My Story Of Wealthy Affiliate & How I Began To Be A "Wealthy Affiliate"

The Wealthy Affiliate University was not where I first started Internet marketing, or even where I began to learn about anything about this industry.

In the beginning it all started by the choice. I have to provide for my family, and I had 5 kids, a back injury that had ended my career as a communication tower climber, a wife that was stressed out about bills, and my own stress which just piled on top of everything else in turn. I was a vicious circle. I made the choice to find out about the possibility of working at home to make a bit of extra income to make up for the lack of income I was used to working.

I was in agonizing back pain every day and still suffer from this injury as I write this. The fact was I just needed to cover the costs of living... keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. That's all I cared about was a bit of extra dough to pay for our needs because frankly with the money I recieved from workers comp, I was facing the very real possibility of being homeless soon as it is not enough to provide for a family of 7.

Food stamps, medi-cal, and any type of assistance you can think of simply did not offer any help. The guidelines did not allow them to provide assistance, nor did my eligibility qualify for it. Trust me, my wife and I looked into and exhausted every resource for aid. This pissed me off even more, for obvious reasons.

Here I was, a hard working man trying to provide for his family, then I get hurt on the job, my company lays me off due to cut backs. I now receive a fixed income that doesn't pay the bills or feed my family, so I make cut backs myself and move to a new house and cut every cost of living I could manage. I apply for every assistance aid program there was and did not qualify for a single one of them basicaly because of the fact that I was making "to much" on disability.

Meanwhile the scam artists and con men all fleece our system and drive Cadillac Escalades. I won't rant about this as it just pisses you off as much as it does me, and we're all aware of those that abuse the system. It simply does not work for people that genuinely need the help in most cases.

So what could a man in my position do? As my wife quit school and started looking for a job to help pay the bills, I started looking into how I could make some extra money to make the ends meet myself. Now mind you, these are not credit card bills or some ridiculous home loan that millions of irresponsible people got into trouble with and now find themselves in forclosures. No, the banks that did this irresponsible lending have ruined our economy and THAT is a whole other story.

I pay rent, and have no credit card debt whatsoever. We own my work truck and her Trail blazer which stuffs all 7 of us inside very cozily. All I wanted to do was make enough extra income every month to help pay for everything and get some needs met like food and rent. I have to pay for 2 car payments, rent, food, utilities, insurance, and I coudln't even afford that. I now have to medical insurance as do neither my entire family because of my losing my job.

As cliche and cheesy as it sounds, Wealthy Affiliate had saved the day.

Remember I started by being pissed off and writing about scams, then decided I wasn't going to bother wasting any more time trying to search for something legit because in my mind, it was all scams.

What happened in my story next was my desire to expose rip off artists. I started reviewing all the things I got ripped off by, and obviously couldn't afford. Even tried like heck to get my refunds from the ones that guaranteed it. Each thing I bought into felt like a gamble and I was taking the risk of hoping the money was well spent. I couldn't justify the reasoning any more with my wife to spend 40 bucks on this or 12 bucks for that. We simply did not have it anymore.

When I found Wealthy Affiliate, it was something I quickly discovered to be a powerful resource of "boot-camp" training for Internet marketing.

I couldn't join immediately as I had to wait until the following month when I could manage a few bills and put the money aside to join this membership program. The same week that I found out about Wealthy Affiliate my bank account had 3 dollars in it. Very literally and very seriously... this is no joke. The money was tight and I was stressed out just a tad bit I would say!

I REALLY wanted to do this and it worked out pretty good for my case. I was able to quite smoking and reduced my monthly bills by cutting everything that I could and just kept my family fed and a roof over our heads. Unfortunately I have taken up the bad habit again these days and still desire to quit smoking. That's a whole other story as well though.

The exciting thing for me was I had found literally the best place for a complete beginner like myself. It was pretty apparent as well that this University also taught everything from beginner to expert and I saw many members that had joined who were already making thousands a day as affiliate marketers. They came to WA to learn more and how to tweak their work. All that information that just totally overwhelmed me.

I literally took two months of sitting behind my computer every day for long hours and just absorbing what I could and learning. The members only forum was addictive to, as I would spend HOURS upon hours of reading the posts and just soaking up all the gold mines I found in those threads. The overabundance of information and material was VERY overwhelming.

The largest problem with all the ebooks and programs I had bought before wasn't completely their fault. Much of it was my own as I learned IM with Wealthy Affiliate University.

The brutally honest story is I was suckered into buying all sorts of ebooks and programs because it was simply good advertising. Obviously of course, a good amount of what I had bought into was a complete scam, misleading, or in some cases just to little information. For someone like myself, the information was literally just enough for me to be dangerous to myself.

What I mean by this is it was just a tiny bit of knowledge about one thing that gave me just the right amount of information to give someone the ability to actually LOSE money instead of making it.

What do I mean?

Example: Just think of all the Google AdWord guides out there. Lets say for the sake of argument you know nothing about PPC advertising. You buy an ebook and it says do this then do that. You do this and that and get your ass handed to you by the campaign and walk away with your tail tucked between your legs as you just had your proverbial ass kicked by PPC. Think someone that knows nothing about marketing and good ad writing could be successful with it by reading any of the lousy ebooks out there written on the subject?

Well, the reality is a few might give you enough information to do it correctly, and in my case... I found one guide for being successful making money with Adwords and it has now become my Google "bible" so to speak. It was the needle in the haystack for me.

The times are changing and the economy is tough.  I know what it's like to be one paycheck away from financial ruin.  I hated being in that position and I really feel for anyone in the same situation as I was.

It is not a way to live... and it's not a way of life.

It is downright scary and heartbreaking to worry about your family and how you're going to provide for them.

Stop living that life and make the choice I did.