My Wealthy Affiliate Review

Affiliate Marketing is where I managed to get my big breakthrough when it came to making money outside a normal job, and this is where you can learn how to start making money online too.

Let me first give you a bit more of my own story and then I’ll explain how the Wealthy Affiliate community and training can help you get your breakthrough to making money online.

I was born and brought up in Essex, UK and attended a good grammar school in Southend. After that, I went off to Portsmouth and got a degree in Electronics. Everything seemed good and I was very excited to get to work and start earning money.

Big plans, high hopes. Such is the life of a 20 year old!

My first job was working for a big defence contractor in Basildon but the hours were long and during winter I hardly even saw the sun because there were no windows in the building. It was a pretty tough start to my working life. The days soon ran into weeks and the weeks into months and so on.

Was this how I was going to live the next 40 years of my life?

No way! Looking for various ways to make money, I started trading the stock market. It must have looked like I had a bladder problem – I was nipping off to the payphone every few hours to call the brokers to check prices and buy and sell. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was learning a lot, fast. My main source of tips was the national newspapers. Sure enough some weeks I would make more money trading stocks and shares than I did working 37 hours in my job. Wow! that was pretty cool.

I wondered if the stock market was the answer?

But that was pre-internet bubble. I got lucky on a few tech stocks and made some good money but then the bubble burst and guess what happened? Yep, back to square one.

Roll on a couple more years and I decided to get out of Electronics and try my hand at Technical Sales.

Change of jobs

After 2 job interviews I landed a job with a small family run electronics business in Hertfordshire. I was the 15th person to join the company and thought “Yeah, this is it – I can go to the top and run this show!”. It was certainly VERY different to working with a company of 2,500 people. Initially I LOVED it. But as the years passed by – guess what? Yep, I started to realise this wasn’t going to be my ticket to freedom either.

Spotted the internet

By around 1996 I spotted and started trying to work out what the “internet thing” was all about. I could see it had the potential to change the world and I started buying domain names. I bought the domain name “moviewatch.co.uk” which was rather ambitious. Remember, this was way before anyone thought you’d be able to watch movies online. The internet in 1999 was VERY slow. However, domain names like “business.com” and “broadcast.com” were selling for $billions! It was crazy times. This was all revolutionary and no-one knew where it was all heading. Google didn’t even exist until 1999.

Anyway I didn’t make a fortune in domain names. (I’ve since cancelled around 1,000 domain names I purchased over the years). No point in just having domain names though. I also started working out how to create websites to go with them. Not only that, I also worked out how to get to the top of search results. BOOM! I now had a business I could run by myself. Or so I thought.

Industrial Directory – What a great idea for a business?

My initial plan was to create a website for the industry I’d worked in for the last 7 years. I would simply charge companies for listing their details on my site. The site was getting a good number of views and the idea seemed simple enough. I had basically created a yellow pages online for industry. Well, that was the plan. But I couldn’t go any further with it whilst I had a full-time job. I needed to TIME to get it off the ground. I persuaded my boss to let me work a 4 day week (for a 20% pay cut of course) and this gave me a vital day each week to work on my exit strategy. But the time came pretty quickly where I had to make a leap of faith.

Time to QUIT my job!

So, on Feb 1st 2001, I QUIT my job and went self employed. Wow, it felt GOOD but also a little bit scary. My wife was expecting our first child so I had to make it work. I gave myself 6 months and said if it didn’t work, I’d go back to a job and a steady income.

Well, within 6 months of picking up the phone, trying to persuade people they should pay me to list their company phone number on my site, I worked out this was not going to make me enough money to survive on – at least not enough to keep my wife at home and pay for the new baby clothes and nappies we seemed to be buying with alarming regularity. A decision had to be made.

FAILURE – leads to a new door of opportunity

I took a job very briefly with an internet company just down the road but within 2 months I had quit again. I had tasted freedom and it tasted good and I guess I was now no longer employee mentality.

Get the PRODUCT right

I could make my own way thank you very much. One thing I soon realised when I worked for the internet company was that I was doing the right thing – getting to the top of Google and creating sites – but I was not selling the right product. I had come across something which by this stage was called “affiliate marketing” and realised I could just put links on my websites sending people to other websites and those companies would then pay me for any resulting sales. No need to phone up companies trying to persuade them to pay me. Instead there were sites I could go to to get a link from another company wanting to pay me!

Aha! Affiliate Marketing – My Saviour

How cool was that? No talking to anyone, no selling anything. Just build website after website and put links on them. kerrching!

That was indeed my breakthrough moment and by the end of 2001 I was earning a full-time income from the internet. Goal achieved. And it’s all thanks to “affiliate marketing”.

Which brings me back now to you!

If you want to make money online, you need to UNDERSTAND what affiliate marketing is and how you can benefit from it. My story above shows you the long journey I took to get to that breakthrough moment when I realised Affiliate marketing was the solution.

But, times have changed (they’ve changed a lot). You do not need to spend years learning the skills it took me to learn.

There’s no need to take as long as I took or make the mistakes I made.

If you could attend an “affiliate marketing university” online, that was free (or certainly very low cost), would that help you get your breakthrough? Learn from people who are actually DOING it.

You can of course do it the hard way if you are mad and want to spend the next 4 years trying to work it out for yourself. But I really would advise you there is a much easier way – join Wealthy Affiliate for FREE.

free sign up to wa

 

★ Claim Your 2 Free Websites Here ★

 

paul hardingham x200 shadeThis is my profile pic in WA. →

I’ll be checking in on you to make sure that you got started alright, and you can always ask me questions you have.

Remember that helping people start their first online business is a passion of mine. So don’t hesitate to drop by and ask me something!

Feel free to share your thoughts, experiences or comments below. Thanks!


Comments

26 responses to “Wealthy Affiliate Review”

  1. Ijeoma Avatar
    Ijeoma

    Hi Paul

    I just want to Know, what type of product has to be sold in the website when on joined WA, or do they have their own specific products.

    It looks interesting and i think i will join soon, thanks.

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      They teach you how to find the right affiliate products to promote. There’s a million different things you can promote. They teach you how to build a website that gets free traffic and then what sort of products to promote in your website and so on. Wealthy Affiliate also has it’s own affiliate programme. You get 50% lifetime recurring commission on anyone you refer.

  2. Tornyeli Avatar
    Tornyeli

    Hi Paul I have try several times to register for this but the system always tells me I am already register which is not true and even if I change my email it still prevents me from registering. I have really research about this program and realize its really helping people who are new to affiliate marketing like me and I really want to join, can you please help me out to be able to register? or is the program for only certain geographical areas?

    Kindly let me hear from you.

    Thanks

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      As far as I’m aware it’s global. If it says you’ve already registered, I would imagine you have but just don’t remember doing it. You therefore have two options. 1) Request a password reset or 2) sign up again using a different email address.

  3. Paul.
    I have had E mails/Schemes from you for years.
    I used to be a pretty good silver affiliate in Tiscali up until they sold it in 2010 to Talk Talk.
    It was FREE to Join,Free training website,everything was FREE with no upfront costs,(although before i joined it was £199),when they made it FREE it Exploded with what everyone wants monthly residual income.
    This is what i want and am looking for a product like Broadband when it first came out.
    I not into smartphones/touch screen rubbish with APPS (applications)to me it is total dross.
    Sorry for the full on bit,but i say it how it is,if you offer the above,i’ll work with you as i did Peter powderham/Tony parker/Elaine fishburge. All top dogs at Tiscali..cheers mate andy

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      Hi Andy, I was in Tiscali Network too. You’ll see one of my videos within my Quit925 site showing my Tiscali success. And I totally agree with you, essentially what you are saying is you HAVE to have a quality product lots of people find genuine value. That’s what I always focus on. It’s so difficult telling some people that when they are only interested in making a “quick buck” with the millions of scams out there.

      Check out my http://www.quit925.co.uk site though if you haven’t already – you’ll see the businesses I recommend are all good value products (IMHO).

  4. Alicia Nottingham Avatar
    Alicia Nottingham

    I am interested in making money but have no idea how to start

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      That’s precisely what the Wealthy Affiliate University is all about. Go here and grab yourself a free account and take a good look round. The community of real people giving real help is fantastic. http://www.2-go.co.uk/wealthyaffiliate is the link.

  5. I want to learn.

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      Great. Grab yourself a free account and you can start learning straight away.

  6. Tom Miti Avatar
    Tom Miti

    Please am sorry to say this however i have been receiving email from you like hi happy Easter, happy new year , there are new offer, business opportunities however because there is a lot of internet scum and theft i did not pay a attention to you. I also received emails from you saying Miti long time what are you doing at the moment.

    Best Regards

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      OK that’s a shame because I am a genuine person. It’s rather difficult to send emails to people telling them about genuine opportunities because there are so many scams out there. However, there are also pick pockets out there, but that doesn’t mean you never leave your house?

  7. stefan Avatar
    stefan

    Great post Paul

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      Thanks for letting me know. Hope you are well.

  8. hi paul you can look to these websites as well they are also going strong

    1.XXXXX

    2.XXXXX (affiliate links removed)

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      I’ve had a look thanks, neither are for me.

  9. Will I have to upgrade my new laptop to get started?

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      If you can access the internet with your laptop then no, you won’t need to upgrade. The fact that you’ve been able to post a comment to this blog makes me believe you have all you need to access the Wealthy Affiliate university and learn some great things.

  10. MUKHTAR Avatar
    MUKHTAR

    THNX

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      You’re welcome

  11. I see, in past i tried gain from the internet, but i saw all that so hard or so small, (0.001$ for each click,…)

    thank you paul :*

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      That’s the point about Wealthy affiliate – it’s an online training university teaching you how to get well past small incomes such as 0.001$ per click. It’s been online for 9 years and has around 300,000 members around the world. The a free 7 day test drive and see for yourself.

  12. Thanks a million for your article.Most encouraging.I have decided this is the way for to go.I am also involved in electronics but am getting out.WA was recommended along time ago and foolishly I ignored it to my regret.However from here I will try to correct my dismal past.
    Thanks again for your timely email because I am at my crossroads now.

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      Don’t worry about what you did or didn’t do in the past. It shouldn’t have any bearing on what you do today. One of my favourite quotes is “there’s only one thing worse than failure, regret!”.

      Thanks for commenting and thanks for the thanks too.

  13. Paul,

    I want to earn. Pls take me with you. I want to join. I want to start as early as possible.

    With best regards

    Azam

    1. Paul Hardingham Avatar
      Paul Hardingham

      Sure, just add your details at my Quit925 site and get started. If you get stuck with anything just give me a shout on skype. Paul.