Wow, thank you very much for sharing your experience here Adam! Much appreciated sir.

Seems different things work for different folks. Grace just mentioned I don't have enough posts on my site but you say you got 9 sales with just 32 posts.

I understand what you saying about relevancy and publishing the right type of content, the affiliate niche is extremely competitive though but there is also endless variety to choose from which is good because you can never run out of content ideas.

Guess I just have to work hard at this and give it more time.

Thanks again for your contribution to this thread Adam.

Regards,
Kamil

I appreciate you sharing your journey, Adam. Sounds as if you're on the right track.

You're welcome, I have dark days with WA too, but I'm trying to think long term with it.

Re QSR, I use the keyword tool that comes with my membership, nothing more, and while I check search volume, if I paid attention to QSR I'd never have written some of my most popular posts.

I've written what I feel is 'fluff' at times, not well researched enough, and other stuff that's really from the heart and experience. When it's the latter, I find filling the word count easy. But while I just don't have the time and resources to join every program and really get the inside info on it, I try and be fair i.e. I don't just bash something because it's not WA.

Personally, I couldn't post every day - could certainly post more often - but it takes me hours to research and write an article. Like four or five hours for a two thousand word post. My longest, eleven thousand words, took me a week to produce - but I was enjoying writing it, so it wasn't a hardship.

It's a hardship if I've got nothing really to say and am looking for something.

I usually just go with what's appearing in my Facebook sponsored news feed for inspiration, as I find that links well to the relevant articles being found organically. I can always tell when one of the usual MLM suspects is on a Facebook ads campaign as my associated article will jump in viewings in GA.

I started out writing a lot of what I thought I "should" be writing too - vanilla fluff pieces on how to start affiliate marketing and Facebook etc - and it wasn't really my voice. These days I try and just say what I really think, rants and all, as it's more authentic and I'm happier with that style: I'm not writing for the Financial Times after all. Plus who needs another saying-the-same-thing-as-every-other-blog post on keyword implementation.

As for comments, a lot of my stuff hasn't drawn that much organically. I have put posts up for comments in WA but haven't found it all that great an experience, and maybe a double edged sword. I say that, because you tend to get a couple of gushing sentences on a "great article" that could be copied & pasted in reply to just about anything. And the contributor link usually leads back to another WA promoting site, which doesn't look all that trust inspiring in my opinion.

Also your traffic stats can get skewed - you think you've had a good couple days, but it's all WA readers who aren't going to be signing up.

There's a lot of dogma that gets repeated in relation to building a blog. Some of it's true, a lot of it's repeated from the training or Neil Patel's blog, and I think it's perfectly valid to examine your own experience and say, "Hang on, that's not what I've seen" and take the training and advice, and apply it as it works best for you. Remember, a lot of advice on the Web - and WA - comes with a caveat emptor: you don't know a lot of the time if the counsel comes from experience or is just someone parroting back what they've read elsewhere or 'think' will work (done more for community standing than out of genuine knowledge - it's human nature) i.e. advising that more of the same that isn't working, but 'should', will somehow work in future.

All that said though, I feel there's a large element of post and let the chips fall where they may with Google, because no one outside of Google really knows what black magic's at work within the algorithm.

Just my $0.02.

Haha, yes these are the dark days but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! ^^,

I definitely don't need to go to Vegas but it would be nice if this business could finally pay for it's self.

Yes, I dislike regurgitating content and try to write my own original stuff but in order to do this and add value one has to be educated to be able to provide value to the reader.
My content never focuses on pushing someone toward buying anything but the option is always there when someone is genuinely interested.

It is hard to push on when you get no results to motivate you but hopefully this is just a phase that will soon be part of the past :)

The main thing is that the internet is so HUGE, that there's a ton of websites that searchers have to sort through, and a lot of them are, as mentioned above, pretty thin or superficial. Yours and mine get lost in all that "noise." I might be wrong, but I think that quality of content is as important as quantity. Hopefully after a time the quality websites will rise to the top.
To me that's why it's important to sign up yearly for premium, if possible. I did that and I don't have to worry about any payments for another 8 months, which gives me time to work and progress. My goal by then is to have my websites pay for the next year. I think that promoting WA is a good way to go, but realize that there's a lot of competition there too. As there is anywhere.

Yes, this definitely takes time and effort but I would not expect any less if I was planning to build a solid long term business.

It takes time, patience, sacrifice, the willingness to learn and overcome our failures and challenges.

I am in this for the long haul because in such a short time I have learnt so much, and I have a really good feeling about WA. It took me quite a while to even contemplate WA as I thought it was just another scam, but it took me maybe 1-2 hours to decide that this training platform was nothing like I had come across anywhere on the Internet.

I guess the ones you attracted Kamil were ones that weren't prepared to learn and wanted it all done for themselves. I mean really where can you get this level of training from, for less than $1 a day? It's absolutely ridiculous that people can't see this.

Wish I could find people like you Mick to join as my referrals :) Was a no-brainer to go premium.

Kamil, are you using ppc traffic with Bing, Yahoo, Adwords, social media, do you have a facebook page, youtube. what other methods are you using other than organic? I'm by no means an expert in any of this but to me, SEO is great but very competitive, hence the reason why so called gurus (not WA) use only PAID traffic. as they can get it out to the masses and ramp it up far quicker. Have you thought about advertising through magazines and newspaper?

What methods are you using?

What I don't understand is (and this is down to who you trust and believe) that people are supposedly making a living through Clickbank and this is full of CRAP.

You see all they have to do is grab a product, create a landing/squeeze page, create a FREE something and pay for traffic. I bet this is how many on here are making a living, well I know they used to anyway.

Have you not tried this as a means to getting something back?

The only problem with this is that I cannot invest at this point and have already exceeded my budget for online stuff.

I use so many other avenues it would take me a long time to list everything here and I have already written a post about the methods I use so people can see what I'm doing and try help accordingly to what they see I have already done.

Will have to do another write up on this when I have more time.

Have not tried clickbank as there simply isn't time to take on anything extra right now, I already battle to keep up with a massive list of daily tasks and follow ups + my full time job :p

Thank you Timothy.
100 posts is a lot more than me! Good job there.
and still no fortune you say?

Well yes, it's still early but it seems you have a higher chance of getting that first premium than me hehe.

Are you using keywords and low QSR?

I have spoken to Kyle and exchanged a few PM's regarding this matter, he straightened me out on one or two issues and gave me advice, I have been following that advice since and now hopefully if I write more things will start to happen... no one said this would be easy :)

Thanks Grant, yes those people who are serious about building a serious business are very hard to find, like you said, everyone wants freebees or something easy.

Though nothing worthwhile ever comes easy :)

I wrote a huge long reply here and see it has been removed? :/

Hate it when that happens. With long replies, I try to remember to select all and copy my reply before I press the button in case it does that. I've noticed this happening with others too and it could be because we are taking a long time to reply and it times out?

Sorry to hear that. Anyway, if you have more time to write it again, I'm happy to help.

I will definitely do that from now on, just copy before sending.

That is true, a lot of these referrals were not planning on ever going premium but I would say at least half had the potential to.

I speak to many people on forums where they are looking for money making opportunities and if they ask "do you know any legit and trustworthy website where I could earn?" then I will point them to WA and many of my referrals were acquired this way.

Some say they feel overwhelmed and vanish, some say they can't afford $49 pm or even $19 for that first month, some are not serious, some just want the free training, some just join for the incentive I offer where it's appropriate, this was suggested to me by some members.

So I have tried a lot of different approaches + taking Kyle's advice.
When I spoke to Kyle he never mentioned anything about tracking ID's. Is that in the training? and how will this help me convert referrals to premium?

Yes I write reviews on my site with low QSR keywords, not all posts are reviews though, I try write helpful articles more than just pushing products, that was what I learned from the lessons here on WA however my website is also filled with many referral links (where appropriate) so I have created A LOT opportunities to earn commissions.
So far I have 24 pages, 44 posts and 312 approved comments.
90% Site Trust if that's relevant.

I send emails and use sites like Herculist and Ad Trooper (upgraded account) to send to targeted visitors but the click rates are barely 1% - 2% even after I worked on the heading as was suggested by Bo who is the co-founder of Ad Troopers.
I use my own lists from contact I collect from my website when people join the newsletter or contact me via support.

My traffic is random and comes from all over the place.
+-500 in a bad month and +-5000 in a good month. Depends how much activity I do. Sharing posts, sending emails, blogging, traffic exchange etc.

I try stick to what I have been taught in the courses.

It is A LOT to manage + my full time job. Currently working 16 hours a day. Not sure how I do it all but have to in order to survive and feed my family.
The results are dismal so I would really appreciate some help at this stage.

Thanks again Grace and sorry for the essay!

Kind regards,
Kamil

P.S - I saved this first!! :D

Hi Kamil, So glad you wrote this out again.

This is the main problem here:
24 pages, 44 posts and 312 approved comments

Your site I'm guessing is 9-10 months old and this is not enough posts for a site your age. You need to add a LOT more content than this for your site to get any real organic traffic.

All your other efforts (forums, Herculist, AdTrooper, etc) has obviously gone nowhere.

I would do less of that and do what the training says which is writing product reviews.

Yes it's fine you are also writing other posts too that have nothing to do with product reviews, but your site should have 60-80% product reviews.

You're not getting enough organic search traffic = people searching about a product in the IM niche, which are usually crap products that can't compare to WA, so you tell them what's wrong with those and then recommend WA. That's the formula.

When I started I did a lot of helpful posts vs product reviews, and wrote less per month (8 per month), what's the result? Not enough traffic, not that many referrals.

I learned from the Vegas members and from just looking at their sites, that first you need to publish at least 3 times a week (some do 7 times a week - this is what you're competing against).

Since I've learned this, I've been publishing 16 posts a month for the last 8 months but guess what? My traffic didn't really pick up till last month! I've finally see my analytics driving upwards and now getting more referrals more often.

This month I'm going to do even more, trying to do 20 posts a month or more.

I have seen members who do this from the start and they make $700/mo in their 10th month!

Other older bootcamp members always have tons of product reviews on their sites and have consistently been publishing. That's how you get referrals that upgrade to premium.

I'm not saying you should go crazy since you have a full time job, but at least start writing more and do less of things that have not been working.

My site is a year old now and I have 162 posts published, 1300+ comments, it's going to hit 200 posts before the end of the year, and I'm going to continue the 20 posts per month through this year and next. I see my traffic going up a thousand visits a month like this, maybe it'll be even more who knows.

All I know is more content, more traffic, more sales.

The trackingIDs, I can't remember if they were in the training specifically but as you write more posts, you will want to see what is working and what isn't and using the trackingIDs will help you analyze your entry points better.

A Custom Sign up page (this is in the training) allows you to have that continuity from your site to WA's sign up page and gives more trust.

I hope this will help you change your path and start writing a lot more. I would even stop all the other activities and just concentrate on writing if I were you.

Best of luck! :)
Grace

Grace thank you so much for your time and thorough explanation here, it really means a lot that you did this!

I'm sure many other people will also be grateful for this info.

May I ask how much should my 10 month old site be making?
How would I track exactly how much money is being made if say, someone signs up to one of the Bitcoin faucets (referral link) and then starts creating a passive income stream of Satoshi within that faucet and later I can send that money to my Bitcoin wallet.

Is there a way to connect this activity to Google Analytics?

I am making a little bit of money from my site but it's impossible to know exactly how much because it would all have to be tracked manually.

What about EPN (eBay Partner Network)?
When someone buys a Antminer (product) from a link that sends them to eBay. Not sure how to track this activity either.

I have been asked by a few people "how much do you make from your website?" and I cannot answer them because I'm not sure how to track over 200 Bitcoin faucet referrals and the commissions I get from their activity.

For now I will take your advice and just start writing! :)

Again thank you so much for your help! BIG time.

Kind regards,
Kamil

HI, little mama. I know this was for Kamil but I took a lot from it too. Thanks. Important info.

WHOA!!! When I grow up, I hope to be just like my Twin!!!

You've given a lot of information that I'll have to review several times, Grace. Even your questions are very insightful. Thank you for sharing what you know so freely!

I can't tell you how much you should be making from your 10 month site. So many veterans here can say you should be earning $500-$1000/month by 12 months. Well, that's not my reality, far from it, but I know I will reach that next year. The day I do, you will hear about it! LOL

I can only share what my experience is and and what I've learned and applying to my site which has been working.

Your experience will surely be different because we all have different things on our sites that will drive different sales.

Like the other member Adam getting 9 sales from very little posts, you may think so that can work too.

But is what he's doing going to reach him Vegas in the next year? I don't think so because he's looking very long term.

I'm not going to wait that long to go to Vegas, I hope 2018 is my year and I can make it to Vegas Jan 2019 and the way to get there is writing, writing, and more writing because that's what all the other members who's been to Vegas do.

So why not listen to the ones that's been to Vegas?

Your tracking issues... sometimes I wish Jay did a webinar on that and even how to use G.A. data better.

What I do, and what you can do, is look at all your posts that relate to WA, and see from them how many visits you get vs how many referrals you get. I see this under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

I also like to see where people land on from organic search so i look at Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages.

When I see pages getting a lot of traffic, I always go back to those to update and make them better.

Another way to track is using the TrackingID here under Link & Tracking, you can put any link and add a tracking ID to it... so let's say you have 2 or 3 main pages that come to WA (the other posts should just refer to these posts), those should have the tracking IDs attached to them so when someone signs up, you know exactly which post it came from.

When you get your Invitation Accepted email, the tracking ID shows on there as well. Like today, I know that my Affiliate Marketing guide got me 2 referrals, my Make Money Online Guide got my 1 referral and my Best Way To MMO post got me another referral. It's one of my better days to get 4 referrals today! yay!

For other affiliate programs you're talking about, you can use Pretty Link or still look at the traffic on GA for the posts for those products.

Pretty Links I use a lot (it's free), I brand all my affiliate links with it. This will track all the clicks on those links so you can compare the number of clicks with the number of sales you get for those products.

I also still use Pretty Links with the WA affiliate links with the tracking IDs because i can track the number of clicks there compared to the traffic of that post.

I'm sure there are many other ways to track but that's what I've been doing so far.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that to not have so many affiliate products to promote on one site... MMO can be a huge wide niche and should be narrowed.

You said you have Bitcoin then also eBay and WA, it sounds like you have three niches. Narrow your content down so that your content is concentrated to where you want to make the most money from.

I went a little broad as well when I first started but now I find all that I did was just a waste of time and I should have just concentrated on WA.

It took my awhile to reply this time because i wrote another post today so that's 2 posts! ;P

I hope you get my drift and I hope you can navigate better going forward.

Hope we all make it to Vegas sooner than later!
Grace

My pleasure Grant, the info on WA is for everyone so I'm happy to help more than one person!! I hope you will like my second response to Kamil as well. :)

Hey Twin! haha... Hey at least your niche is not as competitive, is it?!

I'm glad this can help you too... writing content is key and writing product reviews is also key... this goes for any niche.

Hope you're doing well and your site is coming along!
Grace

Yep, I did.

Thank you Grace, this will take me a while to sort out.
My brain is cooked and I have to wake up in 5 hours :/

My website is called affiliate income marketing (AIM), not sure if you seen it yet? :)
Not 3 niches just 1, epn is connected to the Bitcoin products I promote. Bitcoin has a lot of affiliate opportunities like the faucets, this also works on a referral principal and eventually you can create passive income streams from each one. This is very relevant to my niche which is affiliate marketing.

I will go through this all again tomorrow.

Thanks again Grace.

Regards,
Kamil

Affiliate marketing is more of a business model and it's very open. I mean, will the Bitcoin audience also want to build an online business? They may but I find that Bitcoin niche is more for finance people. If that's the audience you're going for, then continue.

I've never reviewed a Bitcoin related product on my site for that reason or any stock trading type products which all have affiliate programs and opportunities.

There are tons of affiliate marketing opportunities and that is why we have niches to narrow that down.

If Bitcoin is more profitable for you right now, maybe you should just stay on that route and don't refer WA.

Either way, I don't feel you should mix the two but you can get other opinions on this. :)

I wouldn't say that Bitcoin is just for "finance" people. Cryptocurrency will eventually replace cash or in the very least provide an alternative method of payment just like credit cards. In the 50's no one used them, now most people who work and have a bank account have one. Some people don't use cash anymore at all.

I only got attention on my website when I started publishing Bitcoin articles/posts. If I stop I will probably loose more than half my audience lol

Yes, a lot of the time I get 10 different opinions and there is no time to try everything so I also have to follow my instincts and learn as I go.

You don't see that it's a niche in itself? I used to write social media posts on my site and I got traffic, lots of it but you know what? None of it was interested in WA. I never write about social media anymore even though I know a lot about it.

If Bitcoin is what's giving you traffic and you like that niche stick with that.

You'll be spreading yourself thin if you do both.

It is difficult to let go of all the hard work and wouldn't make sense to walk away from my website and start this all over again for the sake of Bitcoin or do you mean I should just write Bitcoin articles from here on? Sorry, a bit confused

I still think Bitcoin is a great magnet to use, people are usually curious because Bitcoin is still fairly fresh for most people and if they already looking for money making opportunities and happen to see WA on the side or read my review, it could spontaneously lead to a conversion.

Will do what you first suggested with the private WA invite link, tracking etc. and try write some fresh new content that comes naturally. I struggle with posts where time is concerned, it takes me about 6 hours to write a good 1500 word post with images, keywords, links, tags, description, editing and revision etc.

I mean to just write about Bitcoin going forward and not do WA affiliate program. If you do 100 posts of Bitcoin, that will be better than having 50 posts for Bitcoin and 50 for WA. You CAN do both, but results will take longer that's all, it'll take you twice as long if you want to Vegas.

The writing comes faster when you do more, I was the same in the beginning taking 6 hours but nowadays I can get a post done from beginning to end in 3 hours max & easily 1500 words.

Aha, I see what you mean.

I'm not a huge traveler and don't NEED to go to Vegas but it sure would be nice to meet Kyle and Carson and the other hard working guys! :)

Would be nice just to cover the WA costs for starters.

Off to work then.

P.S. I owe you big time Grace! Thank you so much.

Thank me when your business starts making money lots of money! :)

Best to you!
Grace

I wrote a very long answer here and see it has been removed.
Not sure what's going on here...

UPDATE

Sorry about that Jhurreea, I did reply to you but it timed out according to Grace, please read the reply I wrote to "littlemama" above this comment.

I have already tested a lot of methods but there are always more so pushing on forward in this marathon :)

Trying to pace myself so I don't burn out and make it to the next milestone for a short breather and then back to the run hehe

How did you get your first premium referral?

I know Mike! Tell me about it, I'm like SUPER slow turtle here :D

Thank you Brian

Hopefully I can find who this person was and locate their post.
You don't happen to remember their username?

It was quite awhile ago and I don't remember the username, but I will see if I can search for that blog post for you or even find others similar to that. I still thought that was a good idea though if people are hesitant to upgrade because of their financial situation.

Something else to think about too even though it's just a few months away. Wealthy Affiliate's Black Friday sale where you can join yearly for a reduced price. That certainly might be something helpful for some of your referrals when that time comes.

I have thought of that Brian thanks but when someone is already complaining about $19 for the first month or $49 pm then what are the chances of them spending $300 when they have no clue yet as to the value they get for this or have no idea what WA is all about just yet.

That is true, but you never know especially with a sale like that going on and it is a great time to show them the benefits of going premium and taking advantage of the special offer. Better to do some kind of promotion and show the benefits of taking advantage of that then not doing anything at all.

I understand they are your referrals and you want to tread carefully which is a good thing as you don't want to push them away from Wealthy Affiliate, it's just that....

I regret not taking advantage of that Black Friday special last year by promoting it, creating posts about it on my website, creating landing pages, and even creating email lists for it. I didn't do any of that while other members here were getting signups or upgrades to premium from new comers and other referrals left and right.

I definitely want things to be different this year, but I've got to take some kind of action for that to happen. You are way ahead of me in referrals as I've only gotten one and that was just very recently when I tried a few things I had never done before.

Whatever you decide to do or try, I hope it helps you greatly and maybe it can even be something I try.

Definitely going to consider doing something in this regard. I know just the term "Black Friday" get's people's attention! It's kind of sad how the world has been conditioned and I don't like taking advantage of ANYONE but obviously knowing that WA could benefit them and change their life, it encourages me to promote it :)

Thanks Pablo, getting referrals here is half the battle but the true skills lie in premium conversions and as you say this might take time to learn.