They turn beginners into profitable affiliate marketers by providing training, a functioning website, tools and coaching. It is one platform where you can create your whole affiliate marketing business. The best part is that they make the complete process of starting an online business from scratch pretty easy. In this article, we are bringing you Wealthy Affiliate review so that you can know all about this platform and how it can make you money and if it is worth your time.
Wealthy Affiliate Review
It is one of the most renowned and controversial platforms worldwide that offers affiliate marketing training courses, community and ecosystem. It can also be said of a course or community that provides you knowledge on making money online with affiliate marketing. They combine software, training and website hosting into one.
What is Wealthy Affiliate?
It is the complete solution to your affiliate marketing problems. You just have to pay a membership fee and get everything required to create your affiliate marketing business. The name of its founders is Carson Lim and Kyle Loudon, both of them are Canadian entrepreneurs. They have been in the business since 2005, and the name of their company is Niche Marketing, Inc. To date, they have assisted over 1.4 million students, which makes it one of the most reliable and popular platforms worldwide.
If you join them and pay for the membership, they offer you everything required to earn a living through affiliate marketing. Their course includes –
A complete introduction to affiliate programs You will get a website builder Training on how to attract traffic to your site You also get training on mastering paid traffic Provide training on niche selection They offer you subscriptions to important tools Along with training, they also provide you with a helpful community so that you can learn the right way
The Wealthy Affiliates team comprises 1800 coaches, 1.4 million members, over 10 000 businesses started to date, and 23,000 people head daily.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Wealthy Affiliate offers you knowledge on how to make money online from affiliate marketing. In case you are unaware of what affiliate marketing is, here is a small description of it. It is a performance-based marketing business in which Affiliate gets rewards from the publisher for every visitor or customer. This means that for every sale you make, they reward you with a commission. The commission rate varies from company to company and varies on the product you select to promote.
Why should you not join Wealthy Affiliate?
Here is an honest Wealthy affiliate review for you as here you would get to know why you should not join this platform. The truth is that this platform is not for everyone; here are some of the reasons why –
The training they offer is not much helpful; it might actually lessen your chance of success. You would be amazed to know that most of their training material has not been updated after 2005. Both of their founders have themselves not seen much success in affiliate marketing after 2016. The main training they offer is full of false claims and poorly organized. You might also find some bad advice in training plus it is also missing a lot of important information. The internal system of Wealth Affiliate is pathetic.
Thus, if you are serious about succeeding in affiliate marketing, then this program is not recommended. Their training is outdated and detrimental at worst.
How much does Wealthy Affiliate cost?
Let us look at the plans offered by Wealthy Affiliate. It is an important factor and hence, we have tried to give all the details about each of their plans in this Wealthy Affiliate review.
- Starter Plan – Free The free plan consists of –
1 Website Community Access for 7 days No classes Access to Level 1 Training Jaaxy Starter Free SSL
- Premium Plan – $49 per month Here are the features that you get in Premium Plan –
10 websites Unlimited support Training of all levels Website Backup More than 52 expert classes Daily Backup Hacking Prevention 24/7 site support Multi-Threaded Search – 2x SiteRank Analysis Scans – 2000 Jaaxy Lite
- Premium Plus Plan – $99 per month In this plan, you get all the features of previous plans and more –
50 websites Unlimited support with priority 200+ expert classes Advanced Level Hosting Security Suite Private help Multi-Threaded Search – 5x SiteRank Analysis Scans – 10,000 Jaaxy Enterprise
Why don’t people prefer the free program?
In some wealthy affiliate reviews, it was observed that their free plan is not enough to earn income online. It gives you access to limited training material and restricted website-building tools. So, it is recommended to opt for their premium plan if you want to make money online through Affiliate marketing. Also Read: 120 Best Affiliate Programs
How does Wealthy Affiliate work?
The best part about this platform is that it combines software, tools, website and all the other things required in a user-friendly manner. They have a well-designed user interface that you would not feel confused when you get onto their website. They update the website regularly and are regularly working on updating the training material, web hosting and all the other things required for streamlining the process of making money online. Let us move along with Wealthy Affiliate review and learn about the things that you would get access to when you join them –
- Comprehensive Training Material – They are very famous for the training material they provide about affiliate marketing. Their core training comes in 5 levels (will discuss that later in the blog), and it is called “Online Entrepreneur Certification.” In this training, they teach you 50 lessons and give you 160 actionable tasks. The nice thing is that they do not teach you techniques that are not long-lasting. All the tactics you learn on Wealthy Affiliate are long-term and white-hat methods. Every day, you would see that they add new training into the program, which implies that you can be sure of getting the latest information on how to do online marketing.
- Industry-leading site hosting – Don’t think of Wealthy Affiliate as just an education platform as here you also get training on the best-managed WordPress hosting as well. A lot of entrepreneurs feel that dealing with hosting issues is very stressful; hence they provide you with the training so that it is no more trouble for you. As compared to unmanaged hosting, WordPress Managed Hosting is more secure. With the latter, you can be sure of speed, security, backups, spam & data protection, reliability and much more.
- Community-driven learning – It is a very community-centric platform as here you not only learn from the instructor, but they create such a learning environment where you can share your ideas and experience with everyone. If you face any sort of problem, you can get help instantly from thousands of members globally through live chat. While using you would realize that its interface is pretty similar to a social media platform as you can connect to everyone, including the owners, very easily. For every lesson, there is a discussion thread. Thus, you would be able to see the questions asked and the answers given by other experienced members.
- Access to premium research tools – Not every platform enables you to use the premium research tools, but Wealthy Affiliate For creating an affiliate marketing business, you need keyword research tools for SEO. Hence, they provide you with a popular and robust keyword research tool called Jaaxy. This tool helps discover profitable keywords, reviews market trends and searches for appropriate affiliate programs for the users. If you opt for any similar keyword research tool, it would not cost you less than $100/month. But, with Wealthy Affiliate, you get it for free.
- Powerful Site Builder – They provide a site builder that helps create a website within a couple of minutes. Their site builder is called SiteRubix, you just need to answer a few questions, and it creates the website as per your requirements. The questions you have to answer are: type of website you want to build, name of your website and select the design, and the website will be created for you. This process is so simple that anyone can do it.
- Site Comment & Site Feedback – After creating a new website, you cannot expect a lot of visitors in the initial few weeks. This can be pretty tough for you to see as a website owner, but Wealthy Affiliate has the solution for you. Their members will visit your site for Site comments and also leave a comment on your post. They leave a quality comment as else it gets disapproved. They also have a team of experienced members who give site feedback; it is paramount for you, especially for a new website. They would offer you advice on improving design, templates, content, layout, etc., which can be very helpful. This is how this platform works, it is a very useful and easy-to-use platform. Now, in this Wealthy Affiliate review, let us learn the levels of the training program as it will give you an insight on how to get started and what the outcome would be.
Levels of Wealthy Affiliate Course
Here are the 5 levels of Wealthy Affiliate training and the things you would learn from it – Level 1 – Introduction This is the first step of the course; here you would get information on how to navigate the community, set up the account, and give you details on what you would get if you upgrade to their premium plan. The few things that you would be asked to do are –
Vision – In this, they would ask you to specify your money goals and where you wish to reach in your life. Focus – Select the niche in which you want to work. Build – Create your website the way you want to with the help of their website builder. Optimize – They would teach you how to make your site SEO-friendly. Write – You will also learn how to create engaging content so that more and more visitors get attracted to your website. Organize – You need to set up the site’s table of content and menu; with WA you will also get an insight on how to manage your website. Study – They would provide you with knowledge on how to research for effective keywords.
This is the first level of training which is quite fast and if you follow all the steps rightly, then your website will be up and running within a couple of days. Level 2 – Gaining Traffic Here comes the second level of the training, where they focus on getting more and more organic traffic on your website. First, they will teach you how to get visitors to come and visit your website. By the end of the second step, you would be well versed with:
Choosing and purchasing a marketable domain name. How to transfer your website to the new domain name that you created. Boost productivity and create more blog posts. How to target SEO keywords. Choosing appropriate pictures to support your content. Get insight on posting your website to WA community for getting comments. They will teach you to sell WA courses and post on their blogs. Learn how to set up a domain-specific email account.
Level 3 – Earning money In the second level, you have learned how to get traffic; now is the time to monetize that traffic. Here are a few ways of doing that – This is one of the most crucial training steps as it helps to get revenue on your website. Level 4 – Skillfully using Social Media In this step, they teach you the methods to multiply the traffic on your website so that more viewers get attracted to your affiliate offers and Google Ads. In this part of the training, you will learn to –
Use various social media platforms for sharing your blog posts. Search for the latest topics on Twitter to use them in your posts. Handle your blog comments. Using Facebook smartly for starting a discussion. Tell you how to use the WA community to reap maximum benefits from it. They teach you which social media to use and at what particular time.
This is a vital part of the training as these are small things but have a huge impact on the outcome Level 5 – Refining content Competent content writing is paramount for running any business online and here as well. It will help if you add engaging information and genuine product reviews as these are the important factors to get a loyal customer base who purchase your products. At this level, you would learn about –
How to write impressive content so that more and more customers get attracted. A review of conversions from one of the best-selling websites. Transforming the traffic into leads. Expanding your business. Seek methods for outsourcing your content. How to ensure that people read the content and engage with it. Planning for long-term success. How to get indexed and rank higher on Bing and Yahoo. They teach you to use webmaster tools for tracking your website. Guide you on setting up an annual plan for content creation.
All of these learnings are essential for becoming a successful affiliate marketer or running your business online. Thus, this training can be very effective for you if you are a beginner. Also Read: 31 Best Gaming Affiliate Programs
What is not covered in Wealthy Affiliate training program?
There are a lot of theories, strategies and techniques that it fails to teach as there are various important things that are important today, but the course does not comprise. Here are the few things that are not in the course/training –
Building backlinks Affiliate disclosures Google AdSense Alternatives to Google AdSense Caching Updating content External linking to authority sites Citing sources Outsourcing content Schema markup Featured snippets Video (no training in OEC series) YouTube SEO Alternatives to Jaaxy for keyword research Which sources of traffic are best and why Email marketing Instagram WordPress page builders
Pros of Wealthy Affiliate
In this Wealthy Affiliate review, we have included both pros and cons; let us start with the pros before listing the cons. Below is the list of all the good things about WA –
- Get started with Affiliate Marketing easily – WA is one of the easiest ways to begin affiliate marketing. They have created a system that enables you to set up everything speedily and easily. With them, you can set up your website and start getting traffic in just a couple of days. But, the truth is that money-making will take some time, so don’t keep your expectations too high.
- CTA guidance – They teach you an essential thing that really helps in the long run: not to use CTA more than once or twice per product review.
- Nice training on fundamentals – If you are an amateur in affiliate marketing or have no idea about online money-making, then in WA training, there are many things for you to learn. Some of the significant things you would learn are the basics of WordPress, everything about Affiliate Marketing, basic keyword research, and much more.
- Affordable – The good thing about their training and program is that it is affordable. Unlike other platforms, they do not charge you a high fee; instead, it is just $49 a month and there is so much you can learn from it. If you join their annual plan, you get two months of free subscriptions; what else can you ask for?
- Sense of Progress – Their training is divided into various levels, and they give you manageable tasks at the end of every level. This way, you get data on your progress which keeps you motivated.
- Comprehensive platform – It is not just an online course but is more than that as here you learn many practical things that you might not get on other platforms. The various benefits that you get from joining it are support from team members, tools for keyword research, round-the-clock site support, and much more.
- Write honest reviews – One of the best learning that you can take from WA is writing honest reviews. In training, they always emphasize writing genuine reviews of the product that you promote.
- Excellent hosting – With WA, you can host up to 10 premium websites. Their founders have invested millions of dollars in improving web hosting technology, which has made a real difference in the website’s load time. Some other benefits are listed below –
Live webinars are hosted every week Super helpful and active community They regularly make the updates Training is well-designed and beginner-friendly Technical support is available round the clock White hat throughout
Cons of Wealthy Affiliate
Anything is neither that bad nor the greatest thing ever in today’s time. So along with the benefits, come a few disadvantages of WA. Next in Wealthy affiliate review are some of its major cons and why you should not opt for it –
- No refunds – This is the worst thing about them as there are a lot of people who complained that they refused to give a refund after they paid the membership fee.
- Unrealistic expectations – They set unrealistic expectations in training, plus at times they also contradict their own statements, which makes it confusing for the affiliates.
- Training is outdated – Various people gripe that their training module is outdated and it needs to be updated as per the new strategies and techniques in the market. This is true to some extent as they do not remove some of the old training material because some of them have valuable information.
- Shades of MLM – A major part of their training is about selling WA courses to others, which is weird as it should not be included in the training for beginners.
- Confusing ranking system – They have a ranking system for all members, which makes the community system look like a game. Their ranking system is pointless as it is not about how much you make, but they rank you based on your engagement, and comments you make on blog posts, and if you answer people’s questions, it will increase your ranking. Some other cons of Wealthy Affiliate are listed below –
Repetitive education Advanced SEO tactics missing Relentless selling in training
These were some of the pros and cons of WA; it will make it easier to analyze whether to opt for it as per your requirements or not. Also Read: 31 Best Pay Per Lead Affiliate Programs
Is Wealthy Affiliate Legit? Is it a scam?
Since their inception, they have been rendering solid affiliate marketing training; thus, it is not a scam. You might not like various things about them, but it is for sure not a scam. But a lot of people say it is a scam because their teachings have become outdated and ineffective. Well, honestly, it is legit as a scam is when someone takes your money and runs away. But they offer you training, support, tools and provide you with a lot of information about affiliate marketing. It is still working for numerous people, so it is a 100% legit program and not a scam. But, before applying for the program, there are a few things that you should keep in mind-
Their training material has not been updated after 2015. A lot of their training material comprises bad advice, misleading claims and is poorly organized. Most of the successful WA students seem to earn maximum money by referring WA courses to others.
Can you make money with Wealthy Affiliate?
This question is the crux of this Wealthy Affiliate review. As per WA, they provide you with numerous tools, support and guidance that is required for becoming a successful affiliate and start earning. But the truth is that you will not earn anything with the free plan; you would just be able to earn when you refer someone for their program. WA members were making good money till 2016, but after that, their performance is constantly declining. Now, they have fewer success stories, and people are losing interest in this platform. How much money you can make from it would depend on what you learned from the training and how you use it practically. For becoming successful and earning decent money, you would have to create a website, build a brand, create a community, and master paid traffic. The truth is that you can make money with WA by becoming an affiliate for WA itself. It was effective several years ago, and people used to earn through it, but the results are not the same today.
Is their Affiliate program worth it?
They have one of the most renowned affiliate programs online, as you can earn $121 per sale, plus you get a lifetime commission. Isn’t that wonderful? This is one reason why people love joining and recommending it, as the commission is pretty high. Lifetime commission means that you will get paid as long as the person you referred pays the monthly subscription. This means that $121 plus the percentage of every time they renew their contract with WA. This is the major reason why so many people promote it.
Who are the founders of Wealthy Affiliate?
The co-founders of Wealthy Affiliate are Kyle Loudon and Carson Lim. Kyle Loudon – He is the face of WA, and he is the one you would see in most of the training sessions. He is the primary trainer responsible for most of the core lessons and videos in WA. He knew a lot about SEO and affiliate marketing; thus, he started sharing his knowledge on WA, and students started getting amazing results from it. WA started earning a massive amount of money through it, more than Kyle ever earned from his affiliate sites. Carson Lim – Apart from being the co-founder of WA, Carson is also the designer of WA. He is Kyle’s right hand and is responsible for turning plans into reality. Jay Neil – He also plays an important role in WA as he is the training chief there. He takes the weekly live training webinars for premium members of WA. He has been with WA since 2007, and he describes himself to be ‘The World’s First Wealthy Affiliate Influencer’.
Is Wealthy Affiliate a scam similar to a pyramid scheme or MLM?
The truth is that it is neither a pyramid scheme nor MLM, but it comprises the elements of both. A pyramid scheme is described as one where fresh recruits pay upfront fees to members at the top of the pyramid under the vow of getting payments when they appoint new members below them. This means you pay the fee to get enrolled and then earn money by recruiting new people. If they opt for the premium plan, you get a fixed amount plus a lifetime commission. Thus, it is neither an MLM nor a pyramid scheme.
Unsubstantiated claims in Wealthy Affiliate
They make numerous outlandish claims that should be included in Wealthy Affiliate review. Here are some of the false claims made by WA –
No chance of failure – They have written on the website, “You Won’t Fail. We Promise.” But, the truth is nothing ever is guaranteed. Not everyone who joined them has succeeded. There is no guarantee of everyone who joins them would earn a commission or make money. Hence, this is a false claim
High success rate – They claim that they have the highest success rate in the industry, but how is that measured and are there any facts to prove that? No, they don’t; thus, this again is not to be believed.
Make a website in 30 seconds – For sure, there is no way around that you can build an elegant, revenue-ready website in just 30 seconds. As per the reviews, people say that this is a nonsense claim as you need to create a design, do hosting, SEO work, content, and many other things that need to be updated before your website is ready to be launched.
Best Affiliate Marketing Platform – Except WA people say that maybe while making it the top affiliate marketing platform, only their founders or team members were allowed to vote.
Google Rankings are owned by WA users – This is not at all true and is said to be meaningless marketing speak. No facts or details support this statement; what are they trying to say by owning Google rankings? It is a dubious claim as if it is true; they should prove it by putting facts around it.
Some of the other dubious claims are –
WA has the best website hosting in the industry. You can use 20,000 plugins on your first website after signing in. Make $1 million per year through a campaign by scaling it. Every Google update boosts the earnings of users of WA. Domain Names that are perfect and stay high in Google search.
Also Read: 30 Best High Income Skills to Learn
Who is Wealthy Affiliate for?
This tool is for anyone who has a lot of time to make money online through affiliate marketing. It renders users with all the tools required to create a website, and content and get organic traffic for monetization. It is not just for beginners; you can also learn a lot from it even if you have already been into an online business. It is usually recommended for beginners because it becomes easier for them to build a website as they get complete assistance from WA’s team. Advanced affiliates might not want to join it as they might know a lot of things already. Still, they can benefit in other ways, such as they get keyword research tools, state-of-art hosting and other additional features.
Who is Wealthy Affiliate not for?
If you are looking to make money in just a couple of weeks, this platform might not be appropriate. It teaches you to create a long-term digital asset that helps generate passive income for you in the coming years. This is not a short-term plan; hence you cannot make money from it instantly. To make money via WA, first, you would have to make a website and create effective and engaging content to drive more traffic. You need a lot of patience and need to devote some time to earning money through it. Therefore, WA is not for you if you are not patient and cannot wait for long to make money. Let us continue this Wealthy Affiliate review by talking about WA customer support.
Wealthy Affiliate Support
When you talk about their Support, it gets a big plus. Their support team is very fast and convenient. You would be amazed to know that its founders are also available through private messaging; they are also pretty prompt in responding to queries. They answer all your queries within no time. But, there are times when the answer might not be that great. They also have a contact us page where you can write your queries and get the answer within a couple of hours.
Wealthy Affiliate Community
If we talk about its community, the answer is it is super active. They have a community of more than 8 00 000 members worldwide, and they are active round the clock. As per WA, their response time is 1.8 minutes, and there are over 32 000 community interactions every day, which is huge. The negative point about the community is that a lot of community activities seem to be pointless and might distract you from creating a good affiliate website. As there are a lot of members who like to leave pointless comments, which distracts users. The truth about Wealthy Affiliate is that it is definitely not worth your time and money. But, it claims to have numerous success stories of its members who have earned a lot of money through their training. Thus, you can join their training lesson for free and then signup for a $49 plan, learn from the premium material in a month and then you can cancel the subscription. Hopefully, this Wealthy Affiliate review will help you decide whether it is worth it or not. All in all, as a beginner you can join this course as within a couple of weeks you will learn a lot about making money online. You get basic affiliate marketing training and support here but do not expect high-level training. Keep reading Moneymint for more such money-making articles!
