What Does the Journey to Success Look Like?
Hey Everyone,
Today, I want to get into the nitty gritty of success, and what the journey to success looked like for me, and what it may look like for you within the online world. I think this will give you a clearer picture of what that process looks like.
What the Journey Looks Like
1. Building a Solid Foundation:
One of the most common questions I get is, “How long does it take to achieve success?” Whether you’re a newcomer or a seasoned member, understanding the journey is crucial. The first step? You need to build a solid foundation for your business.
Think of it like constructing a skyscraper—you can’t build something huge without a strong base. In the world of online business, this foundation consists of your website, brand, content base, and most importantly, a clear understanding of the process—from creating a website to making money. These fundamentals are what we focus on in the core and step-by-step training here at Wealthy Affiliate.
2. The Traffic Component:
Once your foundation is set, the next focus is building an audience. Without people visiting your site, you won’t have the opportunity to generate revenue, no matter how great your business idea is. This is true whether you’re running an online affiliate business or an offline company like an electrical service.
At Wealthy Affiliate, we provide the tools, training, and education you need to attract traffic. This starts with getting indexed and ranked in search engines, but it doesn’t stop there. We also cover additional traffic generation strategies like YouTube, email marketing, social media, and even artificial intelligence techniques. The more traffic you bring in, the more opportunities you have.
3. Monetizing Your Traffic:
With traffic in place, you can move on to generating revenue. While affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to monetize, there are many other options depending on your business model. Once you’ve established a solid foundation and traffic, you can explore different monetization techniques to scale your business and income.
4. How Long Does Success Take?
Now, the big question—how long does it take? That really depends on the actions YOU take and the effort you put in. It’s important to give yourself time to succeed. For most people, it doesn’t happen in the first week, though some might earn their first commission early on.
For me, it took about three months to earn my first commission, and around six months to see consistent revenue. By the time I hit the one-year mark, I was able to go full-time in the online business world. Your journey may look a little different, but the key is to follow the steps: build your foundation, generate traffic, and monetize.
Your Journey...
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic! What does your journey look like so far? Have you faced challenges along the way?
Feel free to drop your questions or share your journey in the comments below. Let’s inspire each other as we continue pushing forward in our shared journey of success, and advancing our knowledge, skills, and abilities within the online world.
Recent Comments
49
Hi Kyle, thanks so much for explaining this! Yes, it all takes time, and I'm not in a hurry to get the money rolling in, so I'm not doing too much earning now! But this week, I'm going to get down to adding lots of affiliate links to my nicely maturing websites! So, this is a timely vlog!
For me, it's about becoming an authority on my various sites, so I put my main effort into that. I know the money will come, but first, I want to get the sites solid and smoothly functioning!
It all depends on your priorities. I know driving traffic is happening, especially now that I'm broadcasting to my SM platform, and my email list is growing, so I hope I'll be raking it in before the end of my first year I'll be raking it in!! LOL!
Thanks so much for your story and constant encouragement!
See you for beer!
Best
L
Nice work Linden on your progress. The thing that I have seen over the years in my business and in others is that the time you invest NOW, always pays off later (and sometimes forever).
So you are planting seeds all the time, and through time these are going to continue to grow but there is patience need to see them through to fruition.
Back in the day Carson and I used to notice that summers were always strong months for us, but things tapered off sometimes in the winter. The reason was we used to be much more "slack "in the summer in terms of productivity, and it didn't show face until the winter months. It took us many years to realize this, and adjust (and now we are steady in terms of productivity throughout the year).
That proves that investment now, is always for the pay off later in business. This means skills, failures you learn from, and all the test we do in business.
We are first, helping people. Then we are aligning products with them that are relevant and that they often times already want.
The only thing we need to really focus on through time once we have the formula down is growing the people part of our business. :)
This is such a good thing to keep in mind! Great things do require time to be built. If you are going for monetization through Google AdSense there is no rushing the process. They need to know that your site is here to stay and will continue delivering quality content.
So, it wouldn't matter if you spent 3 weeks just grinding away making your website the best it could be, they still want the longevity invested as well.
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
Angela M :)
Yes, absolutely the case. Don't rush to success, because it can wait and you are going to skip steps (critical ones) if you are trying to race to an imaginary finish line.
I think a lot of people view building a business much like they are 'trying something that might work', and they need to find out fast if it does. This approach will lead to imminent failure because people will tend not to give themselves adequate time and effort required to achieve success.
The reality is this is BUSINESS. You can succeed in business, anyone can. You have all the training, tools and mentorship to succeed with a business here. The only missing piece is a bit of hard work, a bit of dedication, and time. This is a capability for anyone.
Good morning Kyle,
Thank you for an interesting video on your journey to success, Kyle, it's always interesting to hear how people started out online. I wonder if you were starting from scratch right now, if you would do the same thing! You must have seen so many changes along the way, probably the biggest change being AI, possibly.
It's interesting that you made your first commission in month three, Kyle; I'm sure that must've been a good feeling. I had my website professionally built back in 2007, WordPress wasn't particularly nice back then for people like me! I remember I made my first sale within 24 hours. However, my web designer at the time had built the back office of the website so that I could add content before the front-end was live. So, I kind of had a head start as the website had a considerable amount of content available before it went live.
If I remember rightly, my first sale was a wheelbarrow for about a £5 commission! The website was really designed to be an AdSense site at the time, but we also had affiliate products which seemed to work.
I believe the biggest key to success is consistency; as I have mentioned before, I have an offline business, which, to a certain extent, can hold the online business back. That will change soon.
Wishing you a fantastic day.
Roy
If I had a budget, I would probably build my foundation and head into PPC. Meanwhile I would also be building out content with efficiency, getting engagement within the content, and working that approach (as we cover in the core training).
But with a small budget, I would move into the PPC world in the earlier stages, and I wouldn't be afraid to test new things, I also wouldn't assume there is one way to bake the cake (so to speak). That is how I operated back then, and how I operate now.
Sounds like you had a developer ahead of their time a bit, I was very much manual in the early stages of my business (2002-2004), and if you remember, SiteRubix was initially a website builder and we were "drag and drop" before that was ever even a thing.
And that is so cool, a wheelbarrow being your first commission! lol What a fun world we live in on the internet. Consistency is key, and the desire to keep pushing even when things seem "hard" is what will equip anyone for long term success. ;)
Good morning Kyle,
Thank you for your reply, Kyle, it's an interesting subject.
That's interesting to hear regarding PPC. That's good to hear, follow the training and get engagement.
It sounds like you are a fan of PPC, Kyle, which I understand and makes sense. So, in other words, experimenting.
I believe my first web developer was probably ahead of his time, Kyle; he certainly seemed to know his job and what he built worked well. That first money making website cost me £2000 back in 2007. But at the time, I would not have even considered trying to build my own website, I felt I had enough to do just creating the content.
I must admit, I didn't know that SiteRubix was initially a website builder.
It was encouraging to have a sale within 24 hours and of course, with Google AdSense, the website was earning daily. That's so true about moving forward when things seem hard, that's probably even harder than being consistent!
Have a great day.
Roy
I enjoyed the message Kyle and I am happy to hear you had your first commission at 3 months. Though, it does make me wonder if I’m doing this right. My first site has been up 8 months and my other one for 5 months, but I haven’t seen any revenue yet.
For the first site, pre WA, I was told not to add affiliate links until I gained decent traffic and my site matured, so didn’t add any till around the 4 month mark. My second site is doing good w impressions but still no sales. It’s a little bit disheartening at the moment. 😞
I've got just one niche, but I'm considering adding another two like you have. But maybe that's part of the reason it's taking a bit longer to see success for you, you've diluted your focus by having more than one niche?
My thinking is it might be better to think like an archeologist and dig around with different niches and see if there's anything there that appeals to people.
However, I suspect Kyle and others more knowledgeable than me would say be like an engineer and choose one niche and plan it all out and work the plan.
I think it's difficult to combine both approaches. However, AI and the ease of creating good content may well be a strong argument for multiple niches.
I'd like to know what others think about whether it's better to try a few different niches to see if one or more are a better fit or more popular or just focus on one?
My two interests in the beginning were helping people lose weight and playing guitar. I chose the weight loss one first at random. Then I joined WA and started the guitar site 3 months later.
Maybe I spread myself too thin but it is interesting to watch the progress of them side by side. You can distinctly see the difference in the amount of impressions each one gets.
You are doing thing right, this is just your journey and your story. If you are doing the same thing and not getting results after one month, adjust. I would never recommend doing the same thing over and over if you are not achieve results.
It could be the content you are published, are you getting engagement within the content, are you focusing on too many projects at once, the pages that you have seen rank, is there a type of content those are?
Are you being consistent with your business, or because you are focusing on double the sites, are you half as consistent.
Also if you are getting traffic/impressions to particular pages on your website and no sales, is the flow of relevance there? What are you selling? Are you getting click-throughs.
Traffic is the basis of all success. Once you have that, then product relevance and how you align it with your audience (whilst building trust with them in your content) is what will lead to revenue.
There are many sources of traffic, and many products/services you can promote. So the opportunity will always be there, just have to get the right flow going and you WILL, sometimes it just takes a bit more time for some. :)
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Hey Kyle, thanks for sharing this video. I have been writing on Medium, Substack, Newsbreak, and a few other platforms. When I try to use your affiliate link, the links disappear and only the text shows after saving the article. While editing the article, you can see the links but not after you save the changes to the article. However, all my other affiliate links work fine there. They don't usually hide the links, I have a YouTube SEO tool and that link displays fine on the same article. What could be the problem?