Wealthy Affiliate Is Opening A Door For You

The focus of Wealthy Affiliate training is "affiliate blogging" as I see it. It means starting a blog-style website, and promoting affiliate products within the content. That's as narrow of a definition as I can think of.

However, the skills you learn here have much broader uses, and they will open up many doors for you. There are many types of online businesses out there, including:

• ecommerce
• Amazon FBA
• local SEO
• consulting
• drop shipping

Probably more too, but those are just what I could think of off the top of my head.

Themain important skill you learn here, as I see it, is the ability to build a website. That's a huge hurdle for most people who want to start an online business. Most people wouldn't even be able to tell you the difference between a Shopify store and a WordPress blog.

Even if you are not an "expert" website builder right now, the foundations you have can still go a very long way. For example, you currently have access to excellent hosting and know how to log into your website to publish content.

That's big.

As you move through the training, you're going to learn more useful skills like:

• writing articles
• social media management
• wordpress troubleshooting
• web design
• email marketing
• marketing funnels

As you grow your business, you'll also be (at least in my experience) forced to learn how business works.

• types of business entities
• tax structures
• how to budget
• investing in the future of your business
• competition
• business strategy design & implementation
• joint ventures
• customer service
• engagement

Wealthy Affilaite doesn't teach those things per se, but this is the "open door" I'm talking about.

Wealthy Affiliate Is Like A Incubator For People Starting A Business With No Previous Experience

There are many Wealthy Affiliate members who no longer actually run their affiliate blogs. I've seen some people launch consulting business, or YouTube channels, or even selling their own products online.

Though they are not "affiliate bloggers", they are still online business owners. They still need to be able to run a website and manage their business "in the cloud". Maybe some skills they learned at Wealthy Affiliate, and maybe some skills they learned elsewhere as their interests shifted.

They started at Wealthy Affiliate though!

In my opinion, Wealthy Affiliate is a fun, enthusiastic, helpful community of online entrepreneurs which makes it a great startup incubator for folks like myself who want to start a business, but have no formal training.

I started out in 2010 with no marketing degree. No web design skills. No business training. I didn't even have a Facebook account or a smartphone. Now I run a six figure online business worth probably close to a million dollars. Pretty amazing results, right?

That's just part of the picture though.

Now, I feel empowered to move into other areas if I really wanted to. For example, I think cryptocurrenc art is a unique idea I feel like i coulde execute on if I wanted to. I saw this website the other day and think it could be really big in the future. Imagine buying art with a QR code on the back to store your wealth?

Cool, right?

Though I have no plans to go into this space right now (I'm also not affiliated with them or advertising either BTW), I just thought it was interesting to see the idea and consider that I could actually do it if I wanted to.

That confidence came from opening the door to online business thanks to Wealthy Affiliate!

Becoming A Licenced Broker Of High Ticket Products

After publishing this article in 2021, I had a referral tell me a very cool story about his journey. I won't reveal his niche or his site, but the general idea is very cool.

He got into a niche in which he had extensive experience and promoted a company on his website which had a "good reputation" and was high paying. Unfortunately, he started receiving reports from commenters that the company (which did have an affiliate program), wasn't actually fulfilling orders. Then, he tried to sign up and purchase the product, and confirmed that the company was just ignore orders, emails, etc.

Though investigating all this, and looking for alternatives, he ended up becoming a licensed broker of a specific product in his niche!

Now he uses his website to collect emails and receive phone calls, and he can direct people the correct products and services, while receiving commissions for each recommendation.

His journey is unique. Although he doesn't have an "affiliate blog" per se, like you learn in the training, he did use the WA training to achieve his goals of running an online business. He learned how to build a website, do effective SEO, build lead-generating contact forms (email marketing), and research companies to work with.

Of course, he added a lot of his spices to the soup, so it's not like he was following the training step by step to get where he is now, but the story is a perfect demonstration of how Wealthy Affiliate is opening doors for you. He had to figure out some stuff on his own, the beginning steps and the foundation to the business started here at Wealthy Affiliate.

Landing A Job As An Ecommerce Manager

Another member used his skills here to do a kind of double-jump to land a great job. First, he build an Ebay store on his own, but then he used the skills he learned here in Wealthy Affiliate to increase the traffic to his store. With that solid experiernce under his belt, he was able to land a job in the same field.

"The first 6 years I worked on an eBay shop using skills I learned here to improve traffic and sales. I sold that in 2017 for $7.5K after landing a new job as an e-commerce manager for my current employer. The skills I learned here were crucial in landing that job and continue to improve my skills."

I keep saying that the skills you learn here in Wealthy Affiliate are worth a lot. What's crazy is that in many cases you CANNOT LEARN THEM IN ANY TRADITIONAL EDUCATION SETTING. It's not like you can go to college for blogging and SEO, yet that's exactly what modern companies need.

With Wealthy Affiliate, you're basically frontrunning traditional business education and learning skills that are relevant right now!

Starting His Own Publishing Business And Membership Website With Online Courses

Though I push people to follow the beaten path and build an affiliate blog because I think it's the easiest thing to do, knowing how to build websites opens up a lot of possiblities. Not every website has to be an affiliate blog! You can sell your own ebooks, start a membership website, create a forum, or build websites for local businesses. Here's a great example from Mel:

"I came to WA with an already established publishing business, books & ebooks and I've sold products online before. Ecommerce sites & ebay.
As a result of being with WA I have been able to expand my publishing and I just started a membership site and am adding courses there.
I will continue to learn and level up as I go along. Looking at some possibilities now."

Renting Out Timeshares In Mexico

"I started with affiliate marketing, too. But I started making money when I built a website advertising travel opportunities and renting out my timeshare weeks (of which I have too many to use). It took a while to learn all the ins-and-outs and I couldn't have started off without going through all the rest of it. But now, if I saw another opportunity, I'm pretty sure I could put together another website quickly and avoid all the dumb newbie mistakes I made! All through WA.

I started out like everyone else, building a site, figuring out how to monetize it, adding quality content. I started out with BakingNaturally[dot]org, which got me comfortable with SEO and all the ins-and-outs of online business. I got accepted by Amazon, Rakuten, then by several vendors through Pepperjam. I expanded to Pinterest (really active for recipes, BTW) and Instagram. I still work on it regularly, but it hasn't yet been a real money-maker.
Because of my training and experience through BakingNaturally, I started thinking about other areas of my life where I could build a site that would be interesting AND make money. My partner and I travel quite a bit, spending months each year in Mexico. We also own quite a few weeks of timeshare, and we never use them all. So together, we formed an LLC, "Cowboy Concierge", where we offer travel tips and post listings for weeks we've booked in Mexico.
Since then, things have taken a huge upswing.... [full post: $5000 Sale Thanks To Wealthy Affiliate]"

If you weren't doing affiliate blogging and building niche websites, what type of online business would you start?