Oh no! Something terrible has happened! (This will hopefully be the best thing you read all day.)

146 followers

Updated 5 years ago

I've got a fever...

and the only prescription is more Wealthy Affiliate. No, no. For anyone who isn't familiar with the skit from a show here called "Saturday Night Live", I don't actually have a fever.

But, I certainly am addicted to getting on here and chatting with all of you fine folks while I learn about growing my business.

I'm now a premium member, well newish.

4 days old.

Well, obvioulsy, I'm not 4 days old! You know what I mean!

I'm a full-time online entrepreneur

So, a little bit about me. I'm a husband, a father and a full-time online entrepreneur. I'm not being dicey with my words either. No tricks. No loopholes.

My family's full income comes from our online business, and investments. That's it.

My wife and I work on our business full-time, and enjoy the freedom of working when we want to work (in fact, after I write this, we are going to a theme park with the kids for the rest of the day).

I don't say this to brag, but just to firstly introduce myself a bit better, and to show others who might be skeptical that you can make a full-time living doing this kind of work.

Wait just a second! You don't even have your first website!

So, the more keen-eyed among you might have noticed that I have none of those sweet badges for having a website yet. And you are correct, I do not have a website on Wealthy Affiliate... yet.

But wait, didn't I say "no loopholes?" Correct. We currently run a bunch of websites, but none are on Wealthy Affiliate.

Well, if you're such an internet smarty-pants, then why are you on here at all?

Hey! Great question (but you don't have to be so sarcastic) :-P

We make our money mostly from display advertising. You know... all of the Googley-goodness you see plastered on all of your favorite websites, but you wish it weren't there, slowing the page down.

Yes, I'm that guy.

Well, my wife and I are that guy... those guys... well... wait. No. She's not that guy. I'm that guy and she's that girl. Please don't hate us. <3 Phew. That shouldn't have been so difficult!

We make a little from affiliate sales and investments, but I'm not an affiliate pro... yet!

Now things are starting to make some sense!

You see, even though I can make all this money on the interwebs, I'm not great at everything. I recognize that affiliate marketing is a massive opportunity for me to grow and build the business income.

Why not keep growing your advertising revenue?

Another great question! Maybe you are the smarty-pants! There are a few reasons why I'm trying to pivot the business a little:

Income diversification
More competition
Shrinking revenue
Ad blockers
Phone Apps

Income Diversification

You've probably heard the phrase "don't put all of your eggs in one basket." Well, at the moment, I've got a pretty big basket that I have nicknamed "Google" and most of my eggs are in it.

You always want as many streams of income coming in as possible. I've been diversifying my income with investments of different kinds, but I also want to diversify my business income too!

More Competition

It's no secret. I mean, look at Wealthy Affiliate alone! They've got an amazing training program, and they're turning out a bunch of new internet experts. More and more, people want a piece of this internet money pie.

But it's really not you independent friends that are the major threat. More and more, I'm seeing huge companies investing heavily into content marketing which pushes us little guys further down in the search results.

Shrinking Revenue

I have more traffic coming in than ever in the history of our business, but the earnings have stayed relatively flat the last year. It's no secret, display ads are absolutely one of the worst ways to monetize a website.

So, why do we use display ads? Simple: they are easy-peasy! That's it. Display ads are effortless to make money, but that comes with a huge downside: lower revenue per visitor.

And, that's a big reason why we want to get better at affiliate marketing. We need to increase our revenue per visitor. That way, even if our traffic drops a bit, we're still making great earnings per visitor.

Ad Blockers

People hate ads. I get that. People truly loathe them, and it is only a matter of time before display ads just aren't viable alone as a business. I mean, I hate ads! I pay for YouTube premium just so I don't have to see advertisements.

People have, naturally, turned to technology to solve the ad problem.

What about you:

Are any of you running an ad blocker right now?

I'm sure ad blockers have a lot to do with the flat revenue despite increased traffic. I'm obviously not upset at my readers. I understand how annoying ads are. So, it's incumbent upon me to learn how to get new revenue out of this business.

Phone Apps

With more and more people going mobile, and consuming content inside of ads, affiliate marketing is a more future-proof way for me to generate income. Should I transition my content into an app, I can basically just drop my content in with affiliate links in-tact. That would be much harder to do with all of the various code that's needed to run the various ad-networks.

That's My Story... Sort of...

Yes, there is way, way, way more about me, but that's the stuff I think most people are interested about for the moment. I'm largely a private person, but I'm not an introvert.

Seriously.

I'm extremely extroverted and friendly. But, online, I mostly keep to myself, so that's another funny little bit about me. Most people get on the internet and go crazy with putting everything out there, and I'm the complete opposite.