Progress Report

byEricCantu

13.8K followers

7 years ago

I'm a huge promoter of blogging your progress here at WA. I tell all my referrals to do this from day one. We get involved in this great training and we attack it, and before we know it we're choosing niches, building sites, dressing up as bats fighting crime at night, and growing impatient with our own success, aren't we?

I joined Wealthy Affiliate right at the beginning of the year. I think it was January 9th when I went premium. I told myself I'd give myself a good 6 months before I expected anything at all. The fact that Kyle himself mentions in the very beginning that if we stick to the training, in 6 months time we should have some regular commissions gave me some added comfort. We were on the same page.

My site looked NOTHING like what it does now. In fact, my original site and domain name was "Travel the World Making Money Online". I started with a bare bones site, and followed Kyle's training to the tee. I liked that I was learning. I loved that this was so eye opening.

Like most new members I started skipping ahead a bit. I'd leave comments for others in the comments forum and see their sites and think "oooh I need that!" or "ahhhh I need this!" as I saw member's sites who were further along in the training than I was. I remember almost breaking my site as I got obsessed with site speed one weekend and I realized I needed to get back to the bootcamp, lol.

Thankfully I never fell into the "When will I start making real money?" trap. This too is a completely natural feeling. We question ourselves. We're human. But when people ask what the secret to online success is, it's really all about not falling into that trap. When you do, you lose your patience, and when you lose your patience, you skip steps and when you skip steps your don't build your foundation right for your future success.

I had my first referral around the 6 week mark and I was crazy ecstatic. I kept saying "it really works!" over and over again. A couple of days later, another referral. "This is it!" I thought, and then a niiiiiice loooooong period of nothing.

What was I doing wrong? Nothing was wrong.

This is a process. Especially in the beginning. Don't even sweat it. Just move forward and keep writing content. When people say they've researched how 2-3 "great" posts a is just as good as 2-3 posts a week, that may be fine for them at their stage of development, but early on YOU NEED TO STICK TO THE PACE KYLE SETS. 2-3 quality posts a week, anywhere from 800-1500 words per post is a great and very doable pace to stick with. He's the expert, right? If you can do more, great! Attack it! But keep that steady pace and it's like you're ringing a bell to Google that you're there.

I was guilty of slowing down my pace a bit and I saw the difference when I got back on track. Instead of worrying so much about how each and every post is ranking and the analytics of it all, you just have to make yourself concentrate on the quality of the content itself. Do your part in the sharing of that post and all the off-page SEO we're taught here, and then DON'T SWEAT THE ANALYTICS so much that you frustrate yourself. Are you creating a great user experience on your site? Is it easy to navigate? Would you read your own articles or are you bored halfway through? These are the things to spend your time on, not page rank. Improve those things and page rank comes with it all on its own.

It's ok if a post doesn't burst onto the scene on page 1. Maybe it's on page 7. So what? You're building great content and you're proactive with how you share your post right? You're not depending on just the google searches, you're putting it out there yourself. With time that article you thought was lost into the abyss of the internet will be the reason a referral finds their way here, you just watch!

It just takes one solid post to suddenly start getting regular traffic to your site and the referrals or sales just start growing. I've had the great fortune of helping several people build their first business online. The system works. I've met complete strangers online through my articles and now they're here building their dream with the same training! It doesn't matter if you're 5 months in or 5 years in, stick with it!

You have to keep your goal at the forefront that you're building a site to help others. It's not all about your commissions. Help others, answer questions, ask questions, stay consistent. Not only will that attitude get you straight to ambassador but your content will reflect it and your success will grow :)

Thanks to not only my referrals, but everyone else here for being a constant source of inspiration. Here's to the year ahead! Attack it!