Before Creating Trainings - Do You Know What You Are Talking About?
I have been here at WA for a couple of months now, and love the training I get here and all the support.
I must however say that I have realized one thing about trainings. Even though there are every day created many valuable and amazing trainings, there also seems to be some of not that high quality (or even with inaccurate information) and a lot of repetitions.
I am writing this to encourage all of us to think about one thing before creating a training - Do I know what I am talking about?
It seems that sometimes trainings are created for the sake of getting higher WA rank and not because it is something that we know about and can share with other members.
I think it would be great if we all become a bit more critical before creating training, so we are sure to keep a high level of the trainings.
Not that I think that it should only be people that have been here for years that do trainings. Many beginners often also have very relevant advice and experiences. And not to say that I don't think we should create training if it is experimental. I think the experimental approach and sharing these experiences can be very valuable.
But would be great if it is stated very clearly in the beginning of the training if it is experimental or something you really know about and or more guessing. Also if you know the long term effects of your advice.
So hope we can all keep supporting each other and sharing, but also remembering to keep the quality high and first of all focus on quality of both trainings and our blogs and not only quantity and our WA rank.
All the best,
Mikael
Recent Comments
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I wondered the same question, but what if I didn't know? That is a serious situation if it messes things up, right? A brand new person might not decide to go premium due to being misinformed, trust is very important.
Yes the accuracy of the training is very important. That is also why I in the post wrote that I think it would be great if people state very clearly in the beginning of a training if this is something that they really know the consequences of or if it is more experimental.
If I'm unsure of something I might post where do I ask? Who? And I'm not understanding consequences or experimental, sorry.
If there is any training about the topic by Kyle or in any of the live classes I always go there to check what they say about it. There are many people here at WA that has a lot of very good and helpful advice, but still good to be a bit critical about who to take advice from I think:-)
That is a good point you have brought up Mikael. I also like the input from Jay. I didn't know there was a way of pointing out outdated material. Good to know!
Thanks. And yes that is a great feature to know about - have used it before, and very good point to bring up in this discussion.
I wholeheartedly agree Mikael!!!
I had a boss once, who used to say, "Think about what you're doing." Too often, people just do something without taking the time to really think through what they are presenting. I have no doubt that when I do create my first training, that there will be many errors, but I'll be OK with the errors, as long as I took the time to really take time to think through the training, before presenting it to the community.
Really good insight Mikael!
Thank you. And thanks for your input.
And yes I agree that mistakes are of course ok. We all do our best. But yes it is very important that at least first we have given it some thought and also are aware that sometimes we do maybe not yet have the knowledge to advice about certain aspects.
Then we also know that when we get advice, we know it comes from somebody how knows the effect of what the are saying so we dont end up damaging our site and business when trying to optimize it.
It's interesting Mikael, but just a day or two ago, Loes made a comment about why there are so many outdated questions that appear in the WA search engine, and why there are so many of the same questions posted. My reply was that I wonder why they can't monitor it in some way. If you leave any feedback or comments on someone else's site in Site Rubix, if the feedback or comment isn't deemed "original", it's rejected, and you have to resubmit. I wonder why they don't have the same set up for submitting training.
I dont necessarily mind the repetion of questions or trainings so much as long as they are of high quality:-) Sometimes I think it can even be an advantage that there are more trainings created but with different names as it can be easier to find as we often look under different search terms.
I am sure that WA will keep developing in a positive direction and also come up with tools to improve on this. Just hope that maybe I can be a part of the positive development with raising issues like this so we can keep an even higher quality of training and eventually results from being here.
I too, like reading different responses to similar questions. It helps me tremendously! I like what you said about being a part of the "positive development". And yes, I have no doubt, that WA will continue to find ways to improve our experience.
Great chatting with you Mikael!
Hey Mikael.
I agree with you, 100 percent !
In fact I've been appalled by some of the member created training appearing recently, given that if a newcomer implemented some of the advice I'm seeing, it would have a detrimental effect on their site rather than a positive one.
I also really wish members wouldn't worry about their WA rank. It's merely a reflection of activity and engagement within the community here, members are being ranked by how much "noise" they make, to be blunt. It's not a benchmark of "success" in any shape or form and it certainly won't earn them a dime.
I can tell you for a fact that some of the most financially successful members here don't even rank anywhere in the WA "league" table, probably because they're far too busy earning to engage on the level necessary to do so.
I'm also aghast to see some of the catty remarks bandied about on an almost daily basis from those engaged in such "competitive" WA ranking and which obviously must be incredibly off-putting to newcomers when they witness this.
It's often an issue that members seem to get distracted by following, socialising, blogging and sadly even "competitive" ranking within WA to the detriment of their training. Unfortunately, in my experience, they end up complaining years later they've not earned anywhere near what they'd hoped for. It usually only takes a quick glance to reveal they've got at least ten times the content here on the WA platform than they do on their own site!
Jay (@magistudios) raised the issue yesterday, asking ambassadors to try and generate only quality content ... WA Ambassadors: Know Your Limits ... so please know that you're not alone in your thinking.
I can say for sure that many long term members – and I imagine the vast majority of newcomers too – will give their whole-hearted support to you and Jay in asking that going forward only quality content and training gets published here at WA from now on.
Rich.
Thanks for the feedback and for the link to Jays post.
It is tricky with the ambassador because I think it is really important that we support each other and I also really appreciate all the help I get. And I think it is amazing that people are so eager to help. But it should not only with the focus on the rank, but only when we really have something that helps.
As you say, some of the advice/trainings I am a bit worried about - especially when it is a topic I do not know enough about to know if the training/advice is a good idea to follow or not.
But great to know that there are many that agree to focus on the quality so we can keep helping each other going in the right direction.
Mikael
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Hi Mikael,
Thanks for sharing your opinion.
There is a system in place to prevent new premium members from creating training for a period of 3 months. So, this is a small solution to this with the anticipation that the new recruits will take their learning seriously.
But yes, there does seem to be some 'rank gaming training' out there.
Another new feature that has been added, is a request update button. See the attached image.
If you click this, a pop up form comes up where you can outline why you feel the training needs to be updated.
Hope this helps.
Jay
Thanks for your input Jay.
I think both of the features you mention are great. Thanks for pointing that out.
And overall I also think the abassador program and the ranking system work well in many ways - it helps to motivate and to keep people active. Just wanted to point out some of the down sides of it that I have also seen. Especially when it comes to training about certain topics a bit more technical - I want to be sure that the advice that I get will actually help and not mess up my site. Like I am with the trainings by you and Kyle.
So hoping to be able to help keep focus on quality with this post.
WOW!!! This makes the 4th thing I learned this week! I didn't know that "request update" had to do with someone being able to give feedback on the training. I thought that since some of the training is a few years old, that perhaps, the person who created the training may have updated the information, and clicking that button, would allow someone to get the most recent update. That's really good to know.
"rank gaming training"....so that's what it's called, lol.
Thanks Jay!
you are right Mikael, neither of those 'small solutions' help at all and I've seen people re-do my own domain email training twice without actually helping people set it up at all and neither will they refer people to the full training when they are desperately stuck - all about protecting rank in here
ultimately the issue needs taken up with Kyle by many people, I think many voices is the tipping point there as he encourages all newbies to produce and to help and I've spent the last week undoing help that has sunk people, all the great resources here and this is a major issue!
btw the 'request update' doesn't work to get someone to pull a bad training
Thanks for the comment Mary. Think it is great that so many people want to create trainings - just encouragíng that people fully understand the consequences of the advice they are giving so we share from experience and not just from theories:-)
understanding the consequences of advice, sigh, good luck with that but there are at least two superaffiliate posts I know of since 2015 warning people not to take any advice because of the level of damage when people don't do their homework first and lead others astray - it's also a plague across the internet because that same shooting of a half baked opinion without research standard is how people run sites too, and now there are plugins to help people copy and propagate that :D