now, being buried by time. This is not the first time members have had prolonged influence on this Platform. Member contributions like this have been and continue to affect the build of the Platform and community. This is not a free-for-all nor anything-goes. We know this. What we are seeing now is not only the early spirit of the Wealthy Affiliate, but the early Internet as well. What many people do not realize is that, Kyle & Carson did not put this thing together alone, but is the culminated effort of the community and countless ideas from MEMBERS that now make up the conglomerated Platform. Don't forget this.

Size alone sometimes snuffs this kind of stuff out, and that is most unfortunate. We also get stuck in time and if we are not careful, we begin to hate change, which is the colour of time. Be careful that we do not introduce stagnation.

~~~

The following is a bit of WA history, and shown to point out that what we are seeing today, that is being seen by some as factious, is not new to the WA community. WARNING: THIS IS A HISTORICAL DOCUMENT AND SOME OF WHAT IS IN IT NO LONGER APPLIES.

~~~

Are you part of a WA Club yet? (act quick!)
2010/WA Article Club
x

Wealthy Affiliate news@wealthyaffiliate.com via http://aweber.com
9/16/10

to me
Hey Daniel,

Brand new at WA!!!

We have just launched WA Clubs. These are exclusive 30-Day Clubs that are going to be offered to Wealthy Affiliate members going forward. All members are granted the opportunity to fill out a survey that will we will analyze and decide upon who is best geared for the club.

Entry to these clubs is only open until next Monday (September 20th) at NOON, so please do act quickly if you are interested in it. Note that there are no costs to join these clubs as a member of WA.

There are two clubs currently running right now:

WA 30-Day Bing/YSM Marketing Club (hosted by Kyle & Carson)

If you have a budget of over $200 per month and you have been interested in getting into PPC for quite some time, this is the course for you. We are going to be walking you through the creation of a WP Express blog and the creation of a high quality PPC campaign in Bing/YSM for the promotion of Wealthy Affiliate.

These two paid search engines now control over 25% of the market share and cannot be overlooked any longer. Through some tests we have done, Yahoo actually converts better than Google.

Here is the link to the Join Survey for the WA Bing/YSM Club (log into WA first):

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/survey/view/wa-ppc-club

WA 30-Day Article Marketing Club (hosted by Marcus)

If you don't have a lot of money to spend on advertising and would rather utilize free marketing techniques, this is the course for you. Within this 30-day course you are going to be working on creating a profitable article marketing campaign for the promotion of Wealthy Affiliate.

You will be creating a WordPress Express Blog, writing articles, submitting them and utilizing other various marketing strategies to obtain top natural listings in the search engines. There is an endless amount of keywords out there in the "Internet marketing niche" and you will be working to expose and leverage many of these.

Here is the link to the Join Survey for the WA Article Marketing Club (log into WA first):

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/survey/view/wa-article-club

---------------

One thing we want to mention before you enroll in any of the clubs:

(1) You need to be committed (no slackers please)
(2) You need to be willing to take direction (we know what works and want to help you out)

We are looking for people that are willing to work hard at this and willing to take this seriously. Please do not waste your time or ours by joining if you cannot dedicate an adequate amount of time to this challenge. You simply will not see results if you are not willing to take action each and every day as we send out daily training and information.

We will also be basing our selection process on who is the quickest to act as there are a limited number of spots. Please make sure that if you are interested that you act very quickly and login to WA and fill out either the Bing/YSM or the Article Marketing survey...depending on which on you are interested in. Only choose one.

Join the club now. It's FREE!

Cheers,

Kyle & Carson
Wealthy Affiliate

Thanks for sharing Alex, much appreciated. I am relatively new to WA, but not to business by any measure. I see value to what Bo and Dave have each presented, as I feel it follows the spirit of mentorship. In every case, including even my decision to join WA, my experience tells me to do my due diligence in evaluating opportunities, as profit is yoked with prudence. Will follow you here, look forward to learning more. Peace. :-)

Hello folks and thank you for responding and I really appreciate your comments, I have been under a deluge of shall we say criticism, it has taken me a bit of time to work through it all.

Firstly in no way did I want to criticize anything that has been proposed in the community I have only raised some concerns and that is all. I think debate is one of the things that help's to create better outcomes, especially in business.

I tip my hat to Bo who has come to the platform and offered his help to some selected members by sharing his years of internet experience and success. As for mentoring and coaching, I think if we can follow success in a systemized fashion then it makes the journey a whole lot easier and we can model our processes on theirs, and if we add our own understandings then we are indeed in a better position to make and create some solid results.

I see it as a real positive for the community so we have 16 folks that will learn how to use the systems here at WA to create income under Bo's tutorage and watchful eye, the thing that I think is positive about that is he brings that accountability to the game not only to him but also between the participants to each other and to themselves, the hybrid model of mentoring and coaching is very powerful.
I have limited understanding but the positive observed is that they will then share their knowledge with the community at large that in its self can only be positive, so the more folks that can learn how to create income the better.

If we are honest that is one of the primal courses for folks leaving the industry. If you are not making money you won't be hanging around, for long and I guess that is reflected in the transient nature of the wider internet community. Here at WA we have a systemized approach that works.

Moving on I really respect Dave and think that his innovation will have a major impact on the community. The idea of bringing information into more focused niche orientated as he has promoted is brilliant so a foundation post that is oriented to my niche will draw me in like a moth to the flame.

I have to commend him on his forward thinking and I think that it will have huge benefits. I am in a niche and I know that there is a foundation post that is in my area of interest and I can go to it to increase knowledge or find solutions to niche related pain points, that is such a huge plus.

So to both Bo and Dave a huge heads up there is nothing like observing folks leading from the front, total respect.

Moving on, troublemaker that I am, I think WA is so Dynamic because it is so transparent and stepping out on a limb I am sure that Kyle and Carson must pinch themselves just for that reassurance that they are not dreaming. What these guys have put together is nothing short of miraculous.

I can't actually believe that I stumbled across WA and give thanks on a daily basis.

After you have been here a while you start to observe, it is a subtle process.

This post was a hard hitter, overwritten.

As listed in the post I only have two basic concerns.

1, I just felt in the enthusiasm of these new developments that I didn't see reference to Kyle or Carson. It felt like the platform was somehow being devalued, I was curious to see if indeed they had been consulted at all. For me call me old-fashioned, but it is a matter of courtesy to do that. I raised that issue.

I have been informed via pm by members that this is the case and Kyle has sanctioned these new developments.

2, We are only a week into the new year and my observation based on comments that I have read, there seem to be new sets of rules developing to monitor and govern these new developments.

My concern there was that it would cause confusion within the community. it is hard to keep up with the best of times. my thinking is that rules are important but they need to be centralized so perhaps an addition to the spam is a no-no, so there is one place that we can refer to when we want or need clarification.

Bringing things together in one place.

3, I have obviously ruffled a few feathers, and I apologize for that. I am making observations that is all. I didn't realize I was so popular lol,
I look forward to reading the success stories that come out of Bo's group. in no way is this an attack one of the first lessons that I learned from my first mentor was that "we don't always have to comment on everything we see and hear." my take on that is that we don't have to defend every position.
The second one was, observe everything, control your emotions and then enter with a measured response. this one has served me very well over the years.

The most important thing is transparency, I kind of observed that it was kind of missing so that gave me the inclination to write this post. I hear the carpenters working on the gallows from my cell so have to write my memoirs very quickly.

Thank you for reading

kind regards

Alex

Hi Alex,

As long all stays within WA and anyone can participate, not to exclude people!

And Kyle and Carson say yes to this, it is great that other members are willing to teach all of us what made them successful with the help of WA!

Anything outside of WA is not ok I believe as it is excluding others from this opportunity.

I am sure Kyle and Carson are aware and will come up with possible proposals what is possible within WA.

The Joker ツ

As a newbie (Nov 29) I can say that I find the whole setup and generosity of members that is fostered and encouraged amazing here.
And the step by step learning is awesome.
Having just completed the certification course, and with 30+ blogs so far, it is coming together.
I get so much from the many posters of all sorts in this community. I love the pay it forward mentality.

Mentoring is part of our business, I have done it all the time. Whether is one-one, one-on -10 or even one-on-16, is still mentoring. I just not had the chance to do it on a large scale and I have done it individually over twenty times.

That had served a learning experience for me, but it also had used up some of my time which I know it will pay off in the long run. All good things usually do. Could you imagine if I had taken those 20 people and just do it one time? Just saying.

I agree that one has to be careful when trying to help a group of people, and should find out if it is within the laws of WA, but sometimes when you have one goal in mind to make other people lives better, you foresee these things.

As a teacher back then it was very challenging and sometimes difficult for my students. I had to make sure all my students grasp what I had to teach and what they need to learn. It was difficult to some and very easy for others. What I saw was mind-boggling. The ones that knew exactly what I was trying to convey form groups with the ones that did not grasp it. And I remember I did as well with my friends in school back then. Later on, the ones that were having difficulty began to grasp it. Maybe one-on- 5 do help. Should I have put a stop to that awesome togetherness?

Just saying.

I have seen these happen times and times again and all I ask myself, is it for the good or is it to undermine the system? If it for the good and people would benefit, I usually leave it alone. Sometimes I tend to leave things alone and then when it has fully developed, check on it again and make a final analysis.

I glad that you take the time to give your concerns, cause i can see clearly that you do not want something like WA diverse from what has already been proven, and I commend you for that. With people like you around it gives me assurance that I am in the right place. Thank you for this post, Alex, and I hope all have the chance to read your take on this, and when all is said and done, the good will prevail.
Just my two cents on this.

Make it a great Sunday!

I think I know what you are alluding to Alex. The formation of the mentoring mastermind groups is a great thing and if I may speak on Bo's behalf meant to enhance and not divide WA. That being said there should be more of a defined statement of purpose on both sides. K&C \have not weighed in with any response that I have seen!

There does seem to be a different set of conversations going on at the moment in comparison with the normal style of commentary we see here.

Personally it does not bother me, I am here to learn what I can, and as far as where I learn it from I am not concerned.

I would rather see WA stay in it's current format and not "splinter" into any factions, and I would rather that all the resources available to Kyle and Carson be put to the further development of WA. Not in pulling out splinters.