An Open Letter to my WA "Coach"
Hi David,
Yes, it’s me again.
First, let me congratulate you….your marketing strategy is brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that it convinced me to join WA under your name rather than the other 40+ review sites I perused. Whew!
You are a master marketer.
You see, when I joined back in January 2012, there was no free 10 day trial period where a curious IM newbie could get a peek into the WA community before plunking down a payment. Since I wasn’t exactly clear on how the whole IM world worked, I was quite precautious and researched WA by reading through pages and pages of helpful reviews. Most were very informative, but yours, David, yours really spoke to me.
Over and over again the one WA “flaw” exposed on all the review sites was this - there was TOO much material provided; a newbie may have difficulty navigating the site. Your offer to provide FREE one-on-one coaching, (“an untouchable resource” as you described it) was the tipping point for me – I’d be a fool to turn down such an offer! (Wow, and do you really charge $500 a month for your coaching prowess? You just have to be good, right?)
Well, based on your auto-responder email that I have received each of the 72 times I have attempted to reach you, you must be extremely busy. It says you get over 20 emails a day and that it can take 24 hours to get back to me. Wow, you must be helping loads of people because it’s been EIGHT months since I’ve joined thru your link and still I haven’t “seen you on the inside”. (Hey, I apologize, my last email was a bit strongly worded, I was impatient to hear from you. )I know you are busy helping others succeed and providing at “no cost whatsoever – to give one-on-one coaching to use the site effectively”. And you must be very busy raking in all those commissions, too. I know, that all takes time from your schedule.
David, you’ll be happy to know, once I joined WA I quickly learned I didn’t need your free expert coaching after all! I found some wonderfully helpful people here and they don’t even seem to care that I signed up for WA under your affiliate link. As a matter of fact, I’d call these people magnanimous; they generously give their time to help me and others here at WA just because they WANT to. I know, you can’t believe it, right? Me too.
I have discovered that along with my WA membership I have inherited hundreds of personal coaches and trainers and a great community to cheer me on, so I just don’t need you.
It’s funny, I don’t see you around the WA community. Where are you, anyway? I sure would love to have a good chat with you someday, and I bet all the others waiting for you to “be a mentor on the inside” would also love to “see you on the inside”
I see that today your review page is still going strong and sits comfortably with first page rankings. Yes, you are a brilliant marketer. Brilliant coach? Well, we’ll see.
Your devoted trainee-in-waiting, Lisa
Recent Comments
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A lot of so called guru's promise the world and deliver nothing. Just goes to show that good ad copy can sell anything. Take a lesson from this in your marketing appeal to your readers emotions, make it a good experience for them and follow through on a promise if you make one. I have to promise people a specific outcome on my site and I do everything it takes to make it happen. I really have no idea who this guy is but it burns me to see how marketers say all this puffery and have nothing to back it up.
David, kudos to you for doing the right thing for your website readers. Because you do that, they'll stick with you.
Very true. When it comes to the Internet, certain actions tend to be misjudged pretty easily, and silence is the most prolific example.
Y'know, that's a sad story, but I sometimes wonder what will happen to my sites when/if I stop tinkering with them. If I don't sell them, that is. But it does seem pretty counterproductive to be intentionally dismissive.
This really highlights that we need to be very careful what we, as affiliates, promise people.
A positive to take from this experience is that David could have referred you to much worse places than WA. He actually did you a favor and brought you to a community where you can get the help you need getting started.
What I am going to say next is not defending David so please do not take it that way.
You emailed him 72 times?!?!? (hoping this was just a random number from a drama standpoint)
Now David should have been fully prepared to back up his promises and he obviously was not OR did not anticipate how many requests he was going to get for help.
Let's assume for a second that David has referred, oh i don't know, a couple hundred people to WA.
What if they all emailed him 72 times like you did....
That would be almost 15,000 emails and quite overwhelming for anyone....
Again, this is not defending him but rather highlighting that David may be very good at building sites and ranking to drive traffic. I doubt he was prepared to be bombarded with emails.
Should he have expected he would get some questions via email?
Hell yes as he offered the support...
Awhile back I asked K&C a question relating to email marketing and if there is a cut off point that you can no longer continue to email back and forth with someone.
72 emails would certainly be well past that point...
I think there are a few great things you can take from this experience.
1. You know exactly what keyword David is using to rank his site.
2. You know exactly what David did through his email campaign that convinced you to sign up.
3. You know where David is deficient.
Taking this knowledge and turning it into a positive can make you very much better than he is at what he is doing.
Glad you made it to WA and obviously you like what you have found as you are still a member.
There is no sense in spending any time wasted on negativity in our business. It serves no useful purpose.
I wasted a chunk of money back in 2007 on a program that was completely worthless but, through trying to use it someone referred me here to WA. The money spent on that junk was well worth finding WA alone.
Best of luck and keep working at it every day.
Joniki, no, I was using just a tad bit of hyperbole there. I emailed him several times the first month(a totally reasonable number of times), then not again until this month just to see if there was a possibility he was not a ghost. You're right, if I got 72 emails from someone, I'd be thinking stalker. We know he has been out there at least 3 years, so if he had gotten more responses than expected, he could have pulled the plug a long time ago.
Top reply...Jonki & Lisa just keep going girl ..
Who need this distracted David dude anyway!
This reminds me...
I remember once when Gatorade promised me to make me a better athlete but when I drank their syrup I was still the same athlete? WTH!
This is very interesting. It annoys me when I hear things like this. People need to back their promises on their websites. I'm surprised none of these 40+ comments said that they never hear from him. What's his website called? I'd like to check it out.
Hey Lisa,
I felt the exact same way you did when I signed up, 3 years ago! I too signed up through David K with the promise of coaching and guidance once I joined. Sent numerous e mail (maybe not quite as many as you :)) and never heard back from this guy. I have moved on, and could care less. While he might know and understand how to market his site to get sign ups, as far as I am concerned he is no marketing genius. If WA wasn't so valuable his retention rate would be 0% because of his lack of follow through.
I see Kyle said he may not even be a member here any more, but it is so odd because his member rank is always pretty high. I just checked and it is at 92 now, but it was much higher a few months ago. I am here every day interacting, I blog, chat etc.. and my rank struggles to stay in the 80's. Not sure why his remains where it is at considering he is a ghost.
Anyway, like you said, you just don't need him anyway. There are a ton of helpful folks here and they help because that is what it is all about.
Don't sweat it, just move on, Best of luck with your IM endeavors.
josh
Wow, Josh, I find this new info fascinating. Not only is this ghost here, but he must be quite active to have a ranking like that. thanks for telling your story. I didn't know he had been around so long. Best of luck to you, too.
Lisa
That's interesting Josh. I have wondered about member rankings and how "ghosts" rank ok . K & C's algo for calculating the rankings obviously gives a decent amount of juice to those that bring in a lot of new members.
My understanding is that you do not have to be a member to promote WA. Given you should expect better success if you knew what was "inside" by being a member. I am happy to be corrected on this!
The next question I ask myself is : why not quit WA under my current user name and resign with a new user name using the affiliate link of an active member who has been invaluable to me?? they would then benefit from their generous donation of time and energy!!
Yes, you would obviously lose your "old" WA blog but if you were active inside WA, people here would soon realize that you are one and the same person and adapt to the new user name quickly.
Cheers, Phil
@the filbert
We at one time opened up the affiliate program for a short period to "outside" people. However, we didn't like the idea of people not knowing and using Wealthy Affiliate promoting us, so we ended that program soon after it was started. You have to be a member of WA to promote WA, but this doesn't mean that you have to be a member to run website promoting WA (anyone could have a website promoting WA, even if they were a past member). Maybe this is the case here.
Nevertheless, I think most people, regardless of the path they took to come here to WA feel as though they are in good hands once they see what is inside the members area. :)
@ stadium..right now as I look up at the rankings I am 123 and I wonder why it is so high, because I make a few posts here and there and am in the chat room only occassionally. Why so, I cannot tell you.
@ Kyle I'm not sure I understand this part of your statement :
"You have to be a member of WA to promote WA, but this doesn't mean that you have to be a member to run website promoting WA (anyone could have a website promoting WA, even if they were a past member). Maybe this is the case here."
Are you trying to say that people are promoting WA on their website and are not affiliates?? Because really, that just does not make sense.
If this guys ad copy was so compelling you would think he was a pro. And a pro would do this and not have affiliate links???
I think everyone agrees, they have looked to IM as a means for another income source.
Cheers, phil
to lmc6837.... I really wonder if "being active" in the community gives you a better ranking... take for example the number 5 guy here in WA https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/marat I have never seen him in chat , no blogs, no forum posts, no training...have asked around and noone has seen him being "active"....but guess what? he leads a bucket load of people to WA as can be seen by his "following" and who he "follows"....number 5 hey...and never participated..... go figure!
Perhaps "David" may not even be a member any longer? Seems crazy that they would never follow through with their plans and I am sorry to hear about that. In saying this, I am glad that you have made WA your home Lisa and like many others, you have found that this is a place that truly cares. People care about one another, we care about ALL of our members, and we are all working towards similar goals and willing to help each other to achieve those goals.
Of course, my door is always open if you ever need a hand with anything, just let me know.
Thanks, Kyle. I really appreciate your note. I'm sure he is no longer here, or if he ever was. It's just frustrating because he is still promoting WA and I think it can give off a very wrong impression. I hate that he's making commissions off WA people.
you all have been wonderful, and really do help because you want to. thanks.
Actually if you think about it, it's a very good thing that David is on the first page of Google. After reading a number of the comments, it seems you aren't the only person who signed up for the program just to get free coaching from him. This guy's website is, in a way, an effective advertisement for WA!
Which means he deserves to get paid for reeling in all you awesome people. That's the purpose of the Super Affiliate program, isn't it? It's one thing leading to the next. He wants money, so he creates his site, and you want what's on his site, so you join WA, and WA pays David his money. :)
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HI Lisa. I'm playing devil's advocate, but it's worth remembering that sometimes websites do get abandoned through no fault of the owner but continue on year-after-year because the hosting keeps being paid. I read of one case where a site owner unfortunately passed away and although it was earning a substantial income, none of his family could or would take it on. The article also mentioned that PayPal hardly ever gets informed that an account holder is deceased simply because users don't keep a record for others to find that they were holding money there. If you have a site or other online assets, it's worth adding a physical printout of the details to keep with a copy of your will, so that your executors can at least decide whether or not to try and recover or sell these. Just my 2¢.
Hi Richard. That is a very good suggestion - to make a print out and include passwords and such, too. Thanks for reminding me about that. As for my guy though, I suspect he has gone on to bigger and better things and has intentionally left his website available to snag any prospects with no effort on his part. I just feel dumb for being one of those prospects. At least now with the free trial people can see that a coach is not necessary.
Thanks for the comment.