The Wealthy Affiliate Review for 2018 – The Facts You Must Know!
Are you contemplating starting a new online business? Wondering what is the best affiliate marketing course for beginners? Looking to create a blog website for free? You’ve got to the right place!
Welcome to the Wealthy Affiliate review for 2018 that will provide you with all the information you are searching for:
* Is it a legit opportunity or just another scam
* What are the main features?
* How much does it cost? (Spoiler: you can join for free and stay for free forever)
* What are the pros and cons?
Let’s get started…
Whether you are a newbie looking to create a first online business in your life or an owner of the already functioning web store, there is a lot of value in Wealthy Affiliate platform features that can be of great benefit FOR YOU.
Everything below is my personal honest opinion based on my own experience with Wealthy Affiliate.
I can guess, your first question is ….
Can I make money with Wealthy Affiliate?
Yes, YOU can, but it’s not only about money. There is much more to it as you’ll see soon.
But as you’ve already asked, here are some success stories from the last year
Here is 21y old Jerry Huang from Taiwan, who was able to reach 4 figures monthly income after 6 months and became one of the most recognized contributors on the platform.
Click on the pictures to read the full stories.
Do you want to see more stories? One of the members at Wealthy Affiliate took on himself the role of “success historian” of the community. He scrupulously collects success stories throughout the whole year. Take a look at his list of big and small celebrations in 2018.
Want to join? Click the button below:
Now, your second question is…. Let me guess again….
Is Wealthy Affiliate some kind of a pyramid scheme, MLM or another type of scam?
No, it’s not! You can join for FREE! There are no multiple levels of referrals. There is absolutely no obligation to promote Wealthy Affiliate! You can make money from any other product or affiliate source, like this member, who made his profits from Amazon commissions:
I’ll answer more frequently asked questions at the end, but first, let me give you some important information.
What is Wealthy Affiliate? Five Keys to Your Success
Wealthy Affiliate was founded in 2005 by two Canadian entrepreneurs, Kyle Loudon and Carson Lim. It started as a keyword list service and evolved to the best affiliate marketing learning platform in the world, adding new fabulous features every year. Currently, there are more than 1.4 million users in the WA community, from the beginners to professional bloggers.
Some people prefer to call it Wealthy Affiliate University, recognizing an amazing educational value provided by this site.
I see it as One Stop Shop for Internet Marketing and Website Development. It provides all the components needed to start your journey to success in online entrepreneurship:
* Unlimited amount of training from the beginner to skilled level
* WordPress Websites hosting
* Content creation and keyword research tools
* Supportive online community of internet entrepreneurs
* Extremely Generous Affiliate Program
You’ll see more details about each component in this review.
I’ll be honest and tell you that even all this stuff is really awesome and helpful, the MAIN key to your success is YOURSELF. Nothing good will happen without your eagerness to learn, persistence and confidence in your own value. This is not a “get rich overnight” scheme. You’ll need to invest your time consistently in order to see the fruits of your effort.
Who can benefit from Wealthy Affiliate?
From the beginners to professionals – Everyone!
Before I dive into the details of each key component, let’s see who can benefit from this amazing platform:
For-Profit
Newbies to online business will find at Wealthy Affiliate all the vital tools to get started and will always be able to find an answer to any questions along the way to success. Even if you still have no idea about the niche of your future business, you will get practical help in finding one.
Active Bloggers will find invaluable advice on how to optimize and monetize their existing blog. In addition, there is a lot of training for better content writing and creative visualization tools.
Small business owners who want to create or improve their website will find many creative ideas on attracting a traffic to the website and increase income. They can save on external hosting service, as WA provides these services as part of the membership (more details on this in the following sections).
Internet Marketers can get help with finding new profitable affiliate programs to promote and get training for creatively using various social platforms to expand their business.
Online Stores owners will find new ways to grow their revenues and learn how to use email lists for up sales. Many WA members will be able to help with Shopify related questions as well.
Not For Profit
People passionate about any non-profit cause who want to create an awareness website and get to a larger audience will find a lot of unique ideas on achieving it.
People eager to learn new things and acquire new valuable skills will find numerous training videos on various topics as website features, SEO optimizations and many more.
Retired people looking for exciting occupation and new knowledge, as a type of long-deferred self- development.
In other words, ANYONE interested to be a part of buzzing online scene as a creator or business owner.
Now, let’s take a close look at what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer.
Get Started – Take a look by yourself
Unlimited Training on WA – Learn Everything You Need Any Time
There are various learning options on the platform: step by step certification courses and boot camps, subject classrooms, webinars, video, and written training. Let’s check out the details of these options.
Certification courses and boot camps
Certification courses and boot camps provided by the owners, Kyle and Carson are very detailed, organized and supported by implementation tasks. If you have any related question, you can ask it in the comments section and get answers from the other members. The owners, Kyle and Carson, frequently reply to the questions themselves. This is really great to see them hands-on involved and helping the members.
The main course is “Online Entrepreneur Certification”. It consists of 5 levels, each one with about 10 lessons. This course explains the process of creating a new online business in any niche.
Just to give you a taste of the topics that different Wealthy Affiliate members have decided to pursue: cats food supplements, fitness for women, video games, computer parts, catamarans, earbuds and headsets, baby supplies. It’s an endless list of possible ideas. You can make money on anything you are passionate about!
The first level course is included in Free Starter membership and it consists of the following 10 lessons:
The lessons are beginner oriented, very detailed and practical. The goal of this first level course is to get your first website set up and running, while you have a plan for how you are going to make money out of it.
Each lesson comes with several simple tasks that you can easily track, like this:
Classrooms – Great Topics You’d Like to Master
There are 12 classrooms available, covering different aspects of creating and running an online business. Here is the full list with descriptions and amounts of videos and tutorials available.
Live Weekly Webinars – Add to Your Knowledge Weekly
Weekly live webinars are hosted on Fridays and recorded. The Premium members can access them at any time after the event. Currently, there are more than 400 hours of training available.
Other online platforms often sell 10-20 hours webinars for thousands of dollars and you have to pay for any new topic you want to learn. At Wealthy Affiliate, everything is included – existing and any future training.
Training Created By The Members – Video And Written Classes
One of the unique features of WA is the training created by the members themselves. More experienced members are eager to give back and provide the tutorials for others on countless topics, from technical issues to creative solutions for content writing.
Websites– building and hosting. No coding knowledge required
Wealthy Affiliate platform includes WordPress integrated website builder with several modules related to site content, security, speed, emails, support, and feedback. WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world with 57% market share. Google favors it in his indexing and ranking algorithms.
What does it actually means for you? It means you don’t have to understand anything about coding and web design to have your own website up and running in a few minutes!
The Managed WordPress Hosting is provided as part of Wealthy affiliate membership. Free Starter members can host two SiteRubix websites for free and choose from 12 themes. Premium members can host 25! registered domains and 25 SiteRubix free domains with a selection from thousands of free themes. WA hosting includes 30GB space, free SSL security certificate, instant DNS set up, All in One SEO plugin, unlimited email accounts and much more.
Many WA members are running more than one money generating business with WA hosting services.
If you already have a domain hosted elsewhere, you can easily move it to host with Wealthy affiliate and stop paying to another provider.
If you don’t have a website yet, don’t worry- a new domain can be easily purchased from Wealthy Affiliate registrar, so it’s all covered at the same place.
$$Value$$: at least $350 per month
Content Creation, Analytics, and Research. Discover a Blogger Inside You
If you start a blog and fill it with amazing content, the last thing you want to know is that nobody ever has read it. You want to be found by the major search engines Google, Bing, and Yahoo. One of the best technics to attract organic traffic to your website is by using the right keywords. But how do you find them? To do it, seasoned bloggers use one of the keyword research tools that can easily cost about $49 per month. As part of the commitment to provide its members with everything needed for success, Wealthy Affiliate included the access to Jaaxy Lite in its Premium membership. Jaaxy is recognized as one of the best keywords research tools in the industry.
Once you have found a topic close to your heart and started writing, the SiteContent module will check your Grammar and help you to visualize your content using free images from more than 1 million options proposed.
$$Value$$: About $80 per month
The Supportive Online Community of Internet Entrepreneurs
Wealthy affiliate is a vibrant community of people who truly care for each other’s’ success. As on any social platform, the member can create a profile with some information about himself, follow others, post articles, comment on posts and send private messages.
The diversity of the people in the WA community is really heartwarming. There are members from different countries, backgrounds, ages, all sincerely supporting and helping each other.
Every day, dozens of new informative posts and training are added by the members for the benefit of the community, including amazing “How to” articles and inspiring success stories. I was surprised to see how readily the members share their secret tips and tricks, not holding any cards close, as though there is no competition out there.
What you would NOT find on WA:
* It’s strictly forbidden to post any promotional links anywhere on the platform.
* Trolling or any negative attitude to the fellow member.
* Making a fool of anyone. The most obvious newbie question would always be addressed with the utmost respect and answered in details.
* Political and religious discussions.
* Requests for any personal information
Live Chat – Get Instant Help
The first level of support for any type of questions is voluntarily self-managed by the members. The most experienced folks spend a lot of their spare time helping others. The answers are usually provided in a few minutes.
Website Reviews and Post Comments
There are two designated features on Wealthy Affiliate platform where you can ask for peer’s feedback on your website or ask for comments on your posts. Like everything else in this community, the features are based on reciprocity. You need to give feedback first to become eligible to receive it. This way your site will be never left without visitors.
$$Value$$: at least $490 per month
Extremely Generous Affiliate Program
As part of the philosophy of sharing the success, Wealthy Affiliate offers its own extremely generous affiliate program, including lifetime cookies. To cover your Premium membership costs, you only will need to refer 2-3 new premium members.
If you are a Premium member, your commission plan will be like this:
You can earn commissions as a Free Starter member as well, but the amounts will be a half of the stated above.
Just to remind you again – you don’t have to promote Wealthy Affiliate at all to be a member. This is totally up to you.
Well, let’s summarize what we had till now
I know, it looks like a lot of money. But this is what you GET, not what you need to pay.
How Much Does It Cost?
I’m sure you already understand what incredible value you are going to get to Wealthy Affiliates, but can you afford to join?
Let me explain to you what are your options.
There are two types of membership: Free Starter Membership and Premium Membership. To help you see the difference easier, here is the full official comparison showing what exactly you can get with each membership type.
I know it can be confusing, but the best thing is that you don’t need to decide anything just now.
Here is the easiest action you can take:
You can be a free member as long as you wish. No obligation, no credit card information.
For the first 7 days of your free membership, you’ll be able to try most of the services available for Premium members, like Live Chat support and Live Webinars.
Note: unfortunately it’s not available in high fraud risk countries (Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, and Vietnam).
There are two additional discounts on Premium membership:
- The first month will be only $19, so you can try the whole Premium experience without risking too much money.
- Yearly membership is $359 only (about $29 per month – 40% discount compared to the monthly plan) – for this price you can barely get hosting and security certificate for one site with other providers.
How Do You Start Once You Join?
There are four major steps to take and you’ll see them in details in the “Getting Started” training. But here is a spoiler:
- Choose your niche, the interest you are passionate about
- Build a website and fill it with useful and interesting content, relevant to your audience
- Attract the visitors to your site through organic traffic and social media
- Make money from different sources
If you want to dive deeper, watch this video “How to Create an online business – The 4 steps”
Summary:
Wealthy Affiliate is a legitimate website and is highly recommended to anyone who wants to start or already has an online business.
$$MoCashForYou “Value For Money” Rating: 9.8 out of 10
Pros: Provides everything you need to start an online business. No up sales if you are a Premium member.
Cons: Can be overwhelming at the beginning
Is there enough value in WA to keep me interested for more than several months?
Yes! Many Wealthy Affiliate members stay for years and have no intention to leave. The site is constantly improving and adding new tools for the members without raising the fees.
Recently, I asked people “Would you stay with WA if you have $150K annual income from a daily job?”. Are you intrigued to see what did they say? Almost everyone decided to stay! You can check for yourself in the link above. But to make your life easier I’ll give you the main reasons mentioned by the members:
* To be my own boss
* To create an asset that can bring me passive income in the future
* To spend more time with my family
* To have more than one income source
* To do what I really enjoy
Sounds interesting, but can I do it? I don’t have any relevant knowledge
Look what Wendy, grandmother of 10, has to say:
If I go premium, are there any more up sales I should know about?
No! Actually, it’s the other way around. If you decide on Yearly membership, the price will be the same FOREVER.
This is part of the letter I’ve got from Kyle, the owner when I purchased the Yearly membership:
But wait, it’s getting even better. The package you get is not stale, it’s IMPROVING from year to year. For example, in 2017 Jaaxy Lite was added to Premium services without a dollar of additional payments requested.
Can I make money with Free Starter Membership?
Yes, you can.
As one option, you can build a free site in any niche and promote it on social media.
Another option is to promote Wealthy Affiliate and earn commissions. This can be achieved by writing quality content on your blog inside Wealthy Affiliate platform. The blogs are indexed and ranked by Google and any new member who joins through your blog will be recognized as YOUR referral.
This being said, making money as a Premium member is much easier and faster.
Well, I got the PROS, but what are the CONS?
As I wrote in my personal story post – the first weeks or maybe months can be really overwhelming. If you are absolutely new to website building and content writing, you can find yourself puzzled with many questions of “How to” type. You don’t finish one thing and already want to jump to another. If this happens, you should take a breath and go back to the basic step by step training. Just stick to it and you’ll overcome this temporary obstacle.
Wealthy Affiliate is an addictive social platform. The funny thing, it’s not recognized as such and therefore is not blocked by the servers at my day job office. It’s so easy to spend hours reading the posts or monitoring Live Chat. There is always something to learn, but this way you might be distracted from your tasks, be it the regular job or building the website.
Wealthy Affiliate offers so much for free and for a low membership fee. Are they going bankrupt any soon?
I asked myself the same question. How can Wealthy Affiliate afford to provide all the services for such a low price, along with a generous affiliate program?
My understanding is that a lot of services, like training and support, are actually self-provided by the members themselves, allowing WA to save on hiring its own employees to do it.
Another important point is that the members tend to stay on the platform for many years.
Is my success guaranteed? How long would it take to see the results?
Wealthy Affiliate gives you all the tools you need, however, at the end of the day, your results depend on the motivation and efforts you put into the process. The first milestones to your success would be:
1. Creating a website with quality content
2. Getting your website indexed by Google
3. Getting your posts ranked on the first page for the chosen keywords4. First commission/sale
From there and on the sky is the limit. Typically, it would take at least 3-6 months to see significant growth, depending on the number of weekly hours you are able and willing to invest.
If you have any additional questions about Wealthy Affiliate, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. I promise to get back to you as soon as possible.
Mary
This post may contain affiliate links. Please check our disclosure for more details
I also lost about $75,000 to an IQ option broker and 2 fake binary option website as well but I am sharing my experience here so as to enlighten and educate everyone that is losing money or has lost money to a scam including binary options, dating scams,Recover all your lost money to Bitcoin and other Crypto currency, mortgage/realestate scams and fake ICOs.However , I have been able to recover all the money I lost to the scammers with the help of a recovery professional and I am pleased to inform you that there is hope for everyone that has lost money to scam.
Same old spam and scam
Hello Mary, I am very much interested in creating a webpage to go into Affiliate Marketing, but I am a “computer dummy “. Is WA for people like me. Can they help me put one together ?
Will the hosting and all the other services that goes with it me taken care of by them ?
Hi Ron,
WA provides very detailed training on website creation.
You need to know to type on a laptop, yes. But no coding knowledge is needed.
I didn’t know anything about websites design before I join.
Try the first level of training. At the end of it, you can have your page ready to use on a free domain they provide.
Good luck!
Mary
Great job with your article. Keep up the great work. Actually we can save a lot money using coupons and cashback websites because we have to shop whole life to fulfill daily day needs and by shopping with cashback or reward sites we can save huge amount. Well, I also have a plan to create new affiliate website such as coupons and cashback website and looking for solution that can be used easily and without having deep development skills. I have read a lot of articles to find out best solution and found revglue and there solution to build coupons and cashback websites looking very easy to use, how to create coupons and cashback websites with revglue can be found at revglue(.)com/bespoke, they are providing cashback, coupons cms templates and API and offering free wordpress plugin with as well, but I am confused while working with this platform because i don’t have working experience with this company. If anyone have working experience with this affiliate platform please share. Thanks
Hi Criss,
It sounds like a fun idea to create a new site. First, you can learn what already exists and try to find what people want to be different and improved.
I don’t have any experience with revglue, so can’t help more.
Good luck!
Mary
Hi Mary,
Thank you for this detailed review of Wealthy affiliate! The thing what sounds amazing here is that wealthy affiliate is for everyone, from newbies to experts and that you can get so much help if you don’t know what you are doing! Most of the places where you want to host a website are just helping you to start and then you are on your own..
But i think the most important thing as you say is, you won’t get rich overnight, work hard for it and put a lot of time in it and then you can start to earn.
Kind regards,
Eelco
Hi Eelco,
You’ve got the idea just on the spot! This is so sad that many people just pay for the hosting, SSL and the keywords research tool the same amount as Wealthy Affiliate charges for SO MUCH MORE!
And the community is always there to support, advise and give the latest industry updates, some from the very insiders, like Google experts.
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts!
Mary
Thank you so much for such a detailed and comprehensive review! You answered every potential question I might have had.
Thank you for visiting.
All the best in your journey to success!
Mary