I remember it like yesterday...

We had just wrapped up the "go live" of our website. We put the final touches on it. We had set-up our payment, had the membership ready to go, had the sales page in place, and..

WealthyAffiliate.com was born! (please don't laugh when you look at our original site below)

When we launched, we were a keyword list service. That's it. We charged $29.99 per month or $359.88 per year.

We provided people with a list of handpicked keywords for PPC a few times throughout the month.

Carson and I were both very successful online as PPC marketers for 3 years leading up to launching WA. We had extensive knowledge Google Adwords, and prior to BingAds.com, Overture.com which was the PPC platform for Yahoo. We knew that we could teach others what we know. The principles, the process, the business.

Our Principles & Ethics Started Off Early

Looking back at our very first site, in the very first paragraph we made the following statement:

"First of all we need to agree on something. Making money on the internet is not easy. If it was easy everyone would be doing it, making millions of dollars a year and doing it from the comfort of their own home. If you are lazy and are not willing to put in some hard work please leave the site now as this isn’t a scam to make a quick buck."

Even back then, companies were touting how it was so "easy" to get rich quick. Every single one of those companies is no longer in business or they have gone through 10 different name changes and product names and sometimes they even changed their name.

In today's landscape, things have only gotten worse and more and more people are getting taken advantage of on the concept of "getting rich quick". However, we have not changed in 11 years. We teach PROPER, ETHICAL business online and we continue to do so to this day.

Teaching Others What Works, What We KNOW.

We knew if we could create success and teach people the exact process of how to do so, they could replicate our success.

Keywords were a huge component of success back then as they are now. If you can get traffic from relevant keywords, you can build a business online. Exactly the same as it is today, 11 years later (other than the fact there is way more opportunity today than in 2005)

In hindsight, it was an ugly site. Our sales messaging was unclear. We didn't know much about being a merchant at all, we only had experience being affiliates. But we had to learn by doing and we had to grow up quick as a business.

We didn't know what it would become. We didn't know if we would ever have a paying member. We didn't know if it would evolve. We didn't know how people would react to our service.

But someone decided to be the first member. Then we had another. Then another...

Here WE Stand. As a Community. 11 Years Later.

A lot of things can change in business. A lot of things have for us in the last 11 years. We have gone from a keyword list site delivering a few keyword lists per month, to the top recommend and most active internet marketing/affiliate marketing platform in the world.

When we started out we had no idea what WA would become, but keeping "helping others" at the tip of our tongue and as a focus with every update, every evolution, every innovation, it has allowed Wealthy Affiliate to evolve into what it is today.

We have never been stronger as a community. We have never been as elaborate as a platform. We have never had a better vision as to how WA is going to better serve, YOU. You were our focus back in 2005, you are absolutely our focus now.

Here's to the next 11!