Proof That These Lessons Are Worth Your Time

bySara626

108 followers

3 years ago

I'd like to offer a brief reassurance to those working hard on finding success with this program. It's always difficult to put in a lot of time and effort and not see immediate results. That can be so discouraging. Initially, it seems like you're making great progress as your website comes to life, but then comes the rather tedious job of building content, building trust, growing your SEO, getting comments, et cetera. It feels like the pace of your progress has slowed dramatically.

I've been there. Heck, I'm still there some days. I work a full-time day job, and my free time is stretched thin as I also manage two other websites in addition to my WA site, work on writing and publishing my third novel, and spend time marketing the book series and managing the various social media accounts. Unfortunately, that means I haven't been able to dedicate as much time to my WA website as I'd like to.

I also experienced some setbacks when I felt I had enough posts to start looking for affiliate partners. To my frustration, some of my top picks didn't work out; one accepted me but had no assets to use, and another seems to have a broken web page and doesn't allow me to even apply. Neither responded when I reached out to them via email. And then I was rejected by others I reached out to. Google Adsense denied my application. Another company accepted me and then turned around and rescinded my affiliate status with no explanation a few hours later. I struggled to find programs within my niche that would even have a chance of bringing in decent commissions. (Amazon is technically still on the table, but it's complicated due to my LLC in a completely separate niche being tied to the account.)

It's a slow process, but the logic presented in this course is sound, and I believe it will work in due time. And I'd like to share the glimmer of hope I experienced today that enforces this belief.

As I mentioned, I own and manage two other websites. While my WA site is only about 4 months old, my first website is 4 1/2 years old and has been steadily developed during that time with plenty of genuine content. It's been accepted by Google Analytics and ranked in search engines for quite a while. But I never made money with it. In fact, I didn't really understand that I could make money with it; the site was created so I could develop my author platform. My blog topics were focused primarily on writing, but I really hadn't nailed down a micro niche. Since my website was for art, photography, and writing, I didn't want to bombard users with ads that would disrupt their experience since nowadays websites are, in my opinion, over saturated with ads and pop-ups. My site, in its early years, was meant to be an escape from that.

I started the WA program at the end of July and started building my niche website, which is completely unrelated to my writing website. But as I progressed with my training and developed my brand-new website, I started to think about how I could monetize my existing site while still maintaining its integrity and overall unobtrusive user experience. I looked at the analytics and was shocked to see that the top-performing post beat the others by a LOT in terms of traffic. It was a review of self-publishing platforms, and I realized it was the micro niche my site had been missing.

So, I started to apply my WA training to this seasoned website. I discovered the keywords that had brought people to my article, and I went back into the relevant posts and added those keywords. I learned that I could earn commission on my own book sales through Amazon with the Amazon affiliate program, and I started linking other products. Google Adsense recently approved this website (I'm waiting a while to get more content added to my WA site before reapplying for that one), and I've incorporated native ads at the end of my posts with the WP Quads plugin for easy mass control to manage both Amazon and Google ads across the entire site.

The numbers don't lie! Look at the difference in my website traffic when I started incorporating WA lessons at the very end of August. This breakdown was just the dose of confidence I needed to know the time and energy I've been able to put into these endeavors is not being wasted. Even if the money isn't rolling in yet, I'm invigorated by the traffic growth and remain hopeful that the revenue will start to accumulate soon.

Meanwhile, my WA site is now recognized by Google and slowly growing its Site Trust score. The site stats show that I'm getting multiple visitors every day even when I'm not sharing posts on social media, so users are finding my content, even if it's only in the dozens per day right now.

It's progress. Sometimes it helps to see the numbers laid out in a graph to reassure you that you truly are moving forward and growing. So, my advice: don't lose hope if the commissions aren't coming in yet and you're turned down for affiliate programs. Be patient but diligent. You're making progress, even you can't see it quite yet. Keep going! I can't wait for the day I can write about finally quitting my office job and truly obtaining the flexible work schedule I've always wanted... all in good time :-)