We Were On A Break! 3 takeaways I learned being away from Wealthy Affiliate for 6 months

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Updated 6 years ago

This is my first entry, so be nice :)

I joined Wealthy Affiliate about this time last year after learning I would probably lose my job in the New Year. I have always wanted to own my own business, and had some success with selling on Amazon/Ebay in my spare time.

Within a few hours, I had registered my first domain, generated the skeleton of a website and actually had a rough idea what 'affiliate' meant! My last proper update was over six months ago for personal reasons, but I have gradually noticed an uptick in people accepting WA invitations from my site.

And now my circumstances are much improved, I can start to develop the site properly.

Looking at my site now after so long, my initial foray at the Affiliate Marketing world is somewhat scratchy. Why do I say this?

TAKEAWAY 1: KEEP CONTENT UPDATED, RELEVANT AND USEFUL

Wealthy Affiliate has introduced so many changes in 2017! Two of my highlights include:

- Jaaxy/WA integration

- SiteRubix improvements such as SSL encryption and SiteSpeed

When I started writing pages and posts on the website, I would not know that within a couple of months, the information I wanted to draw attention to would already be outdated by Christmas.

If I had been working regularly, I could plan my content so it was still of value to the reader.

Looking back, maybe I was not taking this seriously enough. If I had treated this as MY business, I would have been more focused on SEO optimization instead of being content with just writing content.

I even state on my main page: "I will be updating this regularly...."!

TAKEAWAY 2: DON'T BOX YOURSELF IN - KNOW HOW TO GROW

https://whatiswealthyaffiliate...

I can see now that my domain name will have some limitations on possible income generation. If I had been more general, or specified a niche which I could write around the topic, there are probably a lot more opportunities out there.

I probably did not have an overall idea of where I wanted to go. I liked the way my site looked, and the writing seemed to be decent. But that's useless if I'm the only person reading it!

I still have plans on where to go next (for this site and for a new non-WA niche too)... leading me onto:

TAKEAWAY 3: DO IT ALREADY!

In the last year, I have spent plenty of time watching the training, reading blogs, researching niches, having ideas of how to develop and generate a passive income. Problem is, I had these ideas months ago.

I didn't take any action!

I was amazed that my neglected site was actually reaching a small audience. I think this has happened because of the SEO I worked on all those months ago has started to kick in (I reached page 1 on a couple of these keywords).

But imagine if I had spent the time optimizing my content and website properly? Imagine if I posted regularly? Imagine if it was properly updated?

I'm really, really bad with putting things off.

In fact, I promised myself I would work on my site tonight, and then I started writing this!

Luckily, I am more motivated than ever:

- I need to clear up the old content and broken links

- I need to work on providing regular content, with a clear plan of where the website needs to go

- I need to catchup with the live video tutorials I missed!

- I need to make sure I have SEO implemented properly or the only person reading the content is me...

- And I need to actually do it, not just think about it...

I am in some ways lucky that I have never really left Wealthy Affiliate, since I would login daily and be stunned with how many clicks and invitations my site had been generating while 'dormant'.

Imagine if you had been away for a period of time. Looking at your website now, is there anything you look at and go: "I should have fixed that AGES ago!"

So as I look forward to actually investing some much needed hours, I would be grateful for any advice on how to update old content effectively - feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading!

Simon