Beer with Kyle Fridays: The External Ace Flow (Turning First-Time Visitors Into Builders)

Hey Everyone,
Today I want to get into the external flow of Ace, our new environment and helper that assists you with your business, but also kicks off that process right on the external Wealthy Affiliate website.

Here is something we are being really careful about. We do not want to come across like just another chatbot. We have all been to customer support sites and gotten terrible service from those things that pop up pretending to be helpful. That is NOT what we are offering. Ace is far more integrated into what you actually want.

In the back office, Ace is integrated into your business, your activities, and what you are learning. Think of it like a generative AI platform, but much more personalized and capable when it comes to helping you build an actual business. But before any of that, we have to capture people's interest on the external site. That is what I want to run by you today, because the flow is a bit more established now, and your feedback is going to help guide where we take it.

This Week's Beer.

Today's beer is by Hoyne Brewing Co. It is an Italian Pilsner called Che Bello, and it has become one of my favorites. I did not have a lot of options in my beer fridge, which lives upstairs in my little games room, but this was a great pick.

It is a lighter beer at 5.3% ABV, really nice, in a cool Wealthy Affiliate glass as usual. I do like Pilsners, but sometimes I find they taste a little tinny. This one is one of the smoothest I have ever had. Che Bello, Italian Pilsner by Hoyne. Cheers.

What the External Site Is Actually For.

Let me give you some background on our ultimate goal with the external Wealthy Affiliate website.

The purpose of this site is to help anyone who has an existing online business, anyone interested in creating one, anyone with a local offline business looking to get reach online, and even influencers. Basically anyone who wants to operate as a business in the online world. We can help them inside Wealthy Affiliate, and the new environment is built to be conducive to all of it.

The first thing we need to do is get people into the back office. And to do that, we want to really customize their homepage experience.

We do not want a flat, static sales page that speaks to a percentage of people but totally alienates everyone else. Before AI, positioning a landing page for a particular audience was much more difficult. Over the years we built all sorts of niche-relevant tools, so you could land on a Wealthy Affiliate homepage with a golf backdrop, for example. Those did an okay job at best of warming people up. Now we can do so much better.

A Homepage That Remembers You.

So you can see this is a sales page. Not a lot of color splash yet, we will probably make it more visually engaging down the line, but right now the focus has been on the content and, primarily, on refining and polishing Ace.

You can see I have an Ace conversation already going. It has created a game plan and pitched me to join the platform. That is because it remembers my history through a cookie. So if I came to the Wealthy Affiliate website, started a conversation with Ace about starting a business, and came back later, it would pick right back up where I left off.

I can hit the refresh button to reset it, and that gives me the experience a first-time visitor would get.

Again, the thing we want to avoid is that early chatbot feel. Those things always felt fake, with totally generalized responses. This is going to be a much more personalized and relevant experience for absolutely anyone.

Walking Through the First-Time Experience.

So you arrive at the website. Bring an idea, or none at all, and start building today. Your agents are included with your account, and there is a real community inside. That is the intro as you come in. Then on the Ace side, that is where you actually start building your business.

This is built for mobile too, because a large chunk of our audience comes through mobile, and our entire platform is being built mobile-first. Everyone wants to run their business from multiple environments, so this will work really well on a phone. On my screen here it looks a little odd because of the dimensions, but it is going to be very mobile friendly when implemented.

When I arrive, Ace gives me a few buttons. Start something new. Grow what I already have. I run a local business or brand. Or just looking around. I can also just tell Ace what I want to do in my own words.

Let me pick "just looking around," since maybe I do not really know what Wealthy Affiliate is all about. Ace naturally explains what Wealthy Affiliate is, how it helps, and how I can tap into the community. It does not have live community data yet since this is a testing environment. Then it asks what kind of thing I am curious about building, or whether this is totally new territory. I have a business idea, I already run a business, or just exploring for now.

Let me say I am exploring, but I do have a business idea. It asks me to tell it what that is, what problem I am trying to solve, or who I would love to help.

Guiding Toward a Direction.

I say I want to work in the knitting world, since I like to knit. Not everyone even knows what a niche is before they start, so Ace handles that gracefully. It tells me knitting is a great lane with tons of people searching for patterns, techniques, and troubleshooting.

Then it gives me directions to consider. Do I want to sell knitted products I make, teach knitting to others, review gear and patterns, or should it pick for me? I go with reviewing gear and patterns.

It confirms that is solid, since people are actively hunting for honest takes on yarn quality, needle brands, and pattern difficulty. Then it asks where my future customers hang out. Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, a blog they would stumble on, or somewhere else? I go with Pinterest and Instagram for now.

One of our big goals here is efficiency in response times. If you have used generative AI, you know some models are really slow, and we cannot have someone sitting there waiting 30 seconds for an answer. That is something we have been very careful about in development.

The Game Plan and Signup.

After a certain stage, Ace builds a game plan. In this case, Knitting Gear HQ, a hosted website. Here is what I get: a hosted website organized by gear type with reviews live and affiliate links ready, five to eight Pinterest pins and Instagram posts promoting my top reviews, and an email signup form on my site.

These are just examples for now, but the point is that people will be guided naturally and will actually start building out their business the moment they walk into the back office.

Then it shows what you get. Free credits (the credit system will be very tokenized like it is now, and these numbers will be adjusted based on how it all works), community, no card required, free stays free, and your plan stays yours.

So I just enter my name and email, hit save hub, and I am in. The crew starts assembling and it opens my workspace. It also notes that a sign-in link has been sent to my email. The signup is going to be very straightforward. A magic link, just like most things these days. Very efficient. Then you open your workspace, game plan and all, and move forward with your business.

Why This Matters for Affiliates.

This works with any type of business. One of the core ideas is that you will be able to drive any relevant traffic to this. People with a business, people looking to scale, people looking to start. Ace guides them and converts them into a free member building a hub inside Wealthy Affiliate.

This external Ace environment will keep evolving and improving based on conversions and what we see happening. Ultimately we want to make it as easy and natural as possible for you, as a member and as an affiliate, to promote this platform to others and introduce them to Wealthy Affiliate, to Ace, to the community, and to the environment. There is a huge revenue generation opportunity on the affiliate side, and it all starts with a great homepage and the ability to convert.

Now I Want to Hear From You.

I want your feedback on the FEEL of this. Not the fill... the feel.

If you were a newcomer, what would you expect to see? How would you expect Ace to behave? How would you expect it to look? Would you be engaged by this, and would you want to start building your business through Ace?

We are going to make adjustments as we move forward, and once we have real data and conversion numbers, that will guide us too. But I really want your gut reaction to the flow.

Jump down in the comments. I am going to have another sip of this Italian Pilsner. Hope you have had an awesome week, and an even better one ahead. Catch you next week.