Wealthy Affiliate: 14 important things to know before joining [Review]

We all want freedom…

Freedom of time, money, and stress.

Wealthy Affiliate provides a map for achieving it. But is it the right map? And does it really give you the freedom you’re looking for? Keep reading to find out.

Wealthy Affiliate is a network marketing company that offers training and tools to help members start a successful affiliate marketing business.

Imagine sitting back and watching the Benjamins roll in without ever having to recruit a single soul or hit up a single relative on social media.

Or even lifting a finger, for that matter.

That’s what Wealthy Affiliate promises, and they offer all this at a bargain price. Here are the details.

FAQ

1. What does Wealthy Affiliate sell? An entire system — tools, training, and supportive community — to help you build an affiliate business.

2. What are Wealthy Affiliate’s most popular products? Their affiliate bootcamp training shows you how to create an authority website within the various categories that Wealthy Affiliate offers services in. They provide hosting, a website, and other services. The goal? To turn complete newbies into successful affiliate marketers.

3. How much does it cost to join Wealthy Affiliate? To join the Premium membership and get 2x higher payout, you’ll pay $49 per month.

4. Is Wealthy Affiliate a scam? No, they’re a legit business offering a real product. But you need to do your due diligence before joining. Their methods may not be entirely ethical.

5. What is Wealthy Affiliate’s BBB rating? F

6. How long has Wealthy Affiliate been in business? Since 2005

7. What is Wealthy Affiliate’s revenue? No numbers have been shared online.

8. How many Wealthy Affiliate distributors are there? 1.5 million

9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2015, Wealthy Affiliate was sued by MOBE for defamation. In 2016, MOBE filed a second lawsuit for calling MOBE a “fraud.” In 2017, MOBE removed this second claim. In 2018, the FTC shut down MOBE business operations, which validated Wealthy Affiliate’s defense. The case was dismissed. [1]

10. Comparable companies: ClickFunnels, Empowr

So should you get involved?

I’m not going to say it would be impossible to make money with Wealthy Affiliate, but there are certainly more sustainable options out there if passive income is what you’re after…

Product-wise this company might be legit, but if you’re just interested in the business opportunity, there are better options out there…

Click here for my #1 recommendation

Either way, here are 14 important things to know before joining Wealthy Affiliate.

#14. They’re somewhat established

While they haven’t been around for a century, they’ve been operating for a little over a decade, which is quite significant in MLM-years. They’ve also helped over 1 million customers, i.e. “budding entrepreneurs”, start their first online businesses.

#13. Never buy inventory again

It’s all digital! The future is here!

That’s right, no more buying inventory, storing boxes in your home, sending people off with product, or dealing with the U.S. Postal Service, EVER AGAIN. No more parties, no more auto-ships, and no more wondering if you’re going to even be able to cover the cost of your product.

That’s because Wealthy Affiliate is…

#12. Less an MLM, more an affiliate opportunity

The difference here is that Wealthy Affiliate is an educational community, through which you make money by learning how to create affiliate sites that can market any product you want. Although you do make money for referring new members, it’s an affiliate model in that you don’t have a (pyramid-shaped) downstream (the model that looks like a pyramid), and you’re not buying any inventory.

It doesn’t come close to any of the FTC’s “telltale signs of a pyramid scheme”. [2]

#11. Recruiting is not important

Their program for referring new members is a second thought, not highlighted on their website, and is not a main source of income like it is for so many MLMs. Many of their users report not even referring new members at all, but rather focusing on the community and building their sites.

As you can see on the “How Wealthy Affiliate Works” section, the four steps don’t even mention recruitment. [3]

#10. An internet marketing education at an affordable price

If you got a bachelor’s degree in the past 10 years, chances are you know how irrelevant it can be to things like getting a job or making good money…

NBD.

Good thing that degree was super cheap, right?

Too bad these degrees cost upwards of $60,000 nowadays and often take decades to pay off. [4]

Wealthy Affiliate is an education program that actually teaches you something both useful in today’s world and potentially lucrative — internet marketing. They train you to build affiliate marketing sites.

While it’s not always quite as easy as they advertise in their 4-step “choose an interest, build a website, attract visitors, earn revenue” slogan, it’s totally possible to earn money this way. Any earning while you learn is the smart way to go about education.

#9. Affordable memberships

It’s also wildly more affordable not only compared to university courses, but compared to other online digital marketing programs as well.

For example, General Assembly, a popular online education platform, offers a course that costs a whopping $3,950 for a 10-week course that meets 20 times for a total of 40 hours of in-class education. [5]

Meanwhile, a premium membership with Wealthy Affiliate costs $49 per month [6], and you get access to 24/7 support and education. You could hold a membership for over a year and a half at the cost of a two and a half month course.

#8. Free to start

Wealthy Affilliate even offers a free trial period.

That being said, you really need to bump yourself up to premium to get anything useful out of this membership. The free trial includes limited help and some beginner training, but the information is really only new to people who know literally nothing about internet marketing. [7]

#7. Lots more included in the premium membership

Alternatively, once you upgrade to premium, the subscription includes unlimited help and 1-on-1 coaching, 50 websites, private messaging, all phases of bootcamp training program (7 instead of 1), unlimited use of their keyword research tool, 2x payout on affiliate program, website feedback and analysis, and greater access to the Wealthy Affiliate community.

#6. The online community is the best part

One big reason sitting in a classroom for hours on end discussing the Grapes of Wrath has little effect on your future income or career success is because it involves no networking.

Networking, folks, is to career success as cake is to a fat kid. It’s elemental. [8]

Aside from the educational element, the ability to network with and learn from a massive global community of 800,000 business-minded users from over 195 countries is the main product they provide, and truth be told, it’s priceless. [9] Where else can you get that? (Please don’t say GAZ, no offense)

Plus, this is a field that changes constantly. You can take a class, but the things you learn might not be relevant a year, or even 6 months from now when Google slaps the web with another update like Penguin and Panda or the next Mark Zuckerberg unveils a brand new social media platform.

With Wealthy Affiliate, you have constant updates. On average, it takes one minute for a user to start getting answers when they post a question.

The program also offers 750+ training updates and 155 system improvements per year. [10]

#5. Affiliate compensation is a perk

If you are on a premium account, for every free account with a domain you sign up, you get $1. For every referral who upgrades to premium, you get $22.50 monthly, and for every upgrade to an annual package, you get $175 annually. On average, 1/8 of users convert to a premium subscription, which is pretty good. [11]

As you can see, it’s not the bulk of your income. But it’s a nice little perk, especially considering all you have to do is get people to click the link on your site. And if Wealthy Affiliate’s lessons really teach you how to generate traffic, this could bring in some nice side money. Apparently, they pay out a total of $1 million a year in commissions.

#4. Spam is explicitly banned

They’re very serious about this, and some users have even had their sites deleted for it, so be warned. [12]

That being said, it’s mostly a good thing. If they weren’t very strict on spam, the community would quickly get stuffed full of it and become useless.

#3. You don’t need experience

They’ve had people ages 8-97 use their program to build a website. The average time to build a website with them? 34 seconds flat. [13]

#2. If it’s so easy, can you really make good money?

Here’s the hiccup in the plan.

Online business is not easy. Not only is there a huge learning curve, you’ll have to be willing to dedicate hours upon hours of your time to learning and reading before you can even get a decent site running. And affiliate marketing is highly competitive. Many niches are already over-saturated. [14]

While it’s true that some people get rich off affiliate sites, you could probably find more money in your couch cushions than a lot of affiliate sites rake in on a monthly basis.

#1. Affiliate marketing can be learned for free

While the community is super helpful, and lessons speed things up, affiliate marketing is definitely something you can teach yourself with the wealth of information that’s available online.

Recap

Wealthy Affiliate helps you start your own affiliate marketing website, a pretty great skill to have in this digital age.

But there are other training courses out there that don’t focus so much on the recruiting.

Look, I’ve been involved with network marketing for over ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.

After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:

Click here for my #1 recommendation

from MLM Companies