10 Year Anniversary At Wealthy Affiliate!
It's finally here - my 10 year anniversary at Wealthy Affiliate and 10 years of affiliate marketing.
When I started out at Wealthy Affiliate in 2010, I had no idea about the journey that was waiting for me.
There's been lots of ups and downs along the way, but it was all worth it. I've got a thriving online business, and a bright future ahead. I'm proud of what I've accopmlished, and excited to see what will happen in the next decade of business.
My #1 Tip For Succcess After 10 years Of Affiliate Marketing
I've been thinking about this for a while, and if I could distill all of my various bits of advice is a single, "best of the best" piece of advice, it would be this:
TAKE DAILY ACTION NO MATTER WHAT
There are two reasons why this bit of advice works, and gets results.
1. It sets up the right mindset. Rather than having your business be a "side project" that you tinker around with when you have free time, it becomes a habit. Much like going to the gym, when you stop going, you feel it. You feel week.
Working on your business daily means that you brain rewires itself to need to have that business time each day. When you don't work on it, you feel it.
2. Small daily actions are sustainable and motivating. If you have to update 300 posts on your website because you uninstalled a plugin and it caused formatting errors, it might be physically impossible to do that all in a single day.
But 10 posts a day for a month and you can get it done.
The same principle applies to any other goal. Looking at a single goal and trying to rush towards it can be super frustrating. Every day becomes a failure. But setting a small goal which you can succeed at each day, and which moves you towards your bigger goal is a much more sustainable workload.
I find that it helps me focus on small things I CAN do, rather than big things which aren't working no matter how hard I try.
Zoom Out
Building a profitable online business can seem like it takes forever. It can seem like you put in a lot of work with no results. It can seem like you're wasting your time.
But zoom out and you'll see that results are happening. Here's the results of working for 5 years on one of my affiliate websites.
June 2015
May 2016
May 2017
May 2018
May 2019
May 2020
It took five years to get to a quarter million pageviews. Consistent work. Publishing weekly. Editing. Updating. Brainstorming.
From those views alone, the blog earns about $3,500 per month, and that doesn't even count the affiliate income.
In another five years, that could be $7,000 per month and a half a million views. 10 years after that, the site could be earning close to $20k/month.
I know a lot of people start online businesses for freedom, myself included. I'm not sure I'll want to take the website that far. We'll just have to see. I might just sell it at some point. Right now I'm working on getting better systems in place so I can do less work but still grow the site.
Always A New Challenge
The ideal situation would be to grow the website income without much of my own involvement. We'll see how well I can build out a system, but it's a challenging job for me. I've never built a "system" before.
There's always a new challenge in the world of affiliate marketing. At first, it's just understanding how the process of how things work. Then it's understanding WordPress. Then it's getting traffic. Then, it's getting sales. Then, it's getting consistent sales. Then, it's diversifying. Then, it's outsourcing. Then, it's balancing work and life.
There's always something! But there's always a solution too. We continually face new challenges because we continually succeed.
Where do you think your business will be in 10 years?
Recent Comments
171
Thank you for sharing this! It motivates me!
I work on my websites or anything related to it every single day, 7 days a week, some days I do more and on some I do less, but I always do something. It is definitely my business and not "something on the side".
I once came across your website months or maybe a year before I joined Wealthy Affiliate, and I remember going over it, clicking through your menu, and reading an article. The reason I remember it is because I liked the name of your website, something with a cup of coffee ;-) Then I found this same website here on WA, and it turns out you are a member here :-)
Congratulations on your 10 year anniversary!!
Hi Nathaniell... Your perseverance brought you to this point... I found your website & now I am here, at my beginning, too.
You have crossed paths with many people, helping them in their journey, and many of their lives are better for it.
You can be proud of your accomplishments here at Wealthy Affiliate!
Congratulations & Stay on the path to success!
Anne
Hi Nathaniell,
Having patience and faith that the WA methods will work over time is what motivates me. One and a half years into my online business I only have 69 posts published. I cannot expect to be earning much at all until I have written hundreds of posts. There is lots to do one step at a time.
In 10 years I expect to have two websites both with at least 300 posts written. And combined generating $10k a month in income.
I earned an average of $9.5K a month for the last 10 years of my career before retiring. My goal is to eclipse that with my affiliate marketing business. I have far less time left to live than you and I want to leave a legacy for my family and young aspiring creative artists through scholarships. Time is of the essence.
Thanks for a very thoughtful post. I salute you for your success and wish you even more in the future.
Cheers.
Edwin
Those are awesome goals Edwin, and I know you can reach them. 10 years and 10k/month with an online business is definitely doable!
Congratulations Nathaniel! Your post was amazing, but I think it’s even more amazing all of the positive things people have to say about you in the comments.
For a “to yourself” type of guy, you’ve definitely impacted quite a lot of people in a positive way—that’s a huge accomplishment. Many extroverts don’t impact the amount of people you have.
I hope to say the same, and best wishes for the next 10 years to be even bigger and better than the first.
You definitely can replicate this, and do even better Tiffany! Your blog is doing great, and you're prepared for liftoff! Sounds like you have a really good content schedule going and are seeing consistent growth so I'm excited to see where things are headed next.
See more comments
Thanks for this. My first day here and your posts are genuine. Plus you've shown longevity. I'm still pretty confused as to what I'm doing here as reading your stuff it seems like traffic through your blo, with little mention of affiliate sales. So, maybe I here to be a blog writer? I suspect all will become clearer with time :)
Follow the training, Anne, and all will become clearer.
It is good to have you with us.
Cassi
Thanks :)
You are welcome, Anne.