3 Years At Wealthy Affiliate

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16.8K followers
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Hey, what's going on everybody? I haven't been posting as much lately because I felt like I was basically repeating myself with every post. I'll work on posting more (I'm thinking more on the lines of reviewing succesful niche sites).

I'm working as hard as ever, though, and just realized I've been here for 3 year now. I was almost shocked when I noticed this and got me thinking about my time here so far.

If this is your first time reading a post by me, here's the journey up to this point:

3 years ago I came across Wealthy Affiliate and didn't sign up right away. I kind of put it on the back burner and never really researched affiliate marketing.

Then in August in 2015, I was working an insurance job (I was 25 then) and didn't like it. I actually ended up leaving at lunch and never returned.

I jumped right into Wealthy Affiliate without even knowing what I was getting into but I was determined to make it work.

I didn't tell anyone in my family for the first week (I literally just got up like I was going to work and just went to Vassar College's library and went through the training and started building my site there).

Eventually I told everyone and they all tried to talk me out of it. You know what happened next? I didn't make a single dollar in my first year. I didn't quite understand which keywords to target and SEO as much as I do now.

My family was losing patience but I pushed on. I scraped my first site and started over. This time I had a year of experience and research. In 6 months I got this site to over 2k a month.

But...

It all disappeared in a day after a Google update. I went from 2k a month to $200. I ended up selling the site for 2k and started over.

This time I did it right (before I had too many affiliate links per page and not enough words per post) and got this site to nearly 5k in 7 months.


I made an additional $500 from Canada and Europe sales.

It was pretty seasonal and I had a choice to make this previous spring - sell it or make under $1000 for the next few months and build a new site with basically no money.

I decided to sell it and got $40,000. It was the right decision and finally being ahead after 2 and half years felt GREAT. For this year I'll have made between $50,000 to $60,000. Not bad.

Since May I've been working on a seasonal website that's probably going to average $2000 to $3000 a month between November to April. I'll be finishing this site up by November and then I'll start a new project.

I already have a niche picked my next niche and this site I'll be working on for a while (I'm guessing for the next 18 months as my sole focus). I'll also put around 10k in it for content creation to speed things up. I may dabble in Youtube as well.

My goal is to have a 10k month in 2019 and to be over 150k in the year 2020 and 300k in 2021. It's going to be tough but I think I can get it.

Here's my advice to anyone just starting out or not getting results:

Measure things in terms of 3 months to 6 months. Affiliate marketing can be slow but it's a great way to make money. If you're not seeing improvements in rankings in 3 month to 6 month chunks, you need to switch things up.

Also, if you're monetizing through Amazon you HAVE to pick a niche where the majority of products are OVER $100.

Here's how the numbers worked out for my last site:

Of all the traffic I got to my site I was able to send 32% to Amazon. Of the 32% sent to Amazon between 7.5% to 8% bought something. The average of all sales was $3.

So If you get 60,000 people to a site and you optimize it correctly, 19,200 will go to Amazon. Of those people you'll get around 1440 sales. At $3 a sale you get around $4,320. That's very attainable and if you know what you're doing, you can do that in a 12 to 18 months.

I marketed items that were in the $150 to $500 range. So if you market products that are $20 to $50 you'll only make around $1 a sale or less. With 60,000 people a month you might make less then $1000 because of this. To make $5,000 you'd have get traffic in the 300,000 a month range. Not impossible but not easy and will take probably 2 years at the very least.

If you pick a niche that has products in the $200 range 300,000 people a month might get you $20,000 a month! These niches exist and can be completely monetized through Amazon. I'm hoping the one I just picked can reach that.

If you're interested in learning how I make sites, read my training here.

This is the best time of the year to use this strategy too. Research a niche now, start writing in November (targeting 2019 keywords) and you'll see good results pretty quickly.

So that's my story and advice. I'm so grateful to have found this place and grateful to have talked with the people inside this community. This is a hell of a lot better then an insurance job. I don't have to ask when to eat, I wake up whenever I want and I'm making more money now then I did working twice as many hours!

Thanks for reading and I hope you success!

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Recent Comments

140

Hey Dylan, I've been waiting for another post of yours haha :)

Seriously, you're inspiring.

As for family losing patience, oh man, how I understand you. At least now with the accident/surgery situation, my family can't actually tell me to go "get a normal job"... so at least somewhat a peaceful environment for me for now.

I mean I wouldn't give in anyway but it's just annoying and distracting. Why waste energy on arguments when you can direct it towards website work?

By the way:

Yesterday for the first time I got 16 orders (with 2 orders being expensive cameras). Should be around $150 or more for one day.

Hopefully September will be my first $500 month!

Now, my results are slower (no crazy jumps from $100 to $1000 to $2500 like it was in your case), but I publish a lot less articles than you too. In the process of switching writers too.

Thanks a lot for sharing your journey and your knowledge Dylan. Wishing you success with your new website!!!

How's your new site going by the way? Any traction so far?

P.S. I just realized that this month it'll be 3 years for me too. Holy moly!

Well my family doesn't have objections now - a little success and they were happy.

And congrats on the sales so far, it's honestly more than prob 90% of people who try affiliate marketing make. You should have a really good November and December too. Sales hit the highest then so you should be a little surprised at the results you get.

Keep going and you'll be making good money soon enough.

The jumps I saw in money isn't very typical and it's because I hit on some very good keywords. Plus they only really hit between October to April - they basically make no money in spring and summer (which is why I have to build a new site which won't grow as fast as the one I'm working on now I don't think).

The new site is going well. The keywords are basically where I want them to be.

I have a little time before they really hit. November is the month where this niche takes off. I'm not entirely sure how much I'll make though and I'm hoping more than last time. We'll see soon enough.

Stay in touch and let me know how the sales go!

Yeah, I hope my family will leave me alone too about changing my law career path to "doing something online" as they say lol.

I'm just glad that at this point, I myself have no more doubts that this is what I want to do. So they can't "break" me lol.

Honestly, I have NO idea what to expect for November/December but I really hope it'll be some big pleasant surprise :)

Gotta try to put out more best of posts/reviews... Wish I didn't have to spread my energy between websites and physiotherapy. Still quite a lot of energy goes into recovery. But I am trying my best and keeping my hopes high for the holiday season!

Good luck with your site and I really hope to hear another success post very soon :)

Thanks and I hope to hear some success stories from you too!

congrats. A great milestone

Thanks!

As always Thank you once again Dylan for your great help.

Your training here is priceless.

Wishing you much success always
Jennifer

Thanks!

You are most welcome

Hi Dylan
Loving this post- So inspirational to someone like me who is constantly looking for ways to improve my online businesses
I will go take a look at your training as I know it will help a lot
Thanks for the share and continued awesomeness to you
Vicki

Thanks!

Dylan,
Congrats on your anniversary. I missed your site training but I've bookmarked it. Thanks for sharing!

No problem!

Thank you, and thanks for sharing your knowledge in a training with all members:))

Thanks Dylan I have read over your training and I am implementing your website building strategy for both of my niche websites. I was just curious as to how many informational pieces you were writing to go with your best of post?

I'd say 60% best of's, 40% info works.

Thank you!

Oh, so inspiring, Dylan. Love your training - everyone should read it! I've got it bookmarked and re-read it from time to time :-)

Do pop in and let us know how it's going.
Ian

Glad you like it!

I haven't quite put it into practise yet but I'm still working through the training. Doing one blog posted based on it, though... :-)

Thanks Dylan. Really valuable advice. Noticed you did not mention ads at all which means your income is largely from affiliate commiasions?

Holy cow... first time I get to be the first one to make a comment on a post or blog. Anyway, THANKS for sharing this great information here.

What I am getting is...you have mastered the basic 'recipe for success' with website monetization and that is where us newbies have to set our sights on...finding the right recipe...and start cooking!

My challenge...and a challenge to most of us newbies...how to do great content, get great traffic AND HOW TO GET SEEN AND RANKED BY GOOGLE!

Joe

Nailed it. Niche selection, keywords and content - that's the recipe.

Awesome share
Thank you

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