How long you have been doing this?
What this question implies is, "How long have you been doing (or attempting to do) the online business you're doing?"
It very often goes hand-in-hand with the money-making questions. They want to know how effective the program is and how long it takes. Some folks are known to go around from person to person asking them these questions.
Sometimes folks are wondering how long a person has been here so they can ask the next question that will be looked at on the next page...
Most of the time, people come on here with a positive attitude and a rearing to go. They have seen the ethical nature of what's here. As a side note: The promotional campaigns for Wealthy Affiliate, in my own words, are influential rather than persuasive. The former is much better than the latter because being influenced by something means the one being influenced has cleared his/her mind that what's being offered is good for them and has no "buyer's remorse" over it.
Usually, those who suffer buyer's remorse are those that have been persuaded. This usually means the person who has been persuaded has some doubts but is willing to try the product or service. Sometimes persuasion comes from advertising that has logical fallacies imbued in it, such as the fallacy of appealling to the emotion rather than a much more up-front means of revealing what the product or service is and what it does, which advertising tends to produce more trust in prospects.
There is yet another implication to the question that will be dealt with on Page 5.
What you say it's true. But it's too harsh, and somehow goes around the straight answer. Those questions are natural and logical. We have all come here to earn money.
I think it would have been more honest just to say: "People, if you don't have any kind of financial backup, don't rely on the business you opened through WA. Here is simply a school, that you have to pay for, for at least one or two years, till you can actually earn enough to sustain yourselves from your websites."
OK, you can elaborate a lot starting from here, but what would be the point? This is true. Any senior here knows it.
There are people here, who mention how much they earn. No secret at all. Ivetriedthat says in his site, he earns like $6000 a month and his site is from 2007 (I'm not exactly sure) and Nathaniel says he has MANY websites (by many I understand like 20) running for good years, and that there are months with almost no money and months with $11000.
And I think this kind of honesty is enough for everybody to get an idea.
Laura
Like the majority of people who first join WA, I too, was looking for a great way to make legit cash overnight. While I knew logically that it doesn't work that way, I was willing to hope that I might be able to pull it off.
Needless to say, I wasn't. But that hasn't in any way made me think less of WA. It's like you say - there's no such thing as overnight success.
One thing I would like to point out that is not a new concept, but one that we constantly need to remind ourselves of is that what we're doing here is starting a business.
As a retailer myself I know that a brick-and-mortar business starts off with an investment of capital and slowly but surely, as the business takes off, and the money comes in, debts begin to get paid off and only after that does the profit show itself.
It takes time, patience, effort, time, perseverance and, dare I say it?, time, to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. Embrace the journey!