Hi Folks!

Wealthy Affiliate is a pay it forward community. It is something that we stand for and something that defines us. Plain and simple, we care about one another and it is a place you can come and feel comfortable getting answers to your questions in relation to your online business. WA is also a place where you can pay it forward as you have the ability to give back and help others that were once in your exact situation.

Personally over the years I have learned a lot, and I surely have learned a great deal during my 12 years operating as one of the co-founders of Wealthy Affiliate. Where did I learn MOST of what I know? Directly here within the community.

The thing is, we all have skills, knowledge, information, and insight that we can share within many aspects of business. We are all consumers. We all have ideas and opinions. We all communicate, and we all have a common goal of creating something of substance within the online world...something that we are proud of, and something that we can look back at and realize that we have had a positive impact on the Internet landscape.

Collectively we can all do this and collectively we can all create success online. There is enough room for ALL of us to succeed, in fact, there is room for 10,000's of successful affiliate marketers in every niche. There are 3.75 BILLION people on the web & over 500 MILLION products we can promote within our respective niches. We can succeed and capitalized on this "never seen before" opportunity at a much greater rate working together to than independently.

Thus, we present Wealthy Affiliate Ambassadorship, 2017!

What Defines an Ambassador at Wealthy Affiliate?

The top 25 members at Wealthy Affiliate are considered Ambassadors of the community. These are members with a consistent and vested interest in helping others within the community. But not just that, these are folks who are continuing their education and pushing the boundaries of what they are capable of within the online world.

We lead this community as a "pay it forward" platform, and Ambassadors have that mentality. Ambassadors understand what Wealthy Affiliate stands for and they conduct themselves in a way helps evolve the community in a forward direction!

Ambassadors are just as willing to ask for help as they are to offer their help.

In the education world, someone that can teach and understand concepts is able to help people in the same way. The best teachers are not always those that can implement their knowledge (although often times they are. There will always be a broad "type" and “range” of ambassador within the platform at WA, some people with years and years of extensive knowledge and success online. Some others could be truly knowledgeable in how WA works, and where to find answers to questions if they do not have the answers themselves.

What Criteria is Considered in WA Rank?

Success is not tracked. We have no idea how much revenue anyone is making, anywhere. This is not data that we keep nor do we care about it in the Ambassador and member rankings.

Helpfulness is of great consideration. The ability to create and educate is considered. The timeliness of support to those that need help is considered. These include the interactions within training, knowledge of the WA platform, and the use of our tools and platforms that are available within the community.

The rankings are comprised of 3 parts. I am going to break each of these down and explain exactly what they mean below.

Ranking Item #1: Helper.

• Live Chat. The live chat within WA is active throughout the day and is where people go to hang out, say hi, share experiences, and to get INSTANT help. If you are actively helping people within the Live Chat by offering answers to questions, and thorough resposes to fellow members, this activity will be considered.

• Responding to Questions within Comments. Very frequently people ask questions within the comments in the training or within blog posts. It can help boost your ranking if you are helping folks with any questions they may have, and of course, answering them correctly.

• Responding to Questions. People use the question facility here all the time. If you click the pen icon in your top header of the account, you will see exactly what I mean. Also, if you use the search bar and you ask a question that you don't find help with, you can turn that quickly into a community question. Responses to these kinds of questions are considered.

  

  Finding those who have “unanswered” questions is as simple as clicking the “Unanswered” filter on the activity dashboard.

  

• Accuracy of your help is also something that is considered. If you don't know the answer when a question is answered, don't offer an answer. If you have a partial answer or some form of insight into things, that is definitely fine to contribute and offer. Furthermore, if you do not have the answer, but know where to find the answer within WA, please offer your guidance by pointing people in the right direction!

Ranking Item #2: Creator

• Blog Posts. This is a place where you can blog about your journey, your activities online, what you are learning about, success stories, progress, and basically your "life online" in general. Blogs will contribute to your rankings. The quality and usefulness of your blog posts, as well as your response time to people that chime into your blog posts, thoroughness of responses, and thoroughness of comments overall, will act toward rankings. Blogging 10x a day is not necessary, blog scores are not based on volume at all (as they were in the previous ranks). Your blog post itself does not get ANY score, but the engagement it creates shows how helpful and important that post is to the community. That is the element of WA blog posts that are considered.

• Training. After being a Premium member for 3 months you can create training. There may be voids you see within the current set of training, or questions that people are asking that you could help with. You may also have expertise in a particular area of the online world and have lots of knowledge you can share. Offer training if you find voids. Adding training for topics already covered will not be considered toward Rank and repeated posting of training that already exists will not improve rank.When you do add new training, support it. When questions are asked within this training, the best thing you can do is help others when they post questions within the training. As a side perk, training at WA is an opportunity to generate monthly revenue through any external traffic received. Keep your training unbranded, unique, thorough, high quality, and promotion free. Great training can have a positive impact on rank.

• Questions. You will get some points for asking questions, however asking a question, 10 questions, or 100 questions is not going to create a major ranking surge. That is not to say you shouldn't ask questions because that's how you get answers when you need them. I'm referring to gaming the system by asking questions over an over gain with the hopes of getting a bunch of ranking points - this won't happen.

  With the above said, one way you can use the question platform (and a way I’ve done it in the past) is to create a question with a relevant title, give a thorough description of the question, and then answer it. If you are commonly seeing a question that it doesn’t seem we have an answer for within the community, you can do this. Answering a question (mentioned above) contributes to rank in a big way. Asking a question and answering it yourself also gives you something you can reference in the future when people ask a related question, it’s a great method of helping others and truly paying-it-forward!Be thorough when asking questions, and be thorough with answers. One line questions with one line answers won’t count at all toward rank.

Ranking Item #3: Activity

• Time Spent in WA. The amount of time spent (no we do not actually count the minutes) within WA is an indication on how much the platform is actually used...and this inadvertently is included in the activity ranking. Spending time using the platforms provided within WA means that you will have first hand exposure with them. This will allow you to offer relevant answers to questions based on personal experience. Use WA, use the tools, interact within all areas!

• Interactions and Responsiveness to Your Engagements. If you make a blog post and you are not supporting it, then it is going to be a one-sided conversation. If you are actively engaged in all your blog posts, questions, comments, and chats, then these elements will contrite to your activity.

• Your Following. People who follow you does play a role in ranking, but the algorithm can definitely determine when you are trying to game the platform by mass following others, and hoping they follow you back. You're natural followers will be notified about your activity within WA and this leads to engagement, so your following at WA is indirectly considered.

Activity that DOES NOT Contribute to Rank

• Volume. Volume posting does not at all contribute to ranking. There are many holes in the new ranks that we've patched up, and there are a few more that we are going to be focusing on going forward so that it's not possible to trick the system into thinking that someone is helpful simply because they post 5 blogs each day.
• WA Affiliate Program. Referring others to WA does not have any impact on rank, or becoming an Ambassador of WA. It would not be an accurate measurement of helpfulness if this was considered at all, so it's simply not at all part of the rankings. With that said, when someone is referred to WA, it does give you an opportunity to help them out by answering their questions...and helping others is considered heavily.
• Bulk Following. Following every single member at WA does not contribute to any ranking points. Following others at WA is a way to receive notifications and notices of activity via email. Whether it's a blog post or a question etc, by following others you are signing up to be kept in the loop. That said, the action of clicking "follow" is not considered.

So, there you have it. A high level explanation of the ranking elements we consider. This new algorithm will be updated with regularity as we integrate new platforms and see opportunity to improve, refine, and gain accuracy.

**A Note On Spam and/or Promotions**

If you spam or you are posting things that offend people, you are naturally going to lose rank within the platform. We have internal "sniff tests" based on certain behaviors where we are able to watch for this.

As you know, we aim to be a spam and promotion free community. We do this to keep Wealthy Affiliate a safe place for everyone to operate without having consistent promotions, spam, and subsequent flame wars utilizing your mind space. We all have different opinions and ideas based on our own experiences, and it’s ok to share them. However, Wealthy Affiliate is a place to learn how to build an online business and somewhere that we want people from all over the world to feel comfortable being part of. There is no place for arguments or negativity - none of us have time for that, nor do we want to be part of it.

The Pay it Forward Society.

Since starting Wealthy Affiliate back in 2005 our goal was to pay forward our knowledge that we had learned in the prior years to help people create businesses online. So the very underpinnings and core focus has always been to pay it forward, share information, and ultimately be the most helpful place on the Internet in this space.

Through time we have become known very much as a pay it forward community. There are tens of thousands of awesome people here paying it forward everyday by giving back their knowledge. As you learn here, you are going to be in a position to pay it forward too! You could be a complete “newbie”, but maybe you asked a questions yesterday, got an answer, then see someone asking the same question today - feel free to answer because that’s how our community works!

The member ranking is based on this very concept and how authentic your pay it forward activities are.

There is enough room for all of us to become independently very successful online. The most efficient way to do this is to work together as a community and help one another. Our focus at Wealthy Affiliate through 2017, 2018 and beyond, is going to be getting people the most efficient help possible by providing you with the tools and services that lead to maximum efficiency in your business...and ultimately more success.

So if you pay it forward, the WA ranking platform is going to pay it back. ;)

Is it Social, is it Marketing Related, or is it Success?

We are a community, people are friends here and people love to network within WA. This is because the environment is non-invasive and one that people truly want to be part of. We have ZERO intention of becoming a Facebook and we are far from it, but in saying this, Facebook does some things brilliantly well in terms of the ability for people to connect.

Our focus is getting people the BEST help and providing them with the most efficient medium to do this. We may already be the most comprehensive platform in the industry, but we want it to become something that goes beyond what folks think is possible.

Our goal is to make you a more successful marketer and business person online through facilitating efficiency, support, and education through ONE centralized platform.

You can post content that has social value, but it should be related to your Internet marketing journey or story. We are considering providing people with the ability to mark their posts here as being social, marketing/business related, or a success based story.

We have a blog that is updated regularly and that covers the posting rules within WA. If you ever need to reference this document, you can go here:

Posting Policy and Rules at Wealthy Affiliate

I suggest you have a read of this If you have not already.

Perks, and The Implementation of This.

Although we've just introduced a new ranking algorithm at WA, we are still working diligently to get the Ambassador and overall ranking platform to a place where we feel that it is going to be as accurate as it ever has been. In the past there have been tendencies for the system to rank folks that are clearly attempting to "game" rank so they can exaggerate their reach. This is something we continually work on so that those who have been authentically helping folks can be showcased and benefit in the overall ranks.

With our updated and consistent "real time" improvements on the Ambassador platform, we feel that we are getting to a place where we are going to be able to offer much more in the way of incentives. As we move through the rest of 2017, you are going to see "perks" for those reaching Ambassador status and for those that are truly paying it forward in the community.

There are platforms and integrations taking shape that we have been working towards for several years that are going to be create entirely new ecosystems and opportunities at WA. This excites us, and I know as we roll out these updates they are going to be incredibly exciting for the community. We do not want helping others to become a job for anyone, nor do we want it to be a burden. Helping others because you WANT to and because you enjoy helping people around the world experience a lightbulb moments, is exactly what we aim to capture within the ranks.

Today ranks have gotten a HUGE shake up. Folks that are helping others are going to see much higher ranks. Some folks may see their ranks drop, it’s the nature of an update, just like any Google ranking update. As the dust settles, RANK will also settle in and normalize. It will be apparent that helping others while being friendly and interactive will lead to consistency.

We look forward to the discussion to follow!