Wealthy affiliate is an online marketing education platform that promises to help you make money from home.

 

As you must have already noticed, on their home page, they state four major steps towards achieving these goals.

 

The steps are as follows; find a passion, build a website, draw traffic to it and make money.

It sounds pretty easy right? Wrong!

 

You should know that these four steps usually take months to complete and it may even take a year or more to become fully profitable.

 

People look at these four steps and think it will be a breeze. So they join thinking it will be pretty easy.

Many fail to follow through with the lessons as a result of this mind set and jump straight to step four expecting to make money by the buckets.

 

I wonder why many don’t slow down to think that these four steps are a little sugar coated.

Maybe it’s desperation, maybe it’s impatience, maybe it’s some feeling of grandeur.

Nonetheless, this is why many members of Wealthy Affiliate make little to no money.

 

Those who take the time to learn and apply these four steps diligently, make good money at wealthy affiliate.

In this review, I will talk about the good, the bad and the ugly sides of Wealthy Affiliate.

 

Feel free to jump to another section if you get bored.

 

Please be sure you are ready to work hard to achieve your goals before you join Wealthy affiliate.

 

Let’s start with an introduction to the foundation of wealthy affiliate.

 

Foundation of Wealthy Affiliate (how it all began)

 

Wealthy affiliate is an online program that was founded in 2005 by Kyle Loudoun and Carson Lim. It began as a small platform that gave people valuable keywords for a monthly subscription.

 

As time went by and their membership increased, they added more and are still reinventing the program and improving on it as I write.

 

In 2005 when they started, the price was $29.99 and they provided one list of keywords to their users a week. As their membership grew, they soon realized that they will need a way to communicate with each other. So, they introduced the wealthy affiliate forum.

 

This forum was a great place for both new and old members to fraternize and help each other with imposing problems 24/7. Since then, they have introduced live chart, a question platform, 24/7 customer support and one on one coaching.

 

The image below summarizes it up nicely,

 

Fast forward, they added paid staff as membership grew and they began adding courses to help members understand and use their keywords properly to draw traffic.

 

Then they designed their own web hosting platform and their website builder called Site Rubix.

Today, wealthy affiliate offers online training on how to build a successful online business (join today for free and learn all about it),

 

They offer site rubix for building quick beautiful websites, a domain platform, hosting for both their free and premium members, an SSL certificate, a site content platform which is still in the making, a huge community of successful entrepreneurs and ever growing additions of new tools.

 

Lets begin our in dept review of Wealthy affiliate.

 

Education

 

They offer a good and simple approach to online marketing. The lessons, certification courses, tutorials and live video classes are well within the curve and the competition in terms of what works today and what will work tomorrow.

 

This information is beneficial to newbies and experienced internet marketers alike. As the online business world changes, you need to stay ahead of the competition and if you follow and put into practice what they teach you; you’ll do great.

 

Unfortunately, many people don’t follow through with the lessons. Wealthy affiliate does not have a process for releasing new members to the world of internet marketing.

 

You are considered an adult and should be responsible for completing your lessons. No one will hold your hand at WA. You are expected to ask questions when you have doubts. Many people are reluctant to do this, feeling like they are pestering people.

 

However, you should ask ask and ask some more every time you need help because that is the only way you will learn from experienced members.

 

I believe that, more members will be successful if Wealthy affiliate made sure they were ready before moving forward.

I know this is not IN the best interest for Wealthy Affiliate business wise but I think it is worth a try if they really care about their members. (knowing how our education from childhood till we are adults are designed such. Many people are not prepared for independence when they finish high school or even college)

 

Training at WA follows a step by step task oriented approach where you are encouraged to complete tasks as you learn.

You however are not oblige to complete the task. This is bad because many people need to complete these task to succeed.

 

The platform is known as wealthy affiliate university so they should ensure their members are learning and understanding their lessons even if they need to pay extra for it (just my opinion).

 

More that half of the new members skip a lot of vital lessons and jump straight to building their website, writing a few contents, pasting ads and hoping to make money fast (I see many people join and have a website up and running in a matter of days. This is OK for an experienced Internet marketer but not so good for a newbie).

 

If you search online, you will see a tons of these mediocre websites that make no money, are poorly designed and contribute nothing worthwhile to society.

 

With the education at WA, you can take almost any passion and turn it into a successful business. But you need to follow through with the lessons to succeed.

 

For example, let’s say that you are passionate about hiking. With proper education you can learn how to turn this passion into a successful business.

 

You can build a website and write reviews and recommendations about several hiking supplies, techniques and much more related to hiking for your visitors.

 

Then when you start getting traffic, you can use several methods taught at wealthy affiliate to monetize your website.

This however will take time and tons of energy.

 

Below is a sugar coated summary of how Wealthy affiliate works,

 

 

As you can see from the image above, the steps seem pretty straight forward and can give newbies the wrong impression.

You find a niche, you build a website, you draw traffic to it and you start making money (you need to sweat, make some mistakes, do a lot of tweaking and be determined before you can make money)

 

Websites

 

Most successful businesses in the 21st century have a website (it does not matter if they are based onsite or online). Websites help businesses reach more people faster.

 

This website for example, helps me reach people from all over the world; people I wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

With a website, you have more control over content, commercials, and many other aspects of your business.

 

At Wealthy affiliate, you have two levels of membership and you can build shinny new websites with both.

There is a starter membership that is free ($0) and with this membership you can build two websites for free.

 

With the premium membership, you can build as many websites as you want and Wealthy Affiliate will host the first 50 websites for free.The premium membership cost $49 a month.

 

Building a website at Wealthy affiliate is made very easy and secure with SiteRubix; one of the leading website building platform in the world.

 

This platform is an integrated tool for management, website analysis, ranking, security and in conjunction with WordPress you can build an amazing looking website.

 

Building and maintaining a site on SiteRubix or any other platform is not as easy as it sounds. Yes it takes an average of 34 seconds to complete in most cases but that is just the beginning.

 

After building a website, you need to customize it for visitors; this means choosing an appropriate theme, finding the right color for your audience, positioning major aspects like side bars, headers, tabs, menus, logos and making sure it is mobile friendly too.

 

Security

 

When you say the word internet, many people think hackers for a good reason. Websites face major threats from malicious software all the time.

 

Take the case of Wanna crypt for example. Without proper security, your business can be hijacked and all your hard work will be lost.

 

At WA with the SiteRubix platform, security is very important. This year alone, WA overcame the attacks of more than 27,195,900 hackers.

 

Web Hosting 

 

After you build your website, you need to find a place to host it. When looking for hosting services, there are many things to consider.

 

Other than the price, you want to make sure this service has at least a 99% up time. WA has a 99.9% up time.

This means you can be sure your business will be on and active almost always.

 

Another thing to look for in a hosting service is redundancy. This is very important as in the event that you loss your website content for some reason, you can always recover it later.

 

At WA, there is full redundancy. Your entire website is backed up regularly.

Finally, you want a company that offers 24/7 customer service and Wealthy affiliate does that.

 

 Domains

 

A domain is a name like www.mysitename.com. In order to build a website, you need to buy a domain name from an accredited domain name registrar. With WA, the experience is very seamless.

 

WA has a powerful and comprehensive search with their SiteDomains platform. This means, instead of buying your domain some place else and trying to transfer it to WA (believe me, it can be nightmare) , you can buy it directly at WA and save yourself the trouble.

 

Accessing and purchasing top domains like .com, .org, and .net are so easy and only takes minutes. You can find and research your domain in one place.

 

You can even save your domains in your cart until you are ready to buy it. When you buy a domain with WA, there are no Up sells (what you see is what you get) and the price won’t change over the years like it does in other places.

 

Each domain you buy at WA comes with full access to emails, full privacy and domain protection, way better than what the competition offers.

 

Community

 

The community at WA is so amazing. For me, they offer the best community experience Period. I have never seen a community that was so eager to help.

 

I was on WA only for a day and already had about 20+ people welcoming me and telling me not to hesitate to ask for help if I needed any.

 

And when I asked for help, a flood of members came to my rescue. It felt like having a million amazing big brothers and sisters.

 

The community size at WA is about 800,000 and growing. Members are from 195 countries around the world.

It is so amazing when you are having a live chat with someone and they are thousands of miles across the world from you.

Networking is encouraged at WA and is a source of lifelong friendships for many.

 

This is facilitated by live chats, private messages and personal blogs, lessons and tutorials.

They encourage the spirit of pay it forward in the community with their Site Comment and Site Feedback platform where members can comment and give feedback on each others websites.

 

They believe in helping each other in a competitive world.

However their biggest asset (community) can also be their biggest problem. Why? Because many people are eager to help but not all the answers are correct.

 

My advise, compare at least three answers before you act on it or ask Kyle/Carson directly if you have doubts. (Kyle and Carson try their best to answer the questions they receive from members promptly).

 

Success

 

Nothing man made is perfect, nonetheless,

At WA, you can surround yourself with successful people who will motivate you and drive you towards success.

 

When I started, I had no idea what the online business world was like but with the encouragement of experienced members, I build my first business and then a second.

There are thousands of people making money every day using Wealthy affiliate.

 

There are also many members who make little to nothing as I mentioned earlier. 

 

With the WA affiliate program, success is attainable. The key is to learn, work hard and be patient.

 

CONS

 

Wealthy Affiliate has many short comings. The one big problem with WA is all the hype. Also one of its greatest tool “community” is also its biggest problem.

 

With such a large community, when ever anyone needs help, they get it in an instant but the help or answer they get for a question is not always right or the best.

 

Sometimes the answers are corrected by the team especially Kyle but sometimes it’s not. So, while at WA don’t always take what everyone says as true.

 

It is better sometimes to leave Kyle a personal message with your question and wait for your answer patiently. He is busy obviously since he has so many people looking up to him but he tries his best to answer.

 

Furthermore, many members help aggravate the issue of hype. If you join, don’t let the bubbly feeling get you because its mostly fluff. Remember that it takes time and handwork to succeed.

 

Through the years, there have been some negative reviews of wealthy affiliate by some people and this is what they complain about;

 

There is a lot of hype surrounding the program. This is mostly because some people have made it very big with the program and so they tend to make the newbies feel like everything is so easy but it is not.

 

You have to understand that this is a business opportunity not a job. With a job, you work for someone. Your pay on a job depends on your qualification and the amount of hours you put in but in a business opportunity, you determine your own success.

 

With wealthy affiliate, you need to be able to follow the lessons and choose a lucrative niche to start your business in. If you do this right and work hard, you can make a full time income from it as I do.

 

Wealthy affiliate is a business opportunity. Like any other business opportunity, whether online or onsite, there is a phase where you are investing money and time and not making any proceeds yet.

 

At wealthy affiliate, they will teach you how to make money and provide you with the tools like a domain purchase platform, a website builder and many other tools all in one place.

 

Your success however will depend on how well you apply the lessons learned and how hard you work on building your business.

I personally don’t think this is a con as it is natural to give any business time to grow.

 

Is wealthy affiliate for everyone?

 

Of course not. Wealthy affiliate is designed for people who are ready to take action and implement what they learn as they learn. It is a place for self-starters and business oriented minds.

 

It is not a place for procrastinators or people who will rather work for someone. You see, once you join this program, you should be prepare to be the boss and assume the responsibilities that come with it.

 

That said, before you decide to join, make sure you are in for the long haul. Take advantage of their yearly membership as you will end up paying less when broken down.

 

If you choose to drop your membership at anytime, you will still have access to the free program but your premium access will be revoked.

 

Click here to join

 

The cost/price of wealthy affiliate

 

The table below explains it nicely,

 

 

Some people feel that the $49 a month price tag for premium members is high. I think it all depends on how you look at it.

You will be paying for a thorough compilation of lessons on how to make money online.

 

You will have access to 1 on 1 coaching, live chat, up to 50 free website hosting, free SSL certificate, a huge community of successful entrepreneurs and more.

 

It cost about $10 on average for a basis hosting plan for a single website these days.

Many online marketers have multiple sites and the cost to host them especially with SSL certificate added can be as high as $100+ a month.

 

If you compare the 50 free website hosting feature to typical hosting cost for basic sites on the internet, you will realize that $49 a month is a steal, BUT you don’t need to pay $49 a month.

If you choose to upgrade to yearly, it will cost you about $30 a month.

 

If you are a newbie, this is good for you. If you plan on building more than 3 websites, this is good for you but if you are experienced and will only need 1 or 2 websites, this might not be the best deal for you. 

Conclusion

 

On a scale of 1-10, I give WA a 9.1. There are plenty of other platforms out there but I think Wealthy Affiliate is doing a good job relatively.  Look around the web for yourself and compare the competition. To join WA, Click here. 

 

You can definitely make money using wealthy affiliate if you put in the effort and complete the task as you are taught.

Wealthy affiliate is working on adding more to their program. This is a place that keeps on reinventing its self.

 

Please leave a comment!

Cheers Denise