I have been repeating the same life every day throughout my career, going to work, going to get off work, and going home every day; until the year before the covid-19 outbreak, I learned about Wealthy Affiliate online and joined It, learn how to make money online.
- 1 Wealthy Affiliate Review
- 2 How does Wealthy Affiliate help you make money?
- 3 How much does Wealthy Affiliate cost?
- 4 How does Wealthy Affiliate work?
- 5 Levels of Wealthy Affiliate Course
- 6 Can you make money with Wealthy Affiliate
- 7 How Much Can You Make With Wealthy Affiliate?
- 8 Is Wealthy Affiliate a scam similar to a pyramid scheme or MLM?
- 9 Who is Wealthy Affiliate for?
- 10 Who is Wealthy Affiliate not for?
- 11 Green Lights
- 12 Red Flags
Wealthy Affiliate Review
Do you want to make money online through affiliate marketing but don’t know how to do it? As a beginner, many people do not know where to start and how to make sales in affiliate marketing. Here is the answer for you, Wealthy Affiliate. It is one of the most well-known and high-rated platforms for affiliates.
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.
What is Wealthy Affiliate?
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.
Wealthy Affiliate is the world’s largest online training platform and community for affiliate marketers, boasting 1.5 million members across 195 countries.
According to Wealthy Affiliate (WA) co-founder Kyle Loudoun:
It includes everything you need from the training, the live classes, the tools, a website builder and WA-only website features, domains, an industry leading website hosting platform, personal support & mentoring, and the ability to network with 100,000’s of like-minded and very successful online marketers.
The company behind Wealthy Affiliate — Niche Marketing Inc. — is based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
How does Wealthy Affiliate help you make money?
In case you’re new to the online business world:
Affiliate marketing is simply promoting someone else’s product or service through a website or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, for a cut of the profits.
Wealthy Affiliate basically aims to help you set up a website, promote products on that website, and earn a commission for every sale you refer.
There are two main tracks to the core training…
- Affiliate Bootcamp promises to teach people how to create a website promoting Wealthy Affiliate.
- Online Entrepreneur Certification promises to teach people how to create an affiliate website in a non-MMO niche. For example, your site could be about dog training, pool cleaning, or website hosting.
Within those two core sections and the rest of Wealthy Affiliate, you’ll find 100’s of training modules of varying quality and recency.
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.
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.
There are three membership levels in Wealthy Affiliate:
Starter – free
Premium – $19 first month, then $49 per month.
Premium Plus – $49 first month, then $99 per month.
1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
Wealthy Affiliate Discount?
There are a couple of ways to save on your Wealthy Affiliate membership.
One is to pay for an annual subscription rather than paying monthly. Last I checked, the yearly membership works out 16% cheaper.
Wealthy Affiliate also seems to do a big discount offer each year around Black Friday. I’ve seen them offer up to 45% off their annual Premium and Premium Plus plans during that promotion.
Refund Policy
Officially, Wealthy Affiliate does not give refunds.
Given that, if you are tempted to try Wealthy Affiliate for yourself, I recommend you sign up for a monthly membership and test it out for a few weeks. But be very hesitant to upgrade to the yearly membership option.
I’ve seen multiple reports within WA of affiliates noticing that some of their referrals received refunds. So it does seem to be possible to get a refund, though the process for doing so remains unclear.
Wealthy Affiliate Membership Options
| Feature | Starter | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0/month | $49/month |
| Live Help | First 7 Days | Unlimited |
| Private Messaging | No | Yes |
| Websites | 2 Free Websites | 50 Websites |
| Security Package | No | Yes |
| Website Backup | Yes | Yes |
| Beginner Course | Yes | Yes |
| Personal Blog | Yes | Yes |
| Affiliate Bootcamp | Phase 1 | All 7 Phases |
| Live Video Classes | No | Yes |
| Video Walk-Throughs | Yes | Yes |
| Keyword Tool | 30 Searches | Unlimited Searches |
| Training Classrooms | 2 | 12 |
| Affiliate Program | Yes | 2x Higher Payout |
| Earn While You Learn | Yes | Yes |
| 1-on-1 Coaching | First 7 Days | Unlimited |
| Access to Owners | No | Yes |
| 24/7/365 Support | No | Yes |
| Website Feedback | No | Yes |
| Website Comment | No | Yes |
| Website Analysis | No | Yes |
Think about it this way:
The free Starter memberships are really just to get your feet wet and learn how to use the Wealthy Affiliate platform. You can also remain a free member of WA for as long as you like (no forced upgrades).
How does Wealthy Affiliate work?
Wealthy Affiliate gives you the money-making tools and know-how to begin your journey as an affiliate marketer. The overall business model is pretty straightforward:
Simple, right? Easier said than done, but that’s gist of affiliate marketing.
And Wealthy Affiliate’s goal is to provide you with the education and support to make that a reality — or at least get you started.
Most of their training is based around their Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) program — an all-in-one series of 5 training courses (50 total lessons) covering the basics of how to start making money online as an affiliate.
That includes choosing your first niche site, free traffic methods, monetizing your site, understanding social media, and content creation.
Levels of Wealthy Affiliate Course
Here are the 5 levels of Wealthy Affiliate training and the things you would learn from it
Level 1 – Getting Started
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 – Building Your Own Traffic Producing Website
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 – Making 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 –
- It would be best if you gained an insight into the purchase cycle of customers.
- You learn to use Google Analytics.
- Search for the numerous affiliate deals and choose the best one.
- You would also get to learn about promoting Amazon products.
- In training, they will tell you how important are product reviews, and for getting success in the long run, it is essential for you to work on them.
- You get knowledge about Google Ads, as if you display them on your website, you get an added income.
This is one of the most crucial training steps as it helps to get revenue on your website.
Level 4 – Mastering Social Engagement
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 – Achieving Maximum Success Through Content Creation
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.
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.
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.
Wealthy Affiliate Commission Structure
| Plan | Starter | Premium | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| $19 trial | $4 | $8 | One-time |
| $49/mo | $11.25 | $23.50 | Recurring |
| $234/6-mos | $54 | $108 | Recurring |
| $359/yr | $87.50 | $175 | Recurring |
| Acct. setup | n/a | $1 | Per referral |
| Domain names | n/a | $1 | Recurring |
As you can see above, affiliates who are Premium members can also earn $1 if a free Starter member completes their account setup, or any buyer purchases their own domain name.
Premium affiliates can also qualify for a trip to Vegas if they manage to sell 300 Premium memberships in a calendar year.
Long story short:
You’ll earn a lot more commission and perks as a WA affiliate if you’re a Premium member.
How Much Can You Make With Wealthy Affiliate?
Well, the good news is: The sky’s the limit.
The bad news?
You’re gonna need a cape.
In terms of the exact percentage you might earn from your affiliate sites, it really depends on the product and companies you’re selling for.
Generally speaking, commission rates for affiliate marketers are normally around 5% to 30% on average. Since physical products (e.g. televisions, computers) actually cost money to produce and ship, they normally have lower commission rates.
Digital marketing products (e.g. online courses, ebooks) cost much less to produce and can be delivered online, so they often have much higher affiliate payouts.
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.
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.
Green Lights
Here are a few things to like about Wealthy Affiliate:
- Decent training on affiliate marketing fundamentals
- Lessons are short and simple, easily digestible.
- 7-day (limited) free trial and only $19 for your first month.
- White hat throughout
- Many students love the sense of community
Red Flags
A few things about Wealthy Affiliate that might give you pause:
- Lack of significant success stories from students.
- Too MLM-y for my liking (60% of core training is about promoting WA)
- Core training is rarely updated
- The lead trainers – Kyle Loudon and Jay Neill – appear to have had little success with affiliate marketing since 2016
- Core training is filled with misleading claims
- Core training is riddled with bad advice
- Core training is missing crucial info
- Core training is poorly organized
- Silly and distracting internal ranking system