Sharing your challenges as an affiliate can be one of the most valuable things you can do. Image: Flickr / horiavarlan / CC-BY-SA
If you have been doing SEO, web management or social media management for any amount of time, you have likely encountered challenges that someone else has had or will have. While you may not be an expert, sharing your experience is valuable for a variety of reasons.
Problem solving is best done together
As thousands of websites and groups have proven, crowdsourcing is a very effective way to do just about anything. Crowdsourcing allows for the group to combine knowledge, experience and expertise to come up with a solution that works well. Sometimes, it takes the idea or the experience of one person or several people that you have never met to spark another idea in your mind, or vice versa. Problem-solving is best done as a group, and sharing your experiences in websites, SEO and community building can help create a community. By presenting the problems you are having challenges with, using search engine optimization techniques you are already familiar with, you will find others who are having similar problems and may have solved them.
Create a record for yourself
It is likely that you will encounter a variety of challenges that you could solve in one of several ways. You may encounter those problems again when building another website, helping out a potential client or even rebuilding your own website. Create a record for yourself of what problems you encountered, what the potential solutions are, which solutions you chose, and how those solutions worked out. If you share this information publicly or semi-publicly, you will be able to search that record again in the future to make more informed decisions. The time savings alone will be worth the effort you put into it.
The importance of branding yourself
As an affiliate, you will likely own and operate special-topics websites that make use of the best practices in social media, search engine optimization and content. Some of these things you may be more passionate about than others, so focus on those things you like. Creating a separate blog or profile where you share your challenges and solutions can help brand you or your business separate from your affiliate accounts. If you wish to branch out into social media management or search engine optimization services, this back record of your work will be incredibly helpful, because you will be known as a person or brand, not just known by your affiliate sites.