What I Have Learned • Wealthy Affiliate Membership at 5 Months • 2021 Upcoming Plans
Wealthy Affiliate
TRAINING - LEVEL 4: Mastering Social Engagement
Lesson 7: The Benefit of Being Social at Wealthy Affiliate
Assignment: Create a blog post or question here at WA.
- Share what You have learned and accomplished,
- Or, Share Your goals for the upcoming 6 months.
So I thought we could journey through both...
SHARE WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED AND ACCOMPLISHED
So I joined Wealthy Affiliate just after 2021 January.
In the last TRAINING - LEVEL 4 • Lesson 6… the assignment was to:
Create a New Post Targeting a New Keyword.
My Halloween Costume Store post is finally finished!
13 Best Halloween Costume Stores • The Ultimate Guide For Your Hauntingly Fun Event
This is a Major Post with 7,500+ words, and has taken nearly a month to finish… as I worked through trial and error. During this time, I learned quite a lot. Here are my notes, and questions... Comment Below.
Website Screenshots
- Finally found the Browser Shots plugin by Ben Gillbanks. Great plugin. I used this 13 times,... for all 13 Halloween Costume stores. Create a Gutenberg blog of the Browser Shot. Type any URL. The Browser Shot Block will update the block with the latest website screenshot.
The first 10 stores in the list, were rearranged in order of highest to lowest. I calculated the affiliate commissions and cookie durations, to determine the number 1 spot. For the reader, it makes no difference.
The last 3 stores place an anti screenshot protection on their website server,... producing a blank white image… with “403 Forbidden”. Hence why these 3 websites in the review were placed toward the bottom of the page.
It appears all 3 stores are owned by the same parent company. Ironically 1 of these stores was originally my number 1 place… but in using the Plugin and generating the website screenshots, the blank white image was an eyesore. It would be a bad first impression for readers potentially clicking away from my site... so better to group them and place at the bottom.
Any ideas on the 403 Forbidden? Perhaps I just have to manually capture these 3 stores… unless there is another plugin that can get around it? - Before this screenshot plugin, I was painstakingly capturing a screenshot of every website. Even more, regrettably the images are static, and never update.
Tables
Tables were added to give more value to the post, and increase the "sticky time", that being the time the readers hang around Your website.
For many years, the Harvey Balls used by Consumer Reports have been admired.
I finally created my own Harvey Ball vector graphics, using the HarveyBall.ttf font. In Inkscape, the font was converted to a path and saved as a SVG graphic.
By the way... Scalable Vector Graphics are the newest graphics. They have been around for years for us Graphic Designers. Yet they are still new for the internet, and unsupported on the web,... so the SVG Support plugin is used as a platform to enable the SVG graphic files.
(Note: using ascii circle fonts are not ideal. The circles are inconsistent, with different sizes.)
Three Harvey Ball SVG files were created:
- 100% filled circle
- 50% half circle
- blank image no circle.
The images are square at 150 pixel x 150 pixel, with a 20 point font size for the Harvey Ball.
When the SVG images go into each table cell, they enlarge to their fullest, and without necessary coding. It took dozens of tries to get the ratio of pixels to points just right… at least with this table example.
- Finally settling on the wpDataTables Plugin for Tables and Table Charts. The user features are very good. Moving columns and rows are easy. This plugin was closest to getting my tables where they needed to be. After much trial and error, the tables were configured as I just need a way to make the tables smaller, so all 13 stores fit? And have all the cells square.
Unsure how to reduce the table font size?
Another thought is to provide a downloadable PDF table for readers. Perhaps part of an email marketing campaign? - TablePress did not even come close to what I needed accomplished, despite good reviews.
- There was an interactive Table plugin that allowed the reader to “sort” the Table, but was not as good for my needs. Perhaps it was Table Sorter? I was unable to locate it again in the Plugin search.
- Gutenberg Block Table is good for simple tables,... but that’s about it. Complex tables are too much for Gutenberg, at least at this time. I watched a Gutenberg table making video on Wealthy Affiliate.
SHARE YOUR GOALS FOR THE UPCOMING 6 MONTHS
If You have been following my profile, You know that I write down my Goals! I have annual goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. Believe me it takes practice.
I am a firm believer that Journals work! Keep a Journal! For the past 2 years, I have been using the Better Life Journal, developed and perfected by Dean Graziosi over the past three decades.
The Journal holds all my Goals. Goals must be written down! Otherwise unwritten goals are simply fleeting wishes that are here today and gone tomorrow.
New Year’s resolutions are a joke, and are mere wishes with, at best,... a shelf life of one month. Come by mid February, New Year’s resolutions have eroded away through the winds of change. Our lives are so busy from day to day… week to week.
WRITE DOWN YOUR WISHES,... AND THEY BECOME GOALS THAT YOU MAY REFER TO DAILY / WEEKLY.
I have only one Goal this Year…
Event Butterfly Inc will earn $50 in 2021
My Goal has been written in my Journal of course.
More importantly, my Goal has also been written by marker on paper. The paper message was cut out so as to be one strip of paper. Finally taped to the top of 1 of my 3 computer monitors.
My Goal and I look at each other several times a Day! LOL. Funny… but it works! Stay tuned! By 2021 December 31st, Event Butterfly Inc will have earned this modest amount of money, and proving MMO (making money online) is possible!
Some of the Blog Post Articles I came up with,... and wrote down in my Journal are:
- Party Stores
- Birthday Party Supplies
- Labor Day Small Appliance Stores
- Back To School Supplies / Backpacks / Shoes
- Homecoming
- Football Party Supplies
- Halloween Candy Stores / Ideas
- Halloween Table Coverings
- Halloween Pumpkins
- Halloween… a National Holiday petition
- Diwali Lights
- Veterans Day Centerpiece
- Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie
- Thanksgiving Table Supplies
- Thanksgiving Restaurant Meal Cater Delivery
- Thanksgiving Kitchen Appliances / Supplies
- Cyber Monday Online Stores / Sales
- Hanukkah Lights / Candy / Items
- Christmas Ugly Sweaters
- Christmas Ornaments
- Yule… Time to reinstate Yule. Christmas religious and Christmas secular.
- Kwanzaa Items of Unity
- New Years Eve Party Supplies
Thank You for reading. My hope is this post helps You in some way.
If you want to learn the art of Affiliate Marketing, MMO (making money online), and being around like minded people, click on Wealthy Affiliate and receive a discount.
Recent Comments
5
Hi Michael
An excellent, informative post and a nice looking site. Great progress...
However, I am sorry to be the one to tell you... under the WA anti-spam rules you must not post your URL here. I recommend you remove the link as soon as possible.
If you go to this post via your profile, you will find a gear icon, top left, which enables you to edit it.
You can add your URL to your profile under "Follow Me On"... then people can find your site there if they wish.
:-)
Richard
Richard,
Thank You for all the good feedback!
In regards to the link...
the link has been removed, despite the Training... and despite You the reader having NO benefit to see the examples of Tables and Screenshots created. Sad.
There is a discrepancy issue, of what the Training says, vs what the overall governing Wealthy Affiliate policies are.
Wealth Affiliate,... fix this.
If You want us to continue as members/students... and let's be honest... we are customers of WA, and complete our Training Assignments, and abide by the Policies... that is fine.
But at least update the Training with clearer instructions that mention the Policies, in order to harmonize the Training WITH the WA policies, so students avoid these policy pitfalls.
In addition, would not an introduction video for new students,... explaining all the policies, be a good visual, and a great idea?
Does anyone else agree?
- Michael
What is misleading in the training please? We should point it out to Kyle if there is anything.
:-)
Richard
The Training is misleading in the fact that there is no mention of Wealthy Affiliate even having Policies.
The Training by itself is innocent.
It is the hidden Policies,... which are the problem.
Do You know when and how, I first found out, that Wealthy Affiliate even had policies?...
After completing TRAINING, LEVEL 2: Lesson 10... the final assignment was to post about our First Month with Wealthy Affiliate. My First Month Of Wealthy Affiliate: Progress Report Of Event Butterfly Inc So wanting to belong here, I had invested 5 days in writing up a great review for Wealthy Affiliate.
I posted,... and was so happy and anticipating some great comments.
15 minutes later, Wealthy Affiliate accuses me of being a spammer.
The Training was very challenging. Paralleling this, it felt as I had just climbed the highest mountain! I was on cloud 9. Time to pause and celebrate... but the joy was interrupted. The accusation made it feel as being pushed off the mountain.
Days later (early April) I reached out to both Kyle and Carson, for clarification and suggestions... No responses... ever... to this day.
The ordeal was anti climatic, and left me feeling I wasted 5 days,... on an article,... for Wealthy Affiliate's benefit,... which upon Wealthy Affiliate did not even appreciate in the first place.
Again, as I stated...
would not an introduction video for brand new members/students,... explaining all the policies, be a good visual, and a great idea,... even before the Training begins?
Anyway, that is all I have to say, as I focus on more positive efforts.
- Michael
Hi Michael
I understand your point I believe.
At the early points in the training where we are encouraged to write a post for the WA blog, it would be helpful for the training at that point to include a reminder of the WA rules for blogging, I would suggest via a link.
I can't remember them being referenced anywhere until I asked and even then they were difficult to find.
I'll make the point to Kyle. I encourage you to do the same.
:-)
Richard