Answer for the trick question
The Question:
"When is a website no longer important to your online business?"
The Answer:
When the website no longer is your business. Yes, you will always need a portal for your business...you will always need a destination for the organic traffic & paid advertisement to point to (I consider those to be my neon signs letting the world know how to find me).
But your website is merely the "hello" to those who find you. The beginning of the relationship you are seeking to develop, not the end.
I know that Wealthy Affiliate here itself seems to contradict my previous statement. Wealthy Affiliate is a bit of an odd duck. It is exceedingly rare for any business in whatever industry to be able to exist soo two dimensionally as it seems to.
I could not tell you if it was by design or by sheer blind luck. After scrutinizing it over the last two years, I say it is a bit of both.
WA has three main things going for it:
- The Intro-
I've been at this off and on for a very loong time. Since about 1997-98, and in that time, I've seen many companies...with many different training styles and varying levels of depth to their trainings. They almost always have one core problem. They all fail to get most of their students/members to take action. To actually implement....to simply do what they have been given.
But before you even buy what they offer you here...you are already beginning by simply implementing their method. That is so incredibly rare.
Which brings me to the training and some of the tools they offer here. A lot could be said about those two departments. Some positive...potentially more that is negative though. But beyond saying that some of the negatives stems from people needing to take baby steps, for needing training wheels while they learn the basics of this industry.... this is a conversation for another time. - The Advertising-
"The company that can spend the most to acquire a customer.... wins"
-Dan Kennedy
As far as I can tell, Wealthy Affiliate spends almost nothing on advertising...they don't even do the organic traffic grind. We their base do 99% of both for them. Now, I find it unfortunate that their main teaching seems to be on the bait & switch. Or at least....it seems to be the one that gets fixated on by everyone. In online marketing, that tactic is also known as traffic jacking.
But I digress, according to Dan Kennedy...considered by many to be one of the fathers of marketing... Wealthy Affiliate is the Master. - The Clientele-
You & me
But it is more than just being able to interact. They left it open ended enough for us to be able to claim partial ownership (psychologically). We don't have to earn or be involved simply by chatting or building our own websites. We can develop our own trainings, earn some creds by offering feedback & comments (true, not much to be made cash wise there...but psychologically, that makes it more significant...not less)
The above three things are what gives WA the potential to be epic. I say potential because the downside of WA is significant enough to darken the brightness of WA into oblivion. The first time I came across Wealthy Affiliate I thought it was a satirical parody of the online training industry.
Speaking of which, unless they have made significant changes to their online writer....don't use it for grammar or spell check.
Apologies for the rant in regards to Wealthy Affiliate, I suppose it is fairly obvious that I have extremely mixed feelings/thoughts about it.
It is a mass of contradictions...
So why am I still here then?
"Opportunities are problems in search of solutions"
-Denis Waitley
Or perhaps Mark Lakeman says it better.
"Most problems are simply missed opportunities. The flip side of every problem is a solution."
What is good here at WA is worth taking the time to develop a solution for the problems.
P.S. They've done some work to the spell checker...much better than what it was a few years ago.
Recent Comments
2
Very wise words and insights here, David! Well done!
Jeff