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I’ve noticed a trend in my comments and emails lately regarding the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
It seems that people increasingly believe that the only thing Wealthy Affiliate does is teach you to bash other products in order to promote their premium membership (which is partially true, but not entirely – I’ll explain in detail below). I’ve had fellow affiliates for WA reach out and tell me they’re no longer going to promote the product because they think it’s headed in the wrong direction thanks to Bootcamp.
I’ve also been spending more and more of my time encouraging my followers to NOT promote Wealthy Affiliate, and instead build a site based around a passion, interest, or expertise they have (as overwhelming as that can seem right now). All of their training is very powerful if you know how to use it, and all of it can play a role in your success online as long as you have the right roadmap.
This post is designed to explain who I recommend WA Bootcamp for, who I recommend Wealthy Affiliate’s Online Entrepreneur Certification for, and what you can potentially expect following either of those paths. By the end of this article, you should have a very clear idea of which path is best for you.
WA is still the #1 best product I’ve reviewed for beginners out of 150+ products, but it’s not perfect. WA Bootcamp is its biggest flaw in my opinion. It was a great opportunity when Kyle initially began teaching it, but an incredible amount of competition is increasingly making it difficult for beginners to succeed with.
Phase 1 Overview – Click to zoom
I started an internet marketing review site about a year before WA Bootcamp was launched. There wasn’t a lot of competition at that time (maybe 2-3 authority sites) and it was something I’d thought about for years as I pursued other affiliate marketing projects. I finally took the leap, built the site, and was able to get it established fairly quickly.
That’s far from possible these days.
I’ll go into great detail later in this post, but due to many factors working against new internet marketers, the internet marketing review niche is extremely tough to succeed in. Wealthy Affiliate’s training is good, but in this particular case, a lot more factors into the situation than how good the training is.
When you’re new to internet/affiliate marketing, I’m not sure there’s anything more confusing, intimidating, and stressful than picking a niche. It’s a big decision, and it influences your internet business for at least the next several months significantly. That’s why a lot of people default to Bootcamp – it’s kind of handed to them on a platter in one of the most frustrating stages of becoming an internet marketer.
Don’t default to WA Affiliate Bootcamp just because you’re overwhelmed by picking a niche. This could end up being a fatal flaw that derails your otherwise successful online business. It’s tough, I know, but stick it out – you’ll be much more successful and profitable in the long run for it.
Your most likely path to success in internet or affiliate marketing is pursuing the niche you can help the most people in. The more people you help, the more successful you’ll be and the more money you’ll make over time.
I know it’s hard to take money out of the decision-making process, but it’s an important thing to do at this stage. You can make money from virtually any niche in this industry. Instead, focus on picking the niche that balances how many people you’ll be able to help with a topic you’re really interested in. You’ll be producing content for this site for months, if not years, to come – it better not be something you don’t understand well or have zero interest in.
How much is your opinion worth?
Your financial worth is directly tied to how much value you bring to the world. The more people you help, the larger market you serve, and the more money you’ll make. If you’ve never worked on a car a day in your life, how can you build a successful niche site that competes against professional mechanics? If you’ve never turned a wooden pen or heard of a lathe, how do you expect to compete against people like me in the pen turning niche?
Similarly, if you’ve never made a living online, it’s probably a bad idea to enter a niche where people will look to you for training and direction on how they can make a living from an internet business.
Pick a niche that plays to your strengths. Later, after that’s successful thanks to WA’s training, you’ll have an incredible amount of value to offer people researching the product.
As I’ve already mentioned, the internet marketing product review space is extraordinarily competitive, and it’s only getting fiercer with the dozens of new WA Bootcampers entering the niche each month. There’s still plenty of room for more authority sites, but it’s a tough road to get there. If you’re planning on promoting WA through WA Affiliate Bootcamp, you should know what the road ahead looks like.
The road ahead for Bootcampers
Since there’s a lot of competition, you’ll likely need to post a minimum of 2-3 times per week for at least 6-8 months without seeing many positive indicators at all. That might get you up to about 30-50 visitors per day unless you catch an unforeseen lucky break.
Once you begin getting comments and emails, you’ll have a lot of people asking for advice and feedback on their sites. How does it look? Will it make money? What should they change or do differently if they want to be successful?
These are just a handful of the most common questions I get asked, and they get much more complex too (ranging from paid advertising to email marketing to analytics and beyond). I’ve had multiple people reach out to me for help after pursuing Bootcamp because they didn’t know how to properly support and guide their referrals.
Alternatively, if you enter a different niche based on a passion, interest, or expertise you have, you’ll be much less likely to burn out (writing internet marketing product reviews week in and week out isn’t an easy grind) and you’ll truly be able to help the people that reach out to you upon finding your site.
Wealthy Affiliate is packed with incredible training, which is why I still recommend the product despite my feelings towards WA Bootcamp. A Starter (free) or Premium ($47 monthly) membership at Wealthy Affiliate is still very valuable – you just need to know how to leverage the training correctly.
Instead of building an internet marketing product review site, there are two paths you can take that are much lower competition in most cases and have a much higher chance of success:
1) Picking a Niche Based on Passion, Interest, or Expertise
Click to zoom
I’ve spent a lot of this review emphasizing this as the best path to take, and you can find the training for it by clicking the “Get Started Here” button towards the top of Wealthy Affiliate’s left navigation panel. That’ll take you to Wealthy Affiliate’s Online Entrepreneur Certification.
It can be intimidating to pick your own niche, but if I’m the person that referred you to WA don’t hesitate to run your ideas past me and get some feedback. I’m much better at picking niches now than I was for the first 2-3 years I was doing this, mainly due to the fact that I picked so many bad ones early on.
2) Use the WA Affiliate Bootcamp Training, but Not for Promoting WA
The WA Affiliate Bootcamp training is really, really good. I’ve had many referrals follow it with a lot of success, but no one that I’ve personally referred has used it to promote WA with much success. There are a couple of people making $100-$200/month after building their site for about a year, and I want you to be much more successful than that if you put that much time into building your business.
The people that are most successful using WA’s Bootcamp training are taking the same business model (writing reviews) and applying it to much lower competition niches that they’re knowledgeable and passionate about. This is a great approach to breaking into this industry. You’re getting great training and a proven business model, but applying it to a niche with significantly less competition.
Above all else, I want your online business to be successful. What I’ve outlined above is the best possible way I can think to set you up for success within Wealthy Affiliate, and since it’s my #1 rated product for beginners, it’s the the best way I can set you up for success within internet/affiliate marketing overall.
If you’re willing to see it all of the way through, you can build an internet marketing product review site that’s bringing in a decent amount of income within 1 to 1.5 years (conservatively). It’ll take a lot of work and dozens of reviews, but it’s a proven niche that many people are succeeding in.
Alternatively, you can apply the business model to lower competition niches and start seeing results a lot faster in most cases, or you can follow WA’s Online Entrepreneur Certification to build a business around a passion or interest you have.
They’re all good options, but one road is significantly harder than the others. I’d recommend following WA’s Online Entrepreneur Certification or applying the review model to a different niche until you have at least one site making money. You’ll learn so much the first time around that you’ll significantly increase your chances of succeeding in such a competitive niche, and you’ll have an incredible amount of valuable information and insight to provide to your followers based on your own experiences.
I hope you’ve found all of the information above helpful. I know it was detailed and possibly longwinded at times, but I can’t emphasize how important it is to me that I give you all of the right tools to succeed, and I think all of the information above is essential to your success at Wealthy Affiliate.
If you’ve taken the time to read all of the way to the end here, please leave a comment below with your thoughts or questions. I’d love to know what’s on your mind.
I've been in internet marketing for over 10 years, and I've purchased dozens of illegitimate products for the sole purpose of evaluating them and exposing the truth about these products to anyone who's thinking about purchasing it. I never let money influence my rating of a product and your success/safety is my absolute highest priority. Don't want to buy a product? Register for one of my 100% free internet marketing training courses>>
