Kettei's Weekly Digest - 9th Dec 2018

It's just over a week before I took the plunge, paid for an annual membership courtesy of the Black Friday mega-discount and re-energised my inner entrepreneur.

So what have I achieved in the first week of my yearly memberhip? Is it going to be a wasted chunk of cash or am I seizing the day and making hay while the sun shines?

Certification Level 4 Complete

I finally completed level 4 of the certification training and I thought it ended on a high note, leaving me rearing to go on to level 5.

I've been here since 2016 so for some of you it's probably laughable that I haven't finished yet but there's reasons for my lack of completion.

First, I've never allowed myself to progress without completing the action points. So, if the lesson says, "write a post with x keywords in it and pin it to your board," I don't move on until I've done that.

Secondly, life keeps getting in the way but I'm working to rectify that.

Sure, I could rush through the training but I sort of feel that I'd miss some things along the way if I did that - and my blog would feel as half-assed as my attention to the training was.

My Bootcamp blog was hacked

Literally a day after I signed up to an annual membership, my bootcamp blog was hacked. That was a refreshing wake-up call that I needed to take updating my plugins and core more seriously (it had remained in the state I'd left it several months back).

It turns out that the intrusion was probably a simple brute-force attempt on the default admin username as since I've installed a security plugin, those attempts are now blocked on a daily basis, multiple times a day.

I'm not sure how I attracted the attention of the script-kiddies but I actually appreciate the life-lesson because it helped me focus on what I wanted to do with the site, reinstall it with a fresher look and get moving on content creation.

Two posts created for my bootcamp blog

Once I'd re-created my bootcamp blog, I restored the old posts and proceeded to write a new one. It turned into a bit of a whopper at just over 2,500 words. Not bad for a comeback.

I also created a seven-page workbook to accompany the post that's completely free to download. I wanted to experiment with using free downloads as a hook but without requiring a sign-up to access them (I don't believe that a download you have to provide an email address for is truly free).

A bit of promotion on Twitter & Pinterest and my dormant site received its first fifteen visitors (besides those that left comments via the WA Site Comments tool).

A couple of days later, I felt inspired to write another post, again including a download (just a single page this time).

Each of the downloads is branded with my site's identity as I'm trying to encourage returning readers. Whether it's working is too early to tell as I need to keep publishing.

I updated my Facebook pages

I deactivated my Facebook account at the end of October for a number of reasons but the main being that I was sick of Facebook's abuse of my personal data.It's felt liberating and I didn't think I'd last this long without it.

I did create a dummy account to solely act as an admin for my website pages. It has no friends, no likes and no groups so it won't distract me if I log in to update the pages with new content about my website.

I managed to log in and post updates about my new content but I hated doing it. I noticed Facebook was insidiously trying to suck me back in by suggesting people I might know. It failed - I've made Facebook my tool now, instead of the other way around.

I've been getting involved again

Over the last week, since I've been back, I've started to get involved in the WA community again. That's felt good because the community here is one of the things that makes Wealthy Affiliate special.

I've missed a number of people here and I've been given a warm welcome back from many.

As an aside, my rank has climbed back to 193 from whatever it was when I returned a week or so ago. I think it was around 4,000 but I can't remember.

It just goes to show that it just takes a few words of encouragement and a few blog entries to get you back up there.

Coming up

My life really is too hectic right now to commit to solid goals for the coming week but I've also learned that no goals results in no progress.

So here's my goals for the coming week. If I don't hit them, I'm not going to beat myself up about it but I'm going to use them as an inspiration to achieve, if I can.

1. Write and publish another two posts for my bootcamp blog
2. Write and publish two new posts for my niche blog
3. Daily tweets for both blogs
4. A new pin for each new blog post

I hope you all have an awesome, productive week and I'll try to summarise my progress next week with another digest (no promises, though). :)