I've Tried That - We lose money so you don't have to!

In my last post about Wealthy Affiliate University (WAU), I told you about the 8-week action plan that is meant to help you move from being a noob to being a successful internet marketer.

This post describes the second lesson in the 8-week action plan. It also gives you a close-up look at just a couple of the many resources you’ll find inside WAU.

A Mile in Your Shoes

Let me step inside your body for a minute and look at this thing from your point of view. I’m 58 years old, let’s say, and my wife has just lost her job, cutting our household income in half. My employer isn’t looking too great, either, and I might not have a job at the end of the year. I have two teenagers that eat like wolves and are STILL. GROWING. Plus, if I want to retire some day and not have to live on cat food from Wal-Mart, I need to find a way to bring in some cash.

Naturally, I go to the Google and start poking around. When I search for ways to make extra money at home, I get a gazillion results. Hell, it seems like everybody is making money online except me! They say it’s easy. They say it’s fast. They carry wads of cash. They have super white teeth. They drive Ferraris. (I’m a Jag kind of guy, but still.)

I don’t need a yacht, but an extra thousand a month would be a miracle. So I sign up for data entry and quickly spend $500 without making a cent. Now I’m a little wiser. But I still know very little about tweets and PHPs and XMLs, though I can click my way around a site just fine.

Your Second Week as a Wealthy Affiliate

So I was very nervous about signing up for WA. But this dude at this blog said it was a trustworthy program. I’m in my second week now and still feel really good about buying in.

I’m not lost yet! WA is teaching me from the ground up about how to make money online. Last week’s lesson was kind of an introduction to the site and how to use it. This week we got into the nitty-gritty.

Here are the learning objectives for my second week:

• Learn the inner workings of Internet marketing & Affiliate marketing
• What are Affiliate Networks, and how can you leverage them?
• The different “types” of Internet marketing
• Choosing your direction
• How to become an expert, not a generalist
• Choosing an industry and product to sell online
• Begin understanding consumers
• Setting up a Pay-Per-Click advertising account
• Squidoo.com

To be honest with you, I looked through that list and thought, “I don’t really know what any of those things mean.” And then I thought, “Well, duh! If I knew that, I wouldn’t have needed the course.” So, yeah. Full steam ahead.

The lesson is clearly written and contains no jargon that it doesn’t explain. There’s a tutorial and a video that spell out exactly what affiliate marketing is and how it works.

The most important part this week is probably the section that breaks down the process into two broad categories of marketing: the free kind (I like how that sounds) and the kind where I need a budget (maybe later). And WA provides tutorials and explanations about each type:

Of course, WA helps me choose which path to take, when, how, and why.

And this week, I learn about Clickbank and the thousands of products available there for me to sell. But WA does not leave it up to me to figure out by myself. They give me a Clickbank research tool so that I can see which products are selling well, how much they cost, and how much they pay. Cool!

The tasks for me this week are just as doable as last week:

• Claim your free $50 Yahoo Search Marketing advertising credit & setup a YSM account
• Setup a Google Adwords account
• Join Squidoo.com (or another article engine)
• Research potential markets & article writing ideas
• Write your first article
• Familiarize yourself with your Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing accounts

And even more important, WA provides a ton of resources to help me with the tasks. Click on the image to see it full size in a new tab or window.

Week two is where the real work starts. I haven’t made any money yet, but I understand now how it works and how I WILL make money. Even I can do this! Join me on the journey. Check out Wealthy Affiliate University by clicking here.