4 Years At WA And A Huge Thanks To Nathaneil & Kyle

byDerekMarshal

4.7K followers

4 years ago

Sweet Leapin' Jesus,

4 years already!.

Good gosh I remember going through the starter membership and having a ton of questions and really eager to learn but absolutely terrified of SEO.

So much so that other unnamed similar training programs after questioning them "Sorry Derek,

Please don't join, we don't think you will be a good fit"

Did not really do anything to reassure my fear of SEO. I had logically related Search Engine Optimisation with needing to know tech stuff and be one of those IT kind of people.

A few, maybe even several (sorry Nathaneil!) to my mentor reassured me, that what is taught at WA is really simple and he loves the simplistic approach.

With that and the reassurance that it is really easy and that he will help me personally of I need it.

Well,

Evidently I joined on the Black Friday Deal!. I thought logically, I work as hard as I can to earn back the US$299 fee.

What greater motivation could I have?

Work hard get that money back! Then work harder and have the money for the second year already paid for...

(which more than happened, approximatedly every other month! not bad for a first years effort considering I was frightened of SEO (Sh*t scared of it!))

I have this personal philosophy of facing fear and going all in!.

I chose a niche a really awkward one! Some of the older long term members may remember it! Intentionally chosen as there is no way that niche would get any clicks from social media (prohibited topic even for Paid traffic on most social sites).

Which meant...

Search traffic was my ONLY option!. I had to, absolutely had to learn SEO!.

Well,

Let's put it this way, fast forwarding a few years, Record Traffic prior to the Google Health Update 25,000 Sessions and easily the top 2 sites in the niche and hiring 2 Doctors to write the content - (not bad considering I started with no knowledge on the subject or on SEO or anything at all!.

If you are just joining Wealthy Affiliate and taking advantage of the once in a year opportunity or just thinking about it. Don't doubt it, not for a second!.

If you don't know something, or, if you were like me a bit fearful of some tech stuff put it to the back of your mind and just follow the training to the letter and run with it!.

There no need for any fancy pants stuff or try to be smart and do stuff you might have heard elsewhere.

Just follow the training.

For the record. My first article popped up on page 1 right away just outside the top 5, outranking Harvard!.

If you are new and in the rather tough Make Money Online Niche, you will notice one thing - it is very rare that when you find a keyword that you want to write content around that you DON'T find at least 2 or 3 other fellow Wealthy Affiliate Members on page 1 of the rankings?

That should tell you all you need to know about the quality of the training here at Wealthy Affiliate.

Where are the rival training companies and their student? Where are they ranking? Why do we see them less often an doften lower in the search rankings pages than wealthy affiliate members?.

It is because we are the competition.

If you are finding it tough and need inspiration, just do what I did and go all in!. Going yearly was the best thing I ever did!.

(Actually, it was the only thing having started out on the Black Friday Deal)!.

Give yourself that motivation to earn back your money and now is the best time to do it!. Think about about it!. You've whacked down a large sum of money right before the festive season and you have just got started, new years is around the corners and what better resolution to make and to reaffirm what you are building here at Wealthy Affiliate?..

My secret sauce...

Ask yourself teh question what is the worse possible thing that could happen if you go yearly?

You fail right?

Money down the proverbial drain!

Then do absolutely everything you can to make sure that does not happen!.

Trust me, it probably won't happen should you put in the effort.

And 4 years on...I am quite the technical SEO Geek! and could if I wanted charge quite a fee freelancing or for consultancy work.

You could say I got my degree in SEO from the Wealthy Affiliate University!