You may have probably read my account of how I discovered and joined Wealthy Affiliate a few years ago.
Below are ten reasons why a newbie affiliate marketer – as I was at the time – should give some thought to signing up with Wealthy Affiliate.
1. Step-by-Step Training
A striking feature Wealthy Affiliate offers is their step-by-step guided training. The training is divided into two courses:
The Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) Course which gives you the freedom to choose a niche, build a business around it, and join relevant affiliate programs and market their products and / or services, in order to earn commissions; and the Affiliate Bootcamp Course which allows you to become an affiliate of the Wealthy Affiliate platform. (See commission structure below).
READY TO BE TRAINED TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL AFFILIATE MARKETER?
Wealthy Affiliate’s training courses are particular helpful if you are a complete newbie in the online Affiliate Marketing space. What each training module does is, it first explains to you the essence of what you are doing at that level.
The explanation is immediately followed by tasks that allow you to apply what is being taught, which is an effective learning method. According to the Learning Pyramid, most learners only remember about 10% of what they read, but retain around 75% of what they learn from practicing.
Skipping lessons is not a good thing to do because each module and its associated task is not just intended to give you a mastery of the topic being covered; it constitutes a piece of the overall affiliate marketing puzzle that you need in your quest to become a successful online marketer. Members usually realize this reality at some point later.
There are also tons and tons of training materials on a diversity of affiliate marketing-related topics which one could use to broaden their knowledge on the subject.
A webinar and several recently-introduced expert classes – for Premium and Premium Plus members (see explanation on membership below) – are held regularly on different topics of interest as appropriate. Past sessions are available for replay, and they include countless hours of training on any internet marketing topic imaginable.
2. Quite Reasonable Pricing
The price is the Number One Factor that has kept me at Wealthy Affiliate. Unlike other affiliate marketing and online business platforms you come across, Wealthy Affiliate has quite affordable prices, especially considering the value that one gets in return.
Prices at Wealthy Affiliate are function of one’s membership. There are three levels of membership: Starter, Premium and Premium Plus. The Starter membership is absolutely free. It allows you to ‘test drive’ ALL the features of the Platform for seven days. At the end of the seven-day trial period, the Starter member loses access to a number of the Platform’s key features.
If he/she decides to upgrade membership to Premium or Premium Plus during the first month on the other hand, they receive a discount, and pay 19 dollars or 49 dollars for their first month of Premium or Premium Plus membership, respectively.
Each subsequent month of Premium or Premium Plus membership costs 49 or 99 dollars. These levels of membership cost $495 and $995, respectively, if they are paid annually. These prices also apply to Starter members who don’t upgrade within the first month.
Some may argue that there are lower prices elsewhere. But the reality is, price is function of what one receives. Wealthy Affiliate’s pricing is quite reasonable when you consider what you get in return as discussed in the points below.
Click here and access the Wealthy Affiliate Platform
3. The Community – Lifeline to Your Business
Life within the Wealthy Affiliate community can not be overemphasized. As a community of more than one million active members across all time zones, the Wealthy Affiliate community never sleep.
As long as it is in the context of learning, there is no shortage of help. There are always members available for whatever reason.
You have access to top affiliate marketers, most of whom are willing to listen and help out if you request their intervention.
I have personally benefited from the assistance of dozens of more experienced members and have helped out less experienced ones only because that’s the spirit that prevails within the community.
Most importantly, I think the Wealthy Affiliate Community is a gateway to other online business opportunities.
By interacting with experiences members, reading their blogs/accounts (a sort of lifeline to your online business) and following their training and advice, you are most often pointed towards other programs that they are a part of, and which would assist you, not only in exploring other opportunities online, but which constitute potential income sources.
4. Affiliate Program and Commissions
Apart from having the possibility of being an affiliate of thousands of affiliate programs/networks, you could also be an affiliate of the platform itself. By doing so, you get one of the most appealing commission structures in the affiliate marketing industry. Wealthy Affiliate’s referring process and commission structure are as follows:
You invite someone and they join Wealthy Affiliate as a free Starter member.
A. If you are still a Starter member:
1. and your referral upgrades to a Premium membership, the commissions you get are:
For (each of) your Referral’s First Month Discounted Price of 19 dollars ==> Your Commission = 4 dollars
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Monthly Subscription of 49 dollars ==> Your Commission = $11.25 monthly
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Yearly Subscription: 495 dollars ==> Your Commission = $117.50 yearly
2. and your referral upgrades to a Premium Plus membership, the commissions you get are:
For (each of) your Referral’s First Month Discounted Price of 49 dollars ==> Your Commission = 11.75 dollars
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Monthly Subscription of 99 dollars ==> Your Commission = $21.75 monthly
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Yearly Subscription: 995 dollars ==> Your Commission = $232.50 yearly
B. If you already are a Premium or Premium Plus member, you get the double of the above commissions and can take part in the 1 dollar credit program, which allows you to earn from free Starter members you refer who set up their accounts; you also earn from each domain your referrals buy or renew, as follows:
Each referral of yours who sets up their account ==> You get 1 dollar
Each Domain bought or renewed by your referrals ==> You get 1 dollar
1. plus the following (double) commissions when your referral upgrades to a Premium membership:
For (each of) your Referral’s First Month Discounted Price of 19 dollars ==> Your Commission = 8 dollars
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Monthly Subscription of 49 dollars ==> Your Commission = $23.50 monthly
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Yearly Subscription: 495 dollars ==> Your Commission = $235 yearly
2. and when your referral upgrades to a Premium Plus membership, the commissions you get are:
For (each of) your Referral’s First Month Discounted Price of 49 dollars ==> Your Commission = $23.50 dollars
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Monthly Subscription of 99 dollars ==> Your Commission = $46.50 monthly
For (each of) your Referral’s Recurrent Yearly Subscription: 995 dollars ==> Your Commission = $465 yearly
NOTE: Commissions you earn from Wealthy Affiliate are paid to you on the 1st of the following month.
In addition, your referrals remain your referrals forever. Except they opt to unsubscribe from Wealthy Affiliate, you never lose your referrals to “higher ups” as is the case with some multi-level pyramid platforms.
5. Access to Affiliate Programs and Networks
For members enrolled in the OEC Course, probably the most interesting component of Wealthy Affiliate’s training is the introduction to Affiliate programs/networks.
Once they arrive at a certain level in the training, as part of their task, they are ushered into joining affiliate programs/networks which are in the thousands, and are available in every niche one could imagine. It is by this means such members usually start to earn some income.
It must however be noted that a member has much responsibility in making this happen. The training gives you “the how”, but your consistency in applying the methods taught and techniques learned is what would guarantee your earning. As I sometimes say, “In order to earn, you must first learn” – and apply.
Click here and join Wealthy Affiliate
6. Keyword Research Tool
A key requirement to publishing relevant affiliate marketing material online is your use of keywords.
Keywords are search terms – words and phrases – people type into search engines when they are looking for something online. Determining keywords that are highly searched for and creating posts using them makes such posts to rank in search results when folks are looking for something related.
How do you – a content creator – get to know which keywords are frequently searched for and whether you will rank easily for those keywords? That’s where a keyword research tool comes in handy. Not only does it provide information of highly searched-for keywords, it also tells you which ones are used by ‘competing’ websites.
Here’s an example of a keyword research tool and how it works:
This is Jaaxy, the keyword research tool within Wealthy Affiliate. Jaaxy doesn’t only find keywords; it provides much much more information. Thus allowing you to make important decisions surrounding specific keywords when creating content.
7. Website Building, Hosting and SEO
Wealthy Affiliate members are led – by means of the training – to create and run their own websites. A website is one way that buyers get in contact with goods and services they are in search of. Accent is placed on website creation at Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate is not about affiliate marketing only. There’s the opportunity of creating and hosting websites. A Premium or Premium Plus member can create and or host as many as 10 and 50 websites, respectively.
There are tens of thousands of website designs and “add-on” features one would expect to pay for. But all that is added advantage to the Premium or Premium Plus member.
You are not obliged to use all of your available websites personally. There are members whose business is to ‘rent’ and manage those websites on behalf of interested persons or entities, for a recurrent income. That’s a whole different profitable business, provided you identify interested clients.
To manage your site(s), you do not need to possess any technical skills. As part of the training, you learn to comfortably use the WordPress website building software.
In addition, you learn how to rank your website(s) with search engines.
There are numerous training sessions including live webinars and expert classes which focus on using keywords to rank your website; i.e. to have it appear on the first page of search engines results. The long term benefit of this technique is to get relevant traffic to your website absolutely free.
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8. Help and Support
Wealthy Affiliate’s Help Center comprises the following features”
Site Support
You do not need to be an expert when it comes to solving your website technical problems. SiteSupport, a 24/7 service is available for that – at no extra cost. Whether you want to insert a code to get ads appearing on your website or repair a malfunction, a message to Site Support is only what is required to have the issue addressed.
Ask a Question
This feature allow you to get answers on any issue from community members who are more experienced in the specific area.
Live Chat
Live chat is a live 24-hour space where members hang out in order to socialize and help out. Questions you have as a new member or even an old member get more quickly responded to in Live Chat.
Private Message
All is not done in public at Wealthy Affiliate. This feature allows you to communicate with any member in private, in case your subject of discussion is confidential.
Premium Coaches and Top Helpers
In Help Center, you are also “introduced” to your Premium coaches (your Referrer; and Platform owners: Kyle and Carson) as well as each day’s top helpers in various lessons.
9. Technology and Performance Tools
The level of technology on which the Wealthy Affiliate platform is built provides a number of advantages.
For example, your personal performance is not just tracked at Wealthy Affiliate; it is made available to you in the “My Stats” feature. There, you see your earnings, your next paycheck, etc., and get to know details relating to clicks, sales, your referrals, etc.
Automated messaging to your referrals is also a reality made possible by Wealthy Affiliate’s technological advancement. You can also create custom pages for your website intended to comfortably lead referrals to the Platform.
Wealthy Affiliate’s SiteSpeed feature enables instant webpage loading which is key to a higher ranked website and an awesome user experience. The SiteProtect feature provides a layer of protection against the three ways hackers are susceptible of ruining your website: comment spam, back office infiltration, and website load speeds.
SiteHealth, for its part, displays the overall health of your website including publishing frequency, content quality, visitor engagement, Google rankings, etc. While Site Feedback allows you to get feedback from other members regarding their experience on your website, giving you the chance to improve in areas that are less than satisfactory.
At Wealthy Affiliate, you are also introduced to and or taught the relevance and functionalities of Google Analytics, a service offered by Google that tracks and reports your website traffic information, including how visitors arrived on your website, how long they stayed on the site, the pages they visited, their geographical location, etc.
Google Analytics also provides information about visitors currently on your site.
10. Site Comment and Credits
Another resource present at Wealthy Affiliate is the website engagement feature, commonly referred to as Site Comments, which allows you to give and receive comments on other members’ website and on yours, respectively. Only engaging – and not generic – comments are acceptable on the platform.
In order to receive one comment, you must first give two. When you offer a comment on a member’s website, you earn one Wealthy Affiliate credit. You need two of these to request one comment on your website. In some cases however, it is possible to receive more than one comment with just two credits.
Not every commenter on the Site Comments platform attains the status of “certified commenter”. To attain such, you need to achieve and maintain a minimum of fifty approved comments within a 30-day period.
And when you do, you earn one Wealthy Affiliate credit and fifty cents cash credit alternatingly for every two approved comments you give. Your cash credit could be cashed out at will or used in paying your Wealthy Affiliate membership subscription.
You will need a Gravatar account to be a player on the Site Comments platform.
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In spite of the many advantages the platform presents, I’ve had some struggles as a Wealthy Affiliate member which I would like to bring to every new member’s attention before he/she signs up.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE JOINING
1. Wealthy Affiliate is No “Magic Carpet”
(as Some Would Want You Believe)
You’ve most certainly come across some review or ad that presents Wealthy Affiliate as some affiliate marketing ‘magic carpet’ that would quickly take you to a place of instantaneous financial success.
Don’t be carried away by such accounts. Don’t be led into thinking that once you join Wealthy Affiliate, have a website to your name and add a few posts and affiliate links, then it’s okay.
There’s no magic wand you can wave as a Wealthy Affiliate member and start to make thousands just like that. On the contrary, you will have to ‘get your hands dirty’ doing REAL HARD WORK. You can’t avoid that, and succeed. I’m into it, so I know it.
Depending on your effort and strategy, it may take you several months to begin to experience success, especially if you are a complete newbie to affiliate marketing as I was when I joined. You would need to engage in a learning process involving constant training, asking questions, content creation, and especially applying what you learn, to see real success.
As co-owner Kyle puts it, “everything needed to make you a successful affiliate marketer is at Wealthy Affiliate; except the YOU part”. Meaning, the training, the community, the technology, etc. – the opportunity – are all available at Wealthy Affiliate, but YOU have to do what’s required of YOU, in order to succeed.
The following proverb of old best presents the Wealthy Affiliate membership experience: “who wants to travel far spares his steed.”
My personal piece of advice to new members is “Make up you mind to never give up!”
2. Rank, Money and Advice
New members are usually fascinated by Wealthy Affiliate’s ranking system. They get excited when their ranks increase. Rank in Wealthy Affiliate is only an indication of how active a member is WITHIN the Wealthy Affiliate community.
High ranking (lower numbers) are obtained by activities like posting blogs and commenting in the Wealthy Affiliate platform, welcoming new members, and the like. It has absolutely no financial incentive attached. Don’t be carried away by it.
Also, new members tend to look up to top-ranking members. But the truth is, not all top-ranking Wealthy Affiliate members are experienced affiliate marketers. Some are not!. So do yourself deligence. Carry out research on members. Read their posts. See what they’ve achieved and what they have to offer.
There are some lower ranking members who are quite knowledgeable, experienced and willing. Sort them out. Members with such qualities are treasures worth ‘keeping’.
3. The Order of Some Courses or Tasks
As I’ve already mentioned, Wealthy Affiliate’s courses are great, especially for beginners. However, I had problems with the sequence of courses in some cases. On a number of occasions, after completing a course, what I expected as the natural “next in line” course wasn’t what actually turned out.
I went about asking other members for directions regarding my unanswered questions, and later found out that the very questions are addressed in later lessons. It would have saved me a great deal of time had those lessons been laid out as I expected.
A common example is the task requesting members to write a review of the Wealthy Affiliate program just after starting the Affiliate Bootcamp training. That’s going to be impossible for a completely new member who goes directly into the Bootcamp training. He/She will not have sufficient experience on the platform to be able to write a comprehensive review.
As a matter of fact, before writing a product review, you must have first experienced the product. The above-mentioned task would therefore be better at the end of the course rather than at the beginning, in case the member decides to take the Bootcamp route.
4. Not Much Accent is Placed on Video Production
By nature, humans are visual beings. We respond more readily to what we see than what we read. That’s one reason why platforms like YouTube are gaining prominence online. Unfortunately, Wealthy Affiliate does not have training relating to such sphere as part of their mainstream training courses.
Though aspects of video marketing appear in the weekly webinars and expert classes, these sessions are a sort of elective which not many members actually participate in.
More and more Wealthy Affiliate members involved in promoting the platform are taking the YouTube route. That may be a long term alternative for newbies, but having access to video marketing training as part of the core courses would be highly appreciated.
5. Absence of Notice Concerning Website Deletion
Wealthy Affiliate training leads members into creating website hosted on their platform. If you have a functioning website, and decide to unsubscribe (i.e. not to renew your subscription at its expiration), you must almost immediately move your website to another hosting platform.
If not, it’s going to be deleted by Wealthy Affiliate 30 days after you unsubscribe. And you’ll automatically lose the fruit of many hours of hard work put into creating it. Unfortunately, this is hardly told.
Members generally do not know that websites are deleted 30 days after memberships are cancelled. You may never learn of this reality as a member.
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Wealthy Affiliate Overview and Ratings
The truth about Wealthy Affiliate is that most members – myself included – are very satisfied with the platform. We prefer a platform where we spend less in terms of finance, have available the tools for success and do the necessary hard work; than one that sucks thousands off us when we are not even sure of earning a mite.
Based on our overall level of satisfaction, I give the platform the following ratings:
Name: Wealthy Affiliate
Owners: Kyle & Carson
Existence: 16 years
Membership: 1.8 million
Website URL: www.wealthyaffiliate.com
Training: 4.5 out of 5
Price: 4.8 out of 5
Support: 4.9 out of 5
Affiliate Program: 4.8 out of 5
Technology: 4.9 out of 5
Research Tools: 4.8 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4.8 out of 5
My final word
Wealthy Affiliate is not scam, neither is it a get-rich-quick scheme. On the contrary, It’s a legitimate Make Money Online / Affiliate Marketing Platform which one needs to join with realistic expectation:
You will need to be very patient and ready to put in hours and hours to do the training and write content for your website, in order to see any meaningful success. Don’t join if you are currently desperate and or need urgent financial relief.
Now that you know the pros and cons, click here to explore Wealthy Affiliate. Wishing you the very best!
If you have any questions or comments concerning Wealthy Affiliate, please leave them below and I’ll be very glad to answer them for you.
Amazing article, Thanks for sharing!
Thanks to you as well, Gopi, for taking out the time to read through my Wealthy Affiliate review. You’re always welcome!