Where do you find what you are looking for? I want to make this as simple as possible, but be as thorough as possible at the same time. There is a lot going on here within Wealthy Affiliate, so I am going to chop the community up and explain the different functional components.

Main Menu

Let's start with the main menu, your home base. Within this menu you will find pretty much everything you need to get around Wealthy Affiliate. I am going to break down each of these items for you and elaborate of each one of them.

Dashboard - This is your homebase. This is where where you will find out what is going on within Wealthy Affiliate University. This includes global activity (the entire community) and your personal feed (the people you are following and conversations you are active in).

The dashboard is where you will be able to get all the notifications for your activity, including comments, replies, and actions related to activities you were involved in. This will allow you to track and keep on top of everything happening.

In addition, you will see a live chat going on at all times down the right hand side of your dashboard. This is a general chat where you can ask questions, help others, hang out, and learn from other conversations that are taking place LIVE.

Certification - The Online Entrepreneur Certification will serve as the keystone to developing you into a skilled Internet Entrepreneur. This is a 60 lesson certification course that includes 6 different Levels of training, each focusing on a different aspect of the online business world.

Training - This is where you go to learn, teach, and discuss pretty much any topic that related to online business. The training platform uses a unique OEP tagging system that allows training to be found quickly with a simple search. Have something that you are looking for...type it into the search bar.

Open Chat - This is a full window version of the live chat on the dashboard. This will allow you to keep a chat window active while you are browsing through other pages, training, writing a blog post...whatever the task. It is always good to multi-task!

Forum - This is the "famous" Wealthy Affiliate forum. This another medium that you can use to discuss topics, ask questions, get help, and offer your services to other. The Wealthy Affiliate forum has been one of the most active forums in the industry since it's inception since 2005. There are a lot of powerful posts and golden nuggests within the forum if you look through some of the historic posts. Access to the forum is exclusive for Premium members only.

My Profile - This is your space, your existence within Wealthy Affiliate. Here you will be able to tell people a little bit about yourself, communicate with others, post links to your website, follow others, and upload any professional or silly picture that you want to share. This is where you will set your default picture. I recommend you spend some time setting up your profile. If your profile lacks personality, other people will be less likely to engage in your content and follow you...both very important.

My Blog - Have a thought you want to share? Have an epiphany the other day that you would like to let others know about? Have a piece of advice? Have a story to share? Are you in the know of a new technique or industry news? Frustrated? Moving in the right direction? Want to track your progress via daily updates? Post it on your blog. Your blog is powerful in the sense that the more you engage here, the more often people will come to know you as a contributor and socialize within your content. A blog can lead to credibility and increase your ability to write/communicate your ideas. Aim to utilize your blog on a regular basis!

My Network - This is where can find and manage your following at Wealthy Affiliate. You are limited to the number of people you can follow (2,000), but you can accrue as large of a following as possible. Following people that share valuable information will keep you "in the know"�, attain a following through helping others, engaging regularly, creating training, and most of all, being real.

Rapid Writer - This is a writing tool. Have an idea for an article or content for your website. Write it within Rapid writer. It allows you to complete your content development from right within Wealthy Affiliate. If you are an article marketer, you can submit your articles directly from Rapid Writer to StreetArticles.com with a click of the button.

Share Wealthy Affiliate - Want to earn revenue simply by sharing this awesome community with others. We have one of the highest paying referral programs in the world, paying out over $1,000,000 every single year to people who share the community. If you know of anyone else that would be interested in becoming part of this awesome community, simply share WA with them via your unique referral link.

Premium Services

We offer members premium services that you are accustomed to paying for separately outside of Wealthy Affiliate University. These premium tools simplify many processes such as building website, market and keyword research, and hosting, providing you with a very interactive and hands on experience.

Our Premium Services Include:

Build Websites - Our website creator (Wordpress Express) allows you to install websites in just a few clicks on our state-of-the-art hosting set-up. Included in all Premium memberships is unlimited domains and installs on your hosting account. You do not need to understand technology to build a website with ease as we have removed all cumbersome processes from the website and web hosting process.

Go see for yourself.

Find Keywords - Find, create, manage and save lists of keywords with Wealthy Affiliate Universities proprietary keyword tool. Using data from all search engines, we have sophisticated technology that allows you to capture realistic data including traffic, competition, quality scores, and estimated traffic. Complete all your research tasks within the Find Keywords section and as a Premium member you will have access to unlimited monthly searches.

Watch Webinars (PREMIUM Only) - Each an every week there are interactive Webinars that you can participate in LIVE. These typically take place on Friday evenings but are scheduled at other times depending on the week. The webinars cover a wide range of topics relating to business on the Internet (almost anything imaginable). Make sure you register for these each week and take a look at the archives of past webinars. Hours of awesome video training!

Keyword Lists (PREMIUM Only)- Keyword lists are delivered to you weekly within Wealthy Affiliate. Every keyword list will contain at least 100 carefully selected keywords that are LOW competition HIGH traffic keywords. These are very powerful lists that will not only give you instant access to valuable keywords, but give you many brand new niche ideas.

The Header

The header is composed of a number of components which provide an overview of your status within Wealthy Affiliate.

Invited - This is the number of people that you have successfully referred to Wealthy Affiliate through your affiliate link or through "sharing" something here at WA. Each invite acts as your referral and you earn $1 credit for each successful invite along with any referral revenue if the person goes on to join WA as a Premium member!

Forum (PREMIUM Only)- This is the number of Private Messages that you have within the Forum. In this case, I have 1 private message. This means that someone has directly contacted me (personally). Note that only Premium members here at Wealthy Affiliate have access to the Private messaging system.

Followers - This is the number of people that are following you within WA. As a member you can follow others. As you offer value and gain crediblity within the community you can create quite the following. I strongly recommend that you follow people on a regular basis who have common interests, who help you out, or who you find interesting or knowledgeable. Creating a following is powerful within WA as it gives you instant reach when you blog or create any form of training.

Quick Action Shortcut Menu - This menu allows you to quickly get at the main action items within Wealthy Affiliate include creating a New training resource, a new blog post, or build a website. This menu is visible on ever page so if you need quick access to any of these items, simply click the arrow within this menu to select your options.

Rank - Your WA rank is based on several metrics including social activity, your training contributions, how active you are within the community, and your following. The best way to improve your rank is to remain active within Wealthy Affiliate, interact, ask questions, help others, create training (when you have something to share), and work towards creating a larger following.

Recommended Training

We also have a menu section dedicated to training that we recommend. This menu will evolve and change over time based on important system updates and training requirements that we believe you should enrol in. However, the main Training page is where you should go if you are searching for topic based training as this is where you will have access to all of the training within The Open Education Project.

Here is the breakdown of the current "Recommended Training":

Getting Started- This is a task based "action plan" that is going to get you fully immersed here at Wealthy Affiliate and completing tasks that will ultimately lead to your success. This is Level 1 the Online Entrepreneur Certification, our keystone foundation building course here at Wealthy Affiliate. We highly recommend that EVERYONE follow through this lesson and task based training!

Warm Welcome - This is the message that you received when you joined Wealthy Affiliate, welcoming you to the community. If you want to revisit this post at any time simply click on it within the menu.

Learn How WA Works - You are viewing this training right now! This is a course that will evolve as The Open Education Project introduces new features and updates. This course is always kept current so if you ever need a brush up at any time going forward or you don't understand something within Wealthy Affiliate University, make sure you check back to this tutorial.