Hi Folks,
You might have a range of reasons for being here and reading Wealthy Affiliate reviews. You might be looking for a legitimate way to make money online.
You might want to establish a new career for yourself or start a new side gig. You might be finding it hard to balance paid employment and home life and think that there must be a better way. You might just want a new hobby, or test out something new to see if it’s something that might work for you.
Whatever your reason for being here, Wealthy Affiliate can help you get there. In fact, Wealthy Affiliate can change your life and open up a whole new range of possibilities. In this review, I’m going to go through everything you should know about Wealthy Affiliate so that you can make an informed decision.
I came across Wealthy Affiliate in November 2017, and it’s the platform that changed everything for me. I’ll be going through quite a bit of detail, so settle in and enjoy my honest Wealthy Affiliate review!
Here’s what I’ll be covering in my review:
- What is Wealthy Affiliate About?
- How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
- A Tour of the Wealthy Affiliate Members Area
- Niche Finder
- Training
- Websites
- Classes
- Research
- Promote
- Live Chat
- Wealthy Affiliate Membership Options
- Who Should Join Wealthy Affiliate?
- Who Shouldn’t Join Wealthy Affiliate?
- Wealthy Affiliate Pros and Cons
- Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories
- A Final Word on Wealthy Affiliate
What is Wealthy Affiliate About?
Wealthy Affiliate is an all-inclusive platform dedicated to helping aspiring and very successful internet entrepreneurs create, grow, and scale businesses online. Created back in 2005, Wealthy Affiliate has the longest-standing track record in the industry, has been deemed the top company in the industry by over 50,000 independent reviews, and currently has an excellent 4.8 Star rating on trust pilot.
Let’s look at a quick breakdown of my rating for Wealthy Affiliate, and then I will get right into filling you in with more details!
Company Name: Wealthy Affiliate
Website URL: https://www.WealthyAffiliate.com
Price: Starter FREE, Premium $49/mth ($497/year), Premium Plus+ $99/mth ($697/year)
Founders: Kyle Loudon and Carson Lim
Community: 2.7+ MILLION members
Overall Rating: 4.9/5
Trust Pilot Consumer Rating: 4.8/5
Research Tools: 5/5
Customer Support: 5/5
Training/Classes: 5/5
WordPress Hosting: 5/5
Websites: 5/5
Free Trial: YES. Get Rolling Here! (no credit card required)
What separates Wealthy Affiliate from the competition out there, is the all-inclusive nature of the offering. Not only are you offered world-class training, but you are getting all the research and writing platforms, websites, hosting, and expert support that you actually need to run an online business (instead of having to purchase all of these services separately).
So in essence, you can walk into Wealthy Affiliate with or without experience, and have EVERYTHING you need under one roof to manage one or many very successful businesses online.
How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
Wealthy Affiliate provides training and support for people of any level of capability to establish their own websites, and earn revenue from those websites. Any person who has the motivation to do something new and put in the work can make a successful online career with the tools and support provided by Wealthy Affiliate.
You will be shown, step by step how to choose an area you are interested in, build a website based on your chosen area, attract visitors to your website, and then earn revenue from your website:
This is the proven four-step model that is used by successful marketers worldwide to make money online.
You will be taken through the process of earning money online in an understandable way:
You will be shown step-by-step how to do this through a series of starter lessons. You don’t need to have had ANY prior experience in websites, marketing, or technology. You will be building your own business as you learn. There are lesson-specific tasks that you can mark off as your progress through the training.
A Tour of the Wealthy Affiliate Members Area
There’s quite a bit going on inside Wealthy Affiliate, so I thought I’d give you a little tour so you can get a feel for what to expect. I’ll talk about the things that will help you in your business and hopefully you’ll see that everything you need to build a successful online business is here in the one platform.
Directly under your profile image, there are links to some of the key elements of the Dashboard. You’ll see:
- Niche Finder
- Top 10 Blogs
- Hot Topics
- New Classes
- Top 10 Training
- New Blogs
- New Questions
- Affiliate Revenue
Niche Finder
It all starts with choosing the right niche for your business. I always think it’s best to choose something you have a genuine interest in (rather than something you think is a hot topic that you may be less interested in but think it will make you money). Remember that you’ll spend a lot of time researching and writing about your niche, so I believe a real interest in your niche is crucial.
The Niche Finder tool helps you find niches in an instant and helps build out ideas within your respective niche business. You might have a vague idea of your niche – the Niche Finder will help you drill down and distill your ideas. So if you’re unsure about how to make a start with your business because you’re having trouble determining the best niche, the Niche Finder is an excellent tool to help you get started.
Simply key in your idea and click ‘find me niches’!
The rest of the topics on the dashboard relate to what’s happening in the platform – members can blog, post topics and questions. You’ll also see the top 10 training, as well as your affiliate revenue if you decide that you’d like to promote Wealthy Affiliate. There’ll be more on that later as this can be an excellent way to increase your income.
Now let’s go across the top of the navigation.
Training
The training tab is, you guessed it, where all the training is located!
There are a few options here. The most important takeaway here is to understand that there are two main training paths depending on what your goal is:
- Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC)
- Affiliate Bootcamp
Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC). This is the core training within Wealthy Affiliate, and it teaches you how to build an affiliate business within any niche. The lessons cover everything you need to build your business, such as choosing a niche, building your site, getting traffic, and earning affiliate commissions.
This course consists of 5 individual modules and is 50 lessons total. Each lesson comes with a checklist and the lessons are designed such that you implement the learnings as you go, and mark off the items that you complete. You can watch and re-watch the lessons as many times as you need, and ask questions along the way.
Affiliate Bootcamp. This is an optional training course that teaches you how to promote Wealthy Affiliate itself if that is something you’d like to do. The training is quite similar to the Online Certification Training, but there is more of a focus on the promotion of Wealthy Affiliate. Some of the topics are a little more advanced such as Pay Per Click (PPC) traffic strategies. In my view, even if you’re not going to promote Wealth Affiliate, there are modules within this training that will benefit you in any niche.
This course consists of 7 individual modules and is 70 lessons total. It’s really important to note that you don’t have to promote Wealthy Affiliate!! I find that many people like to promote it, because like myself, they have had success with the platform, know first-hand that it is an excellent and trusted platform, and realise that it is the best offering out there in this space.
Training HQ
This is where you’ll find all the classrooms. The idea here is that there are topic-specific classes that you might need additional information about, or might not be covered in the OEC or Affiliate Bootcamp.
The training in these classrooms consists of training from the experts, as well as people in the Wealthy Affiliate Community who create their own topic-specific training.
There’s a huge amount of helpful stuff here that can help you with things like WordPress, writing content, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), keyword research, and much more.
Here is a sample class “The 4 Steps to Creating a Successful Business Online“, one that you will have access to immediately when you join.
You won’t find more current, more expert, and more interactive training in the industry that will help you take your business to the next level.
Websites
The Websites tab is all about building, managing, and growing your website.
Site Manager allows you to manage all of your websites in one place.
Site Builder is where you build your website, either on a free domain, or a domain that you own. It’s where you can also choose the theme for your website, from thousands of different themes. Choose the theme that is right for you and your niche.
Site Domains is where you find, register and manage all of your domains. You can search for available domain names within the platform, and also be offered suggestions for domain names. You can purchase domain names through this platform. The usual price of purchasing a .com domain name is $13.99 per annum. You can also transfer existing domain names to Wealthy Affiliate and manage them through the platform.
Site Content allows you to write and edit all of your content. It is really simple to use and keeps track of the posts and pages that you publish, together with word count if you have set yourself content goals. The Site Content platform offers 1,000,000+ free images for you to use in your content and is a really handy tool.
Site Comments and Site Feedback are available if you would like members of Wealthy Affiliate to leave comments on your website to boost engagement and ranking, and feedback is where members can leave feedback (if you request it) to help you improve your website. When you’re starting out, site feedback can be invaluable as a learning tool.
Site Support is available for technical support for website building and hosting, with a dedicated support team available 24/7.
It’s important to note that members can also get help from the community of affiliate marketers, who are always willing to share their expertise and offer advice.
Classes
There are weekly live classes available, which always get a large turnout and go over very well. For those who can’t make it to the live classes, they are recorded and made available whenever you get a moment to see them.
The people that do the live classes are seasoned professionals who know their stuff. If you join Wealthy Affiliate as a premium or premium plus member, you will feel the excitement you get a notification of the upcoming live training hosted by Jay, the in-house expert live training coach, and the panel of in-house experts. Here’s a snapshot of some recent live classes. You’ll also notice the calendar that shows the days that live training occurs (almost every day!):
You can sign up for the classes, or if you haven’t signed up and they happen to be streaming, you can just watch them. When the classes are streaming live you can ask the experts questions in the chat.
Research
Wealthy Affiliate comes with a keyword search tool, Jaaxy. This tool helps you find low-competition keywords for your website. That may not mean much to you yet, but in a nutshell, keyword research is a method of finding out what people are searching for within search engines like Google and Bing, as well as YouTube.
When you understand what people are searching for, you can create helpful content based on these keywords. And when that content ranks on Google, you get high-quality (free) traffic to your site. And when you have visitors, you can earn revenue as an affiliate.
Keyword research is a key aspect of getting traffic to your site.
Don’t worry if this is confusing, because keyword research is a cornerstone of the teaching at Wealthy Affiliate. You’ll be walked through this step-by-step, just as I was when I was new to all of this too.
Promote
The “Promote” tab is where you can search for quality affiliate programs related to your niche, right within Wealthy Affiliate.
You’ll see key metrics related to different affiliate programs such as commission rate, payment terms, and feedback from other affiliates who have tried the program.
This part of the platform makes your job of becoming an affiliate simpler, easier, and more efficient. Wealthy Affiliate vets these companies before making them available to you, meaning that you avoid scam programs and low-quality affiliate programs. You can of course join any affiliate programs that you like, but this tab streamlines the process for you.
Live Chat
Live chat is available 24/7 and is accessible to all members of the platform. It is a useful tool for getting quick answers to questions, getting feedback on ideas, and connecting with other members. For many members, live chat is social so beware or you’ll spend more time than you’ve planned on chatting with the community. It’s great though if you’ve got a quick question. I often see the founders, Kyle and Carson, in the live chat helping people out.
Wealthy Affiliate Membership Options
Wealthy Affiliate Starter Membership
The Starter plan is free to join and provides you with access to a variety of features and resources to help you get started with affiliate marketing. There are five lessons available to you, focusing on these core topics:
1. An Introduction to Wealthy Affiliate and how it can help you
2. A detailed overview of how online business works
3. Choosing a Niche/direction for your online business
4. Building your Website
5. The next steps to take in your business.
As a starter member, you also get a website with hosting and limited access to the keyword research tool. The purpose of the starter plan is really so that you can ‘test the waters’ and see if it’s a good fit for you. You don’t need to provide any credit card information – it’s a true ‘try before you buy’ situation and there is absolutely no obligation for you to upgrade. Of course, most people do upgrade as they get an excellent idea about the platform and many (like myself) want to continue with the training and build out a top website (or two, or more!)
Wealthy Affiliate Premium Membership
The Premium membership is $49 per month, or $497 per year if you pay annually.
This is the option that most people go with. And this is also the part where you need to get a bit real. If you want a successful online career, you do need to make some investment in yourself and in the tools that will get you there. Whilst the starter membership is excellent and gives you a very good feel for affiliate marketing, in my opinion, you’re unlikely to go very far. Expecting to succeed on a starter membership is almost like taking a couple of classes at university and expecting to walk out with a degree and a lucrative job. It really doesn’t work that way.
When you join as a premium member, you get access to the full suite of classes within the Online Entrepreneur Certification as well as the Affiliate Bootcamp classes, weekly live classes from resident expert Jay, and several other things that I believe are critical to creating a genuine, high-quality online business.
Here’s a comparison chart that shows the differences between the starter and premium memberships:
Wealthy Affiliate Premium Plus Membership
The Premium Plus membership is $99 per month, or $697 per year if you pay annually.
I’m personally a Premium Plus member. In my view, the Premium Plus membership is designed for those who are very serious about their online businesses and want to take their skills and earnings to the next level. It provides a wide range of advanced resources and features that can help members achieve their goals more quickly and efficiently.
The main difference between Premium Plus and Premium is the additional expert classes provided. These are real-time classes that take place throughout the week, every week. In fact, there are a minimum of 350+ classes per year. They are pure value and are taught by some most successful Internet Entrepreneurs in the online business world. As someone who went to university and got a Masters degree (which I don’t regret!), I can tell you that these classes are expert classes and you can put everything you learn into practice, without the price tag that goes along with a university degree. The knowledge you receive has a tangible impact on what you’re doing. And as I’ve said, you can watch and re-watch these classes as many times as you like. The value is truly incredible.
Another key difference is that you get access to Jaaxy Enterprise (the standalone cost of that is $99 per month), so essentially you get Jaaxy Enterprise free with your Premium Plus membership. You can also host up to 10 websites on the platform.
Ways to Earn Money with Wealthy Affiliate
Many people find that once they start to become more familiar with the platform they can either partially or fully offset the cost of the membership through the platform. There are a few ways you can earn money with Wealthy Affiliate:
- Earn by promoting Wealthy Affiliate as an affiliate
- Earning ‘cash credits’ within the platform
1. Promote Wealthy Affiliate as an affiliate
One of the great things about Wealthy Affiliate, apart from teaching you how to build your own great revenue-generating websites through your chosen niche, is that like many successful companies, they themselves have an affiliate program.
Because you will be trained in how to build your own traffic-producing websites, earning through the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program will come quite naturally. To make it even easier to maximise your earning potential, Wealthy Affiliate provides extra training called Affiliate Bootcamp to get you well on your way to earning even more revenue through the WA affiliate program.
The WA affiliate program is a VERY generous program. Your Premium referrals can earn you:
Commissions are $20.00 for the first month $49.00 special offer, then $23.50 thereafter. Starter Members earn $10.00 for special offer referrals, then $11.75 monthly and $117.50 yearly commissions.
Your Premium Plus referrals can earn you:
Commissions are $40.00 for the first month $99.00 special offer, then $46.50 thereafter. Starter Members earn $20.00 for special offer referrals, then $23.25 monthly and $160.00 yearly commissions.
Commissions are paid to your PayPal account like clockwork on the first of every month. Since I have been a member, payment has not been late even once.
2. Earning ‘cash credits’ on the platform
You can earn a small amount via cash credits on the platform if you choose. Please note you won’t make much, but you can certainly earn a bit. There are two main ways you can do this.
By becoming a certified commenter, you can actually make revenue by commenting on other people’s websites. You can also make money by developing useful training and publishing it within the Wealthy Affiliate platform.
You can also earn cash credits when your referrals purchase a domain.
Here’s an example showing my credit dashboard:
As you can see, I’ve got some cash credits available. I typically use these to purchase new domains via the Site Domains function on the platform. Many people on the platform use their credits to help pay for their membership. You can have your cash credits paid out to you at the beginning of the month via PayPal, once you have at least $10 (20 Cash Credits).
It’s not difficult to make a few extra hundred dollars per month this way. With that being said, I recommend focussing on your online business, even though this is a good way to earn some extra cash.
Who should join Wealthy Affiliate?
In short, Wealthy Affiliate is for EVERYONE.
You may be just starting out as an entrepreneur, or you may already be highly experienced and running your own successful business wanting to scale it to a whole new level.
Wealthy Affiliate caters to all levels of marketers and entrepreneurs.
You can be of any age, any background, any level of education, from any part of the world. Your personal circumstances won’t dictate your success.
You might be:
- Anyone who wants to be their own boss
- Any person who wants to earn a second income, or replace their existing full-time income
- Anyone who wants a new career
- An existing business owner who wants to grow their online business
- A student who wants to fund their education, or be learning the online world so they’re ready to market themselves or their services after they’ve graduated
- A retiree who wants to learn something new, who wants to stay on top of technology
- A parent who wants a new career online to help manage caring responsibilities and work flexibility requirements
- A person with a disability who may find a regular 9-5 job difficult
- A person who has been unemployed for an extended period of time and wants to learn new skills
- Anyone who wants to be able to work from anywhere in the world
- Anyone who is sick of the 9-5 daily grind
- Anyone who wants to transition from full-time employment to part-time employment
- Anyone with motivation and drive to improve themselves
- Anyone who wants to quit their job
- Anyone who wants work flexibility
- Anyone who wants their own website
What is really important for those joining Wealthy Affiliate is the traits you possess, rather than your level of experience. In my opinion, those who are successful are those who:
- Systematically work through the training and implement their learnings as they go
- Are prepared to work hard to achieve their goals
- Genuinely want to develop a real and long-term business for themselves
- Are committed to learning and implementing their skills beyond just affiliate marketing
You don’t need fancy equipment, just a device, an internet connection, and the right attitude.
Who Shouldn’t Join Wealthy Affiliate?
Honestly, Wealthy Affiliate isn’t really for you if:
- You think it is a get-rich-quick scheme
- You’re not willing to work hard and take action
- You’re willing to cut corners yet expect immediate results
- You think you’ll make money at the push of a button
- You are a scammer, spammer, or troll
I don’t mean to be harsh here, but it’s the truth. I don’t think everyone has the right attitude or motivation to be successful in starting their own affiliate marketing business. Or they just believe reviews that lie about making money online being a quick and easy process – it simply isn’t.
Wealthy Affiliate – The Pros and Cons
The pros
- The most obvious ‘pro’ is that you get all of the tools and training you will need, for a very fair price. I don’t believe you will find a similar offering for the same value.
- Wealthy Affiliate is for absolutely anybody, regardless of where you’re at in your online journey.
- It isn’t restricted to affiliate marketing – you can use the skills from the platform for broader internet marketing – if you have any business and you need to improve the way you market it, the platform is likely to be beneficial to you.
- They are an established and trusted business operating since 2005 with a Trustpilot rating of 4.8/5.
- Every year the platform gets better and better – they keep rolling out new improvements. It’s hard to believe it keeps getting better, but it does.
- The training, I believe, is the best in the industry.
- You can sign up for free and explore the platform at no cost. You can see firsthand if you think it might be a good match for you.
- The community is very welcoming, and the founders are accessible.
- Site support is second to none if you need technical help.
The cons
- I think the biggest con is that there’s a lot going on in the platform, which may distract you. It’s important to be laser-focused and not get caught up in the live chat!
- The learning curve is a little steep but is entirely manageable.
- It may you take you a while before you start seeing results – it’s important that you maintain a long-term view.
- There are lots of newbies in the community, so just be careful who you take advice from.
Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories
Sometimes in the Wealthy Affiliate community, members share their success. Many people keep their earnings to themselves (of course no one is obliged to share any personal information), but some post some motivating stories of their successes. Here’s a small selection that I thought you might find interesting:
Highest Commission Affiliate Programs $15,000 from ONE Sale!
$11,087 from 1 program in 1 month
The Not-So-Secret Secret To Making $1 Million In Commissions
$100K Week. Hard Work Paid Off Huge!
70 referrals in a day! My message to ALL new members!
A final word on Wealthy Affiliate
I’ve been a member of Wealthy Affiliate since November 2017. The training and support I receive is second to none, and I’m still happy to this day that I made the decision to join.
I’m sometimes asked ‘Is Wealthy Affiliate a scam or legit?’ and I can tell you with 100% certainty that Wealthy Affiliate is most definitely NOT a scam. All of the tools and resources are there for you to succeed if you choose to use them and take the opportunity.
Is Wealthy Affiliate worth it? In my opinion, it’s a resounding YES. Don’t just take my word for it though, try it out and see for yourself, no credit card is required.
I’m always available for help and support, so please drop me a question or a comment below and I always respond. When you become a referral I’m always happy to assist where I can, so don’t be a stranger!