Nobody can deny that there’s no shortage of Wealthy Affiliate Reviews out there…
However, 99.9% of them fall under just two categories:
- those that praise WA to the heavens
- and those that trash it to the hell
Nothing in between.
Kinda weird, right?
Well, not really…
You see, the purpose of every single overly positive Wealthy Affiliate review that exists is to promote Wealthy Affiliate in exchange for commissions.
Likewise, the overly negative ones have been created in an attempt to divert you away from it and make you sign up for one of its competitors, again in exchange for commissions.
Having said that, in this Wealthy Affiliate review, I’m going to reveal to you 5 things about WA no one else talks about.
This way, you’ll be able to finally fully understand whether Wealthy Affiliate is really worth the investment of your time, energy, and money or not.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Wealthy Affiliate Review Overview
| Founders: |
Kyle Loudoun (Marketing Chief, Co-founder)
Carson Lim (Design Chief, Co-founder) |
|---|---|
| Price: | Free to Join Premium Starts at $19 |
| Product Type: | Affiliate Marketing Course |
| Best For: | Absolute Beginners |
| Income Potential: | Up to $5000/month |
| Official Website: | wealthyaffiliate.com |
| Pros: |
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| Cons: |
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| Suggested: | Yes! |
| Overall Rating: |
4.0/5 |
Best Affiliate Marketing Courses
Best Affiliate Courses
What is Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate is a combination of an affiliate marketing course and an online community that offers access to training modules, tools, and support that you can utilize to make money online by leveraging an online business model called “affiliate marketing”.
The platform was launched back in 2005 by Kyle Loudoun and Carson Lim.
Kyle and Carson started hanging out while studying computer science in college.
After graduating from college around 2002 and being completely broke, Kyle and Carson started trying to figure out a way to earn money online.
Since they both had a fair share of experience in computers, Kyle and Carson decided to try their luck with affiliate marketing.
Fast forward a couple of years and immense amounts of trial and error, Kyle and Carson managed to build several successful affiliate websites that generated thousands of dollars in commissions per month.
At that point, in 2005, Kyle and Carson decided to launch a course that would share with other people everything they had learned about making money online with affiliate marketing.
And this is how Wealthy Affiliate came to be.
At the time of this review, WA has been operating for more than 15 years and as it seems, the platform is still thriving…
As a matter of fact, in January 2020, it surpassed 2 million registered members from all around the world, out of which, thousands have succeeded in making money online by leveraging affiliate marketing.
How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
Wealthy Affiliate’s recipe for building a successful affiliate marketing business is comprised of 4 simple steps…
- Choose a Subject
- Build a Website
- Attract Visitors
- Earn Revenue
Frankly, that’s the whole gist of affiliate marketing.
First, you determine the subject that your website is going to revolve around.
Then, you get your website up and running.
After that, you start employing techniques towards attracting people to your website.
Lastly, when people purchase products through the affiliate links on your website, you pocket affiliate commissions.
In the free webinar right below, Kyle explains much more in-depth exactly how to leverage this 4-step formula towards creating a successful online business from scratch.
I strongly suggest that you give it a watch.
Who is Wealthy Affiliate for?
Wealthy Affiliate is mainly geared towards absolute beginner affiliate marketers who don’t have that much money to invest in more expensive courses.
In addition, the platform could be of value to those who have tried finding success as affiliate marketers in the past but failed.
Furthermore, since it’s free to join, WA is perfect for those who’d like to give affiliate marketing a go without investing any money to figure out if the whole process is something they would be really interested in.
On the other hand, if you’re an intermediate or advanced affiliate marketer looking for some training to scale your already existing business, it might be in your best interest to invest in a higher-quality course such as The Affiliate Lab or TASS.
Also, please be aware that WA’s training mainly focuses on teaching you how to keep consistently publishing high-quality written content.
Having said that, if you’re not really fond of the idea of putting together articles daily, then WA is probably not for you.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that Wealthy Affiliate is NOT a push-button system that will start magically funneling cash into your bank account without any effort on your part…
That being said, if you
- are looking to get rich fast and effortlessly
- lack patience
- tend to give up after the first setback
- can’t handle failing
- have bought similar courses in the past but never acted upon them
then it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to become a successful affiliate marketer until you shift your perspective and mental attitude.
What's Inside Wealthy Affiliate?
The main purpose of Wealthy Affiliate is to simplify and shorten the process of finding success as an affiliate marketer.
The way that it does that is by offering access to dedicated affiliate training, tools & resources, and support.
Let’s take a closer look.
Affiliate Training
Wealthy Affiliate’s core training is divided into 3 different modules that approach building and scaling an affiliate business from a variety of different angles:
- Online Entrepreneur Certification
- Affiliate Bootcamp
- and Live Webinars (Classes)
Online Entrepreneur Certification
The Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) consists of 5 phases (50 lessons) that walk you through the process of creating and growing an affiliate business from scratch around any subject (aka “niche”) that you’d like.
All the lessons within the Online Entrepreneur Certification have been put together by WA’s co-founder, Kyle, and consist of both text and video that could range anywhere between 10 and 60 minutes.
Some of the things that are being taught within the Online Entrepreneur Certification include:
- Choosing a subject for your website (aka “niche”)
- Creating & setting up your very first website
- Understanding keywords
- Conducting keyword research
- Social media marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Locating & joining affiliate programs
- & more
At the end of each lesson, you’ll be encouraged to complete a few actionable tasks before moving on to the next one.
Those tasks give you a pretty nice “push” to actually act upon what you learn within each lesson.
As a free member of Wealthy Affiliate, you’ll be able to access just the first 10 lessons of the Online Entrepreneur Certification.
To get your hands on all of OEC’s 50 lessons, you’ll have to become a premium member.
Affiliate Bootcamp
The Affiliate Bootcamp is pretty similar to the Online Entrepreneur Certification in terms of structure, with the exception that it consists of 7 Phases (70 lessons) that walk you through the process of creating and establishing a business in a niche related to promoting Wealthy Affiliate, such as
- The Make Money Online niche
- Affiliate marketing
- Personal finance
- Entrepreneurship
- Side-hustles
- etc
Some of the things you’ll learn within the Affiliate Bootcamp include
- Creating & setting up a website
- Promoting your website on social media
- Writing product reviews
- Increasing traffic & conversions
- Creating videos & graphics
- Building a brand
- Using paid ads to attract traffic
- & more
Free WA members can access just the first 10 lessons of the Affiliate Bootcamp.
To get your hands on all of the 70 lessons of the Affiliate Bootcamp, you’ll have to become a premium member.
Live Webinars (Classes)
The last part of WA’s core affiliate training consists of live classes (webinars) that take place 3 to 5 times per week.
The webinars are mostly presented by Kyle Loudoun (WA’s co-founder), Jay Neill (WA’s training chief), as well as a couple of other seasoned WA members.
Each webinar lasts anywhere between 60 and 90 minutes and revolves around a specific topic that is meant to help you improve a certain aspect of your affiliate business, such as
- Growing a YouTube channel
- Writing more effective content
- SEO techniques & checklists
- Creating landing pages
- Case studies
- Leveraging Pinterest
- Tracking & scaling conversions
- & more
Most of the time, webinars get released in series.
A series usually contains 4-5 webinars that get streamed weekly and cover a particular topic in detail.
The last 20-30 minutes of the vast majority of the webinars are devoted to live Q & A sessions with the person that presented them.
If for some reason you can’t attend the live broadcast of a webinar, you’ll still be able to watch its replay once it gets uploaded to the platform, a few days later.
Lastly, you can also access the replays of all the live webinars that have been held since 2012 (300+ webinars).
Tools & Resources
To be able to successfully implement everything that’s being taught within its core training, all WA members are granted access to a bunch of tools and resources, such as
- Keyword Research Tool
- Website Builder
- SiteComments
- and SiteContent
Keyword Research Tool (Jaaxy)
One of the most important skills you’ll have to master if you want to succeed as an affiliate marketer is conducting keyword research.
Locating and using the right keywords on your website is key to receiving healthy amounts of free traffic via search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Having said that, Wealthy Affiliate has a built-in keyword research tool called “Jaaxy” that’ll help you find keywords that are relevant to your niche as well as determine if you should use them on your website or not.
For instance, if Jaaxy reveals that a particular keyword is too competitive or has very little monthly search volume, using it on your website isn’t really suggested.
Anyway, everything you’ll need to know about keywords and Jaaxy is covered in great detail within WA’s core training.
Besides keyword research, Jaaxy performs an array of other functions, such as
- Monitoring your site’s rankings & authority
- Creating and storing keyword lists
- Analyzing your competition
- The alphabet soup technique
- Locating affiliate programs
- & more
Website Builder (SiteRubix)
Another pretty useful tool you’ll get your hands on upon joining Wealthy Affiliate is “SiteRubix”.
SiteRubix is a WordPress-based website builder that’s been created by WA for the purpose of minimizing the time and effort required to create websites from scratch.
As a matter of fact, the process of getting your affiliate website up and running with SiteRubix consists of just 4 simple steps:
- Choose your domain name
- Fill in the title of your website
- Select a WordPress theme
- Click the “Build my website” button
In the video right below, Kyle demonstrates how anyone can leverage SiteRubix to get a brand new affiliate website live in just 30 seconds.
Every website that’s built with SiteRubix is automatically hosted on Wealthy Affiliate’s shared hosting for free.
Free WA members can host just one 1 website on WA’s servers while premium members can host up to 10 different websites simultaneously.
SiteComments
SiteComments is a credit-based platform that allows you to earn “community credits” for posting comments on the websites of other WA members.
Those community credits can then be redeemed for requesting comments on specific pages or posts on your own website.
Receiving comments on your website can have a rather positive impact on the trajectory of your online business, such as:
- Better search engine rankings
- More credibility & trustworthiness
- Higher conversions
- Boosted user engagement
- Social proof
- & more
On top of that, by meeting certain requirements, you can achieve the status of “Certified Commenter”.
As a certified commenter, you’ll able to pocket $0.50 for every 2 comments you offer.
A few months ago, after becoming a Certified Commenter myself, I managed to generate $125 in a month by offering just 15 comments per day.
Becoming a certified commenter won’t help you earn a life-changing income but it’s a pretty nice way to pocket some extra side-cash with minimal effort while working on your online business.
Pro Tip: By offering around 10 comments per day as a Certified Commenter (1 hour of work), you’ll be able to fully cover the costs of WA’s premium monthly membership.
SiteContent
SiteContent is a writing platform that performs functions, such as:
- Grammar & spelling checks
- Content structure analysis
- Vocabulary suggestions
- Creating article templates
- Tracking writing activity
- & more
Furthermore, SiteContent comes with a library of royalty-free images that you can import into your content without being worried about violating any intellectual property rights.
If you don’t have much experience in putting together content and/or if your native language is not English, SiteContent will most likely help you enhance the speed, effectiveness, accuracy, and quality of your writing efforts.
Support
Last but not least, WA enables all its members to request support in 4 different ways:
- SiteSupport
- Live Chat
- Private Messaging
- and Community Questions
SiteSupport
SiteSupport is an internal ticketing system that allows you to communicate with WA’s tech support team regarding technical issues you might be facing on your website.
SiteSupport operates 24/7 so the time it takes for them to respond to most queries ranges from a few minutes to no more than an hour regardless of what time or what day it is.
Live Chat
Wealthy Affiliate’s live chat is by far the fastest way to receive support from other affiliate marketers, senior coaches, or maybe even one of the founders.
Many successful WA members claim that the fast support they were able to receive through the platform’s live chat played an integral part in their success.
Private Messaging
Private messaging allows you to receive focused and in-depth support from any affiliate marketer within the WA community, including Kyle and Carson, in private.
However, the main setback of utilizing private messaging for support is that the large lag times between replies can drag conversations on for many days until you finally receive a sufficient resolution to the issue you were facing.
Community Questions
The last way of receiving help and support as a WA member is through posting questions publically within the WA community.
Community questions are displayed on Wealthy Affiliate’s main newsfeed and classrooms and are viewable by all WA members.
Most community questions receive multiple replies within just a few minutes.
The video right below gives a pretty nice overview of everything you’ll get upon joining WA so make sure to watch it before moving on.
How Much Does Wealthy Affiliate Cost?
Wealthy Affiliate has 3 membership options:
- Free
- Premium
- and Premium Plus
Wealthy Affiliate is free to join, no credit card required and no hidden expenses.
In addition, you can remain a free WA member for as long as you like (no forced upgrades).
However, please note that WA’s free members have limited access to the vast majority of the platform’s features, functions, tools, and resources.
Truthfully, the sole purpose of WA’s free membership is to let you get your feet yet in order to understand whether you’d like to invest in one of its premium plans or not.
The premium and premium plus memberships can be paid either monthly or yearly.
- Premium:
- $49/month
- $495/year
- Premium Plus:
- $99/month
- $995/year
Right below you can see for yourself all the differences between the free, premium, and premium plus memberships.
Wealthy Affiliate Pros
- Free to Join
- Tons of Tools
- Dozens of Success Stories
- Solid Reputation
- Thriving Community
1. Free to Join
Unlike the vast majority of affiliate courses out there, Wealthy Affiliate allows anyone to try it out for free.
This gives wannabe affiliate marketers the opportunity to get their feet wet without any financial commitment.
Truth is that there’s no better way of gathering enough information about any given product/service than trying it out yourself.
2. Tons of Tools
In its 15 years in business, Wealthy Affiliate has built quite a large reserve of tools that have the potential to make your journey to becoming a successful affiliate marketer much easier.
For instance, the website builder allows you to build affiliate websites in mere minutes without any hustle whatsoever.
Jaaxy takes away all the guesswork by helping you locate the right keywords for your website.
SiteContent helps you create higher-quality content a lot faster.
The live chat and the community questions enable you to receive support from other members of the platform almost instantly.
SiteSupport completely takes off your shoulders the burden of having to figure out fixes for your website’s technical issues.
In my 4 years as an affiliate marketer, I’ve never come across another affiliate course that equips its members with such an enormous array of tools under just one roof.
3. Dozens of Success Stories
During the last 2 years, I’ve personally researched, studied, and tried more affiliate marketing courses than I can count.
None of them had nearly as many success stories as Wealthy Affiliate.
You can take a look at a bunch of them right below.
Take a look at some more Wealthy Affiliate success stories right here.
4. Solid Reputation
Over the years of its existence, Wealthy Affiliate has managed to build a very solid reputation online.
For instance, the BBB (Better Business Bureau) has rated Wealthy Affiliate with an A+, which is actually the highest possible BBB rating.
While BBB is an independent organization, not an official business evaluator, the higher the BBB rating a company receives, the more credible and trustworthy it is considered.
Furthermore, Wealthy Affiliate has been rated with 4.8 out of 5 stars based on over 300 user reviews on Trustpilot.
Right below you can take a look at what some people have to say about their experience with WA:
5. Thriving Community
One of Wealthy Affiliate’s most valuable assets is its thriving community of aspiring and successful affiliate marketers.
As a matter of fact, with over 32,000 daily interactions, the WA community can be considered among the most populated and active affiliate marketing communities in the world.
Many WA members claim that the WA community is easily worth the price of the paid memberships alone.
Wealthy Affiliate Cons
- Core Training Lacks Depth
- Low-Quality Hosting
- Noisy & Distracting
- Inaccurate Keyword Tool
- Unskilled Tech Support
1. Core Training Lacks Depth
One thing that I don’t like about Wealthy Affiliate is that its core training doesn’t cover at all several rather significant online marketing practices, such as:
- Email marketing
- Featured snippets
- Page builders
- Backlink building
- Manual competition analysis
- Conversion optimization
- & more
While none of those practices are “really mandatory” to start making money online, they could positively influence the rate at which your business grows, not to mention the revenue it generates.
To be fair, if you dig around a bit within the Wealthy Affiliate community, you’ll probably be able to locate a few training modules, webinars, or classrooms that cover most of those subjects to some degree.
However, since Wealthy Affiliate claims that it’s “A Platform Designed For Affiliate Marketers Of All Levels”, and not just for complete newbies, all those practices should really be covered within its core training.
2. Low-Quality Hosting
Wealthy Affiliates boldly claims that it offers the “Best Managed WordPress Hosting”.
In addition, it supports that its hosting is higher-quality than the $200/month hosting packages provided by some of the most reputable hosting providers out there such as WP Engine, and Kinsta.
This couldn’t be further from reality for two main reasons…
First, WA’s hosting has low server uptime (the total duration for which a server is online and functioning normally).
Secondly, it has slow response times (the speed with which your website starts being served to end-users).
Both low server uptime and slow response times contribute to a bad user experience, something that will most likely impact your online business in a very negative way.
After spending several weeks conducting experiments on several other hosting providers, I found out that WA’s “managed hosting” is actually way worse than a shared hosting plan that costs less than $5 per month.
3. Noisy & Distracting
As mentioned earlier, one of WA’s strongest points is its active affiliate community.
However, every upside has a downside…
The downside here is that most of the activity that takes place in the WA community consists of just unnecessary noise and useless information that has nothing to do with building an online business.
That’s partly because most WA members tend to utilize the platform’s community as a social network – to ramble on about random stuff in order to draw the attention of other members and receive more likes and followers.
While such a community could be fun, there’s a time and a place for everything…
Constantly stumbling upon community posts or chat conversations about dogs, the weather, or how to bake a carrot cake is rather distracting and counterproductive.
The even worse news is that Wealthy Affiliate actually rewards the members who are the most active within its community by increasing their “rank”.
The 25 members that contribute the most in WA’s community get awarded with an “Ambassador” badge.
Achieving a high rank or becoming an Ambassador serves no purpose whatsoever and is correlated in no way with someone’s ability to make money online.
You can become a WA Ambassador and still have a website with one article that has received zero visits for the last 5 months…
As a matter of fact, many newbies who make no money online end up becoming Ambassadors as a result of being way too distracted by the WA community to actually work on their online business.
4. Inaccurate Keyword Tool
As mentioned earlier, upon joining WA you’ll gain access to a keyword research tool (Jaxxy) that will supposedly help you conduct proper keyword research for your website.
The way Jaaxy works is by outputting a bunch of data about any given keyword you insert in it.
Based on this data, you can then determine if the keyword is viable for use or not.
To give you an overview, keywords that according to Jaaxy’s data receive no traffic or have too much competition should be avoided.
The problem here is that I’ve come across multiple instances whereas the data Jaaxy returned for a keyword was highly inaccurate.
To give you an example, according to Jaaxy, the keyword “tap2earn.co review” receives less than 10 searches and traffic per month (see image below).
Based on those numbers, I shouldn’t use the keyword on my website as it receives very little traffic.
However, I did use it!
And according to Google Search Console, it received over 91,000 searches that drove over 2,600 visitors to my website in just one month (see image below).
This means that if I had acted based on Jaaxy’s data, I wouldn’t have used this keyword on my website, and subsequently, I’d have missed out on all this traffic and the revenue it generated.
And unfortunately, this example wasn’t just an isolated incident…
5. Unskilled Tech Support
Upon realizing that WA’s low-quality hosting made my website load slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter, I reached out to SiteSupport for help.
However, not only they were of no help whatsoever, but they kept blaming everything else besides the actual cause of the problem, the server.
First, they claimed that my website was loading slowly due to a faulty plugin.
I disabled the plugin.
Nothing changed…
Then they supported that it was the theme’s fault and that I should contact its developer for help.
I told them that the exact same theme was used on another website hosted on another provider that loaded in less than 2 seconds.
Then they told me that my website’s slow loading speed was due to the page builder I was using.
So, I disabled the page builder and created a completely empty page.
The page did load a tiny bit faster but it was still light years away from actually loading fact.
And it was just an empty page – no text, no images, no videos, nothing.
After that, SiteSupport told me that I should change my website’s theme.
I changed the theme but the loading speed remained exactly the same.
Then they told me that a “senior admin” would look into the issue.
They didn’t update me for 3 days.
When the “senior admin” finally got back to me they told me that they had moved my website to one of their “better” servers.
However, nothing changed… My website’s loading speed remained exactly as slow as it used to be on the previous server.
This was 12 months ago.
To this day, I still haven’t heard from SiteSupport.
They just stopped bothering.
In the meantime, I moved my website to SiteGround’s cheapest hosting plan that costs less than $8 per month.
The quality of their hosting and support is 100 times higher than Wealthy Affiliate’s.
Thinking back, I realize that SiteSupport had left me hanging multiple times in the past.
For instance, about a year ago, I was unable to upload images to my website’s media library.
SiteSupport claimed that it was due to an issue with the WordPress media uploader and suggested that I upload all my files via FTP, which is a very time-consuming and inconvenient process.
After spending a couple of hours conducting research, I found a solution to the issue myself.
It had nothing to do with the WordPress media uploader as SiteSupport had suggested.
Lastly, a few months ago, a test website that I was still hosting on WA’s servers started behaving abnormally.
After contacting SiteSupport, they ensured me that after scanning the website with their online scanner, they didn’t detect any malware…
However, since the website was still not operating normally, I decided to scan it myself using a free online malware scanner and found out that it had indeed been infected by malware.
Upon removing the malware, the website’s operation returned to normal almost instantly.
I have to recognize is that SiteSupport has helped me effortlessly resolve dozens of minor technical issues, such as
- getting locked out of my website
- being unable to uninstall a plugin
- crashing editor
- resetting my FTP credentials
- etc
However, as it seems, they have a very hard time handling issues that require extra effort and attention.
The skilled sailor is known in rough seas.
Apparently, SiteSupport’s sailors aren’t skilled enough…
My Personal Experience with Wealthy Affiliate
Back in 2016, I was working a dead-end, part-time job at a large international company.
Around June of that same year, I started trying to figure out a way to make some extra money to supplement my monthly income.
One day, literally out of nowhere, I heard a voice inside my head (I swear, I’m not crazy) saying:
“Why don’t you try to figure out a way to build an income online?”
Click!
I immediately went online and started doing research!
Over the next couple of weeks, I spent several hours per day trying and testing dozens of money-making platforms.
The vast majority of them promised to show me the “secret hack” to funneling thousands of dollars into my bank account overnight without any effort.
Yeap, they were all scams!
And unfortunately, this seemed to be the norm.
The more I kept researching, the more making money online felt like a dead-end.
Right before I was about to give up my research, I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate.
After reading a couple of Wealthy Affiliate reviews, I was pretty convinced that the platform was if not exactly, very close to what I was looking for.
At that time, I didn’t have a single clue about affiliate marketing, online businesses, writing content, or creating websites…
However, since WA was free to join, I had literally nothing to lose, so I decided to try it out just for fun.
Once I was in, I immediately starting going through the free training, and about an hour later, my very first online business was up and running.
After that, I spent a couple of hours interacting with other WA members on the live chat, and the next day, I upgraded to premium.
A few months down the road, after putting into practice everything I learned in WA’s core training, I managed to earn my first money as an affiliate marketer…
It was a $30 commission generated from the sale of a self-development course I had reviewed on one of my affiliate websites…
I was E-C-S-T-A-T-I-C!
Fast forward a couple of years of working my ass off and I’m now pocketing commissions like these every single month:
Just like any given affiliate marketing course, Wealthy Affiliate is definitely neither perfect nor a guarantee to success…
Nonetheless, my overall personal experience with it has been mostly positive.
Despite all its shortcomings, Wealthy Affiliate still helped me build a successful online business that brings in a full-time income.
So in my eyes, it was absolutely well worth all my investment.
Overview of Everything Wealthy Affiliate Offers
Affiliate Training
- The Online Entrepreneur Certification (50 Lessons)
- The Affiliate Bootcamp (70 Lessons)
- Regular Live Webinars
- Member-Generated Training Modules
- 13 Training Classrooms
Tools & Resources
- Website Builder
- Keyword Research Tool
- Free Hosting for up to 50 Websites
- Content Writing Platform
- Live Chat
- Personal WA Blog
- Free SSL Certificates
- Anti-Spam Filter
- Website Caching
- 1.000.000+ Royalty-Free Images
- Comments & Feedback Exchange Platforms
Support
- 24/7 Technical Support
- Private Messaging
- Community Questions
- One-on-One Mentoring
- Support from the Founders
How to Join Wealthy Affiliate
Joining Wealthy Affiliate is extremely straightforward…
First, head over to wealthyaffiliate.com
Then fill in your email address in the field as depicted in the image below and click the “Get Started” green button.
After that, fill in your name, select a username, submit a password, and click on the “Get Started Now!” green button.
Once you’re inside, make sure to watch the introductory video.
Lastly, click the “Start Lesson 1” blue button on the top right corner of the page to immediately get started with your free training.
That’s it!
You’re now officially a starter member of Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate FAQ
(Click on each question to expand)
Wealthy Affiliate is definitely NOT a scam.
According to the dictionary, “a scam is a dishonest scheme that’s meant to con someone”.
All WA does is provide access to training, tools, resources, and support that anybody can leverage towards building a successful affiliate marketing business.
And just like any kind of business, some will succeed and some will fail.
Some people get frustrated and call Wealthy Affiliate a scam just because it didn’t help them make thousands of dollars during their first couple of months.
That’s absurd.
The average amount of time that it takes for a small business to be profitable is 2-3 years.
And a business built with WA is no different.
Nonetheless, I’ve come across dozens of online businesses created by WA members profit in less than 1 year.
Furthermore, the platform has been operating for over 15 years in the MMO (Make Money Online) industry which is one of the most competitive industries in the world.
Most scams that have attempted to break into this industry, get rejected like a bad transplant in less than 6 months to a year.
Lastly, I’ve personally never seen a scam being rated with an A+ by BBB and 4.8/5 stars on Trustpilot.
So yeah, Wealthy Affiliate is not a scam.
The vast majority of those who promote Wealthy Affiliate tend to claim that anyone can make money online as a free starter member…
However, the ultimate truth is that starter members aren’t equipped with enough training, tools, or support to take their online business to success.
Frankly, the only way to end up earning money as a free WA member is if you already know how to do so beforehand, in which case you wouldn’t need to bother with Wealthy Affiliate in the first place.
The bottom line is that if want to stand a chance of becoming a successful affiliate marketer, you’ll need all of WA’s premium features at your disposal.
As mentioned earlier, the sole purpose of WA’s starter membership is to let you test drive the platform so that you can make a 100% informed decision about whether you’d like to become a premium member or not.
It’ll take exactly 1 year, 4 months, 17 days, and 9 hours…
But you must get started on the second Saturday after the first full moon of the year.
And you have to sacrifice two goats every third Sunday after that…
I am just kidding of course!
In all seriousness, pinpointing exactly how long it could take for any given affiliate marketer to start generating money is as impossible as pinpointing how long it could take for a 500-pound person to become fit.
There are just so many factors in place, such as
- The niche of your business
- The amount of time that you devote
- The quality of your work
- Your work ethic and consistency
- How you market your business
- The products you recommend
- How you respond to trial and error
- Your talent
- etc
Truthfully, I’ve seen affiliate marketers generate $5000 per month in just one year… I’ve also interacted with affiliate marketers who are 5 years in and earn next to nothing or nothing at all.
The only three things that I can guarantee about Wealthy Affiliate are:
- This is in no way a get-rich-quick scheme or a push-button system that will funnel thousands of dollars right into your bank account overnight
- Chances are that you won’t earn a single dime during your first 6 months
- If you keep following the training and consistently apply everything you learn without giving up halfway there, you’ll probably succeed
Let me clear something up here in order to avoid future misunderstandings.
You won’t make any money WITH Wealthy Affiliate because Wealthy Affiliate won’t be the one paying you…
Many people tend to mistake Wealthy Affiliate for a survey platform which will pay them money for completing surveys or other simple tasks.
This couldn’t be further from reality…
Wealthy Affiliate merely provides the training, tools, and support to help you build your very own affiliate marketing business whereas you’ll get paid by other companies (Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, eBay, etc) for promoting their products.
Now that you know, to answer your initial question, Wealthy Affiliate can help you build an income online that will range from anywhere between $0 and millions of dollars per year.
Truthfully, affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business model…
In fact, right now the affiliate marketing industry is worth about $7 billion and its worth seems to be increasing by roughly 10% every single year.
I’ve personally interacted with other Wealthy Affiliate members that earn more than $10,000 per month. There are definitely affiliate marketers such as Pat Flynn and Neil Patel who earn millions of dollars per year through affiliate marketing.
But, there are also others who earn nothing…
Again, there are so many factors in play that it’s impossible to predict how much money any given affiliate marketing business is going to generate.
As mentioned earlier, Wealthy Affiliate has neither any hidden expenses nor any upsells.
The platform’s premium membership includes everything you’ll need to run and scale your online affiliate marketing business.
The only thing that you might want to purchase at some point is a top-level domain name that costs just around $14 per year…
But that’s totally up to you.
By leveraging everything Wealthy Affiliate equipped me with, I managed to build a successful online business that brings in a full-time income.
However, my success with WA is not just an isolated incident…
Apparently, the platform has helped dozens of other people achieve some pretty spectacular results as well.
That being said, as far as I am concerned, Wealthy Affiliate does indeed work.
5 Things About WA No One Else Tells You
1. It’s Neither the Best Nor the Worst
As mentioned at the beginning of this review, there are 2 kinds of Wealthy Affiliate reviews out there…
Most, claim that WA is “one of the best ways to make money online”.
The rest of them, support that the platform is the worst thing since Covid-19.
Frankly, all of those claims are dead wrong.
The ultimate truth is that just like any other product/service, Wealthy Affiliate could be of immense value to some, and of little or maybe even no value to others…
For example, Wealthy Affiliate is perfect for wannabe affiliate marketers who don’t have hundreds or thousands of dollars to invest in courses such as TASS or Super Affiliate System.
On the other hand, if you’re an intermediate or advanced affiliate marketer who’s after scaling an existing online business that’s already generating some decent revenue, then you should probably forget about WA and consider checking out other, higher-quality courses such as, The Affiliate Lab and/or Commission Hero.
2. Less Than 0.05% of Its Members Are Actually Active
In an attempt to boost its credibility as well as convince newbies that “they’ll always be able to receive fast help if they get stuck”, the vast majority of those who promote Wealthy Affiliate tend to imply that its community consists of over 2 million active members…
While back in January 2020 WA indeed reported that it surpassed the 2 million-member mark, this number doesn’t reflect actual active members but rather registered ones.
The truth here is that out of the 2 million people who have joined WA over the years, less than 0.05% (500 – 1000) are actually active within the Wealthy Affiliate community.
The rest of them have either quit after trying the platform for a while, or left without taking any action whatsoever right after creating their free account.
Nonetheless, still, an online community with 500-1000 active affiliate marketers isn’t half bad, especially if you consider that the communities of most affiliate marketing courses are either extremely inactive or completely deserted.
3. It’s Not Free to Use
Despite the fact that I’m personally not that active inside the WA community, about once per week, I come across a starter member throwing a hissy fit on WA’s chat because they can’t get their hands on the vast majority of the platform’s features unless they pay a membership fee.
For some reason, there’s a pretty common misconception that Wealthy Affiliate is completely free to use…
After conducting some research, I’ve come to realize that in an attempt to attract more referrals, a huge chunk of the affiliate marketers that are promoting Wealthy Affiliate, falsely advertise it as a platform that will teach them how to build an online business for free.
This couldn’t be further from reality…
While WA is indeed free to join, free members aren’t granted access to enough resources to scale their online business to success.
The only way to end up making money online as a free WA member is if you already know how to do so, in which case you don’t need to bother with joining the platform in the first place.
Truth is that the sole purpose of WA’s free membership is to allow you to get a taste of the platform in order to be able to make an informed decision about whether you should become a premium member or not.
Nothing more, nothing less…
4. It’s Neither an MLM Nor a Pyramid Scheme
Okay, now, most Wealthy Affiliate reviews that have been created for the purpose of trashing the platform have one thing in common…
They all make claims that WA’s affiliate program is an MLM or a pyramid scheme or that “it displays characteristics of both”.
Frankly, anyone who makes such claims is clearly clueless regarding what MLMs and pyramid schemes really are.
Multi-Level Marketing is a marketing strategy that allows people to earn commissions on the sales that take place on multiple levels of referrals [your referrals (level 1), your referrals’ referrals (level 2), etc.]
Wealthy Affiliate’s affiliate program pays commissions ONLY on the sales YOU make, NOT on the sales made by your referrals or their referrals.
That being said, if WA is to be categorized as an MLM, then Amazon, Apple, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, and virtually every other major global corporation that runs a pretty standard affiliate program is an MLM as well.
A pyramid scheme is a “business model” whereas the only way to generate money is by recruiting others into the scheme rather than selling an actual product or service.
WA is a course that provides training and tools towards making money online by building an affiliate marketing online business.
That’s service!
Again, calling WA a pyramid scheme just because it runs an affiliate program is absurd…
Almost every single affiliate marketing course on the face of this Earth (The Affiliate Lab, Project 24, TASS, etc, etc) has an affiliate program in place that pays commissions for referring other people to it.
I haven’t seen anyone calling any of those courses pyramid schemes.
In conclusion, if someone’s trying to convince you that WA is an MLM or a pyramid scheme, chances are that they’re trying to deceitfully discredit WA in order to get you to sign up for a similar course that they promote.
5. Its Live Webinars Are Superficial
A large percentage of the affiliate marketers that are promoting Wealthy Affiliate, leverage the platform’s live webinars as a major selling point…
Some might even claim that it’s one of WA’s best features.
Personally, I don’t really see it…
Truth is that most of WA’s webinars provide very superficial information about their target subject without investigating it in any substantial depth.
In addition, I’ve noticed that most of the webinars tend to go completely off-topic very frequently and for large amounts of time.
For instance, a couple of weeks ago I sat through a webinar called “Opt-in Strategies for 2020”.
The first half of the webinar described how email marketing is still important.
The second half revolved around setting goals in Google Analytics.
Both of those subjects have NOTHING to do with actual opt-in strategies.
Such deviations and inconsistencies are pretty common among most of the webinars held within WA.
Nonetheless, if you’re just beginning as an affiliate marketer, attended some of them will probably benefit you in some way.
However, if you already possess some basic affiliate marketing knowledge, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll find any value in them.
Wealthy Affiliate Review Summary
Income
Potential
Most of the successful WA members, make up to $5000 per month.
Resources
Core training, live classes, website builder, keyword tool, hosting, live chat, & more.
Value for
Money
Free to join. Affordable premium plans. Pretty solid value for money.
Support
Tech support + community support through live chat, PMs, and public questions.
Success
Stories
More success stories than most affiliate marketing courses out there.
Overall Rating
Affiliate marketing FAQs
Affiliate marketing is an online business model that involves promoting products or services created and distributed by third-party online merchants in exchange for getting paid a commission for each sale you refer.
In layman’s terms, affiliate marketing is the process of being compensated for helping businesses sell to more customers.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of how affiliate marketing works.
- You join a merchant’s affiliate program
- The merchant gives you a unique affiliate link that points to their e-shop
- You promote your unique affiliate link online (blog, forums, social media, paid ads, etc.)
- Every time someone clicks on your unique affiliate link and makes a purchase on the merchant’s e-shop, the merchant pays you a commission
There are thousands of successful affiliate marketers all around the world. Some of the most well-known ones are:
- Pat Flynn
- Matt Diggity
- Matthew Woodward
- Doug Cunnington
- & more
You can check out a roundup of my 17 favorite examples of affiliate success and their backstories right here.
- Billion-dollar industry
- Very low startup & operational expenses
- Huge income potential
- Flexible & versatile
- Passive income
- Simple to implement
- No technical background
- No customer support
- No physical setup
Affiliate marketers can be divided into five main income groups:
- Total beginners: $0 – $20,000 per year
- Low-level affiliates: $20,000 – $50,000 per year
- Intermediate affiliates: $50,000 – $100,000 per year
- High-level affiliates: $100,000 – $500,000 per year
- Super affiliates: $500,000+ per year
According to PayScale, the average annual income for affiliate marketers in the US is over $54,000 per year. Statistics reveal that 13% of affiliates earn more than $75,000 per year.
Some of the factors that influence how much you earn as an affiliate marketer include:
- seniority
- target niche
- available resources
- previous experience
- marketing efforts
- & overall mindset
Here’s a rough income growth timeline of a typical affiliate marketing business:
- months (0-3): no earnings
- months (3-6): first affiliate sale
- months (6-12): $100-$500 monthly
- months (12-18): $1000 monthly
- months (18-24): $3000+ monthly
This timeline isn’t a guarantee of future performance but rather a mere approximation of the income growth of an average affiliate business. Your own timeline could be shorter or longer than projected.
Over the years, I’ve seen aspiring affiliates striking a gold vein just a few months into the industry. On the other hand, I personally know people who’ve been struggling to grow their affiliate revenue to $1000 per month for several years.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most affordable money-making models out there.
Here’s a breakdown of everything you need to get started as an affiliate marketer along with their associated costs:
- web hosting & domain name: $2.95/month (Bluehost)
- keyword research tool: $49/month (Jaaxy)
- expert guidance: $49/month (Wealthy Affiliate)
- email autoresponder: Free for up to 1000 subs (MailerLite)
Please note that on top of expert guidance, Wealthy Affiliate also provides free access to hosting and a keyword research tool so you don’t have to purchase them separately.
Yes, you can do affiliate marketing without a website by promoting your affiliate links on other marketing channels, such as:
- Social Media
- Paid Ads
- YouTube
- Podcast
- etc.
The process of getting started with affiliate marketing can be broken down into the following four simple steps:
- Pick a niche
- Launch a blog
- Build an audience
- Promote affiliate products
No, you don’t.
Affiliate marketing is very simple to get started with by virtually anyone regardless of age, education, background, available capital, tech-savviness, professional network, etc.
In fact, most 6-figure affiliate marketers were no more experienced than you currently are when they first ventured into the affiliate marketing industry.
Nonetheless, being knowledgeable in fields like marketing, sales, content production, business management, etc., could help you reach your financial goals somewhat faster.
Conclusion
Despite all its cons, Wealthy Affiliate can still be classified among the best affiliate marketing training platforms out there.
Its core training might lack information on a number of useful practices but it’s undeniably way better than the straight-up, low-quality training the majority of other affiliate marketing platforms offer which frankly doesn’t even cover the very basics (especially those found on ClickBank & WarriorPlus).
Wealthy Affiliate’s tech support might have difficulty resolving challenging technical issues that require extra time and attention but nonetheless, I’d rather have some tech support backing me up than having no tech support whatsoever.
The platform’s community might consist of unnecessary noise and distractions but I definitely prefer such a community over a completely deserted one whereas there wouldn’t be a single soul to support and help you.
Its hosting might be slower than it should, but at least it’s free for up to 50 websites and you won’t even have to bother setting it up.
Lastly, there might be a few complaints about Wealthy Affiliate here and there but all of them seem to be regarding pretty minor issues not to mention that Wealthy Affiliate seems to be trying to resolve every single one of them, something that indicates that Wealthy Affiliate values their customers.
So, is Wealthy Affiliate suggested?
Well, it all comes down to the two following instances:
- What your financial goals are
- How far are you willing to go to reach those financial goals
For instance, if you are looking for a way to earn an extra $100 – $200 per month without much fuss and struggle, then, instead of going for Wealthy Affiliate, you might want to consider checking out a couple of GPT (Get Paid To) platforms, such as
On the other hand, if you’d like to build a full-time income online, then Wealthy Affiliate might be one of your best chances to do so.
However, if you aren’t willing to devote time and do the required work, well, then you are f*cked…
And not just because Wealthy Affiliate isn’t the kind of place that will pay you thousands of dollars tomorrow for doing nothing, but because there’s no such place whatsoever…
While we are on this subject allow me to state loud and clear that THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS OR MAGIC BULLETS TO SUCCESS!!!
Get that very well in your head and please stop looking for one because let me assure you that you are wasting your time and energy.
Whoever claims that they can show you “The blueprint to earning $5000 by next weekend” or how to “Earn $500 on social media TODAY!” is straight-up lying their ass off in an attempt to either get their hands deep in your pockets or waste your time, or both.
So, yeah, Wealthy Affiliate is not a magic bullet or shortcut to success in any kind of way… It won’t help you earn $20.000 in 79 hours and you won’t magically go from broke to earning 6 figures per minute just by joining the platform.
Wealthy Affiliate’s sole job is to reduce the learning curve of building a profitable affiliate marketing business by providing you with the necessary training, tools, and support.
This is it!
Nothing more… Nothing less…
It’s ultimately UP TO YOU to utilize everything Wealthy Affiliate offers towards reaching your financial goals.
Becoming the next success story of Wealthy Affiliate will be an ongoing process that requires
- Following Wealthy Affiliate’s training
- Working your ass off
- Being patient
- Going through tons of trial and error
- Investing huge chunks of your free time in front of a computer writing articles
- Taking risks
probably for many months before you even get your hands on your first affiliate marketing commission.
So, the question is this…
Are you willing to go through everything I’ve just mentioned without getting paid a single dime for at least 6 months?
If not, then don’t even bother joining Wealthy Affiliate because chances are that you’ll just quit a few days later.
If yes or if you are not really sure, since you are here, and since Wealthy Affiliate is free to join, you might as well give it a try and experience first hand what the platform has to offer…
You have literally nothing to lose.
If you are interested in starting your own affiliate business but for some reason, Wealthy Affiliate didn’t sit quite right with you, then you might want to check out The Affiliate Lab.
38 Responses
Harry thank you for the information. I am currently researching entry-level to affiliate marketing business where I can learn from the roots up tools and together with my business ideas I can set up some web pages snd utilize these affiliate tools.
I am cynical I will admit as I know somebody always has to make money in the background. I was half interested in Wealthy Affiliate until I saw other recommendations. I find your information very helpful. However, now it’s like too many boxes of cornflakes to choose from and I want the most user-friendly source where I can learn.
My yoga website is down since Covid. Please contact me at helen@yogaology.ie or Helen.mooney25@yahoo.com. I need your help and honest expertise for a win-win for all. I have lots of ideas and business skills. I see trends 4-7 years before they happen historically. Thank you HM
Hey Helen, thanks a lot for reaching out to me!
I just contacted you through email so we’ll talk from there.
All the best,
Harry
Hello Harry, thanks a lot for putting together such an in-depth review.
I’m currently looking into several affiliate marketing training programs but it seems that Wealthy Affiliate might be the best way to go.
Do you have any other suggested affiliate courses that I could check out?
Thanks a lot in advance!
Hi Tony, thank you so much for your very kind words!
I’m so happy that you found my review helpful.
As a matter of fact, I’ve created a list of The Best Affiliate Marketing Courses to Make Money Online in 2020
You might want to check that out 🙂
Let me know if I can help in any other way.
Best wishes,
Harry
Hey, thanks for the useful information.
I’ve heard of affiliate marketing before but I didn’t know that you could make so much money with it. Those success stories of Wealthy Affiliate members are pretty inspiring.
I can’t wait to get started as well.
How long does the free trial you mention last? Also, will I be charged automatically when this trial ends?
Hi Emma, it’s very nice to meet you and I’m glad that you found my review of value!
Wealthy Affiliate’s free trial lasts forever.
This means that you can keep test driving the platform for free for as long as you want as well as that you won’t get automatically charged a single dime until you actually decide to upgrade your membership to premium.
Please notify me once you join Wealthy Affiliate so that we can connect and interact within the platform 🙂
My best regards,
Harry
Hello Harry, I took your recommendation and joined Wealthy Affiliate a couple of weeks ago.
I really like the platform and what it has to offer. I finished the 10 free lessons of the OEC Certification, got my website up and running and I think that I’m ready to upgrade my membership to premium.
However, before I do so, I’d like to know how long you think it might take for my affiliate website to start generating money.
Matt
Hi Matt, thanks a lot for reaching out to me!
I’m so glad to hear that you’re progressing within Wealthy Affiliate.
Now, to answer your question, the timeframe that it takes for an affiliate website to start generating money is very hard to pinpoint as it depends on a vast array of factors, including:
Truthfully, I’ve come across websites that started generating sales 2-3 months after they got launched, as well as websites that didn’t generate a single sale during their first year.
To avoid any frustrations, I suggest that you won’t expect your website to make any sales during its first 6 months.
If you’d like more information regarding that subject, you should take a look at my article How Long Does It Really Take To Start Making Money With Affiliate Marketing?
I hope this helps.
If you have more questions, I’d be happy to help you out!
Harry
Hey man, thanks for the wonderful article I must say I am inspired to join Wealthy Affiliate so as to be able to make some cash. I am still at a university in East Africa and I hope I’ll be able to benefit from Wealthy Affiliate.
Hi Martin!
If your goal is to earn money online then I believe that Wealthy Affiliate is going to be of value to you.
Let me know if you join in order for us to connect within WA’s community.
Best wishes,
Harry
I have to say I’m literally ‘gobsmacked’!
This has got to be one of the most comprehensive and informative posts on Wealthy Affiliate I have ever read.
I thought if was really humorous and full of interesting content and honestly it reminded me of one of those infomercials ‘but wait, there’s more’!
You’ve done an amazing job of the presentation showing that you’ve put in the hard yards and committed to your craft and it’s wonderful to hear you are finally reaping the rewards.
Even though I’m already a ‘newbie’ Premium Member I found myself wanting to click on the Join Now button!
Wow, thank you for your very kind words Fran. Truth is that it took me some time to put this review together and make is as helpful as possible.
If only you follow Wealthy Affiliate’s training and you commit for some time, you’ll be able to start earning online as well.
Let me know if you want any help or guidance. I would be thrilled to help you out.
All the best to your you and your business,
Harry
Wealthy affiliate is giving me a user experience I have never seen in any other website or online platform in terms of training and the like features.
In the beginning, I had my doubts but I really made up my mind to upgrade and I was blown away with what comes with my premium membership.
Great work and wonderful platform by Kyle and Carson.
I had my doubts as well before I decided to upgrade my membership to premium but having seen the high-quality of the free training made my decision much easier.
I haven’t regretted my decision the slightest 🙂
Indeed awesome work by Kyle and Carson. And it’s going to get even better as time passes.
Harry
All this sounds very nice and Wealthy Affiliate sounds perfect.
But how long is it going to take for me to make money? How much will I have to work? I need to quit my job which is killing me and I cannot wait any longer to do so.
Also, I don’t have much free time to work after my normal job.
The more you work, the faster the results you get. Simple as that.
If you are not willing to work, you’re fucked.
And if you have time to find this article, read it, and leave a comment, yes, you have time!
Don’t overthink about it. Just step into it and you’ll see for yourself.
By the way, I am working a normal job as well for 9+ hours a day and I have a 2-hour commute to and back from work and I am still managing to scale my website. So, yeah…
Wealthy Affiliate is by far the best affiliate marketing training platform online.
I am always impressed by how things are being handled there, most especially the live chat. By chatting live, you can almost instantly receive your answers to any of your questions from other old members or ambassadors who are currently online.
This is so time saving.
Wealthy Affiliate’s support is like no other platform’s both in terms of speed as well as quality.
To tell you the truth, I have not really used the live chat as much as other people but it’s definitely a valuable asset especially if you are a beginner and you have come across an issue which needs immediate attention and resolution.
Harry