Over 4 Years with Wealthy Affiliate: What Have I Learned?

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Updated 2 years ago

Where Has the Time Gone?

It is over 4 years since I started my Blog at the Wealthy Affiliate and have neglected it for most of this time. Where I ask has the time gone and what on earth have I been doing over this period?

When I retired after 45 years in engineering and commerce, I felt a duty to explore the New Economy of the Internet and this is what I’ve been doing for the last 4 to 5 years. I’ve learnt a lot but feel disappointed with myself that I did not report progress, which was my intention when embarking on the journey. After all, this was the reason I joined Wealthy Affiliate.

What I found on my journey around the New Economy was rather disturbing. There are so few marketers who prosper on the Internet, indeed most fail, around 97%, as commonly reported. It’s shocking I know, but industry figures show the chance of success is around 3%. Anyone who tells you internet marketing is easy is misleading you. Getting started online is hard work and requires a great deal of determination and resilience.

Many hang around believing things will change. And, of course, they might, providing the marketer changes. “Adapt or die”, as we say. So, when completing my initial appraisal of the online industry, it became my mission to understand why failure should be the norm, and to help as many people as possible avoid the pitfalls most fall into.

Well, although absent from Wealthy Affiliate, I have endured doing one thing or other. Time has flown past, that is for sure, but what have I achieved? Although on a mission, I’ve had no clear business goals, it was more of an interest to pursue and have treated it more like a hobby. If given the choice between doing what I must do rather than what I like to do, then invariably I’ve been favouring the latter. This needs to change. I now wish for a more serious and business like plan.

I suppose I could write a book about it, but my problem is that I still have so much unfinished business to do with so little time left to do it. The positive thing is to reflect on lessons learned and share these with the community.

There's a lot to report when it came to writing it all down. This is an abridged version, you can read the full article on my Blog.

Knowledge is Power

Let’s begin with learning, as we all need to figure things out and develop the skills we need to accomplish what we set our minds to do. The accumulation of what we learn about a subject is called knowledge, and over time this gets assimilated into best practice. Apply the practice correctly, they say, you will always get results. Hence, “knowledge is power”, but why then do so many folks fail?

There are three things I’d say… The first is that an accomplished internet marketer has to learn a wide range of skills, including communication, financial, marketing and technical. Second, each skill has its own learning curve to go through and, three, this all takes time. Remember, Rome was not built in a day.

“No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
~ Epictetus

There’s plenty of scope for folks to drop out across such a wide range of subjects to learn, and many do for a variety of reasons. Survival is a challenge and you will soon realise why, when you appreciate the learning cycle to accumulate the wide range of skills you need is anything between 3 to 5 years.

This time should be no surprise to anyone, as mastery of any trade or profession is of the order of 10,000 hours.

Self Mastery

The skill that is most likely to make or break you is self mastery. This is the ability to manage your mind and exercise control over your emotions and limiting beliefs, the stuff lingering in your subconscious. It is also about managing your time and having confidence to do the more challenging things in life to achieve success in whatever you decide to do.

“Mastering others is strength, but mastering yourself is true power.” ~ Dan Lok

Self mastery is something we should all strive for. It requires a great deal of commitment but the payoff is tremendous. It will build discipline, determination, belief and confidence which, ultimately, will lead you to do the right things to achieve results and success in whatever is your endeavour.

The Reality Of Doing Business Online

The first thing to realise is that most internet marketing gurus only give you part of the story. There is good reason to be wary...

There are several well-established platforms on the Internet where you can witness “the dark side of internet marketing” at play. You have probably seen it… an enormous group of marketers talking about how easy it is to make money online and how they have discovered some “terrific new push button software” that makes them 4 or 5 figure $ incomes per week, and how you can do the same for only $37. This is just the magnet. What follows is a foray of upsells to get the consumer to part with more money.

Those “dark side” marketers have been deceiving gullible investors, regurgitating and rebranding the same old products, time and time again. You don’t need an acclaimed guru to help you make six figures. What you need is a proven system where you can predict your success from the outset.

The glossy sales copy produced by these gurus is persuasive and often can be deceptive. That’s why so many novice marketers get tempted to buy. I’m living witness to the deceptive practices. Gurus have misled me into purchasing many times. There is seldom any follow up on the purchase, other than a steady stream of new unrelated offers.

The stark truth, however, is that few of these marketers make money doing what they preach. They make money by selling “how to make money online”, and the reason they’re able to make so much money is because they are all sharing their lists and testimonials with each other. It’s a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality with no consideration given to customers whatever.

These marketers all have huge contact lists. Upon release of a product, they all promote each other’s stuff to their respective lists. Most never give a second thought about offering value to their customer base. They just share the same stuff repeatedly and because they’re all promoting one thing there is massive social proof. In some forums on the Internet, I see users refer to these platforms as “flea markets”.

My advice: avoid these platforms like the plague.

Let’s Sum Things Up With a Shortcut

Although there is bad news about failure statistics, the reason is simple to decipher. And the good news is that there is a remedy incorporated within this concluding section. First, however, a recap on the findings…

While the failure rate of new business is high, there is a solid reason behind the statistics. Most novice entrepreneurs enter the industry alone, lacking the knowledge and skills to do business online. Also, many do not have the financial and mental resilience to weather the storms they are likely to encounter when trying to climb the many learning curves they have to go through. Typically, mastering a trade or profession can take up to 5 years and if the internet marketer works alone from home, with little or no support, it is easy to see why many quit and give up.

However, I don’t want to use the statistics to scare or deter you from a career online. My aim is to raise awareness so you can make an informed choice about your future. There are ways to succeed in a shorter time frame, providing you get guidance from a reputable, well-established marketer or marketing firm with a suitable done-for-you program made available to you to franchise at a reasonable cost.

The idea is like setting up a Starbucks or McDonald’s franchise store on a smaller scale without the enormous cost. These companies set up stores for investors in the same way many times over because they are proven systems that have been shown to work. If you sign up for such a system, the goal is to make you money from the outset. Investors in such systems receive everything set up ready to operate with full training in the specific things to be done to grow their businesses. It’s a win-win situation for all parties to the arrangement.

In the online version, you are provided with a website with all the content you need. All you do is attract visitors (traffic) to your web pages and let the system do the selling for you. You’ll be shown how to promote your site effectively because you are part of a team which is there to do everything to help get you into profit.

You will be trained to do your job, which is the marketing part, and everything else can be taken care of for you. All the work setting up your website, creating content, training materials, is there for you, including help and support needs.

In summary, an existing success story or brand (the franchise) will help you build your business online. You do not have to be making money online to get started and ultimately succeed. You simply refer people to the existing brand, and your leads get sent back to sign up to your team through your affiliate link.

All the best,

Will Banks