One Year Wealthy Affiliate Anniversary - 5000 Friends!

What A Year this has been! I joined Wealthy Affiliate at the end of 2018. I fell into the world of Affiliate Marketing unwittingly. A few years ago a friend mentioned it to me that gave me a vague idea what it was about. It wasn't very long for me to discover I knew very little about it.

My first memory at Wealthy Affiliate was about getting a series of messages from Kyle, my sponsor Tim, and a bunch of people I didn't know. I thought to myself, what a welcoming place this was. But why from so many?

Strange Environment

It took a while to find my way around this strange, but exciting environment. My first stop was the training area. There was a choice to begin either with the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course OR The Affiliate Bootamp Course. Since the latter consisted of training to promote Wealthy Affiliate, I decided to start with the OEC. Most of the members who sent me greetings suggested that too.

Rather than explore this platform from end to end I decided to hunker down and go through the OEC lessons. Kyle did a great job of keeping them at a level I could understand. Enough to perform the exercises.

The first time I got stuck, I thought I coudn't move forward until I clicked all the complete boxes. When I asked my sponsor how to get around that, he advised me to ask a question first. And then, just move on to the next lesson and return to complete the missing task after I got some answers.

I was amazed that one could do that. Other places I had joined in the past, one would not be allowed to move onward until completing all the tasks assigned.

First Niche And Website

It took me several attempts to decide what my niche would be. My first choice was the field of music. Tim told me that was too broad and I needed to narrow it down. When I suggested digital keyboards he felt that was perfect. He suggested I include keyboard lessons in my blog posts too using video.

I was a member of LegalShield, a legal services company, as well as an Associate. Meaning I could market the services and earn a commission. LegalShield also had a Network Marketing Program that I was not active in.. Hence, I had several options.

Since LegalShield had a great Customer Relations Management program I challenged myself to build my network using Affiliate Marketing techniques, to take advantage of the residual income possible.

At first, I was skeptical about becoming a Premium Member because I was not looking for Affiliate Marketing in the first place. I felt that all I needed was the free membership to learn what I needed to know.

Premium Bonus

Tim advised me I had several important things to do in my first week. The first was to complete my Profile Page. He then offered me a bonus if I upgraded to Premium before my first week ended. A $19 entry into Premium for the following month. A huge discount from the regular price of $49. Of course the subscription would subsequently return to $49 a month.

He and Kyle alternately reminded me about time marching on and if I did nothing I would miss out on the $19 first months' subscription to Wealthy Affiliate Premium. I completed my Profile However, I decided to wait till the very end to check out the platform thoroughly before taking that step. I was still not convinced that WA was right for me.

Eventually on the 7th Day I upgraded taking advantage of the discounted first months' fee of $19. I rationalized that if I decided not to move on my loss would be ONLY $19! You see, I had joined other online marketing programs like AWOL and Leads System Pro, where up sells were the norm.

In fact, there was another place that offered a free one-hour telephone consultation to help me understand what their program was about and how I could maximize my time there. I thought that was amazing and scheduled that one-hour chat.

Big mistake, That turned out to be a major up sell. And if I didn't pay up for the "real" course, I would be wasting my time. I quit.

Difference

I instinctively felt that Wealthy Affiliate was indeed a different and more helpful place. I upgraded in the nick of time to get the $19 rate.

It was fun going through the training. In general, I had no difficulty in going through the lessons. I had selected my niche and started to create my first free website using SiteRubix.

I had previously built a website using WiX. To me a beautiful website meant one that has fancy pictures, and a lead capturing mechanism. That website was dedicated to promoting my solar electric systems business. One of the challenges was to have a form filling mechanism on the website to allow those who wanted a quote to enter relevant information needed for that purpose.

Google Docs came in very handy to create a form and link the data entered directly to my Google Excel like formatted form.

Solar was not going to be my first niche. LegalShield was. It was a challenge to pick my first paid Domain name. Once again, my sponsor Tim to the rescue. I sent him a few suggestions that he rejected. Finally, I got one he thought was worth pursuing.My One Stop Legal.

After buying my new Domain, I created the associated website using the lessons learned in the OEC. The next step was to transfer all the content in my SiteRubix website to my own personal one.

Super Affiliate Challenge

After I had completed 22 articles in my Legal website, I received an invitation from Kyle in March 2019, saying I had qualified to join the Super Affiaite Challenge. This was going to be an intensive course till the end of the year for those who wanted to promote Wealthy Affiliate.

After reviewing the commission structure, I thought that this would be a better starting point into the world of Affiliate Marketing instead of my Legal services one. So I joined! This meant putting my first niche site on hold. I felt it was better to focus on one website at a time. This advice was also given by Kyle, Jay and my sponsor, Tim. After my Wealthy Affiliate site started to earn a regula income, I could return to develop my Legal site.

Time for a new Domain Name! Rather longwinded but I chose, Affiliate Marketing For Leaders.

Ambassador Invitation

Kyle also promoted the wisdom of becoming an Ambassador by helping others who needed help and support. I had no idea what rank in WA meant. It was mind blowing to see how my rank advanced by leaps and bounds from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands and then to under 1000!

I learned all the different ways to help others. When my rank hit 200 and I saw my name on the ranking list, I felt truly honored to be there. A few months' later I had succeeded in reaching the ranks of the top 25 and became an Ambassador officially.

5000 In My Network

Once I started helping others and adding new people to my network, Others also added me to their network. There seemed to be a direct correlation to rank advance and network growth.

It is an honor to have connected with over 5000 other members at Wealthy Affiliate.

I have made so many wonderful friends along the way who have gone over and above to help me develop my affiliate marketing business.

Writing blog posts in Wealthy Affiliate was also a wonderful way to connect with other members. I find it hard to believe I have written 93 posts here already. Perhaps I should have focused more on writing articles for my website instead of at Wealthy Affiliate.

Indexed

As I completed and published my articles on my website It was exciting to hear from Kyle that my post was Indexed by Google. Also, when I checked, several were ranked on Page 1 of the search engines. Not as many as I had hoped, And this led me to my most important learning experience.

Lessons On Ranking And Traffic

This to me was the Holy Grail. In other programs I was involved in, I had to pay for special up sell packages at several hundred dollars to teach me how to do this. At Wealthy Affiliate it was just a part of the course. I didn't need to pay extra.

Around the time I entered the Super Affiliate Challenge I discovered what the Live Events was. Every Friday Jay Neil, the Wealthy Affiliate Live Coach gave webinars on topics that were in the training. He went throigh these topics in great depth. Jay's style was easy to follow, I found his webinars on Keywords, writing content, SEO, Google Search Console and Analytics among many others of immense value. These were recorded to reference at any time.

There exists a gold mine of information on every aspect of affiliate marketing in the Live Events archives. If I had to miss a session, it was reassuring to know I could go there to catch up. However, one of the main benefits of attenting the events live was we could ask questions. If our questions were relevant and worthwhile, Jay would answer them.

I highly recommend attending these webinars.

Affiliate Bootcamp

I have fallen so far behind in the Super Affiliate Challenge I decided to resume the lessons I had started in the Affiliate Bootcamp training. My goal is to complete this course. As well as to add more articles to the 47 I have already completed.

In a way I didn't mind my slow rate of writing. if I had rushed through, I would have perpetuated many mistakes I had made in my articles so far. For examplt, I didn't use proper SEO management like I had learned later. I am now better equipped to use SEO more effectively.

Future Plans

This is easy. To do more research. To write more articles, And to rank in the search engines.

By The Way, where did I learn the mantra of Research, Write and Rank from? It was from Jay in one of his most recent webinars.

He also taught how to use the best of 2019 to select effective Keywords and Articles for 2020.

As I write new articles, I am revisitng my old ones to make improvements. This will give me the opportunity to submit them for URL Inspection in Google Search Console to get Indexed again and to improve their chances of increasing rank in the Search Engines.

And that fellow members is what my future plans are going to revolve around. What about making money? That will be a by product of helping others through my articles.

I wish all of you much success in creating your own Affiliate Marketing Businesses. And that 2020 will be a stellar year for you.

Cheers!

Edwin