WA Personal Premium Guide to Success in 2014
Please read this first: You are now a premium member of Wealthy Affiliate. I want to congratulate & thank you for taking a shot at this. Know without a shadow of a doubt that you ARE in the right place. What you learn as a premium member through the training offered at WA is simply priceless. I ve seen and experimented with many different guides, tutorials, programs and spent a lot of money in my time doing this. To date, nothing even comes close to WA and what they offer. Why I wrote this guide: I want to help you get the most out of the training @ WA as a premium member and see results as quickly as possible. I know you re all here because of this! This is a guide that I created privately just for you. As structured and organized as Wealthy Affiliate is, there s still a lot of people who can get lost in the training and often times feel overwhelmed with the amount of information they get. This is completely normal so don t worry about it That being said, in this guide, you re going to get a lot of clarify and an express route to success with Wealthy Affiliate. I m also going to provide you with some personal tips I use to find great keywords, content, products & niches.
Contents: 1. My personal story of success & failure: Page 4 2. Now that you re a premium member, here is your #1 task: Page 7 3. Ways to speed up your success: Page 9 4. 5 MAJOR Mistakes WA members make that you have to avoid: Page 12 5. To conclude: Page 14
My personal story of success & failure: Before I get to the nitty gritty, I want to share with you how I personally got started with internet marketing & Wealthy Affiliate, of which I have been a member of for nearly 7 years. I know that in one way or another you ll probably be able to relate to this story. I want to share it with you & let you know that many of the things you re feeling right now as a new premium member (worries, excitement, anxiety, confusion) is OK and only good things await you if you put in the effort and follow through with the training at WA. I was a freshman in college when I first discovered online marketing. At the time I was a disgruntled student who didn t want to work a 9-5 job. I wanted my own options in life and frankly, I didn t think college could give it to me. Long story short, when I discovered online marketing then, I went through several months of VERY hard work writing up an entire ebook that ended up being over 90 pages long. I set up a website and paid people to create beautiful images for me. I really put my heart into this project and when it was all said and done, I made 1 sale. If I recall correctly, it was for $27, but I had to refund the buyer a portion of it because he paid for it twice LOL. That was a major setback and slap in the face to say the least. I was depressed, discouraged and wanted to quit. But fate apparently had a different idea in mind. One of the people who helped me set up the ebook and my first ever website suggested I try a different method of marketing. That method would eventually lead me to Wealthy Affiliate. Back then the site was very different than it is now. Kyle & Carson were just as helpful & supportive then as they are now but there was no certification course or bootcamp. There was something called the 8 week action plan which ran through many of the concepts taught today at WA. This goes to show that they have not only kept up with the times, but have always been right about what they teach. I took it upon myself to learn & implement everything I was being taught. I steered away from WA a couple of times in my years to try different program/s (Bring the Fresh) and other opportunities, but they all fell apart sooner or later and I returned. This showed that WA was always the #1 place for me to succeed in online marketing. To date, 99% of all the success I have encountered online was thanks to their training.
What kind of success are we talking about? Well in my 8+ years in online marketing, 6+ of which have been with WA, I have been able to generate about half a million in revenue or which more than half was profit. Most of that success came from doing paid advertising and some SEO, but overtime as popular niches that I found began to sink in popularity, so did my profits. It showed me that I needed to find stability and long term success. Enter 2013, WA s certification course & affiliate bootcamp training, both of which I have completed. I created 1 website for each of these courses and followed through with everything that was being taught. The results? Well here are some traffic stats for one of my websites following the bootcamp course: For about 3 months into doing this, I was getting results. 10-30 visits a day, invites and some sales, but not what I really wanted. I was writing a post once every 2 days on my site. I ll be honest though, I was angry at times that things were progressing slowly. But as I later found out, this was normal and it was only a matter of time before I would have increased traffic. By month 4-5, I was getting about 50 visits + a day. Now, it s over 200 visits a day. This is something you need to understand about bootcamp & the certification course: It takes time, but everything you do will accumulate and lead to success down the line. What you write on your site will eventually rank and the more you write, the more you will rank and accumulate traffic. The more traffic you accumulate, the more sales you will make. As this builds, your newer/older posts will start to rank higher and higher. This will open up the flood gates of traffic and only multiply your success overtime. It s a snowball effect basically and unfortunately a lot of people quit before they see those results. Here is an actual screenshot of my site s stats:
See what I mean about the snowball effect? This is what you will see as well when you follow through with what s taught at the certification courses & bootcamp. Note the keyword here being: Follow through!
Now that you re a premium member, here is your #1 task: Do 1 of the courses: Certification Course or Affiliate Bootcamp. You have to pick one (for now). Once you do, stick to it. Your #1 priority to success online is to apply the training from one of those places. Do not deviate. Pick a course and follow through with the training. What is the difference between these 2 courses? The certification course deals with picking your own niche topic. It could be a personal hobby, passion or expertise in any field you possess. There are many people who enter WA who already have an idea they want to turn into an online business. The certification course is perfect for this. People often feel like the niche they chose isn t right or have questions about it. By all means, ask people in chat, myself or post questions on it. The community of WA is here to help you! One thing people don t often think about when doing the certification courses is promoting local businesses. Why not? It s a niche! Let me give you an example: I was offered to promote a law firm in my area which would pay me $100 s for each referral. And the competition for this niche is very low since it s targeted to a specific area. Success in this niche could mean a full time income! The most important thing you need to understand is that the certification courses are designed to help you turn a passion into a business. I m sure that you already possess an interest in a certain subject. Believe me when I say this could be turned into an online business if you apply it to the certification course. There are however many people who are uncertain about this course or can t choose a niche. That s ok too, because that s where the second course comes into play:
The affiliate bootcamp. It s for people who: A) Have not chosen or don t know which niche topic they want to pursue. B) Is designed to help you promote Wealthy Affiliate. There are 6 levels to bootcamp and a lot of it actually deals with training you find in the certification courses, although it s much more specific because the niche & product you re promoting (WA) has already been chosen. There is 1 very important thing you need to understand about the Affiliate bootcamp: When you go through the course, you are entering into the MMO (Make money online) niche. This niche is very competitive, but at the same time, bootcamp will show you how to succeed within it. The site I showed you above is an example of this. There is NO such thing as too much competition and you can/will succeed if you apply the bootcamp training. But at the same time, you have to understand that in the MMO niche, because it is more competitive than other niches, results take longer to see. How long? In my experience 3-6 months. You will get visitors before that time, and you can make money before then, but it will likely be small. If you look at my example above, for several months, my traffic was very low. This is OK. The key is to keep writing posts/pages. You will gain more authority, more rankings and more traffic & sales eventually. The bottom line is this: The MOST important thing you need to do to succeed online is pick one of the 2 courses and commit to it! I strongly recommend picking something you can relate to very well. This will make it easier to write great content and see faster results. When I got started with this business, I was very interested in weight loss (not a niche, but I know a lot of info about it). Knowledge in this field helped me write great content and see results faster. If MMO is your niche or you don t know which one to pursue, do the bootcamp course.
Ways to speed up your success: The most important things you learn within both the affiliate bootcamp and the certification courses is to write content (pages/posts) based on your niche. I have found some really cool ways to get hot content ideas and help you speed up your results. Here they are: 1. Use Google trends: This is a GREAT resource for finding HOT niche topics. My most successful campaigns originated when I found them through this site. At one point in time I found an amazing diet program which I promoted through paid advertising. I was getting 5,000 visitors+ every single day and making incredible profits. This lasted me for a YEAR! Here is a full tutorial on using Google Trends (Also type Google trends to see more tutorials on it): https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/using-google-trends-to-crack-niches 2. Find news reports on subjects in your niche. You could use Google news, your local newspaper, MSN, Yahoo and other places which provide current event stories. I am working on a diet niche site at the moment and have found tons of great diets which were set to come on the market but not yet popular. This meant that there was LITTLE competition for them and I could get in on the action before it exploded in popularity! I wrote up posts on these diets in anticipation of this and got ranked high very quickly. Then when the diet/s became popular and people started looking them up on Google, guess what? My site appears on the first page which means loads of traffic, more sales and future benefits! 3. Use Amazon s product list to find content ideas. There are many ways you could utilize this resource, but I have 3 particular methods. A) Amazon s best seller list. Jaaxy also shows you information on this by the way B) Look at the top selling products in each category on Amzon.com. Say I was looking at a diet book. One that same page, there is a link which will show you the top 100 diet books being sold right now. I can guarantee you there are TONS of products/books within that top 100 category that have low competition and tons of people searching for them.
Your job is to find a product within Amazon that is related to your niche. Then look at the top 100 products within that category, see which ones are relevant towards your niche and write posts/pages on these products. It could be reviews on whether or not they are good. Additional tips to help speed up success: 4. Don t underestimate the webinars! They are golden nuggets and a HUGE perk of being a premium member. I recommend watching some of those webinars and getting additional ideas for your online business. 5. Never be afraid to post a question. Though you can ALWAYS PM Kyle & Carson, use the WA chat, your blog, I recommend utilizing the classrooms section of WA. I personally find questions get answered there much faster. It s amazing how many people do NOT use this feature of WA. I abuse it (mwuahah). Here is what it looks like: 6. Try to write content on a daily basis (if possible). The more you write, the more you get ranked. Also, DO NOT keep drafted posts and wait until they are perfect. I ve seen people do this and it s a huge mistake. Publish the post, then edit it if you want to. That way while you re working on other things, your post will rank and your site will gain authority. If you keep it drafted, it won t be live and you will only slow yourself down!
7. I recommend making each of your posts/pages at least 1,000 words. I ve noticed time and time again that posts which go over the 1,000 word mark get ranked and stay ranked more consistently. Above all your goal is to provide high quality content that helps people. Here are some great tips you can utilize: Be controversial. Be funny. Ask people s opinions. Write as though you re talking to them 1 on 1, not like an English professor. Write to HELP people. 8. Expect to see a Google dance but DON T let it stop you. People always seem to get slowed down when they experience the Google dance. It is basically when your posts/pages that are ranked on Google keep bouncing, re-appearing and disappearing. This can go on for days, weeks and even months. People freak out about this when they first see it and for some reason stop adding content, progressing with their online business and wait for the post to show up again on the search engine. Do NOT make this mistake. The Google dance is completely normal and happens to EVERYONE. This will especially happen for longer periods of time when you have a new site and begin adding content. Fret not, expect it but don t let it stop you. Keep writing content. Keep adding new posts/pages. Eventually as your site gains more authority, you will see your posts rank higher/faster and see the Google dance happen a lot less often. 9. Understand that NOT all of your content/keywords will rank on the 1 st page. This is just reality! To date I ve written over 150 posts on my site and I like to think they are all high quality content. Unfortunately not all of them are ranking on the first page. This is going to happen to you. You may put in a lot of effort into making a post only to not see it perform as well as you had hoped. Don t let this stop you. Continue adding content to your site. It s like a dart board. You ll be throwing a lot of them, but not everyone of them will land on the bulls eye. Remember, this is OK. Do not by any means wait for your content to reach the first page. Let it continue ranking. Just keep adding content.
5 MAJOR Mistakes WA members make that you have to avoid: 1. They want to try too many ideas. Don t make this mistake. Pick 1 idea, use the bootcamp or certification course/s and commit to it. If you have doubts, certainly ask people in WA for advice. 2. They think their niche isn t popular or is too broad. Every idea has a group of people (niche) behind it. I promise you as you apply your niche ideas into your online business, you will see results in not just that niche, but other related niche topics around it. This means in time you will only increase your site s popularity, but only if you stick to the initial niche idea. I recommend reading up on this WA member s success story. He took a small niche idea and turned it into a full time business. He gets 1,000 s of visitors to his site daily: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/ramccracken/blog/month-5-recap-keep-trafficgrowing-outside-the-box-and-into-success 3. They try to work on multiple sites at once. This is related to the first point, but once you pick your idea, make your website and focus on entirely on that. When it becomes successful enough to stop working on it for awhile, then focus on another idea if you wish. 4. They want to see fast results and when they don t, they quit. I see this all the time! This goes back to the point I made about niches and competition. Some niche/s you choose will not have a lot of it, meaning you will see results faster. Some niches like MMO will be more competitive and WILL take time to see results. But people after not seeing a lot of visitors to their site will think they have failed and quit WA and internet marketing, but this is a HUGE mistake.
If I quit 2-3 months into my bootcamp journey, I would never have gotten to that point. If the WA member whose post I just linked above also quit, he wouldn t own a Porsche right now or be fully self-employed. Just because you re not seeing results quickly does NOT mean it s not working! This is a business you re working on. Don t think that you re doing something wrong because the results aren t coming in quickly enough. If you are following the courses within WA, rest assured, you ARE on the right track and it s only a matter of time before you see results. Just KEEP adding content to your site. 5. They choose what they think will make the most money instead of choosing a niche they personally love. This is a very counterproductive attitude and it will work against you. I ve made this mistake before. I ve chosen niches which I though had HUGE profit potential, but the problem was I could never write enough content on my site about it because I didn t possess knowledge in the field. This also translated into me writing up bad information on my site and leading to even worse results. Eventually I had to quit because I ran out of ideas and I just didn t have fun making the site anymore. If you have a passion, pursue it! Make a site out of it. This will make it SO much easier to write up content and come up with constant ideas. All of this will eventually translate into greater long term success and a sense of fulfillment!
To conclude: All of the advice I have given you here will most certainly help you get results much faster. It comes from all my years with WA. You are already well on your way to succeeding now that you are a premium member. Now it s just a matter of applying what is provided to you within WA. Take things at your own pace. If you ever have questions, PM me, use the chat, post it on your profile or ask it in the classrooms section of WA. Don t let the allure of money making get in the way of you building a sustainable and fulfilling online business. The thought of making money usually distracts people from actually doing what needs to be done to make that happen! Do what is taught in the certification/bootcamp courses. Have fun with it. You may also want to consider joining WA on a yearly basis as it will save you a lot of money in the long run (membership will then be $30/month). Thank you for reading this guide. Now get to work! Your friend, Vitaliy