Monthly Progress Report #2 – How To Get Referrals In Online Business?

Hello, everyone. How’re you doing? Do you know how to get referrals in online business?

This is my second progress report about my website, YoungRichFree.com, and my affiliate marketing journey. My website is created at the end of April 2020 and it is 4 months old now.

In August 2020, I reached my goal on the number of posts published. Moreover, I got a fantastic email from Wealthy Affiliate on 1st August 2020.

Wealthy Affiliate First Referral

“I Got My First Referral !! Yeah !!”

As you may know, I’m going to promote Wealthy Affiliate which I do believe is the best affiliate marketing training program nowadays. I always want to introduce Wealthy Affiliate which is my favorite training program to someone who is looking for affiliate marketing training.

I briefly introduce myself on the About Me page. I discovered affiliate marketing in 2012 and purchased a lot of “training programs” that claimed to tell me the “Secret” of getting rich overnight by affiliate marketing. However, almost all of them are either scams or lack of support.

Eventually, I gave up and went back to my 9-5 job.

This year, 2020, I was inspired by a very successful Super Affiliate, Jerry Huang, and came back to the training on Wealthy Affiliate in April.

In this monthly progress report, I’m going to tell you how to get your first Wealthy Affiliate referral and some data such as the number of posts and comments, the amount of traffic, and the number of social media followers of my affiliate marketing journey.


How To Get Referrals In Online Business? Training And Execution!

No matter which niche you are, training is the first step of your affiliate marketing journey.

My niche is “Making Money Online”, Wealthy Affiliate specifically, which is a very competitive niche. I need a lot of training, hardworking, and patience to succeed in this niche. Therefore, I take the training program on Wealthy Affiliate seriously. I follow the training called “Affiliate Bootcamp” on Wealthy Affiliate which is specially designed for affiliates to promote Wealthy Affiliate.

On the other hand, if you are in other niches, you could take the training called “Online Entrepreneur Certification”. It is designed for affiliates who want to target other profitable niches.

The Affiliate Bootcamp training is a 7 Phase (70 lessons) series of courses walking you through the process of creating and establishing a business in a niche related to the promotion of Wealthy Affiliate.

Affiliate Bootcamp

I’m currently in Phrase 5 of this training. I learned a lot of knowledge about creating an affiliate marketing business.

In Phase 1, it is an introductory phrase that taught me the basic concept and correct mindset of affiliate marketing, how to build a website, the basic process of keyword research, and how to create thoughtful reviews.

In Phrase 2, Kyle, one of the co-founders of Wealthy Affiliate, told me more details about how to create a readable and converting content that is targeted to a specific keyword.

In Phase 3, I learned how to use the power of social media channels to get traffic to my website. Moreover, it is time to track the data on my website by using Google Analytics.

In Phase 4, Design, Aesthetic, Branding, and Video are the powerful visualizing elements to enhance your website and boost organic traffic.

In Phase 5 which is I’m currently studying, I get a better understanding of my audiences and improve my skills to convert a visitor on my website to a referral.

In Phase 6 and 7 which I will go through in the future, I will learn how to get paid traffic from various search engines and how to scale my Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign.

In a nutshell, how did I get my first referral? I just followed the Affiliate Bootcamp training step by step. Most importantly, I took action consistently. I did my thorough keyword research, tried my very best to create converting posts regularly, shared my content on different social media channels, and tweaked my website and strategy carefully, etc.

A correct mindset is very important for affiliate marketing. A few years ago, I tried to find the “Secret” to get rich overnight. However, there is no such secret. You can’t get rich overnight in the affiliate marketing business. You need to be very patient, consistent, and hardworking. Then, what you can do is to wait for the results. You will see the results getting better and better over time.

Finally, I got my first referral after waiting for 4 months.


How’s The Result Of A 4 Months Old Website? – I Catch Up My Schedule Finally

After 4 months of hard work on my website, there is a certain number of posts, comments, and a certain amount of organic traffic. Now, let me give you some data on my website.

  • Number Of PostsTotal Number of Posts and Pages Published: 35 posts and 5 pages
    • There are 35 posts and 5 pages published after 4 months. I finally caught up on my schedule. According to the Affiliate Bootcamp training on Wealthy Affiliate, it should be 60 to 100 posts published after 6 months. Therefore, I will write about 10 posts every month and it should be at least 60 posts published by the end of October.

 

  • Number Of CommentsTotal Number of Comments: 170 (About Half of The Comments is My Reply)
    • There are a total of 170 comments on different posts on my website. The post that gets the most number of comments is about how to get ranked with Google. I think many visitors who come to my site are really interested in ranking. As always, I will reply to every comment and I’m really appreciated who visited my site and left their valuable comments. Their comments could motivate me to create more content and inspire me for ideas of topics.

 

  • Amount of Organic Traffic
    • In August 2020, there are a total of 252 users with 405 sessions on my website.

August Traffic

As you could see my screenshot above, there is a sharply climb-up on the last 2 days of August. When I look into the details of these 2 days, there is a strange “Referral” traffic from a link called “trafficbot4free.host”. This link provides 56 users for my website in these 2 days.

Quite strange! I didn’t figure out what it is yet. Do you know what it is?

August Traffic Last 2 Days

In a nutshell, the traffic on my website is still very low. There are just about 8 users who visited my site per day in August. I hope this situation will be improved after I publish more and more content.


Social Media Engagement – Facebook, Twitter, And Pinterest

  • Facebook Fanpage: 41 Likes
  • Twitter: 97 Followers
    • It seems that Facebook Fanpage and Twitter cannot provide too much traffic to my website. There are just 16 users who came from my social media channels on August, 10 and 6 of them came from Facebook and Twitter respectively.
    • I think I have to work hard on social media channels. However, my difficulty is the time since I still have a 9-5 job. I almost put all of my spare time into creating articles but I will try my best on social media anyway.
  • Pinterest: 52 Followers But The Problem Is Still There
    • As I said in the last Progress Report, I can’t create any pins from my website on Pinterest and it seems that I will never solve this problem. Therefore, I adjusted the practice that the Affiliate Bootcamp training taught me. I created my own pins by using Canva and linked them to Wealthy Affiliate directly instead of my website. Let’s see the result next month.
    • In August, my pins got 629 impressions and the number of total audiences is 451. I know these numbers are very low for Pinterest. I will try my best to do better next month.

Pinterest August


What Did I Learn In August?

  • Canva – Very Powerful And Free Online Graphic Design Tool

In August, I learned how to use Canva to create some simple images and put on my posts as featured images.

Canva is a very useful and free online graphic design tool to create graphics. I use it for creating my featured images on my website and pins on Pinterest.

Canva Templates

As you could see in the screenshot above, there are lots of templates on Canva for designing graphics for different purposes such as Facebook posts, flyers, presentations, cards, posters, and logos. I learned to use it by myself and I’m now able to create some simple and beautiful graphics. It is not difficult to use Canva because it is very user-friendly. If you want to create your own graphics for your website, I would suggest using Canva.

  • Simple Follow-Up Message Campaign

Since I got my first referral in August, I immediately wanted to write a message to my first referral. After writing my first message, I just thought about if I get more and more referrals, it is very time-consuming to write messages to them one by one. Therefore, I started looking for creating an automated follow-up message campaign.

As I said, Wealthy Affiliate is a very comprehensive training platform. I can easily find training in automated follow-up message campaigns on Wealthy Affiliate.

There is a “Messages” function under the “WA Affiliate Program”. As you could see in the screenshot below, there is a Custom Message Campaign created by Kyle and Carson. It is a set of follow-up messages sent from Kyle and Carson to all members of Wealthy Affiliate upon joining and based on different rules. I could take a look at them as a reference.

Custom Message Campaign

I also created my own automated follow-up message campaign to all my referrals as shown below. I just created 3 simple follow-up messages. If I get more referrals, I may write more follow-up messages in this messaging campaign. To be honest, I strongly suggest creating your own automated follow-up message campaign to show your personality.

My Messages Campaign


Planning For The Next Month: September 2020

  • Magical Number Of Posts

After reading the post titled “Secret To Achieving Vegas” by Grace aka LittleMama who is a Super Affiliate on Wealthy Affiliate, 400 review posts seem to be the magical number to become a Super Affiliate and qualify for the WA Las Vegas Super Affiliate Conference.

Therefore, my long-term goal is to write 400 review posts. I will create more review posts rather than posts with general topics starting from September. I currently have 17 review posts to share different affiliate marketing training programs or systems. I’m going to write at least 10 review posts every month. Do some calculations, I will have 400 review posts by the end of 2023.

  • Beginner’s Guide To Make Money Online

I’m going to write a “Beginner’s Guide To Make Money Online”. It would be a landing page to share my information about how to make money online by affiliate marketing. Visitors will suppose to give me their email addresses and I will send them the link to this beginner’s guide.

“Money is in the list”. I always want to build my email list to build relationships and trust with my subscribers. Therefore, I would like to share my experience and knowledge in the beginner’s guide to someone who would like to give me their email addresses.

  • Social Media Channels

I will keep sharing my posts and useful information on my social media channels such as Facebook Fanpage, Twitter, and Pinterest. I hope I can get more followers and more organic traffic to my website.

In a nutshell, my website, YoungRichFree.com is still a very young website that is only 4 months old. I will be patient and consistent. I will keep posting and sharing to get more and more traffic to my website.

If you have any comments on how to get referrals in online business or my affiliate marketing progress, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you and I’ll reply to you as soon as possible.

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