My Wealthy Affiliate Experience - The story so far.

byCycletek

172 followers

5 years ago

Introduction

I wanted to share with you my experience of Wealthy Affiliate to act as an inspiration to those of you who are just starting out on your journey. If you have just begun, remember one thing - persistence is the key. "Build it They WILL come" - Field of Dreams

I haven't been a very active member of the WA community, and for that I apologise. It has been a tough six months and a very steep learning curve. I have been trying my hardest to focus on the job in hand.

It seems that not so long ago I was in a desperate situation. My business was in trouble, and I was struggling to bring in enough money to keep a roof over my family's heads.

It was at this time I started to think outside of the box. I had been attracted to the lure of making money online for many years, but I never took the plunge until November 2018.

At the age of 49, I had five beautiful daughters, a wonderful wife, but was really struggling financially.

I had known about affiliate marketing for many years, but somehow never managed to get off the starting blocks. I had been too busy slogging away, desperately trying to keep the wolves from the door.

Does Wealthy Affiliate really work?

I am, by nature quite a skeptical person, but I knew that affiliate marketing was a sound business model. I recall having a conversation a few years previous with a group of friends about the limitless earning potential of the internet.

I used the analogy that there is treasure out there somewhere waiting to be found, all we needed was the map, the right tools, and more importantly the focus and commitment to see the job through.

I believe that Wealthy Affiliate provides the map, tools and most importantly the support of a community of like-minded individuals who are united by one goal - to improve their quality of life through financial freedom and job satisfaction.

What greater way is there to earn an income by writing about something you have a passion for?

So in answer to the above question - does Wealthy Affiliate really work? the answer is a resounding YES... But, you will need to add the focus and commitment.

My Wealthy Affiliate Journey

At the time of writing, I am about six and-a-half months in. Before joining WA, I had no experience of blogging. I had previously dabbled with e-commerce (without success) and had built a couple of websites - one for my delivery business and later a site for my electric bike conversion service. Both of these sites did okay on a local level.

After joining WA, I quickly signed up for Premium membership as I believe that Wealthy Affiliate offers exceptional value. There are not many places where you get the Website building tools, the hosting plus the training and community support all in one place!

I was immediately overwhelmed by the support available from the community, and found the training to be top class.

During the first month I started to build my site and add content, implementing the things I had been learning. Initially I started to write content in the diet and fitness niche. This was a subject close to my heart, as I had managed to lose 70lbs in weight through cycling and diet.

But after a month I started to write about something I had knowledge and experience of - the electric bike industry.

Due to family commitments, I found it difficult to stay focused and would often stay awake until the early hours writing content. It was a difficult journey and my wife was initially skeptical. I totally understood where she was coming from. Here I was, spending hours most days (and evenings) tapping away on the keyboard of my old laptop and not earning a single penny!

I struggled in the first few months to stay on track, due to the ever present financial pressures I was under. I continued to build electric bikes for customers, but due to the seasonal nature of my work, things were incredibly tight - there were several months when I even struggled to pay my monthly WA fees.

By February 2019 things were getting desperate. I was hanging on in there by a thread, and just about making my monthly house rental payments. Then, something amazing happened. On the 22nd of February I made my first commission from Amazon. The grand sum of £22!

The other great thing that happened in February was a couple of my posts were starting to rank 1st page on Google. This was a great milestone and confidence booster.

Up to this point I had never paid for any traffic to my site. I used my business Facebook page and Pinterest. Now I was starting to see a slow but steady growth in my organic traffic.

By March 2019 things really started to happen. As I added new content and tweaked older content, my organic web traffic started to increase exponentially. Below is a recent screenshot from my Google Analytics.

By the end of March I had earned over £200 from Amazon affiliates and had started to earn from Aliexpress as well. The feeling you get when your hard work starts to pay off is amazing!

Where am I now?

I am now six and-a-half months in to my Wealthy Affiliate journey and lots of reviews and articles from my site are ranking 1st page on Google. I am getting around 12k monthly visitors from over 80 different countries and last months earnings from affiliate commissions were around £1200.

I still have a long way to go, and I am still trying to play catch up with my finances, but I am making sales on a daily basis. Now I have an audience, I have some great ideas to scale things much further, and for the first time in years I have hope for the future.

I achieved this using an old laptop and a poor internet connection, while at the same time juggling work and family commitments.

A knock-on effect of my e-bike blog's online presence is that I have been inundated with customers for my electric bike conversion business, which is now also flourishing better than it ever has.

Conclusion

If you are reading this post and are just beginning your journey, remember it is not a quick and easy route to success. I still have a long way to go, but believe me, when you wake up in the morning to see that you have earned some money while you were sleeping, it is a fantastic feeling.

Could I have got where I am today without Wealthy Affiliate? maybe, maybe not. Like I have said before, having everything 'under one roof' is fantastic, and I sincerely believe WA is the place to be whether you are a novice, intermediate or more experienced blogger. A big THANK YOU to Kyle, Carson and everyone in the Wealthy Affiliate community!

I wish you all the best success in your journey!