So, this kind of ties in with Partha's latest epic post, which I hope you will all read at some point!
Essentially, quick wins to earn some money, that you could potentially invest in your "dead" website and bring it back to life!
I have written other posts about how you can use Medium in two ways - to attract traffic to your site or to make some money by writing.
Or, combine the two!
Sorry, @Yusuf, I know your country is not an option for earning from Medium 😥
(Oops, I used an emoji, won't happen again, lol.)
I joined the Medium Partner Program 4 months ago, and have earned about $200 so far.
Obviously, it's not a huge amount, but hands up, who has not earned $200 yet from their website?
Trying to attract readers on Medium can be somewhat difficult, but one way to speed things up is to join a Publication.
Publications are "sub-groups" on Medium, and currently, there are over 4,500 covering 30,000 topics.
A publication can have thousands of followers and millions of readers.
So, if your story is accepted, there is a huge potential to be seen.
Of course, it works the other way too, that your story is buried under the multitude of posts that they publish.
The Editors of the top publications also have the option of submitting your story to be Boosted, and your earnings can skyrocket if this happens.
They all have their own rules, so if you are interested in joining a publication, look for where it says - Authors, Join Us, Write for Us, Be a Writer, Submission Guidelines, etc., and read their terms carefully.
As a minimum, they will all broadly follow the Medium rules - no written AI content, always caption your image with the source, and surprisingly, most of them only accept drafts that have not yet been published.
You can see some of my earnings below, and of these 5 stories, 4 of them were added to a publication.
I hope this helps, happy to answer any questions, and if you need any help with Medium, let's talk!
I can write content for you, or rewrite and condense posts from your website, so they can attract traffic.
My hand is up, Diane, but I am scared. I am a paid Medium member under my business name but have never posted anything there. It's funny that I've gained followers there already without writing anything. I now use Grammarly Premium, which is AI. That is what stops me. Another WA member who writes there regularly informed me that I cannot promote WA there under that business name.
My stories need to be human-related, but nothing about WA. All of the posts on my blog are about my five-year experience using the WA platform. I followed Partha's post about promoting WA and wrote about my experience using the platform. Unique blog post titles, some of which are now in the search engine results. None of those articles have been written before
I see the potential for making money at Medium. I know I can do it. What stops me is that they will not allow me to be in their paid partner program because I use Grammarly. I need to get started there. I don't know what to write about, as I can't use it to promote WA.
I created another account, the free version, so perhaps I can use that for the WA review. Im just confused about all of Medium's newly added rules that state. "human stories only." My human story is about promoting WA. Therefore, I can't use those articles in Medium as it is not the correct type of audience; it looks like spam according to another Wa member- CP, the minimalist, you know who-
Well, first of all, there is nothing to stop you from posting about WA.
There are currently about 100 posts on Medium that are specifically promoting WA, all written by members you will probably recognize!
However, they get very little engagement, the majority of them have no claps (Medium's version of "likes") and no comments.
So, probably not worth it, in that respect.
But, there are over 61,000 posts on affiliate marketing, so perhaps worth thinking about, as I assume not all of your posts are about WA, as surely Google would see them all as essentially the same?
Not that we care about Google at this present time!
But you would need a unique angle on affiliate marketing, not just the generic topics that have been written about thousands of times, such as mistakes to avoid in affiliate marketing, how to find a profitable niche, how to do keyword research, etc.
As regards AI, there is no problem with using Grammarly.
Here is what Medium says -
We define AI-generated writing as writing where the majority of the content has been created by an AI-writing program with little or no edits, improvements, fact-checking, or changes. This does not include AI writing tools such as AI outlining, or AI-assisted fact, spelling, or grammar checkers.
So, the other option is to use Medium for income, not for traffic to your website.
You don't need a niche, you can write about literally anything.
For example, I write short fiction stories and poetry, and I have talked about Tony's illness and how it affects our lives.
There are a lot of stories about deafness, so perhaps that is another option, stories about how it has affected your life, about using sign language, about your teaching work, etc.
It's actually quite liberating not thinking about keywords and ranking, etc, just writing anything you want!
Hi Diane, I got it. I have a lot of thinking to do about Medium. You are the second person who suggested that I write about my life experience as a Deaf person. This means I will need to stop paying membership payments under my business name at Medium and start under my name. I am not sure how that will work, but I will figure it out.
@brendamz I saw a post from you on WA about you leaving in November. When I went in to read it, it had disappeared! Was it removed?
@brendamz I saw a post from you on WA about you leaving in November. When I went in to read it, it had disappeared! Was it removed?
Noticed that too and @brendamz: read your message to Vitaly as well. So sad to see you did all this work,for nothing. And most of all: that they made you believe that promoting WA would make you money, no one in the real SEO world thinks that WA is any good. Couldn't answer you anymore because I'm silence banned.
Lizzy
Hi Jonathan,
Yes, and of course, wouldn't you know it? The owners probably removed it and flagged it as censorship content. I wrote the truth about what I saw after Partha, Phil, Diane, and Mick left. I said I wrote a goodbye WA Post this morning. I admitted that I failed. Instead, they censored my content, and now that made me MAD. So yeah, my membership is due on the 13th, and I said the last day was on the 12th, but because the owners took my content off. I was told, "No one needs to see that content." No wonder why so many left.
Anytime we say something we do not like, they get defensive, just like many other WA members. They shut us up. I refused to be shut up or censored like that, so tonight, I am closing my WA account for good. I was going to wait until the 12th
Now, my blog is banned. I tried to write another post, but it won't let me. I can't even write anymore. I'm like, Okay—fine I say. Do you know the middle finger that we Americans do when we cuss? That's my attitude.
I'm done with WA. Sorry!
I already moved my domain name and host to another place. I said that this is where the owners get defensive and overtly sensitive about it- it's true the hosting issue there SUCKS! Partha and Diane were right all along.
I had a lot of white-out screens that I had dealt with for months. I have had it with them. It turns out that I was using Kadence Blocks Pro and another plug-in which WA put on a blacklist (one of their many plugin blacklists) that caused a whiteout screen. My new hosting has no whiteout screens, and there is no need to cache every thousand times, as Partha stated constantly.
Yes, you will see more of me here on this platform. Sorry, Partha and Diane. I should have left much sooner, right after you guys left. I wanted to see how things would work out, and it was a nightmare with white-out screens. Also, Google's last core update killed my website content.
I'm moving on to something else. There are many other ways to make money online.
@brendamz Jonathan!!! 
Yes, I thought so, I just wanted to be sure. Something is clearly going on in WA, more than usual.
Jóhann.
@noteboom Sorry about your name; I am a blondie, after all, Haha LOL! Yes, of course, something "more than usual" is always happening on that platform.
@noteboom I'll be okay. I'll get over it. Moving on is the best thing for me right now.
@noteboom Sorry about your name; I am a blondie, after all, Haha LOL! Yes, of course, something "more than usual" is always happening on that platform.
I saw on of your last messages where you said that you dislike the AI writer,that was probably the last drop for them to silence and ban you, as they did with me. I think me telling them first: your hosting isn't good and your site support sucks ( in a bit more polite way lol), then telling Kyle that their AI writer isn't good,and then telling them that Jay is making a huge mistake by telling people that they can use Amazon images straight up, and me answering that they could lose their Amazon account when they just copy-paste their images, was enough for me to have me 'disappear' from the platform.
You know the first time I saw a red flag for you? When you told me that 'people told me I should only promote WA', and I was thinking like : why would you believe this and why would you do what these friends tell you to do? I mean,if you only talk about WA on your site,nobody will believe that you are neutral in the MMO world.
These 'friends' in the WA community weren't helping you making money, they destroyed it. It's a cult. I wanted to say so much more to you in public,but that would have given me an even quicker silence ban on there. So sorry you wasted all that time and money.
Lizzy
Hi Lizzy,
You may think it's about AI Authors that caused me to be censored, but it was not about that. It was precisely what I said in the post. It was about the constant changes to the Starter account, the constant changes in the Hubs, and having to constantly change my screenshots on my blog post to reflect the current changes. There were new changes a week later, and another week, there were more and more changes. I said," If it wasn't broken, why bother to fix it." I was exhausted with this, plus dealing with whiteout screens from Pro plugins that WA put on the ban list.
I also sent a screenshot showing how we can no longer do something in the Hubs because the niche-specific list is now in the Hubs. Instead of being on the home page, he moved it further down instead of the top, and then he moved that into the Hubs as well.
Im like, STOP moving things around. Well, he's just trying to survive in a Googleless world. Sales have been at an all-time low (for people like myself who promoted WA) since the Hubs started. That is why the changes are made in hopes of getting more conversions. The changes are confusing to newbies.
The reason for censorship is "No one needs to see that post." It discourages people, and the Goodbye post leads to another "Partha." (Ironically, Partha wasn't the first to leave). He (K) said, "If I wanted to leave WA, do so quietly." That made me mad. The last I heard, "writing a rant" ok but talk about sensitive things about WA is a "no no" just as you stated the silence ban (I call that censorship).
When I joined WA in 2019, my intention was not to promote physical products. I signed up under another WA person who was promoting WA. I wanted to promote WA, too. She was making money with her product reviews. I wanted to do what she did; she was a super affiliate, too, and she is no longer doing it. I haven't seen her for years now. I think she left WA. I stayed and created a site following the Affiliate Bootcamp, the old course. We were told to write product reviews using WA as the number one recommendation. That is what made these guys Super Affiliates back then.
Anyhow, I had some good years with WA. It started to get nasty after the Google HCU updates and WA's switch to Hubs, and since then, it's been a Googleless world for affiliate marketers.
Im moving on now, Lizzy.
@brendamz It just saddens me to see how many people wasted so much money on WA, while,as I said before, their basic training for beginners is ok (now, it wasn't for years), once you have your website up and running and have written blogs, there is no one holding you responsible to tell you if you are on the right track or not.
Kyle, and other 'teachers' on the platform should have told you (sorry if this is blunt) : "Brenda, what you are doing right now, isn't going to make you any money." It wasn't just the HCU, you were writing about things that NOBODY outside of WA cares about.
No one cares about the 'Hubs', their 'keyword research tool Jaaxy,which nobody ever heard of and which isn't any good", or their 'perfect AI writer (which sucks)', or their 'world-class hosting" (which sucks). Even without the HCU update, you wouldn't have gotten anywhere, sorry to say!
And of course, you got nowhere with social media, because also their training on social media sucks! Again: basics, how to set something up, like a Facebook page or a newsletter, is fine (I'm even still a member for a while, because I want to setup a newsletter to my 2 other sites as well, and Jay's class about that is easy to follow),but other than that nobody is going to succeed on social media, only based on their 'training'.
Heck, have you ever really checked out Jays FB page or even just WA's page? Even on Linkedn and Twitter, both are nobodies. They don't ever show the 'big money' and 'success' they have with their own sites. The only 'succes' they have every now and then is showing how Jay ranked a post above Martha Stewart,hahahahahaha!
Even Vitaly never made most of his money with affiliate marketing, but with ads!
Of course Kyle says to everyone: don't go look on socials or elsewhere than on WA, people might start to notice they are doing things wrong! hahahahahaha
I opened up my ads income today (screenshot), my stats have never been this high, since I started focussing on socials, and ignored Google.
(while WA was STILL like "get your longtail keywords and you'll be fine", "keep using the AI writer and you'll be fine", "ignore the noise everywhere else but only focus on our platform and you'll be fine". If I had done that, and never look anywhere else (yes, on those socials that you don't like), I wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
The only people on WA who were helpful to me were Partha, Diane, and Andy. Oh, and Vitaly at least was and is being honest about everything, love him for that. (he was the only one telling me that I should probably be on socials instead of focussing on writing for my blog, after his case studies on the model building niche, this was even before all the Google updates)
The others like Kyle, Carson even in a dm to me about the hosting, Eric Cantu, they were ALL OVER ME when after the HCU update, I said that using longtail keyword isn't going to help us!
If you google 'WA review", you'll only get a few youtube results from people who are never active on WA and are clearly just sucking up to the WA cult,and one video from Eric, who got a lucky shot on Youtube.
Did you notice that at their 'meetings in Las Vegas for their star-winners', it is always the same people in the pictures? The teachers on WA and every now and then someone else who had been a teacher on WA. Did you ever see any really successful member who has no bonds with WA at those meetings? I can't believe nobody ever noticed this.
If I had now joined WA as a newbie, I would have been gone a lot quicker than I would have a few years ago, because back then, all you saw were classes and good information, now what you see is social talk and 'hang in there, it will get better'. I would have RUN so hard from the platform as it is now, I don't want to chat about my life or how vaguely 'it will get better if you just stick to it, my 'friend' (ugh),I want to make money!
Remember when you taught me about access for screenreaders for websites, and that I should adjust some colors and so on? You were passionate about explaining it to me, and you were doing that so well, I think you'd be better at creating a niche about that, instead of trying to promote something that is dead and dying and is even working against you. But I see you moved on, good for you!
What are you going to do now?
Good luck with everything you will try
Lizzy
Hi Lizzy,
I agree with you. As I stated, I had some good years at WA. I learned a lot from many people, including Partha and Diane. Most of all, I learned more about Pinterest from Diane and Andy. I would never have started without their help. I am grateful that I met many people virtually in WA. I met you, too. Suppose I had not been a paid member, or you. I would never have had this conversation with you at all. So, everything happens for a reason.
Yes, Vitaliy does not only do paid ads. He does almost everything now. He does social media, YouTube, and now on Facebook (Fakebook)!
It's not a secret here. Everyone knows I loathe social media. I refuse to be on any of them.
Don't worry about the "waste money" thing. The only waste for me was doing paid ads. I did everything following Vitaliy's lead. He helped me with that. The thing about paid ads is that, yes, you are expected to pay a lot of money for clicks, and there is a possibility that those clicks might not lead to sales. I had a small budget to work with, and I got a lot of clicks and referrals; however, not one upgraded because many were confused with the new Hubs. Some of them removed their account.
I learned a lot about Pinterest. However, like Google, Pinterest has its algorithm traffic changes as well. I learned a lot, but the WA promotion didn't go well for me there unless you are well-known. YouTube or a social media influencer, which I will never be a part of.
I will never use YouTube, either. I tried to make the technology work for me, but it was just too complex. I could not make the voiceover in sync with the closed captioning. Eric and many other Super Affiliates debuted in Vegas because they used YouTube and Google traffic long before the HCU and all those core updates from 2023-2024.
Grace (little mama) is the only female who made it to Vegas. She was my mentor. As far as I know, she's no longer there (not active). I have not seen her for several years, not since she got "attacked." I vaguely remember that she angered many people, but I don't know the exact details. The last I heard, she moved on to something else.
Yes, I remember explaining the colors for the screenreaders to you.
Thanks. I appreciate the feedback.
What am I going to do now? It probably won't be in "affiliate marketing, " nor will it be in MLM, even though I was in MLM for many years before joining WA.
I am continuing what I am doing now: Teaching. Adjunct teaching is my paid job. As you stated, I could create a digital course, perhaps a Masterclass of some sort. I do not know exactly what yet. I still have my paid job, and I will continue with that. I will figure it out in time, but I will take a break from all this 'affiliate marketing' stuff for now.
@noteboom hi Johan, I think what’s going on on this site that you reference. Is that the administrator is trying to navigate all the changes from Google and try to navigate his business so that he survives. I think he means well. I do believe perhaps he’s been harsh to some people here. any case I’m glad to be here to learn new ways. And perhaps that other platform may be they’ll expand and grow and become something more relevant. That could be to us in the future. I am currently a member there. I don’t know how long I will be but for now I am. I’ve only been there for one year though. I’m relative newbie
@noteboom hi Johan, I think what’s going on on this site that you reference. Is that the administrator is trying to navigate all the changes from Google and try to navigate his business so that he survives. I think he means well. I do believe perhaps he’s been harsh to some people here. any case I’m glad to be here to learn new ways. And perhaps that other platform may be they’ll expand and grow and become something more relevant. That could be to us in the future. I am currently a member there. I don’t know how long I will be but for now I am. I’ve only been there for one year though. I’m relative newbie
yes, of course he is trying to survive, but if he goes on like this, he'll lose. The only ones left over on the platform, either aren't making money themselves, besides being a teacher on their own platform.
Take a look, for example, on the new lessons by Jay on Facebook and thén check his page closely:
Have a look at Jay's FB page:
Have a look at WA's FB page:
Now, take a look at my page:
Who would you take Facebook lessons from,when you don't just look at the followers, but engagement,traffic to your site, likes and shares?
He tries to survive, but to what means? Making people do mistakes? Ignoring that their hosting sucks? If my website is down that much because of their hosting, off course it doesn't make me money. Telling people they can use Amazon pictures without getting into trouble?
'Just use the AI writer and longtail keywords and you'll be fine'? It's a huge mess on WA.
Sure,if you are new: learn how to setup a website, learn about what affiliate marketing is and hopefully what adds are (because that latter is what is making me the most money at the moment), setup all the necessary socials with their help. They're great at that. But if you want to move on from there,please look elsewhere.
Lizzy
@ohnoo_not_her yes, I figured that. I am new so will get started and likely leave too at some point. I am already starting to plan on using ads as well. Where do you advertise? Facebook?
@ohnoo_not_her yes, I figured that. I am new so will get started and likely leave too at some point. I am already starting to plan on using ads as well. Where do you advertise? Facebook?
Yes, I have been following a course from someone else and I'm still ploughing through it,it has soooo much information and he keeps it updated! https://www.introverted-entrepreneur.com/facebook-for-niche-sites
(not an affiliate link)
I am only sending out little by little ads, for 1 or 2 dollars a day, then wait for a month or two to see which ads are converting the best and give me the best profit for my money. And I've grown on Facebook traffic to my site. I'm now almost at 500$ per month from ads income alone (through Journey,for me adds income is doing a lot better than affiliates). This includes from Pinterest/newsletters and a bit from search engines still though.
Please don't let anyone on the platform tell you that you shouldn't use ads on your website, they'll try that in DM's and such! (by the way, this is not the website that I link here now, just to be clear haha)
Good luck!
Lizzy
@ohnoo_not_her is this book really so good? It costs 100 dollars. Not sure I want to get it at this point. If wa is no longer the place to learn how to make money online is there another platform out there that is more legit where I can learn to succeed?
@ohnoo_not_her is this book really so good? It costs 100 dollars. Not sure I want to get it at this point. If wa is no longer the place to learn how to make money online is there another platform out there that is more legit where I can learn to succeed?
I would like to reply in very good detail to this and show you with actual numbers (because I'm not the one to claim anything without proof), but I will need to get back to you about this,because I still need to have a good look at the statistics from the last months, both in Facebook statistics as on Google Analytics (and I still need to learn more about that part)
So far, it looks really promising, I doubled my followers in a few months time and I'm having troubles keeping up with engagement. Which is good, because when your page is engaging, the Facebook algorithms will follow.
Please remind me of this question by the end of the year, I will know a lot more, because I also recently have been doing extra things for Facebook, in coöperation with Diane here.
But the course itself: for sure, it is totally worth for me, the 100 dollars. And at least, I will still have the course forever, on the contrary when you leave WA, you won't be able to see the lessons anymore.
About another platform, to be honest I never looked at another platform, because they were way out of my reach financially.
What I do know, right now, is that aside from socials, and just talk about SEO courses: do not join ANY other platform at the moment, because literally nobody KNOWS at this moment what is going to happen with Google or even other search engines. There is SO much going on at the moment and things are changing quickly.
There is now the AI overview (don't know which countries exactly have this yet in Google), but it will be in Europe as well (I live in Belgium)
And it looks like it is a horror show on Google, with AI responses that are totally incorrect and niche sites being pushed down the Serps even more.
Jay says: focus on Bing, yes sure, but the share of Bing always has been small and nobody knows if people will actually switch from Google to Bing or other search engines.
Also, Reddit ranks now for a lot more things then they used to , because Google coöperates with them.
So a platform claiming they know how to get you ranking in Google at the moment, especially for new sites, in my opinion lies. The only niche sites who survived the last updates either had high domain authority ( I SLIGHTLY had a little bit of traffic back, while I used to have a DA of 32,now down to 22), but here I'm talking about very high domains, either are running an e-commerce store or local business, have tools on their site like Neil Pattel has, that people come back to to use the tool, or are a 'platform' in itself.
Recently, 20 niche site owners were invited to go to a google meeting and basically, they don't even know themselves how to fix things, because 'their sites were all right', so Google was saying: 'it isn't you, it is us'. They can't guarantee that traffic to your site will be coming back.
This is a long read,but tells you a lot of what has been going on : https://readysteadycut.com/2024/10/28/google-destroyed-ready-steady-cut/
So for now, if you are new, I would still follow the lessons from WA to get you started, and then I think we'll have to wait for SEO, but still try to focus on at least one social media platform. (or other platform depending on the niche. In my niche, this can also be something like blogspots, but that's more rare)
If nothing is moving on that one platform, focus on another.
For free, you can look up information on Youtube, use their search bar.
I'm sure also that soon, we will hear more from Partha here br />
(sorry for my bad English, not a native English speaker)
Lizzy
@ohnoo_not_her do you have a recommendation for another company to host my websites? Is bluehost good?
they seem to quite inexpensive
@ohnoo_not_her do you have a recommendation for another company to host my websites? Is bluehost good?
they seem to quite inexpensive
I'm hosted on WPX, great customer service and they allow each plugin you really want to use and even set the settings, so you don't get "white screens of death', if any plugin would ever conflict with their hosting.
These days,I have a lot more 'natural' comments on my site,and I think it really is because of people not being able to get through the comment section at all when I was hosted on WA. I even had the proof of that when I did a giveaway on my Facebook group for an Etsy voucher. And I asked people to comment on a post: lots of them came back to me that they couldn't do that, because they got a white screen.
If you want, you can even ask them for help for free in their chat system, they even helped me for free before I switched and asked all kinds of questions!
Lizzy
@markh Hi - I see you are asking about recommendations for another platform, other than WA, to continue your learning.
I'm just a bit concerned, that you may be continuing to throw money away, if you perhaps don't have the time (or motivation?) to dedicate to trying to make this work.
I am not saying this to be unkind, but if your "dry eye" website is the only project you are working on, then it has very little to show for the last 17 months.
And I can't find any evidence of your website on any social media platforms.
If I can mention Lizzy as a good example of how this can be successful, you will see that she has invested a huge amount of time in her business.
I would estimate she has over 350 blog posts on her website, a forum with hundreds of posts, several Facebook groups, accounts on Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Reddit and a shop.
And she is not afraid to invest in ads and outsourcing.
That is why she is now seeing the monetary results she deserves.
Please don't take offence at these comments, Mark, they apply equally to the majority of WA members.
Can you, or anybody else, honestly say that they are prepared to take on all this work?
Especially if you have a job/family commitments.
The days of making money by simply posting blogs on websites are long gone, sorry to say.
@diane no offense taken. Over the past year just blogging. I have meant to get into social media but haven’t so far. The truth is I have so little time for this so was focusing first on blogging to get my site up and running. I only recently started putting affiliate links and made one measly sale ( I need two more soon or Amazon will give me the boot). Looking for ways to expand with the little time I have
@markh -
I hear you!
I am not one to talk, lol, but in the past few months, I've learned to schedule my time so I can increase my website exposure and get more traffic.
As a suggestion, write a list of all of the tasks you think you need to do. Then select the top 5 tasks that are most important.
Decide how much time you can devote to accomplishing those 5 tasks.
Dedicate 20 - 30 minutes each day, decide when that is, I find that the first hour of my day, after my personal morning routine, offers me the best time.
Yet, sometimes, that hour or so is broken up beteeen day and night activities.
To succeed here, Mark, you need to invest your time, as little as that may be right now, and take one step at a time. Then you can add to your list of to-do things.
Hope that helps!
Rudy
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