Welcome to my Wealthy Affiliate University review. You made up your mind that you want to start your own online business. You maybe want a change from doing the traditional 9-5, and want to work from home.
Is Wealthy Affiliate a scam, or can they help you to reach your dream of becoming a successful online entrepreneur?
In today’s review, I am going to show you what Wealthy Affiliate is all about. The truth is that Wealthy Affiliate is NOT for everyone, and I will help you decide if it’s the right platform for you to join.
Before we dive straight into the review, feel free to check out my NR.1 recommendation to make money online. Simply click on the link that follows to learn more.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before I show you what the Wealthy Affiliate Business program is all about, let me first talk to you about a business model called Affiliate Marketing.
When you come into the online world intending to start your own business, you might be confronted with various business models to choose from. You can sell your own digital products online, you can start your own consulting or coaching program, or even launch your own mastermind.
There is also a business model called affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you, the affiliate would sell other people’s products or services and earn a commission from the sale.
Basically, you bring together the buyer and the seller. And you earn commissions for every successful transaction that takes place.
The profit you earn depends on the commissions offered by the merchant or vendor. If you sell high-ticket affiliate products, even if the percentage is small, you can make a good sale.
Let’s say that you are marketing a product that costs $1,000. If the commission is say 20%, you make a cool $200. The great part about high-ticket affiliate marketing is that you do not need to focus on volume to reach your income goals. You only need to sell five items to make $1,000.
But that does not mean that low-ticket affiliate marketing is bad.
Not at all.
You can market a course that retails for $49 monthly. The commission on that course is $29 per month. And you earn a recurring or passive income as long as your referral is a member of the course.
So, you have options.
There are other benefits to starting an affiliate marketing business.
Recommended Reading: The BucketList Bombshells Review – It Might Not Be As Good As It Looks!
What Are The Benefits of Doing Online Affiliate Marketing?
Benefit One: You Do Not Need A Product Of Your Own
You are marketing someone’s else product or service. You do not have to worry about creating a product of your own.
Benefit Two: No After-Sales Customer Support Worries
Once you make a successful sale, the job is on the owners of the product to ensure that the customer is happy. They handle customer support queries. You do not have to worry about liaising with the customer.
Benefit Three: Most Affiliate Programs are FREE
You can become an Amazon associate for free. In fact, there are tons of affiliate programs that you can join in whatever niche(subject or audience) you want to target.
Benefit Four: No Need To Recruit ANYONE!
To earn higher paychecks in an MLM or multi-level marketing organization like Velovita or 4 Life, you need to focus on recruiting people.
With affiliate marketing, you do not need to do any recruiting.
Benefit Five: It’s a Beginner Friendly Business Model and Low Risk
You do not have to need any experience to do it. It’s also a low-risk business model. Anyone can learn the business, as it’s fairly easy to understand. It might require one to learn some new skills and that will take time. And it’s not expensive to get started,
And this is where Wealthy Affiliate comes into the picture. It teaches you this business model irrespective of what experience you may have.
What is The Wealthy Affiliate Program All About?
The Wealthy Affiliate University is a platform that teaches anyone how to build an online business of their own. It teaches its students the affiliate marketing business model and caters to both beginners and experts.
The Wealthy Affiliate platform has been around for 17 years and opens its membership across 193 countries. According to the official Wealthy Affiliate website, they have over 2.6 Million members, 1.800 expert coaches, and help 24 000 people on a daily basis.
Who Are The Owners of Wealthy Affiliate?
The founders of Wealthy Affiliate are Kyle Langound and Carson Long. They started Wealthy Affiliate 17 years ago.
At the time, the platform was focused on only offering a keyword service. Members would be able to purchase “low competition, high volume” keywords to help their articles get ranked on Google and other search engines.
Today, they have a powerful keyword tool called Jaxxy to help you find keywords in seconds. That is only a small portion of what Wealthy Affiliate has become.
The platform offers comprehensive training, website builders, expert and live classes, top-notch support, and an interactive community to help folks become successful entrepreneurs.
Before we talk about the features that Wealthy Affiliate offers, I want to show you how you can benefit as a Wealthy Affiliate premium member.
How Can Wealthy Affiliate Help You? What Benefits Do You Get As A Wealthy Affiliate Member?
The Affiliate Marketing that you will be learning with Wealthy Affiliate is SEO Affiliate Marketing.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
It basically means learning techniques to help your website rank among Google and other search engines. When your site is well-ranked, you get an unlimited amount of targeted traffic to your online business. And that means more visitors and ultimately more sales.
In fact, this is the 4-step training process outlined in the Wealthy Affiliate training program.
The steps are as follows :
- Step One: Find a suitable Niche(your target audience or subject for your website)
- Step Two: Build A Website (based on your niche)
- Step Three: Attract Visitors to your website
- Step Four: Earn Revenue
The first benefit of being a Wealthy Affiliate member is that you have access to flagship training courses. These courses will take you from building the foundation of your website all the way up to mastering paid ads.
The second benefit is that even as a free member, you are part of their interactive community. You will be welcomed to the WA family as soon as you sign-up. You will read success stories, you can reach out for help and help others as a WA member.
The third benefit is you get a website and everything else to make it go live! You do not have to go searching for a domain registrar. As a WA member, you get a free personal domain, and included is world-class hosting and daily backup of your sites.
The fourth benefit is you have access to many channels of support. Whether you are a new or an experienced marketer, it always helps to be a part of a community with like-minded folks.
The fifth benefit is that there are no upsells. There are three membership options, two of which are paid ones. Whichever paid option you choose, there are no further upsells. No hidden costs. When it comes to renewing your membership, you get the membership locked in at the original price.
The sixth benefit is that you have multiple ways to make money apart from your affiliate marketing website. You have free access to their affiliate program. You get paid for providing comments on other people’s websites within the WA community. You can provide training to WA members and get paid for it!
The final benefit is that you have flexibility when it comes to working with the training courses. Some online courses affix a deadline for you to complete their course, watch a webinar, or access previous training.
With Wealthy Affiliate, nothing is time-sensitive. You can access tons of training material at any time. (Warning: It might take you a lifetime to go through. LOL)
My Point: You can do training, watch live classes, recorded events whenever it fits your schedule.
The Wealthy Affiliate Features- What Do You Get As A WA Member?
To start off, the core feature is their flagship training course.
You have the OEC or Online Entrepreneurship Course which consists of 5 LEVELS, comprising a total of 50 LESSONS.
The OEC course walks you through the process of building a business based on any niche. They have another comprehensive course called the Affiliate Bootcamp.
The Wealthy Affiliate Bootcamp course teaches you how to start a business within the make-money-online niche. It consists of 7 LEVELS comprising 70 LEVELS.
Wealthy Affiliate has its own site builder. In a matter of seconds, you can have the framework of your site built on a free domain or a domain that you already own. You can also buy your own domain within WA.
***The best part is that building your first site is made as simple as possible. If you are a newbie, you do not have to be technically minded at all.
The owners of WA have made it possible that you can reach out for help using more than just one way. You can use the LIVE CHAT feature.
You can “ASK A QUESTION” or “BLOG YOUR QUERY” to the online community.
You also have 24-hour WA technical support on standby. You can also “PRIVATE MESSAGE” any other WA member including Kyle and Carson.
Apart from the flagship courses, you can access the 100’s classes covering any topic relating to affiliate marketing and online entrepreneurship.
If the classes are not enough, then you can also access hundreds of recorded webinars or register for their LIVE WEEKLY ones that take place every Friday!
Wealthy Affiliate has its own keyword tool that allows you to do more than just find the best keywords for your articles.
You can track keywords that you have already used to see how they are performing on Google. You can save a keyword list. You can even spy on your competitor’s website, and see what is working for them so that you can use it in your business.
These are just some of the main features of the Wealthy Affiliate platform. Go ahead and sign-up to discover more about what Wealthy Affiliate offers here.
How Much Does Wealthy Affiliate Cost? The Wealthy Affiliate Membership Options
There are 3 membership options that you can choose from.
These are :
- FREE Plan
- WA Premium Membership $49 (+ 1 Free Domain)
- WA Premium Plus Membership $99 ( +2 Free Domains)
As a free member, you get access to the first level of their flagship training courses and the starter version of Jaaxy, the keyword tool. You also get 7-days of unlimited support, and one website to start building the foundation of your business.
I am on the Wealthy Affiliate premium membership. It has served me fine thus far. I only use 3 of the 10 websites that are allocated in my membership. In fact, Kyle even mentions in the training, that you only need 1 website to have a profitable online business on your hands.
I have not even gone through half of the expert classes, and the Jaxxy Lite membership is working wonders for me. If you are just starting out, I would recommend going for the Wealthy Affiliate premium membership.
Will I upgrade later to the premium plus package?
Probably. But at a later stage. The most attractive feature of the premium plus package is the number of expert classes and training you get. Apart from Kyle, you get training from WA members who have used the WA training and made successful 6 figures and are teaching you what has worked in their business. Truly amazing stuff!
If this sounds like something you would enjoy, then go ahead and join the Wealthy Affiliate Premium Plus membership here.
Does The Wealthy Affiliate University Training Work? Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories
I like to check out 3rd party review sites, to get a fair view of whether or not people are happy with using a particular program. One such site is called Trustpilot.com
At the time of writing this review, Wealthy Affiliate had around 523 reviews. 92% of the reviews were 5-star ratings.
Here are some of the positive reviews.
No platform is perfect. WA also has its fair share of negative reviews. Though it counts for only 3%.
The one thing that you will notice is that with the majority of the reviews, the owners have taken the time to give a response or feedback.
What about success stories? Are people making money with the Wealthy Affiliate training?
That’s a great question.
Remember earlier on I mentioned that folks can use the blog feature within WA to reach out for help, share training, or even talk about how their business is doing?
Well, there is a special section within WA where they showcase members making it a success after implementing the WA training.
That’s what makes the Wealthy Affiliate community different from other online training platforms. They do not have your usual Private Facebook community. And Kyle and Carson did that on purpose.
Having a support channel in the form of a blog is so much more versatile. If someone has a problem with their website or needs help, blogging allows them to explain the problem in much more detail and it gives a clearer picture as compared to using a Facebook post.
As you can see it is also easier to see the success stories.
Speaking of which, here are my recent commissions that I made with Wealthy Affiliate.
Pros of Wealthy Affiliate
- Owner Transparency/Long Standing In The Market
Not only do they have owner transparency, but this is one of the few online business platforms where you can directly contact the owners even if they have 2 million members on their database. WA has been around for 15 years.
2. They Offer a Free Membership Option
3. They Have Many Channels of Support
You can reach out for help via their live chat, blogging, or private messaging. They have 24/7/365 technical support service on standby.
4. All of your premium websites are backed-up daily
5. They Have a Free Affiliate Program
6. They Are Teaching A Proven Online Business Model(i.e. SEO affiliate marketing), that Will Stand The Test of Time.
7. They Have Tons of Success Stories and Member Testimonials
8. They Cater For Both Newbies and Experienced Marketers
9. They Have An Interactive and Helpful Online Community
10. Live Weekly Training Webinar Session With Q&A
Cons of The Wealthy Affiliate University
- Too Much Going On- Can Be Distracting
You can jump into the live chat, or blog or spend time reading tons of other people’s blogs. You can also immerse yourself in watching the hours of training sessions. Sometimes it can become distracting and take you away from focusing on building your business.
2. They Teach a Concept That Requires Patience
Having a successful affiliate marketing website with SEO does take time and hard work.
Is it Difficult To Make Money With Wealthy Affiliate?
How do you make money with Wealthy Affiliate?
The main way is to have a blog and write articles that are optimized for SEO. This is what the core training of Wealthy Affiliate teaches.
It teaches you how to first set up your blog, and then how to go about creating content that will be favored well on Google and other search engines.
To make money this way, would mean that you need to be consistent in creating quality content for your reader.
Google is not going to just rank your site after you created 5 or 10 posts. Google needs to know that they can trust your website, and for them to do this they need to see you put out original and helpful articles on a regular basis.
Do you have to be a writer to be a successful online affiliate marketer?
No, you do not. If you are just starting out, then you might not be good at writing, but as time goes on, you will become better. As they say, practice makes perfect, right?
The main idea is to focus on helping people.
Think of it as talking to a friend and helping them out. That is really what blogging is all about. Reaching out to people.
Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam? My Personal Opinion
Why do people call Wealthy Affiliate a Scam?
Some people say that the training at Wealthy Affiliate does not work. I have shown you some amazing success stories.
The main reason I believe people say this is because members have not given it a fair chance. If you treat your online business as a hobby, and not as a business, then you are not going to get the results you are looking for.
You have to be committed.
It takes TIME to have a blog that gains traction and is making money. Depending on the niche you select, it can take anywhere between 3-9 months to get your first commission.
It’s not hard to make money with Wealthy Affiliate. It just does not happen overnight. If you implement the training and take massive action every day, you will have a profitable online business on your hands.
Just Do Not Give Up! You might be closer than You Think!
How Do I Earn A Passive Income Online
I transitioned from the health field to the online world. I face a major health challenge that affected my ability to do my day job as a pharmacist, and I had no choice but to find another way to bring in the money. You can read my story here.
It’s thanks to affiliate marketing that I can earn a passive income online.
With affiliate marketing, you do not have to focus on recruiting people at all. There is no cold-calling or having “tea-parties” or having to do any door-to-door selling.
It’s a great business model for newbies. Even if you have no marketing or any technical experience with website building and so forth.
You have the freedom to build your business around a topic or niche that you enjoy talking about. And you are not restricted to marketing only ONE product or service.
I sell high-ticket digital products. The commissions are higher and you have to only sell a few to make your monthly target.
It would my pleasure to show you more about how I made money with this business model since 2016. Let me show you how it can benefit YOU as well by clicking here.
Thanks so much for joining me on this Wealthy Affiliate University Review.
I hope that it has helped you out.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Roopesh
I couldn’t agree more my friend. You showed what WA really is, what you can accomplish with it and what are bad sides of it, even if there aren’t many, there is some. This is an amazing review and tells the real truth, which is mostly important. It gets real dense in the beginning, but once you get through, it becomes easier.
True indeed. Initially, when one is starting off, it can feel overwhelming and intimidating. I feel like that many times when I first started my WA journey.
But it’s like first learning to ride a bicycle. Initially, it’s hard, but once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. And the same principle applies when it comes to starting an online affiliate marketing business.
Thanks for stopping by.
Regards
Roopesh
Hey, thanks for this very thorough review!
It certainly answered many if not all questions one would have regarding this platform! I like how you covered everything whilst being honest, something a newbie needs to hear.
Wealthy Affiliate is definitely a great platform for everyone and anyone alike! Enjoyed your very detailed review!
Have a great day!
Thanks for your kind words.
Glad that you enjoyed the review.
Wish you everything of the best.
Regards
Roopesh
This was a really great article on the pros and cons of Wealthy Affiliate. There is so much good information that will help a person who is searching for information about online businesses to make a decision. Most people fail because they came in expecting a get-rich-quick scheme. Affiliate marketing takes time and patience.
Hi, I agree with you 100%. Like building any solid business, affiliate marketing does take time and effort. However, the rewards are certainly worth it.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
Regards
Roopesh
I appreciate your article. Great content. I’ve heard there are many companies out there that offer “similar” opportunities. I’ve also found out by experience that they were scams.
My research led me to Wealthy Affiliate. At first, I wasn’t sure. I signed up for the free plan because I didn’t want to be taken. After taking Wealthy Affiliate for a test run, I was convinced they are the real deal, not a scam.
So I thank you for your article. Very informative a helped me solidify my decision to become a premium + member. Absolutely have no regrets.
You are most welcome. I am glad to hear that you are enjoying what Wealthy Affiliate had to offer. How is premium plus?
Let me know if you need help with anything, it would be a pleasure to assist in any way that I can.
Regards
Roopesh