Online Entrepreneur Certification or Affiliate Bootcamp?
So, you've just joined Wealthy Affiliate. And you are ready to learn affiliate marketing and how to create an online business for yourself. You can choose to start with the Online Entrepreneur Certification or Affiliate Bootcamp training courses.
So, which training course do you choose? Which course is the right one for you?
This is an important decision to make. Because this decision will determine the direction of your business and what groups of people you will be talking to. For months and years to come.
NOTE: If you have already started one of these courses, do not change your direction just because of this post. Finish what you started. You will have plenty of opportunities to create more websites in more niches in the future.
Online Entreprenuer Certification is # 1
If you are new to affiliate or online marketing, my personal recommendation is to start with the Online Entreprenuer Certification (OEC). The OEC training course will teach you how to promote any product to a variety of groups of people. You will be free to pick a market that you are interested in and means something to you.
Affiliate Bootcamp Narrows Your Products and Audiences
The affiliate bootcamp course will teach you about the Wealthy Affiliate program. You will learn how to promote Wealthy Affiliate and similar products to a specific group of people who would be interested in these solutions.
Both courses will teach you how to:
- Do affiliate marketing online (i.e. be an online affiliate marketer)
- Learn internet marketing skills (i.e. be an online marketer)
- Research the groups of people you want to target (i.e. target audience)
- Build a website for your online business (i.e. yourawesomewebsite.com)
- Optimize your website for search engines (i.e. SEO)
- Build out content schedules (i.e. content calendar)
- Find affiliate product solutions for your target audience (i.e. affiliate programs or networks)
- Drive traffic to your website from social media and paid sources (i.e. traffic sources)
OEC Course
The Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) training contains 5 phases with 10 lessons each, for a total of 50 lessons. In the beginning of this course, you will watch a video walk through of Wealthy Affiliate and learn how to navigate the platform and leverage all the general tools available to you.
The OEC course does a good job on covering the basics of how affiliate marketing works and how Wealthy Affiliate supports you with a variety of tools to support your online business.
OEC Level 1 Course Overview
How to:
- Navigate and maximize your experience on the Wealthy Affiliate platform
- Setup your WA account and profile
- Understand how to make money online
- Choose a niche, a particular group or audience of people to help
- Build your website with WA tool, Site Builder
- Establish your website layout and foundation
- Make your website search engine friendly
- Do keyword research with WA tool, Jaxxy
- Create a list of topics that you will write content on
- Understand the difference between free and premium membership at WA
Bootcamp Course
The Affiliate Bootcamp training contains 7 phases with 10 lessons each, for a total of 70 lessons. You will learn how the Wealthy Affiliate program works and the specific WA promotion tools available to you.
The bootcamp course jumps you straight into promoting Wealthy Affiliate to specific groups of people who would be interested in WA. This course defines which markets of people you will be learning about. And how to promote Wealthy Affiliate as a solution to someone who wants to learn affiliate marketing or make money online.
Bootcamp Phase 1 Course Overview
How to:
- Navigate and maximize your experience as an affiliate of the Wealthy Affiliate program
- Find target audiences for promoting Wealthy Affiliate
- Build your website with WA tool, Site Builder
- Setup your website for search engines
- Create initial basic website content
- Do keyword research with WA tool, Jaxxy
- Define your long term content strategy
- Create product reviews using the 4 "CIAO" Principles
- Create a product review of Wealthy Affiliate
- Understand the realistic time frame for success
Course Differences
The OEC course:
- Explains the very basics of the affiliate marketing process in detail
- Explains all the features available here, at Wealthy Affiliate
- Let's you choose the products you promote and the groups of people to learn about
The bootcamp course:
- Contains 20 more lessons
- Explains the Wealthy Affiliate program
- Provides a thorough walk through of the affiliate program tools
- Defines the products you promote and the groups of people you will need to learn about
Course Similiarities
Both courses:
- Will teach you how be an affiliate marketer
- Offer detailed training to learn the skills to be successful
- Offer the first 10 lessons of phase 1 for free
As a free starter Wealthy Affiliate member, you can go start each course without any payment and no credit card requirement.
No, You Do Not Need To Do Both At Once
The best strategy for your success is to choose one course and complete all training phases. You should finish the entire course, complete every step and focus on one site at a time. When you have one site going (e.g. gaining more traffic and increasing sales), then you can start the other course and build an another site.
Confirm You Picked The Right Course
Here is a checklist to help you pick the right course.
- Do you want to promote solutions for health, weight loss, knitting, creating scrapbooks, cooking, yoga, meditation or something else?
- If you said yes, the Online Entreprenuer Certification course is for you
- The OEC course will teach you to promote whatever you want
- Do you want to promote the Wealthy Affiliate platform?
- If said yes, the WA Affiliate Bootcamp course is for you
- The bootcamp course will teach you how to promote products that will help people learn online marketing and how to make money online using these skills
- If you said no, then definitely choose the OEC course and products that interest you
Bonus Tip With Warning
If you are unsure which direction you want to go or you want to maximize your free starter membership at Wealthy Affiliate, complete phase 1 of both courses.
- Start and complete phase 1 of OEC
- Then start and complete phase 1 of Affiliate Bootcamp
- Complete a total of 20 lessons
- Then choose 1 course to complete all phases
With this strategy, you will create a website for any market you choose and then create a second website for a market interested in learning how to do affiliate marketing or make money online. Then you can decide which direction you want to go for the long haul.
You are given two free starter websites with the free membership plan, so you can build these two sites for no cost.
WARNING
This bonus tip strategy is not the recommended approach if you really want to make money faster. This tip is more about learning and less about making money.
This approach has its advantages because you will get a good basic foundation of how affiliate marketing works promoting two different products to different groups of people.
But this approach has a big disadvantage as it will take longer to make your first sale because you are not focusing on learning one group of people really well to know what are the best solutions to recommend to them.
Knowing your target audience really well is a key strategy to being a really good affiliate marketer.
Whatever course you choose, good luck and go get 'em!
Got Questions or Advice?
Just add them below.
Kim Wolfe
Recent Comments
48
Great post thoroughly explaining the difference between OEC and the Bootcamp course. Thank You Kim!
An excellent and informative post. Whilst I am doing OEC have found that by doing part one of the Boot Camp it made some things a lot clearer. Possibly just a refresher.
Stuart
Yes. I completely agree with you Stuart. I thought the Bootcamp was a good refresher and reinforcer of what we learn. It’s just another perspective but the same process. Thanks for chiming in here.
Thanks for sharing this.
I've been here just over a month and wish I had the opportunity to read this in the beginning. I don't think it would have changed my mind about the direction to take but now I know that Boot camp is an option for the future!
Susan
Sorry I am a month behind Susan :) But it sounds like you chose the right course for you anyways. Good job and thanks for chiming in here.
Kim
I totally agree with you Kim. I thought long and hard about the direction I wanted to go in. I decided that I really wanted my own site first. It had to be something I loved doing and would have no issues writing content for. The Bootcamp direction seemed like it could be more profitable. But I'd rather taste the apple before trying to sell it. Jim
YES Jim!
Thanks for explaining how you chose your first course. I am really glad to hear you chose to promote something of your own interest. If you are not interested in what you are promoting, well then certainly do not promote it.
And yes, the WA affiliate program can really have great payouts. However, this niche takes time and a lot of consistency to get those sales going. Not everyone in this world wants to learn online marketing, let alone spend $49 a month or $359 a year on online marketing tools.
I do, but I am not everyone :)
Thanks again for chiming in here.
Kim
Excellent post! ... superbly written, clear & on point! ... could have used this post as guidance when I first got here to better understand which way to go, up, down, sideways! ....
Thank you so much for composing this information piece for the benefit of everyone and anyone considering WA ... all the best to you for every success, cheerio... :)
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Thank you for taking the time to write this, I was seriously considering trying to to do both at the same time. I now see this would not be a wise idea. I will start with my first choice get very good at one then move to the next.
Sandy
YES Sandy!
This will be a better strategy for your success. Once you have basic skills, you will find repetitive information in both courses but you'll be faster and more skilled the 2nd time around.
Best of luck!
Kim