One Year Later. How Everything Changed Last Black Friday

bybrandonacox

2.9K followers

Updated 6 years ago

I've been in digital marketing for over a decade, but I've always worked for others, building lists, websites, and social media profiles for the companies and people for whom I've worked.

And I LOVE having served in that way. To extend the life and voice of someone else who has a great message is a great privilege.

I had piddled around with affiliate marketing, promoting a link or two here and there. In 2016, I made $363.78.

All year.

Around Black Friday of last year, I stumbled on Wealthy Affiliate and joined. I didn't upgrade until February, but even as a free member working my way through the course material, everything started changing.

I learned about choosing niches, building niche sites, and optimizing for search engines.

One relationship led to another and I wound up getting invited to help promote a few launches.

I keep learning more and more about what works and what doesn't. I've made mistakes. I've wasted money here and there on products that didn't live up to their hype. I've also discovered some real gems that paid off.

I'd rather not share my personal earnings here publicly, but I will report that my investment in the Wealthy Affiliate Premium Membership with the accompanying higher commissions have paid me back ten-fold (just from the WA affiliate program).

I've made ten times in commissions what I've spent on my Premium Membership in less than a year. But that's not all.

I can also quantify my passive income that keeps coming in every month from one particular blog post I wrote that mentioned a single, larger ticket item with affiliate links from both Walmart and Amazon.

The earnings from that one blog post alone have reached into the thousands of dollars and it varies between #1 and #2 on Google for the target keywords, even beating a large company out of their top spot and their domain name contains the keywords I outrank them for! Again, that's within this year.

We've earned enough extra, mostly passive income this year to pay some big medical bills, take a couple of trips, save for the future, and give more to our church.

And on top of all of that, it's fun!! It's very fun.

Here are three big takeaways from this year of growth...

Start!

Most people who have the potential to succeed never do because they simply never take action.

Stay at it!

Others never succeed because they fizzled out just short of their big breakthrough.

Stick to your values!

Don't ever compromise your values and ethics. Keep "money" where it really belongs in your priorities. Stay generous. Add value. Be a giver. Market honestly.

If you haven't gotten started yet, hit the green button! Go through the classrooms. Network with others. Launch a site now and perfect it over time.