Starting An Online Business – My Top Recommendation
On my thumbnail photograph today, I have the title, “Starting an online business – my top recommendation!” I have been working online since around 2004, but I also have an offline business. I had my first website in 2004 and quickly realised the power and potential of the Internet. The Internet gives you the power to get your message over to thousands of people literally. I have a more detailed video review of the platform below. You can also see my getting started blog post here.
It’s Hard When You Don’t Know What You’re Doing!
When I first started out online, the biggest problem I had was the fact was that I didn’t really know where to start. I just started putting in the usual search criteria, things like “how to make money online” and “Internet marketing”. The searches came up with loads of ideas about how I could become a millionaire over the weekend and so forth, which immediately sends up alarm bells! However, I did not know which websites were genuine and who was telling the truth.
The Wealthy Affiliate Platform
I came across the Wealthy Affiliate platform nine years ago; prior to this, I had been a member of a small Internet marketing training platform. When I joined Wealthy Affiliate, I was already making money, but I wanted to join a platform where I could mix with like-minded people and get up-to-date training all in one place. Wealthy Affiliate does precisely this, hence why I have been there for nine years. It’s not always always easy starting an online business. But at least Wealthy Affiliate takes the guesswork out of creating a business!
This Is Not A Get-Rich-Quick Platform
The Wealthy Affiliate platform is not a get-rich-quick platform; it’s a platform that teaches you how to build and start an online business. Not only does it teach you, it takes you through the process step-by-step, by using up-to-date video modules. It gives the user regular tasks to complete after every video training module. It’s important to go through the videos step-by-step and complete all the tasks after each training video. I believe that too many people try to jump through videos and then miss some of the vital ingredients.
Wealthy Affiliate has over two and a half million users; however, I do appreciate that not all of these users are active. However, there are certainly a lot of active users and there have been a terrific amount of success stories on the platform.
The Biggest Reason For Failure
The biggest reason that people file online is due to the fact that many people do not take action at all. They will sign up to a genuine platform and literally not do anything! They will then ask for the money back and say that the platform doesn’t work! With any business, whether it’s online or offline, you have to work hard, especially in the early days. For some reason, people seem to think that starting an online business does the work for you, but I’m afraid that is not the case!
I also think other people genuinely work really hard and go through all the training. But actually, they give up too soon. I don’t want to put the dampers on anyone or exaggerate, but you really have to work hard to get any business off the ground. It’s important not to give up and keep moving forward. If you follow the training, ask questions along the way and take action, in most cases, there is no reason why you should not be successful.
A Comprehensive Platform
The Wealthy Affiliate platform has a huge amount of functionality and a terrific amount of training and other useful resources. If you look along the main navigation bar, you can see the homepage, which normally has the top 10 blog posts at the top of the page. If you scroll down further, you will see more and more items which we will talk about as we go through this blog post and video.
So basically, Wealthy Affiliate allows the user to have huge amounts of training. Whether you’re a beginner or a successful Internet marketer. There is something for everyone here. There are many beginners here, but there are also some hugely successful people on the platform.
Website Hosting
If you are a paid member of Wealthy Affiliate, you can host several websites, which is a really useful feature. I have some websites hosted on the platform, but my larger websites are hosted on a dedicated server. The hosting is absolutely fine for people starting out and beyond. You also have a help button if you need any help with your websites. The help is carried out by email; however, the response times are good.
Other functionality includes more classes; the classes include all sorts of subjects regarding Internet marketing. We then have the research button that allows you to do keyword research, site Rank, keyword lists, alphabet soup, search engine analysis and niche trends.
Affiliate Marketing
The next tab is promote, under the promote section there are all sorts of different websites that have numerous affiliate products on. Wealthy Affiliate’s main objective is to teach people about affiliate marketing. So you need to have various websites with various products that you can promote. I don’t generally use this feature. I generally carry out a search within Google for appropriate affiliate programs within my niche.
Moving onto the next tab, we have publish, this part of the platform enables you to write content into a platform and then transfer it to your website. I must admit it is not a feature that I use. However, it is being updated very soon and will give a lot more functionality, including the use of artificial intelligence.
And finally, we have the ask a question button that enables you to send a technical question to site support. We then have the live chat feature, which allows you to chat to other members of the platform. It’s not a feature that I use a huge amount, but many people really like it. That’s probably because it’s slightly time-consuming, but at the same time, it can be good fun.
How Do You Join Wealthy Affiliate?
It’s very easy to join the platform. They actually have a start-up package which is absolutely free and there is no credit card required. I always recommend people to start off with the free version of the platform as it gives you enough information to know whether it’s for you or not.
If you want to unlock all the premium features, you can become a premium member for $49 per month or $497 per year. If you’re not too sure if you want to be a member for a year, then I would just sign up on a monthly basis. You can go to yearly billing at any time.
If you want to unlock even more features, you can go to Premium Plus membership. The only difference with the Premium Plus membership is that there are really more classes available. However, Premium Plus has probably been around for about two years; you don’t need the Premium Plus version to be successful. I know lots of people who are highly successful and are still just using the cheaper premium version.
The cost of the premium plus version is $99 per month or $697 billing. Once again, you can try monthly billing to see if you like the premium plus training. You can always downgrade again if you don’t want to stay as a premium plus member.
Black Friday Offer
There is a black Friday offer coming up at the end of the month, which is definitely worth thinking about. The cost of the premium package is $297, and the cost of the premium plus package is $497. So a considerable saving on the full price.
To conclude
If you would like any more information, please feel free to leave a comment on my YouTube video. The video is embedded into this blog post. Alternatively, contact me on my profile page.