Funny story...

I had originally planned this post about something different—a milestone I reached the other day.

If you’re wondering if this Wealthy Affiliate thing really works, I get it. I know what it’s like when you’re starting out and not getting much traffic (or any traffic for that matter). Every single one of us has been there.

You wonder if you’re wasting your time—your friends and family are certain that you’re wasting your time.

You ask yourself if this is BS, if Google hates you… or if SEO only works for people born during the second hour of the first full moon in the year of the Tiger.

I get it.

So, I had originally planned to share some traffic numbers as proof that what you’re learning here does work, and I will. Then I'll get to the subject promised in the Headline - $636.30 USD From An Affiliate Program I Completely Forgot About!

But first, to say it again, yes Wealthy Affiliate works. It just takes time, effort and most importantly… patience. I can’t emphasize that word enough.

Patience.

As long as you're consistent with keyword research and content creation, Google will get around to you. It won't happen fast enough, but eventually, if you keep your foot on the gas, they will show you some love.

Like everyone who follows Wealthy Affiliate's training, I started with one keyword and one post. Then another, and another, and so on…

Those early posts are cringe worthy and I didn't yet comprehend the full scope of what real keyword research entails, but very few people knock it out of the park from the word go... so, if you can relate, don't worry about it.

No one picks up the guitar their very first time and nails a perfect rendition of Stairway to Heaven.

Likewise... checking your Google Analytics after you've written 2 posts is probably not going to be inspiring.

I know, because for the longest time I was addicted to the pain of checking my traffic daily until I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Recently though, I’ve been waking up everyday and checking them again because I had been knocking on the door of a goal (an arbitrary goal of course), and then it happened on April 3rd…

Yes… I had come close before but on April 3rd my site finally reached 2K sessions for the day.

I was of course excited, and wanted to show anyone who has doubts about what they're doing here at WA that it works.

However… before I could write that post, I woke up to something even better!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still excited about my traffic milestone… but this is what I woke up to yesterday. An email from PayPal.

I thought it was a phishing scam! You know, the kind that provides a link for you to sign into your PayPal account, which takes you to a fake lookalike login page where they grab your login credentials.

Nope. I logged into my proper account and the money was there. Of course, at this point I remembered setting up my affiliate account with this particular company. But I didn't expect it to make money.

And it’s even better because I’m in Canada… so $636.30 USD is like $230K CAD!!!

Okay, maybe I'm off by a few bucks. It’s more like $851 (and ninety-seven cents), but who’s counting, right?

Did I mention this was an affiliate program I had forgotten about? 😀

Way back in January (I think) when I was… well, I can’t remember what I was doing, or why I was doing it. But for whatever reason I had checked a post I had written about a year ago and noticed it was ranked number one. It wasn't getting a ton of traffic, but being in the number one spot I figured I might as well join their affiliate program, right? Seemed like a good idea.

I do remember checking the stats a few times after signing up, but it wasn’t really doing much. A few clicks but no conversions, so it just slipped my mind and since then I had completely forgetton about it... that is until yesterday when they paid me $851 CAD...

.... (and ninety-seven cents) ;-)

So there it is…

Does Wealthy Affiliate work? Yes, it absolutely works... and despite all of your frustrations and disappointments, you may have some pleasant surprises along the way.