First Impression: WA Needs Some Work

bySupafly

19 followers

Updated 14 years ago

Yep, discovered Wealthy Affiliate through a member blogger, who oddly enough, I found to be both suspicious and obstructive.  Therefore, I bought several other internet marketing programs as well, but once I dove into the material, WA was clearly the most forthright of them all.  I have since enjoyed learning a great deal and look forward to a long and lucrative relationship with Wealthy Affiliate.

The tremendous resources and training material as well as the WA community make Wealthy Affiliate one of the best business opportunities that I have come across.  That being said, there are some areas within WA that leave me scratching my head.  How can so much good information be presented so poorly, for example.  The tutorials are full of thought fragments and badly composed ideas as well as fundamental usage errors such as dangling participles and extraneous prepositions.  The juvenile sentence construction reads the same way an eighteen-year-old speaks.  I know, harsh criticism—ouch!

Why is correct usage, grammar and spelling important?  I’ll set aside the obvious breach of professionalism and address how poor writing prevents WA from achieving its objectives.  Before I do, however, I must make clear that my objective is not to disparage the great work Kyle and Carson have done with this system.  I admire not only their great accomplishments and knowledge, but their commitment to grow a business ethically and with great compassion for others.  Rather, my intention is to identify what I believe is wrong, how those problems impact the goals of Wealthy Affiliate and to provide some suggestions to help make their system even better.  We cannot improve ourselves unless someone is willing to assume the distasteful role of critic.

First, I have noticed one of the common complaints among beginners is the tidal wave of information. Indeed, there is an enormous amount of info, but not more than any text book or other comparable program.  The problem is that students are having a hard time learning it all.  Clearly written material will help them learn more quickly and understand the ideas so they can proceed to the next lesson.  Uncompleted thoughts—of which there are many in the tutorials—bog down the learning process and impede advancement.  Often, students won’t know why they are having a hard time understanding a concept.  He or she may believe they are just having trouble comprehending the subject matter when in fact, if the author had written more clearly, there would be no problem learning the material. 

The more quickly students pick up on the subject material, the better experience they will have with WA.  The better their experience, the more successful they will become.  I wonder how many people have signed on to Wealthy Affiliate only to give up because the material was too confusing or overwhelming.

The following are some suggestions to prevent WA from loosing people during the training process:

1. Hire copywriters to edit the tutorials.  That is not to say I am in favor of a stiff and sterile writing style.  Nor do I believe communication should be impersonal.  On the contrary, I believe in using humor and even slang, but the material needs to have structure and must conform to generally accepted English principles or students will be confused.
2. Speaking of which, humor can be difficult because it is hard to be funny and not offend someone.  We must be careful with this.  Think of Gary Larsen.  He was very good at writing the Far Side cartoons and nobody ever got offended—unless, of course, you were a cow.
3. Provide practical applications of the concepts or real-world examples of abstract ideas.  Never underestimate the teaching power of an example or story.  Use many and use them often.
4. Limit the links to additional tutorials.  Many of the tutorials have links to other tutorials, which link to more tutorials, which link to yet even more tutorials.  It’s too much and a student can easily get lost or feel overwhelmed.  I got stuck on step five of the tutorials and thought I would never advance.  Students need a sense of progression.
5. Links should always open up to a “new” window so students do not lose their place by clicking the back button.
6. Provide more video.   I know WA is working at this, but supporting concepts with visuals will greatly help the learning process.  WA suggests breaking up our websites with videos, pictures and diagrams.  WA should do this within its own website.
7. Each section of the tutorial should begin with an overview of the subject matter.  Give the reader the big picture before the details.  The details should be in the body of the tutorial while the conclusion should wrap things up.  Try using bullet points of lessons learned at the end of each tutorial.  Furthermore, a better overview of internet marketing should be provided for those who join Wealthy Affiliate.  Again, provide real-world examples of how affiliate marketing is used.
8. Those who write tutorials need to step back from them momentarily before they are posted.  How would someone who has no knowledge of internet marketing understand the material?  What information have you “assumed” the reader already knows?  Is that assumption fair?

Pick up any book from your book shelf and you will notice how well thoughts are presented in most of them.  Most books read the same way because they follow certain rules of communication.  Editors and copy-writers have gone through them and cleaned up the author’s writing, making books readable and unambiguous. 

We are accustomed to reading ideas in a certain way.  Poor usage and grammar can be distracting to the reader.  When we are introduced to sentences and thoughts that are constructed incorrectly, our minds get confused, though we may not know why.  Websites that aspire to grow their membership should make the investment and follow the same English principles as books.  If Wealthy Affiliate does this, I am sure it will retain many more members and be responsible for many more success stories.