Early October to early November is my busiest time of year. It's my niche peak season, and I have very little time to do anything else. That is also my "worst" one-month period as far as activities in this community are concerned.

My Case is Different

To begin, I would say, my situation in WA is somewhat uncommon. Not many members here find themselves in my shoes. Though I'm involved in affiliate marketing to a certain extent, my online business "heartbeat" has always been to offer a particular service that I'm also offering offline. That was my primary intent when joining WA over a year ago. As Kyle mentions in the training, there are more than 50 ways to monetize one's website, and as such, I'm seeking to use one of those ways, in addition to being an affiliate of a couple of affiliate programs.

This makes my learning process here to be more challenging, as there are a lot of things I have to try out which are not necessarily taught in the training. But thanks to the loving members, I'm moving in the right direction as far as offering services online is concerned. A big thanks to my Premium Coach and mentor, Gary Horton. So glad I signed up through his link!

Counting the Cost

Couple of months ago, I began my niche peak season preparations, but was overwhelmed by the number of tasks to perform as part of the process: from creating a Facebook page to integrating relevant forms on my website, to placing ad banners in divers locations, as well as publishing relevant posts; all in an effort to get clients during my just-ended niche peak season.

During that time, my involvement in the community drastically reduced. I saw myself slowly sliding down the rankings. Before beginning the preparations, I ranked 260 in the community. At the end of the peak season, I found myself all the way down to Rank Number 891, more than 600 places lower. But that's not much of an issue, as I know how to climb the rank ladder here, and will surely be within the Top 200 for the first time some time next month.

The Outcome and Why

Now, back to my experience. After all I did and all the work put in to get clients during the peak season, my campaign did not pay off; I did not get any clients as I had hoped.

I later managed to figure out the reason why my campaign didn't convert:

My website is still relatively new and consequently generally unknown. And as such, any signups would have been but a miracle. Visitors to the site haven't reposed their trust in my service offered, which I find to be normal. As we know, business is based on trust. Hardly anyone will hand over their money to you unless they know and or trust you.

A Hurdle to Overcome

And what makes this a bit more complicated is, whereas in affiliate marketing, you refer the visitor to another site which they would regard as pure and simple goodwill on your part, when you're offering a service and have to "refer" them to yourself, they tend to become skeptical, considering you a possible scammer, and for the most part, eventually flee.

This is a major challenge that new online service-providing businesses face, which only time and consistency can actually resolve. I "unfortunately" currently find myself in that stage, and have to accept it, 'cause it's part of the business development curve. (All businesses take time to develop).

The good thing is, I've identified this reality, and know how to handle it.

Back to Usual Business

With the peak season and all the hard work put in now behind, I've simply returned to work, continuing to build my business by incorporating strategies that would increase the popularity of my website and by continuing publishing very informative articles on my niche, in order to gain the much-needed trust of my prospective clients. So that hopefully by this time next year, my report on the issue would be different.