There is a storm of people online everyday looking for ways to make a living from home. Among the many companies that provide education and tools for people to work online is wealthy affiliate.

Wealthy affiliate is very popular online among affiliate marketers because many of them can link their successes back to it.

This said, there are many who feel that Wealthy affiliate has fallen short of its expectation. It is not surprising that there are some negative reviews of wealthy affiliate.

There are many reasons for this and I will talk about them in this review.

Negative reviews of wealthy affiliate

If you go to Google search or Bing and type the keywords wealthy affiliate review or wealthy affiliate scam or any other related phrases, you will get a ton of results.

Among these results, you will get mostly 5 star reviews of wealthy affiliate because it is indeed a very good program for both beginning and experience affiliate/online marketers to join.

Finding a negative review for this program is like pulling teeth. Someone like me who always think everything is a scam until proven other wise, dig deeper and turn every rock to get the complete story.

From my investigation and experience, I have found the following short comings at Wealthy Affiliate.

Excessive use of hype at wealthy affiliate

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 in a job depends on your qualification and the amount of hours you put in.

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.

It took me six months before I started making money with wealthy affiliate. It takes some people a shorter time and others longer. For some, it never happens.

For me, it was longer because as a mom of four who was still working full-time, I only had so much time to spare. I managed to put an hour or two a day in my business so it grew slower than it would have if I had been investing full time hours into it.

Wealthy affiliate can be overwhelming for a newbie 

Like I said earlier, it is not easy even for experience online marketers to build and run a business.

When you first join wealthy affiliate, you are directed to the entrepreneurial lessons that will guide you through the process of building your first website and starting your business.

Each lesson is task oriented and you are expected to complete each task before moving onto the next for good reasons.

If you skip a task, you will find out like I did on a later date that you don’t know how to do so and so or you have been doing something wrong for so long simply because you skipped a task.

Anyway, I’m highlighting this aspect of the program so you know first hand before joining. If you are the kind of person who procrastinates a lot and have a hard time following directions, then wealthy affiliate is not a program for you.

You will end up blaming them for your failure even though your success relies entirely on you.

If you follow their lessons and apply it well and do your investigation on the kind of business you want to start before jumping into it, you will have a better chance of succeeding.

This brings me to the next short coming.

Inadequate guidance with regards to niche selection 

When I started, I was so excited to build my first website and within weeks of joining, that dream came true but it was a mistake. Why? Because I chose the wrong niche to start in.

You see, your success is dependent on the niche you choose to go into. If you choose a niche that is extremely competitive, you will have a hard time making money.

If you choose your niche right, you will be able to work less but make more faster.

I spent six months working on a niche that was super competitive. When I realized it, I was upset but not willing to give up, I did a thorough research and found another niche that was less competitive and within a month, I was making money.

I learned a lot from my mistake but I felt like wealthy affiliate should have done more in guiding me towards a lucrative niche since I was a premium member.

I however blame myself too because as an introvert, I asked little or no questions. If I had been asking questions like the other members, it will have saved me a lot of wasted time and effort.

Wealthy affiliate has since then made some updates to their training. Its better now.

Lost of writing privileges

As a member of wealthy affiliate, the ability to blog and make lessons and tutorials is very important. For one, all the above mentioned affect ranking and when you become a Wealthy affiliate ambassador (top 50 members) you have some financial benefits.

Because of this, many people tend to spamming in order to improve their ranks at Wealthy. In order to reduce spamming, wealthy affiliate has a button you can use to mark a post, lesson or tutorial as spam.

This is a good tool until someone decides to abuse it too.

Many people have had their writing privileges revoked as a result of this. If a certain number of people mark your post, lesson or tutorial as spam, you may lose your writing privileges.

Some people say they have been unfairly targeted and feel bullied. It has never happened to me because I’m mindful of the rules and I hate spamming. I however believe that if you feel like you have been unfairly targeted, you can contact the owners and they will look into the matter.

Wealthy affiliate has updated their algorithm lately. Hopefully it will resolve some of these problems.

Some people make no money

As I mentioned earlier, this program is task orientated. If you don’t work hard and set up your business the right way, you will make little or no money.

While many people make a full-time income from wealthy affiliate, many have a hard time making money.

To succeed you need to work with successful people. So I advise people to communicate with other members. Ask many questions and don’t rush.

Many people join the program thinking that they are going to start making money in a matter of days. It is possible to start making money in that short a time but it is rare. Wealthy affiliate is not a fast money scheme. 

The cost/price of wealthy affiliate

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.

If you only have one website, then it might not be cost effective for you but if you have a minimum of three websites, then it is well worth it.

As a premium member, you can host up to 50 sites for free and all these sites will have an SSL certificate. If you compare this to typical hosting cost for basic sites on the internet, you will realize that $49 a month is a steal.

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.

You can even reduce your membership cost at wealthy affiliate if you join the yearly plan. It cost about $359 a year. This breaks down to about $30 a month.

Finally, you can join the yearly plan during the black Friday period for just $299. I upgraded to yearly premium around this time and saved a lot. I regretted paying the monthly plan for 9 months but that was the past.

So you see, you can easily account for the cost just by looking at the tools offered to you; education, comment platform, feedback platform, domain purchase platform, website builder with a variety of free themes, full redundancy for your website, 24/7 customer service and free hosting for 50 websites.

 

My verdict

I have been a member of wealthy affiliate for two years now and I will confidently give them an A minus. The minus is for the short comings I mentioned above and the fact that nothing man made is perfect.

This is a very good grade especially as Wealthy affiliate stands tall over all their competition.

I have learned a lot from them and I continue to learn. I have made some of the best friendships in their community and I plan to be a member for long.

If you were thinking about joining the program, start with their free membership. You will have access to the entire premium platform for 7 days after which you will only have access to the starter platform.

Take advantage of the 7 days and determine if it is a good fit for you before upgrading to premium.

You will get a discount if you join within the first 7 days or so. You also get a discount if you become a yearly member.

I hope this post was helpful to you. Please share your experience.

Cheers Denise.