The WA Platform - Making it YOURS Over the past couple of years, Wealthy Affiliate has evolved. It has gone from a service that people could “learn how to create and promote their businesses online” to an “open education” PLATFORM that is composed of students, educators, and in many cases people that are active within both roles. In the following pages we are going to explain how YOU can leverage Wealthy Affiliate as your platform for becoming an educator and how to build a business utilizing the features within the Open Education Project platform. Becoming an Educator within WA This is for people that have something to share within the online business world. We all have knowledge, we all have expertise, and we can all help others because of this knowledge. To be completely honest with you, everything that you are doing already could easily be turned into a business within your respective niche. I know you have an innate knowledge that you are currently sharing with the entrepreneur base online already. There is a BIG opportunity to leverage the platform at WA to build a business out of this. You are already very successful in the way you have had a positive impact on people’s lives, you have helped a lot of people get over hurdles, and you have built yourself quite a brand within WA (and also outside of WA).

That definitely has a lot of value and cannot be understated. What may not be so clear is that everything they need to operate a full scale business is there at WA. The platform is already created for you....

In other words, make Wealthy Affiliate your own membership. By doing this you will not have to worry about any technology, any payment, any support, or any service updates. In many cases, you just need to go about your day as you normally would and you could simply spend some time each and every day within the community at WA. When you think about it, you have the facility and the platform already in place for you, now all you need to do is (a) drive opt-ins (b) offer your training and services within WA. You already have all of the essentials in place.

● Easily create and deliver training - You can easily create videos, tutorials, and blog posts within Wealthy Affiliate that are interactive, can be shared and that you can utilize as bonuses for people signing-up to the 10 day free trial.

● Payment platform (you don’t have to worry about any of it). You just collect the commissions and don’t have to worry about any other aspect.

● The different levels of training (premium). This means that you can incentivize your training to the free sign-up’s and encourage them to sign-up for premium for you additional training.

● The tools you can leverage within your training. Keyword tools, rapid writer, link management. These are tools that you can leverage within your own training and that you could utilize to draw people into the community.

● Ability to get reach through your content. Content within WA is already getting indexed and as the owner of the content, you are get credit for all referrals generated from it. If you wrote a blog post about SEO and it got indexed, you would get credit for any referrals that come through the search rankings.

● Hosting. All free members get access to hosting and all premium members get unlimited hosting on our state of the art architecture. You can simplify many aspects of training by leveraging our hosting solution at WA.

● Website building applications. Website creation is easy within WA and you can incorporate WP express into your training.

● Everyone else’s training. You can leverage everyone else’s training, not just yours within Wealthy Affiliate. You could use these as bonuses for joining for the free trial (your opt-in).

● Profit Potential. For every verified “free” lead you will earn $1 and you will earn full commissions for every paid Premium sign-up. Approximately 5% on the lowest end will convert from free to paid with many members experiencing 10-15%. 12% of all sign-ups join for a one year membership.

Based on these numbers, a single lead works out to be worth far more than it may initially appear.

If you get 100 leads to join WA, you are instantly going to experience a $1 per verified lead (verify via Facebook in back end). This rate is 60%. 60 x $1 = $60.

On the lowest end of the sign-up rate, you are going to see a 5% conversion from free to premium members. This is increasing with time and as we make incremental adjustments. There are many Educators that experience 10%+ conversions from free to paid at WA right now.

At 5% you can expect 5 commissions out of the 100 leads. $22.50 per month, recurring for each. An average membership terms is 5 months (and growing) meaning that the average sale is $112.50.

$112.50 x 5 = 562.50 + $60 verified sign-up payment = $662.50 (based on 5% premium)

So your revenue for every FREE sign-up is going to be $6.63. Every free sign-up pays you that (minimum).

If you get 10%+ which we know that you will be able to accomplish without too much work, every lead will work out to be $12.26! Now that is a scalable business! This leads us to the ultimate lead generating system for educators... Your Ultimate Power Move: Leveraging the Double Opt-in System Our latest technology at Wealthy Affiliate allows you to completely integrate your email marketing campaigns directly into the WA platform.

Here is the infographic outlining the process:

It is quite simple to implement. Basically you are setting your opt-in thank you page as the “create account” page at Wealthy Affiliate, acting as the double opt-in while remaining part of your natural process.

When someone signs up to the opt-in web form on your site, it is going to redirect them to the Wealthy Affiliate sign-up form pre-populated with their details from the prior form.

Here is an example of what the “Create Account” page on Wealthy Affiliate will look like with the returned variables. In this case the submitted details would have been from: Email: kyle@wealthyaffiliate.comName: kyle https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/home/createaccount/?email=kyle%40wealthyaffiliate.com&name=kyle This will all be managed within your “email campaigns” inside of Wealthy Affiliate (this is new). Benefits of Using this System (1) MORE LEADS. You are instantly going to be creating leads within Wealthy Affiliate. 90% of people on average will sign-up between your page and the create account page at Wealthy Affiliate. (2) Completely brandable. You can brand the Create Account page with your details, your bonus, as well as your own message. This will increase conversions. (3) You are still building your own list. Not only will you be building a sizeable referral base within Wealthy Affiliate, you are still going to be building your own email list just as you have been doing. In other words, your opt-in process stays the same. You continue to build your own list. (4) WA Conversions will skyrocket. In a real world situation, an email list of 100 people will convert at around 20% on the high end from email to Wealthy Affiliate. That is 20 referrals for

100 opt-ins which isn’t too bad. However, with this system you are going to make this 90%! This is going to QUADRUPLE your revenue within Wealthy Affiliate! (5) You will build a massive following. When a user is referred they also follow you. This means any time that you create a training resource or a blog post you are going to get a very sizable reach. Think of this as another way to get reach when you have something to say. Incorporating the double opt-in into your website process is a “no brainer” as you are only going to scale your business by incorporating this simple step in a process that is already there!

If you need help setting this up, do let us know and we will be more than happy to work with you. A Walk Through of the Double Opt-in Getting the double opt-in set up is very easy as we have an editor that does most of the work for you. To follow along with this walk-through, go to the double opt-in page which can be found at the following URL. https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/share/optin/ This is the page where you can manage and edit your opt-in campaigns The first process you need to walk through is the “Web Form & Campaign Details” page.

You will notice that there are several fields associated fields. I am going to explain these for you below: Campaign Name: This is for your own reference and management within Wealthy Affiliate and will also be the name used within the URL of the thank you page (we will get to that). I suggest choosing something that is relevant to your campaign. Note that we do not allow duplicate account names within the double opt-in system, so if it is not available you will have to choose a new one.

Aweber List Name: This is the list name from your aweber account. It is not required that you enter a list in this field, but if you would like to capture the opt-in for your own use, you will have to set this up.

Aweber only allows unique list names across all of their accounts. Here is a list name from my account and I would want to copy this directly into the Aweber List Name field. This means that each time someone signs up they will go to my aweber list as well as potentially sign-up to WA as a referral, hence the “double” opt-in. Web From Header: This is the headline within the web form. You will see it update within the preview (on the right) as you edit the content. This should be your “offer” to get people to sign-up and correlate with the what you are going to the training that you provide people with inside of WA.

For example, mine was “Get my 10 Days to Local Marketing Success Course!”. I would then set-up the Default Training to relevant local marketing training (which is done within the Step 2). Web Form Message: This is the content that goes below the web form. This should encourage people to sign-up. Be creative. Remember your ultimate goal is to get a lead, so the more you encouragement you can give for someone to join, then the more aweber leads you are going to get and ultimately the more WA referrals! Web Form Submit Button Text - This should be a “call to action”. Join Now, Get Instant Access, Start My Training, Get More Info NAME, etc. You want an action associated with the button to maximize conversions. Form Width (slider) - You can adjust the width of the form with this slider. Depending on how much content you have within your form and where you want to situate it on your site, you may want to adjust the size of your form. Browse for Image - You can upload an image into your web form. This is important that you choose something that is relevant to your offer and this will make your web form visually appealing (which leads to higher conversions).

Step 2: User Sign-up Page Preview After a user on your website fills out your form, they are going to be redirected to the WA “Create Account” page. This is another page that you will be customizing and doing so will increase your overall conversion rate from initial opt-in (on your site) to the person actually becoming a referral at WA.

The conversion rate between the two pages could be as high as 80-90%. This means that not only will you be building a list at aweber, that there is the potential for 80-90% of these people to become your referrals as well at WA. Massive potential here.

I will explain the fields in more detail below.

Here is what this page looks like “Live”. https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/createaccount/localmarketing You will notice that within the process, that the details entered in the initial form are passed through to the create account page, further simplifying the sign-up process.

Here is a breakdown of the different form fields in the “Step 2: User Sign-up Page Preview”. Sign-up Page Heading - This is the heading that will appear on your create account page. This is likely going to be one of the first things that visitors will see on this page. This should continue the flow between your initial opt-in and the secondary “create account” page where the person will be required to complete their details. Sign-up Page Message - This is a message where you will want to be personal and perhaps talk about other “unadvertised” things that people are going to gain access to when signing-up. Remember, people are getting access to the entire WA community so you can leverage other resources, tools or support systems here. Browse for Image - This is an image that should be relevant. It could be the same as the first image, or could be something different (but still relevant). Again, this is something that you could test to see what converts the best, a picture of you may even convert quite well.

Default Training URL: When someone joins through you, you can customize their experience through their “default” training. The default training appears as their “Getting Started” tab within the dashboard. This training should be created in a way that is time sensitive, has daily tasks (so people are accomplishing things), and something people could finish and see results in their first 10 days.

It can also be used to upsell the premium membership by pointing people to other resources or services someone would get if they were a full paying member which the cannot access as a trial user. In the example I have provided you above, you will see that I made the Getting Started training related to Local Marketing.

Here is the default training if you do not set this training to your own:https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/your-first-10-getting-rolling-with-wealthy-affiliate Default Custom Welcome URL: You can also create a customized blog “welcome message” that will create that instant connection once people enter the Wealthy Affiliate community. This is a comfort creating message and one in which will be relevant to you, your story, and what you are going to be offering your referrals within WA. This is the first thing people are directed to after they complete the initial sign-up process, so in essence this is their “first impression” of WA. Make sure you do your best here to connect with people, make them feel comfortable, perhaps tell a story about yourself, and tell them how they can benefit from WA.

Here is the default welcome message if you do not set this training to your own: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/kyle/blog/a-warm-welcome-from-wa THE CODE You can implement the double opt-in system in two different ways.

The easiest way is to grab the “Opt-in Form Code” and put this on your website. This will take care of the entire process for you. Here is an example of what this web form looks like when it is live. http://youcanreallymarket.com/ You can test out the process and see how it works from start to end for further clarification. If you are using the opt-in code, you simply want to paste this into your site. If you are not all that familiar with code, it will look like the following within a Wordpress site.

Notice that you will want to insert it within the HTML tab when inside the page/post editor in Wordpress. If Using Your Own Form

If you want, you can use your own opt-in form so that nothing on your website has to change. The only thing that will be required of you is to set the “thank you” page within aweber for that particular web form to that URL that is given to you in the “Use your Own Form” url string. There are 5 fields in your opt-in web form code that need to change only: Redirect URL (your thank-you page)<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/createaccount/localmarketing" /> Already on list url (If people sign-up more than once)<input type="hidden" name="meta_redirect_onlist" value="https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/createaccount/localmarketing" /> Name Field (must call it “name” if you want to pass through to WA)<input type="text" name="name" value="" /> Email Field (must call it “email” if you want to pass through to WA)<input type="text" name="email" value="" /> Pass Form Data (tells Aweber to send the “name” and “email” to your redirect page)<input type="hidden" name="meta_forward_vars" value="1" /> Using the Aweber Javascript Version If you use the Javascript version of your web forms from Aweber, this is what your setup would look like:

After saving your web form you simply grab the Javascript version of your code that would look like this: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://forms.aweber.com/form/98/123456789.js"></script> Using a custom welcome comment This was mentioned this briefly in the infographic, but you can set up your own Welcome comment within the Affiliate Program page (under the Referrals tab) https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/share It looks like the following:

This is a comment that your referrals will receive after ONE HOUR from the point that they enter WA and they will also receive an email notification that you have sent them a personal comment on their space profile. ;) This message should be something personal and that lets people know that you are there to help them. This personal contact will serve as a smooth transition from your site into WA and make people feel at home upon coming into WA. Maximizing Your Training There are two different training levels within Wealthy Affiliate, public and premium. Public allows everyone to see the training (including the 10 day trial) whereas premium training is exclusive to that of paying members.

When you create training within WA you have full control over this and you can maximize your conversion potential by being creative with the training resources that you create for the public and the ones that you create privately. You also have control of the “getting started’ course that free trial members will be enrolled in.

I am briefly going to explain how the different aspects of training (getting started, public, premium) could potentially work for you.

1. Getting Started Training This is the first thing that your visitors see within WA when they join. You control this course and choose which training your visitors are enrolled in within their first 10. Your getting started training could simply be a tutorial in which you can set as your default training within Double Opt-in campaigns. The best approach would be to have this coincide with your external offer on your opt-in form.

Ex. Join here and get my 10 days to Local Marketing Success (on your website)

And then you would create your Getting Started course within Wealthy Affiliate and set this as the default for this particular opt-in campaign. This flow of relevance will be highly beneficial in terms of user integration into the system and overall conversions. To further improve conversions you could have offers to “premium” training that you have created within your first 10 days. If you do decide to create your training and not use the default “Your First 10”, then you may want to tie in the training based on their 10 day schedule within WA. This is up to you however and something that could be tested to see what converts the best. 2. Public Training Within each blog post or training piece that you create, you can manage share and control access.

The first aspect is sharing. As you know, items within Wealthy Affiliate can be shared with the outside world (and they get indexed in the search engines) if you turn “Share” to On. This will allow people externally to read your content on WA (and ultimately share it) and will also allow people within the community at WA to get your training a lot of reach.

Note that only the 1st page of training resources are visible to external visitors when shared. . Allowing your content to be shared can lead to reach and if i gets indexed or shared externally t and it leads to more people joining WA for free, you also get credit for all of these. Sharing is on by default when you create or edit a resource as shown below:

And this is what the share module will look like on your training modules:

If you have content that you share within your follow up sequence, you may want to post that content at WA and then point them from your email to the post for that particular content. This way you are offering value and benefiting from it at the same time. You can also send people to training that isn’t yours! This is something that a lot of people forget but if you wanted to link to any of our posts or training...or ANYONES (and get credit for the referral), you could simply grab your permalink for those posts/training.

You could offer any of these as bonuses for joining WA for free...it is FREE to try! Premium Training You also have access controls over WHO within Wealthy Affiliate can view your training or blog posts.

As you can see, you can set resources to “Exclusive to Premium” members. This is a very powerful control that can allow you to upsell the premium membership within your Getting Started course and also within your initial welcome message. These could be more advanced topics or could even serve as a continuation of your getting started training. An example of this would be including your First 10 days of training within your getting started course (for free members) and then the next 20 days within a Premium course that people would have to sign-up as a full premium member to receive.

This can dramatically increase conversions. Also, private message support. Offering your own private support will be a huge clincher for many people. Since the Private Messaging system (and forum) are premium only, this is an obvious upsell for YOUR people coming into WA and something that you are already doing anyways. That will be a huge selling point for many people. Within your initial getting started training you could reference your private support which would be included for premium level members.

Premium membership is your ultimate goal, so always keep ideas on how to do this in the back of your head as to how you can leverage this. The following post explains the main differences, but there are many more subtle ones that we have not included. https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/kyle/blog/free-10-day-trial-vs-wa-premium You have already come up with some ideas for this, but you should be creating some premium training and letting people know about this training that follow you. You could even add this to your follow-up message.

“I also have some premium training here at Wealthy Affiliate that will really help you turn your writing efforts into full scale business, but since they are Premium you do have to be a premium member to use them....etc”

This is just an example and may not be necessary, but you should have an additional level of premium and you may want to make 50% or so of your training resources premium. You can also point to these via your permalinks externally of WA and it will take people to an initially join to pay page...you may want to test this as it could lead to instant commission. Different Types of Training You could break down your training into different categories and with your welcome message you could point people into any direction you like, you could have supplementary training...you could let them know you are there for help.

There are many different training resources that you could create in respect to your interests...

● Copywriting● Motivation● Successful Mindsets● Overcoming Personal Hurdles● Infographics● Outsourcing● Writing, Writing, Writing

These could also be things that you prelude within your website/blog. Say you created a training resource here at Wealthy Affiliate on “How to Write a Topical News Story” (just an example), you could write a blog post on your site that targeted a search term:

“writing a news story ” Or other related keywords. With that post, you could preclude the post by stating...

“Want some free training on how to monetize your writing?”

OR

“Find out how I earn a full time income writing on the Internet...JOIN FREE!”

Something like that. That will segue your content into WA where you will be making referrals. Don’t feel bad about doing this...you are giving away access to WA and some more awesome content. It is OK to push people in a direction that will help them. The Business of It Simply laid out, this is what this business model is going to look like. Remember, what you are doing is leveraging WA as your own membership....minus the support, the payment processing, the infrastructure, the development, the updates, the technology, etc...

You simply have to send people here and create a bit of training, and your business model is going to work. To send people here, you need to:

(1) Get indexed in Google (build content)(2) Advertise via various channels (to scale)(3) Get reach on social platforms(4) Point people to WA from your plugin(5) Tell people to come to WA for their FREE trial Then you need to create the other side (within WA that lines up with your flow): (1) Create relevant training (which will also get indexed)(2) Create Premium training(3) Connect with these people(4) Make them offers via your initial message, the warm welcome, and within your Getting Started training (you could reference your Premium training or recommend Premium training) Future Ambassadorship Potential - Coming Early 2013! By creating training within WA, you are going to be a prime candidate for ambassadorship at WA. This is going to mean revenue. Although we have not revealed exactly where this is headed, it is going to eventually be another way for the creators here at WA to earn a good deal of revenue. That is revenue on top of all the existing business models. This means that you will likely be able to sell low ticket courses (something to this effect) within the community...this is not solidified, I just wanted to give you a bit of a peak as to where the future of ambassadorship may be headed late 2012 or early 2013. If you can align a big following by then, this could lead to a substantial bump in revenue! The Process of Selling WA Here is the basic process of selling WA.

● getting reach through your site and building your brand there (two pronged approach)● build a list and a following on your site

● driving people into the content at WA● completing the process once they are within WA● utilizing WA for content reach, sharing,and indexing in Google (which is coming soon)

Something that is in the early stages of development, but not completed yet is going to be your ability to put the WA sign-up on your actual page. This means that if you get 20 email opt-ins per day, it is going to be 20 referrals to WA.

This is going to serve as a double opt-in as well if you have an aweber list and these people will also be added to your list outside of WA. This is going to lead to substantially more revenue to you in WA referrals, both the free $1 referrals as well as those that upgrade to premium.

This will be in place in August at which time you will be one of the first with the capabilities to add this technology to your site. Every lead = a referral = more revenue. The problem now is that people are creating a lot of leads, but they are lucky if they convert at 20% (max) to WA after they build the leads.

So now, people may get 100 email sign-ups to their aweber list but this only turns into 10 WA referrals. When we roll this out, this is going to equate to 100 WA referrals and a lot more revenue to the affiliate! Overview to Get Your Plan in Place Setting this up is relatively simple. It is a FOUR step process: Step 1: Grab your code from WA to create either your double-optin form or a WA specific thank you page Step 2: Create a training module that coincides with your external offer Step 3: Create a custom welcome message for all of your referrals. Step 4: Create 2 layers of training, some available to everyone and some available to “premium” members only. For this to ultimately achieve the maximum amount of success, you are going to have to break down the different stages of the conversion process and optimize and refine each and every one of them. (1) The Initial Offer - This is going to be the training/course/step-by-step that you are going to be offering people within WA. You know your audience best and what would appeal to them at the highest rates. Courses on a particular topic work very well. We recommend a 7-10 day course that will coincide with your Default Training. C (2) The Opt-in - This is going to be the difference between people joining your personal sequence and not. This is obviously the initial step to get people onto your list. Obviously the more visually appealing, relevant, and helpful that your offer sounds, the higher the opt-in rate.

If the initial offer is good, it is concise, and it stands out, people will join. In particular if they see it in multiple locations and it is a static module on your site within a side widget or a top widget that will increase your opt-in rates. Here is the existing opt-in that I got from your site: I would not suggest offering people a Free 10 Day trial approach. This does not work as well as offering a “free course” or “walkthrough”. Offer a course or training that is going to be 10 or so days (you could do a 7 day course with bonuses). Keep this course inside WA. You could however reference it within your own follow-up emails (in aweber). (3) WA Create Account Page - Obviously this is where people are either going to decide to complete the process or shy away from it. This needs to appear to be part of the process to get the training they are signed-up for.

Remember, these people are wanting YOUR course. If it is behind this last door that requires only a few more details, then they are going to sign-up at a very high rate (80-90%). I would suggest that this is the most important point for RELEVANCE. Relevance between you and your visitor and relevance between your course and your visitor. (4) The Warm Welcome - After people go through the sign-up process, follow a few people. get offered the verify, they are going to “start”. This is going to take them to your custom Welcome Message. This is where you can use instant brand recognition from your website. This is where you can put your pic, offer your backstory of WA, and let people know what they can expect.

From here you can also point them to their training. This step is going to be critical for increasing their comfort level and this is really where you want to connect with them in a way that makes them feel safe, feel like they can get help, and encourage them to pop into chat or ask questions freely.

You may want to also explain a little bit about what making money via the Internet is, but you could reserve this for the training that you are going to point people to from your initial welcome message. (5) Your Training - The training is going to work in many ways. Not only is it going to correlate to your existing offer, it is going to walk people through a task based (ideally) process where they “achieve” something. People are big on being able to see something happen. The Your First 10 training works quite well at doing this and you could take some influence from this and from some of your own training that you have. The training is also going to be where you are able to convert someone from a free trial member to a paying member. There are many ways in which this can be done:

● Premium Training - Offer premium training

● A course extension - Offer a subsequent course. That is, lead from your initial training into a “take off” training course of your initial “free course”. This would be a premium course that they would be required to sign-up to access.

Ex. Day 1-10 (free training), Part 2: Next 10 days (premium training)

● Premium/Personal Support - People cannot PM you unless they are premium members (or access the forum for that matter). You can definitely leverage this as many people will be willing to pay you just to communicate in a private manner. Trust me, you will NOT be inundated with PM’s if you include this as part of your process of getting them to “go premium”. People will contact you, but not in the high numbers you would expect. There are so many ways to communicate in WA that people lean towards using instant chat, comments, and their spaces to communicate.

● Offer a bonus. Set this bonus as a premium and within your course (somewhere near the end) offer incentive to join as premium. Join here and get my “bonus x”. Bonuses have an unusual effect on people and although it would seem that a little guide or a little course doesn’t carry huge value(could just be a premium training you have already created), it improves conversions dramatically. You could even use some of our premium training/bonuses (We have a couple). Here is one of our premium trainings:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/the-diamond-traffic-program

● Use hosting within your training - If you get people to buy a domain and get on our hosting within the training, they are likely to join afterwards. This is an excellent hook and it converts very well.

● Tell them why you are a premium member - This may even be enough for some. People trust you and they will come to trust WA. If you can tell them why you are premium, it will carry a lot of weight in their decision making.

And don’t forget, we are continually refining the process and helping people from our end. People immerse themselves in the community, get support, create friends, build their profiles, use the tools, research, build websites, use the training, join webinars, etc.

Without your extra push for premium you can expect conversions to be quite high as is. With your personalized approach, you can expect much higher and that is a major benefit of “setting up shop” as WA and creating your business relationships with your customers there. This is a business and you need to earn money to keep a business alive. Yes, it is nice to help people and the “helping people” aspect will lead to a much better business and brand, but ultimately you need to have a list of things weekly that are going to favor your bottom line. We understand that and I know you do too. This is the surest path the a consistent income and a very profitable revenue model. I hope this guide has helped clarify the process of “making WA YOURS’. It can quite easily become your business platform, your membership site, your community, your place to interact and build relationships, and your place to build a very lucrative and scalable business. The WA platform has had millions of dollars invested into the infrastructure. Let us take care of offering you the tools to build your business so that you can focus on actually “building your business”. The revenue model explained above has everything you need to deliver the absolute BEST product to your subscribers.