8 Years With Wealthy Affiliate!
Hey folks! Alex aka Canuck here!
Eight years ago I joined Wealthy Affiliate.
I joined out of desperation. I spend a lot of money on "scams" and when I came across WA I promised myself that would be the last "make money" training I'd ever join... and I am still here.
Over the years I have learned a ton on WA. I keep learning new things every time I log in. More importantly, I've made friends here. I've made online friends and I met real life friends. I met up with fellow WA members here in Montreal. About a month ago I visited New York and I met up with Vitaliy which was really cool. I've met Kyle and Carson in 2010 and a few other awesome people.
I've also visited over 20 countries, thanks to "online income" that I initially learned right here, at Wealthy Affiliate.
However, I'd like to share something different in this blog post.
I've had my ups and downs in my online marketing career. I've made $10,000+ in a single month and I've been to the bottom. I've seen great success and even greater failure.
Finally, I have learned the secret to success.
As surprising as it may seem, success only requires 2 major parts: consistency and hard work.
In 2013 I started analyzing my online marketing career and it always came down to these two things. Whenever I worked hard and was super consistent - things happened. Whenever I looked for shortcuts and was lazy - I failed. Sure, in some cases I made money before failing but it was NOT worth it. Would you prefer to invest your time and effort into building a long term business or rather invest the same effort and time to make some quick cash for few weeks? The choice must be obvious here.
I have never been as consistent as I was in 2015. And the results are there. Just for the kicks, I'd like to share some traffic stats from my Extra Paycheck blog:
I have generated about 58,000 unique visitors to my site during 7 years put together. In 2015 I am already at 56k and the year is not over yet. (and this is just my IM blog as example, I have other blogs that generate income in different niches)
Think about it once again. In 1 year I will generate more traffic to my blog than I did in the previous 7 years put together!
The secret? Consistency.
I do not blog as much as I should, but I started the Extra Paycheck Podcast in April and I consistently put out a new episode every single Monday.
I might not write many blog posts but every single blog post is of high quality. One of my latest blog posts was over 7,000 words long and it ended up being one of my most shared posts... quality (read: hard work) pays off.
So that's about it.
I felt like I should share something for this 8 years anniversary ;)
Be consistent. Work hard. Success will come.
- Alex
Recent Comments
203
Hi Alex - love your post
I am nearly my first week into this and I am blogging every day but the blogs are all Related to my niche which is very small so would you rev omens that I blog about other things also my blogs are small may be take a look at my site and see what you think
http://audiophilecables.siterubix.com/
Tank you - Paul
I LOVE this post. I know, at a visceral level, that this is truth. It actually resonates. Thanks for being clear and simple.
Are people not short attention spanners these days? In regards to your 7000 word post?
I was under the assumption that short and sweet (maybe 1000 words) was the aim or the game? Feed them info in a 1 step, 2 step, 3 step, sell type of method, is this not appropriate? Or can be but not always?
Nice beard btw! :)
Thanks for the beard compliment ;)
In general, I do believe that we have a short attention span, however in some cases longer articles can work very well).
Here are more details if you are interested (https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/alexsol/blog/7-500-word-blog-post-done). That blog post also generated several hundreds of dollars of income and keeps generating affiliate sales.
Haha, this is true, I am accustomed to longer podcasts, short and sweet one seem like "heres the content, SEE I MADE AN EFFORT, cya", no real time to get valuable information out of anything they say, or time to elaborate even more on subjects worth talking about.
Depends on the niche I guess, not too sure. Maybe his followers from the previous year knew what to expect with his article. Also, he does do podcasts and from what I remember being on his site they're 40+ minutes long so people will be use to the longer content.
Also, his beard game is strong haha :D
The thing is that most podcast listeners do not listen directly on my site but rather on iTunes. And I can only assume that most don't even listen on iTunes, they download the episodes and listen on the go.
And some certainly just listen because of the beard. Muahahahah :)
Wow sweet!
I used to write in depth and explain things to sway peoples minds and get them into the buying zone, but I asked a few top dogs why I wasn't making sales and they pretty much said "you need a catchy title e.g. 5 simple ways or 5 proven ways to **insert keyword here** and then you need short sweet steps 1. do stuff, 2. do more stuff ... 5. do another thing, so now you see that this product is fantastic, buy it now!" Lol, funnily enough it worked and I did get a few comments and 1 person tried it and loved it so even better!
What is your podcast called? "Beardman?" "The beardst day ever!" "Think and grow a beard" <!-- wow Napoleon Hills book but instead of interviewing super rich business moguls, you interview people with super sweet beards and find out how they get them super sweet, you could even interview yourself. DAMN, billion dollar idea right there! :)
Hahaha, I was thinking of doing a beard related podcast, unfortunately no time for that. Although I do sell beard-care products on Amazon ;)
The podcast is called Extra Paycheck Podcast ;)
I tend to not listen to what the "top dogs" say. Instead I pay attention to what they do and how they do it ;)
Sweet man, I have another friend on here who is keen on starting up a beard care product line, I'll tell him to get on contact with you if thats ok, ask you how you got started.
Smart cookie!
But how do you do that? Just check out their blog and see how they place their keywords and structure their posts, length, images etc?
it's not just about that. Look at main influencers and try to figure out what kind of content they post. How often? How do they share it? Do they guest post, if so, where? How do they sell? How do they run their email marketing? etc... Don't copy them but try to understand why and how they do the things they do ;)
Wow, it's awesome that you have been here so long. I have quickly learned that it takes a lot of hard work and consistency to make a business online so hopefully that can pay off for me because I am determined to continue.
7,000 blog is not even in my range xD My girlfriend managed to get a 3,000 blog, but the most I have done is 1,500. Still though people have said that my content is pretty good so all I can do is improve.
I hope that in 2016 you can double this year :) Work for 100,000 visitors :)
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Hello Alex! Thank you very much for your encouragement.