How Wealthy Affiliate got me going

Hello! I'd been intending to set up an affiliate site for a few years, but, with the pressures of my regular work, I kept putting it off.

However, I'd been impressed by regular emails from Wealthy Affiliate over the past year or so, and a recent one must have inspired me to delay no longer. So I joined Wealthy Affiliate (the free option) just over a month ago.

I needed this to get me going. Working alone, I would not have made the same progress. I now feel a commitment to go through some training or interaction on Wealthy Affiliate every day.

After going through some early training and being impressed by the support, the interactions, the advice, and so on, I decided to go Premium after two weeks.

What niche?

Finding a niche was hard, as my main interests are rather wide (including literature, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, languages). Then I thought of something I'm interested in, but have never pursued in any depth: astronomy. Since I want to set up a website largely in order to become more financially secure, it was easy enough to think of a monetizable topic: telescopes.

Main advantages?

1) The keyword check seemed to indicate this was indeed a good niche with lots of long-tail keywords.

2) Because I intend to get an astronomy telescope, I actually want to do some in-depth research, so I'll be going through the process and developing some expertise (I hope), which means the content should be useful for those who want guidance on telescopes (often longtime experts don't know the questions that novices want answer to).

3) I'll not only enjoy writing about the topic, but later on I can add posts about astronomy in general and space news, which I will enjoy even more, and this should boost the website's authority.

4) There are lots of good non-copyright pictures that can be used (with credits).

5) A good astronomy telescope costs from $200 at least up into the thousands, so affiliate commissions should be good if the site works effectively.

I've now set up the foundations of a website with its own domain name.

Benefits of Wealthy Affiliate (WA)

The WA benefits include excellent training, support, community interaction, etc. These combine to provide clear instructions and advice, strong motivation to keep at it, 'pats on the back' and helpful suggestions from colleagues, and so on. You are not working in isolation; if your enthusiasm flags, you can 'warm up' by interacting with people.

You can get feedback – very nutritious 'foodback'.

I knew some of the things in the early instruction, but it was great to get confirmation, and I've also learnt a lot. But, even more important perhaps, you have a step-by-step process to follow, and that's invaluable.

Next?

I'll keep going through the training and building up my site. I'm not impatient for results yet. I want to get it right, though I have to resist the temptation to be perfectionist and spend too much time tweaking things such as the size of the captions or details of the website's appearance.

That's it, folks! Except to say that the Internet is a marvel (albeit with its dark underside). Here I am, writing from my home in the foothills of the mountains just south of Dublin, Ireland, and I feel part of a community – that of Wealthy Affiliate – that covers the world. Secondly, the global market to which the Internet gives us access is almost unlimited, so there's room for all of us. Good luck!