Embark on the ‘Rookie to Riches’ Odyssey: Your First Quest to Forge a Digital Asset!

Hi!!

Welcome to my blog.

I am beyond honored that you are here!!!!

If you don’t know me by now, let me just say that I am a complete rookie on a journey to riches. Following my mentor Dean Holland’s proven plan to achieve affiliate marketing success.

I am in a program called Internet Profits Accelerator, where Dean has created a platform called Affiliate System and he is walking us through the process step by step, teaching us the valuable skillset to be a profitable affiliate marketer.

Okay, so let me start off by saying that it’s already 3 weeks into affiliate solutions and I have to admit I am a bit behind.

Not because of a lack of dedication, discipline, or mindset but because, hey, sometimes things take time.

Normally I would be stressed, and angry at myself for not meeting the deadline, but I am taking a different approach because the homework assignment meant a lot to me. And when we were told to set up a digital asset, I wanted to get the branding right.

So I am allowing myself a little leeway here because I am taking steps every day towards completing my assignment in a way that I am proud of.

So what do you think? Do you like the layout? The concept? Me as a Simpsons character! How cool, right?

As I said earlier, the first assignment Dean had us do was create a digital asset.

What is a digital asset, you ask? 

Well, in this case, it is this blog, yup, this thing here, my dear diary platform. 

Setting up a digital asset essentially creates a platform, in this case, this blog, to serve as a central hub, a place for me to document my journey. A place to track my progress and share my experiences with you, the reader. 

I can also look back on this as a way to analyze and learn more about my successes and failures along the way and it holds me accountable, and hopefully, I get to connect with you, as you go on your affiliate marketing journey. You can learn from all my faceplant moments! 

And not like this will happen, but I give you permission to give me shit if I ever miss a weekly post. 

Setting up the blog went relatively smoothly; not gonna lie I had to contact customer service a bunch.

Buying a domain name from Namecheap was easy.

Creating a Cloudflare account and adding my domain, also got through pretty effortlessly, but then I ran into some issues adding the DNS records.

Thankfully there is a great customer service team on Dean’s platform; one guy even got on a Zoom with me. 

This is something I look for when signing up for any platform, customer service is something I need when I get stuck and there is nothing worse than emailing for weeks and feeling frustrated. I learned this the hard way with SMTP integration with Sengrid.

Then I got stuck on the theme; I went through the free ones and chose one that had a lot of reviews. But then I got stuck and spent a few hours trying to add the Contact Me and About Me to the top bar.

So I did what any determined affiliate marketer would do, I went to YouTube.

But YouTube failed me here, the tutorial didn’t match the options. Does this mean I need to upgrade?

Dean said in the lesson, that there was no need to upgrade, and I am on a super tight budget, I would rather spend money on Ads than on themes, so I reached out to customer service.

Unfortunately, customer service said this was out of their capacity; setting up the theme and designing the blog on WordPress was not something they could walk me through.

So I did the next best thing, leverage!

Leveraging is an important concept in business. The time it takes to figure something out vs the time and money it takes to hire someone. Leveraging is exactly what I needed at this point and thankfully, I had some options.

As part of Dean’s program, there are opportunities to submit questions daily and attend a live session, there is also a Q&A session that Dean does on Zoom every Wednesday, and I feel like this should have been more obvious to me. 

But, I also learned in this process, after seeing a peer’s post in the certified partner’s Facebook group, that there were tons of people in the community all doing the homework assignment, and some of them were running into similar issues as me and others were willing to help out that were more experienced.

This made me feel incredible. Someone in the program actually DM’d me and offered to help me set up my blog.

I had the support not only of Dean, and two dedicated mentors, Glen and Sophie, but also peers in the program. 

It felt like being a part of a team, all of us at the same point, going on this ride together, and it made it feel exciting. I wasn’t on a deserted road with a flat tire. I had a bunch of people ready to help, offering to give me a tow!

Leverage is a fantastic tool. Having someone show me what to do instead of wasting hours searching the web, for a possible solution is a much better strategy.

Although, the one thing that cannot be leveraged is telling your story and finding your voice. 

Others can be a sounding board, but finding my voice and telling you my story, well, that’s on me.

The reason I say this is because, in the past, I have made the mistake of using AI to write posts. 

Have you ever tried to create your own blog or website? 

Creating content and designing images to reflect you and what you want to convey can be tough.

So I will give you my two cents here, AI is a great tool to help you get unstuck or get ideas and inspiration but don’t ask it to generate your content for you and send out ai AI-generated emails and blog posts; you are doing a huge disservice.

People, whether you believe it or not, want to hear your voice, and your story, because odds are they are going through something similar, and there is a better chance they are going to relate to you than to some ai generated content.

Once you start creating content, it’s not so bad, I promise. I have even grown to really like it.

I can get lost for hours picking images, and fonts, hell, I spent 4 hours crafting this first blog post… 

Let’s say I wrote and deleted and wrote it a bunch of times because I didn’t want to use AI to generate something. I wanted you to get to know me, and finding your voice sometimes is trial and error, just like everything, you get better at it the more you do it. 

And as a rookie, it’s easy to feel like I don’t have anything of value to share.

I don’t consider myself a perfectionist, but I want to offer you value; I want to help you along your journey, I am a pretty skeptical and untrusting person, so knowing that about me, I didn’t want to feed you some bull and claim I have all the answers, but I also wanted to show you, what’s in it for you and make you coming along for this ride worth your time.  

Why follow my blog? Why read it at all?

Well, the truth is, yes, I am a total rookie but in the short time I have been doing this, I am soaking up a ton of incredible information from mentors who have been doing this for years.

So instead of wasting hours googling and searching for answers, I am sharing with you all the steps of Dean’s proven plan.

And I am gonna take his lessons, put them into action and tell you if it works or not if I hit roadblocks, and what I did to overcome them. 

I am not making millions; in 5 months, I have made 3 sales totaling $205.75.

But yet I continue. Am I crazy no, I understand that it takes time, and it’s not about working 12 hours a day it’s about putting in a solid hour a day towards chipping away and taking small steps forward to big goals and dreams.

I will continue to move foward because this has to work because the alternative is not one I will accept.

I am so determined to make my dreams come true, and I want to show you it’s possible. 

I want you to have that same hope and spark to drive you to success. 

If you look back on 2023, and are saying to yourself, I want more, I wish… 

If you are scrolling social media, and think someone’s life is perfect and you want that.

Then I want to inspire you to trust your instinct, invest in yourself, and make it happen. 

There is no better time to take action than now!

I sent these drafts to my mentors for review, and both Glen and Sophie said, “Just publish it.”

Just be yourself and tell your story. Over time you’ll get to see what people like, which posts get comments and likes, and which posts get people coming back for more. It’s trial and error, but the most important lesson is just to do it and keep doing it; just continue to take action. 

It’s funny because sometimes you post something and you think, oh, that was crap; why did I post it? I should delete it, and that post becomes your most-liked post.

So the lesson here is HIT PUBLISH!

Just be you, don’t think so much about it. Share your journey, and people will relate. Not everyone but someone out there is gonna be shaking their head along with you.  

If you have been procrastinating about making a blog or a website, I get it…but can I just say DO IT! There is no time like the present! Let’s live this life with no regrets! Are you with me? 

Comment below, like, share. I want to know if you are with me on this journey.

Are you ready to create your dream life?

Comment below YES!, if you are ready to create your dream life! 

I better see some yeses in the comments below! 

I am here to cheer you on and help you along your journey. 

Feel free to reach out to me at any time using the contact form at the top right of the home page, DM me, and join my Facebook group. 

Let’s go from Rookie to Riches! Let’s Ride!!!!!

Alison Blaire