Goodbye and thanks
Well I'll be honest, I wasn't going to bore you all with a farewell message - or some might call it a parting shot - but a couple of people have suggested I should so this is it.
Why am I leaving? Well there are two main issues for me. One is that I feel that beyond getting you started there is precious little reliable expert advice for some of the trickier stuff, and if you find the same thing then frankly you are more likely to find better and more reliable answers by doing a search on Google or the WordPress forums.
There is a side issue too. Sadly there are a number of people on here who offer poor advice while giving the impression that they are experts, or at least more experienced than they really are. Others seem to be obsessed with posting motivational threads. Digging a little deeper it isn't difficult to work out that most of these people have not actually made any money, which means their ramblings are often misleading at best. I personally do not agree with this behaviour and do not find it to be helpful. Everybody is entitled to their opinion and to do what they want of course but on a free forum do what you wish, that's fine, but on WA it isn't what I am paying for.
Secondly I feel that WA is too big a distraction if you are undertaking a major project by aiming at a very competitive niche as I am. A lot of time is spent simply reading and engaging in posts and blogs. It's a fantastic community, of that there is no doubt, but it's an expensive one if it doesn't offer any real practical value, both in terms of time and money.
Is WA value for money then? To get you started, to give you an understanding, to get your foot in the door, yes absolutely, and there are those who will find the constant help and motivation to be genuinely useful.
Is this a failure? Have I given up? No, absolutely not. I aim to continue with my project and continue with it until it works for me. Perhaps then I might even return to WA to help others, though part of me feels that we are effectively paying for a membership to help others, but the fact is this does work - thousands of people ARE making good money online and virtually EVERY major company runs an affiliate scheme. Go figure!
If you are still trying to make money or just getting started, whatever else you do, DO NOT GIVE UP.
Keep going, remember nobody succeeded by quitting along the way. And as long as you are a member, DO continue to ask, help to get you up and running is definitely here as is all the information you need, even if finding it isn't always easy.
Meanwhile a massive thank you to all those who have helped along the way and all those who have followed me. If anybody does want to stay in touch simply send me a PM for my email address.
Good luck everybody, whatever you choose to do.
Recent Comments
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Understandable Gary. I'm sure you've been given all you need from WA to achieve the next level on your own. I've found WA to be a great deal more helpful than a competing training platform that I was using prior to this. I like Jaaxy, for example, and am glad to have found out about it .... although I'm not crazy about the monthly fee. To be honest, I don't know what benefit (or purpose) the rankings here have. I don't pay too much attention to them. I'm sure some feel empowered by them, or are motivated to see the number 'climb' (which [sometimes] explains the regular posts you referred to).
In every group, large or small, you'll see those who are naturally humble, and those who use whatever methods possible to attain a level of authority. This is unavoidable -- but also human nature. It has its good and bad outcomes.
Best of luck. It's been a pleasure :-)
Thank you Ben. Yes, I pretty much feel I have outgrown WA in some respects, and I am not being arrogant or egotistical when I say that. I still have a lot of work to do, but for the most part it is adding more and more content that is the most important thing, and the most time consuming. I feel I can use the time more wisely than I do on here.
Many thanks Melody. I know you haven't been here long and despite my reservations this really is a fantastic place to get started, there is a lot of knowledge and help on here and I have enjoyed my year overall.
Keep going with the holistic stuff, something I am quite interested in myself, at least if I could find the time!
Hi Gary, you are one the helpful person in WA..! Wish you all the best..!
I here for a year plus, I just started see some small money.
As I always advice newbies if they have job don't ever quit. Job give us stable income. We know online business take 6 month to a year on how much time intend to learn and apply.
I do my best to be helpful. Keep asking questions, I might not have found all the answers here but there is still a lot of help on WA. Make the most of your membership.
It took me 3-5 years of doing this full time until I made enough to live on dependably. So you right on not quitting your job.
You have been a good friend Gary, you will be missed. You helped me along the way, you answered my questions with utter honesty. I will miss you more than you know. I understand your decision, and the money going out is a problem for most of us.
I always wish you the very best and hope you return, if even just for one month to let us know of your great success! God Bless! Tria
Thank you Terea, you're very kind. It's not so much about the cost, but the value for money. I feel WA is good to get you started but beyond teaching you the basics it's a matter of posting a question, unless you are lucky enough to find the right help within the search facility, and hoping you get the right answer rather than somebody posting an opinion, or worse, a wild guess.
It's actually easier to find better technical help on the WordPress forums, or asking the plugin/theme designer or just doing a Google search. Beyond the basic training then, WA just becomes one big community forum and in that sense it's expensive.
As I said, I don't want advice, I want facts. I know that sounds blunt but it could be the difference between success and failure.
Yup unless want to keep blogs hosted here not worth it once get all training you need. they do not give me enough access so I host on my own servers where have full root access.
I can understand your departure but still sorry to see you go, I wish you every success, Putting everything aside I feel that the money spent on a membership is not so bad over a year, for you still would have to pay someone for hosting your sites, I guess I have been fortunate in gaining the assistance I needed and I know come Sept 1st Kyle was going to be bridging the gap of more in depth training take care of yourself and be good to see where your are further along the line with your project
You're so kind as always Katie. I bought the one year membership and I think it is excellent value. I have had my own site before but a year ago I didn't know what WordPress was! And there is a lot of help to get you going, of that there is no doubt.
Unfortunately for me this is tempered with bad advice around the site, and I'm sad to say some of this came from both Kyle and Carson, or whoever they pay to possibly stand in for them. I had a problem with the hosting here and Carson advised me that the slider on my site was causing the problem and that I should get rid of it. I switched to a new host here in the UK, the slider works perfectly and the site loads MUCH faster than it ever did on WA. I think WA is geared up for small sites. Hosting is relatively cheap anyway and the new hosts give me tons of extra features via a control panel like the ability to add subdomains at the click of a button, password protection, automatic daily backups and a whole raft of other features.
Meanwhile, Kyle advises very early on in the training that you do not need to fill in the meta titles and descriptions in All In One SEO but that's not strictly true. Google will pick up the first 160 words of your blog or page for their search description, so if your theme (for example) uses pictures at the top of the theme and you name those pictures with an alt. tag (eg. Acme camera picture 1, Acme camera picture 2 etc.) then it is those descriptions that Google will pick up on and display. Because those descriptions don't make a lot of sense it will do some serious harm to your SEO. Only AFTER I filled in those meta boxes did my rankings start to rise dramatically, with pages in the top 20 that were not previously in the top 100.
Overall though there are people posting "advice" who don't have any more idea than we do, posting items they have found elsewhere, or simply pointing us to a basic training video they have found, like we haven't already seen them. While I appreciate the efforts of those people it is like the blind leading the blind sometimes. As a famous scientist once said, "I don't want your advice, I want the facts". getting the CORRECT information is the only way to give yourself a real chance of major success in my opinion.
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To be honest I think I will be out soon as well. The content is definitely more suitable for a complete beginner to Internet Marketing and Wordpress. I think the live chat does nobody any good and is a distraction from getting things done.
I decided to try premium and see how things went. It hasn't taken long to reach a decision. If the Jaaxy membership was included it would be far more tempting to stay but we can't have everything. Good luck and success to you sir.
I've just had a quick look at your profile, so this should be right up your street. I have been reading a book called "How to build an online cash cow" by Antony Barlow.
The guy is a struggling computer repair guy turned self-made internet marketing millionaire, and the book has an absolute wealth of information, including building lists which is something I have never done either. It's something else on my To-Do list.
The book assumes you have a little knowledge - it is supposed to be written for rank beginners but anybody starting from scratch would not have recognised some of the terminology. Of course you all will now. I highly recommend it and for less than the price of one month's WA subscription you will see why. EVERYBODY here should buy it if you are serious about making money this way.
Available on Amazon - I won't add a link because somebody is bound to report it as an affiliate link!
Small world Gary... I bought that book BEFORE joining WA. I put it down after a couple of chapters since it was before I even had my first website. Guess I should pick it up again!
If I had bought the book before I paid for the annual membership I probably never would have gone beyond the first month here. Everything you need is in the book and in many ways it actually compliments WA very well.
Cancelled Premium. Will be ordering the book. Thanks