In my professional life before I retired I was an IT professional. I graduated college in 1975 as a qualified programmer; a new field in its day. I started out at a major Canadian bank programming in COBOL (look it up). Then I moved on to a major worldwide engineering firm in Montreal, finally ending up my career at a Canadian railway where I ran IT technical support, networks, data centres, call centres, and in the end a wireless internet service for our passengers.
I used to think marketing was for lightweights
All along the way I was exposed to the various marketing departments where I worked. I didn’t get what they did actually. And why did they consume so much of our corporate budget, I thought? To say that I did not respect what these marketing people did was the least disrespectful of thoughts I had. You have probably seen the countless Dilbert cartoons to know what I am talking about.
War existed between IT and Marketing.
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I wanted to earn money to supplement my retirement income
Like many of us I consider myself quite tech savvy so I decided to start a website in the autumn of 2012 shortly after my retirement. Not only was I going to start a website but I wanted to earn money to supplement my retirement income and also have some fun doing it as well.
I thought it was a piece of cake; technically. I had chosen WordPress as my platform after dabbling with Joomla and Drupal. ?But nobody was coming to my technically beautiful site. What was wrong?
I fell for some scams along the way
So I searched around a bit and fell for a sales pitch about a “web business in a box”. Intrigued I ordered their sales material which arrived by courier a few days later. After digging some more into the offer I discovered that this “web business in a box” was part of a huge multi level marketing campaign where I would have been at the bottom of the pyramid; probably earning little while my “coach” higher up was going to make most of the money and get rich off my work. Did not seem to be fair to me so I abandoned that idea.
I joined affiliate programs in the hopes of making some commissions. Never earned a dime. I tried dropshipping and an Amazon Affiliate store. I even tried something called Resellers Heaven (to be reviewed later). Was I in heaven or was I in hell? Check out this at my site I set up which I am not too proud of now. In short, several hundred dollars, maybe over a thousand, ?spent on sites and not a penny of revenue.
I discovered that I was not following internet marketing best practices
I then discovered that I was not following best practice for site design, SEO, social media and content. How did I come to this conclusion? I searched all over the place for answers. I looked at my situation and determined that I needed professional help. I was not going to figure this out on my own easily. I got discouraged until I discovered?Wealthy Affiliate.
So I ended up here at Wealthy Affiliate (see review) ?because it is the only place where online marketing training guides you through the right steps to becoming successful.
Proper training like that at Wealthy Affiliate has helped me considerably
I am now getting many more “quality” visits to my original site I started in late 2012. And I have created another niche site here at Wealthy Affiliate that already attracts significant traffic since just a short time. ?I have even made my first sales commissions in the past month.
Now with the training, support, and resources I have retrofitted my first site launched in 2012 and am getting solid traffic and legit comments. I never got a legit comment on my first site I created before this training.
All my sites are receiving decent traffic and engagement with visitors and I have started to earn sales commissions
So far the best part of the courses has been the keyword research techniques which were much simpler than I had imagined. They really help you to focus on a meaningful audience and act as a guide to writing content.?On my first site?I have thirteen posts so far and have written 7?for?Street Articles.?I have also submitted an article to?EZINE?where I had already published earlier in my blogging career.
I am also social bookmarking at Reddit, Delicious, and Stumbelupon; along with posting to my Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and G+ pages. I have also joined one forum within my niche.
All in all a busy month, but thoroughly enjoying the experience.?And the community is awesome; I have collected 142 followers in that can be of benefit to myself and to them further on.
Why was I so lost?
If you have any feedback or comments on anything related to this article, I would love to hear it. ?Please drop me a note in the comments below! I try to respond within 24 hours.
Mike, founder of The Wealthy Boomers
