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Wealthy Affiliate Review (2023 Update): 10 Things You Need To Know… And #8 Really Got Me Thinking!
Scam Risk is here to help you protect yourself and fight back
By: Scam Risk - Expert Reviewer
Free Wealthy Affiliate Membership (Starter Membership)
Wealthy Affiliate Review: What Is Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate (aka Niche Marketing Inc.) is an Affiliate Marketing course and online entrepreneur certification program. Its core training, web hosting, keyword research and website building tools can help you rank high in the search engines and build a successful online business earning passive income with your own affiliate websites.
However it is another one of those making money online membership programs that is centered around selling other people’s products.
But the vast majority of those affiliates who promote Wealthy Affiliate are also members using using their own affiliate link.
The program is designed to show you how to be a “wealthy affiliate marketer”, but affiliate marketing can be an uphill battle if not done correctly, and you could end up losing more money than you make if you’re not careful.
But, in full disclosures, we want to be completely honest in this reivew, so…
DISCLAIMER:
This Wealthy Affiliate review has been thoroughly researched with information and testimonials that are available online to anyone in the public. Any conclusions drawn by myself are opinions.
Table of Contents
Pros: What I Liked
- Low barrier to entry
- You can start today
- Been around since 2005
The Good
Cons: What I Didn't Like
- LOTS of compeition
- Last update was years ago
- Cookie cutter sites won't do the trick
The Bad
In this Wealthy Affiliate review, we’ll dive into the pros and cons of the program.
But before that, let’s ask ourselves: Is affiliate marketing even a worthwhile business model?
On the one hand, the promise is great…
You don’t have to create products, worry about fulfillment, customer service, or bad reviews.
Your only job is to get the right customers in front of the right offer, and take a commission when they buy.
And – theoretically – you can do it all in an hour a day from the beach.
Sounds simple, right?
Well, not really. Driving traffic (that’s internet speak for getting customers) is single-handedly the hardest part of the entire marketing process.
Later in this review, we’ll talk about all the different skills you need to drive traffic successfully.
For now, let’s just say the promise doesn’t really match up with reality.
At best, affiliate marketing is a job. You’re working for someone else, selling their products, and at any time, they can change your commission structure or block you from selling their stuff entirely.
In this business, you don’t really own or control anything. Since – for the most part – you’re driving traffic (again, the hardest job of all) and sending it to someone else, you don’t even get to keep the customers, who are the most valuable piece of the puzzle.
At worst, affiliate marketing is a pyramid scheme. There are certain – ahem – programs that charge you a monthly “membership fee”, under the guise that you will learn how to be a “wealthy affiliate marketer”.
Once you join, however, you find out the only way to really make money is by being an affiliate for that program.
That’s pretty much the textbook definition of a pyramid scheme.
Now, let’s say you really want that hour-a-day-work-from-the-beach lifestyle.
What if there was a way you could build a passive income stream that’s actually passive?
An income stream that doesn’t require:
- Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours before seeing your first dollar
- Doing all the hard work of driving traffic to only get a tiny commission
- Running your business on someone else’s terms
An income stream that brings in consistent revenues every single month (from a couple thousand dollars to well over $10,000)?
An income stream you could actually build in your spare time, and grow as large or as small as you want to, without having to spend hours a day testing, tweaking, and risking your money in the hope you can finally start making sales?
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, check out Digital Real Estate.
This is like taking all the good parts from affiliate marketing (however few there are), and putting aside all the bad.
However, if you’d still like to know more about Wealthy Affiliate, keep reading.
How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
Basically, Wealthy Affiliate is a membership and mentorship program. You pay a certain amount of money per month to learn all the nuts and bolts of Affiliate Marketing.
After you sign up for the program, you are given a relatively brief tutorial of how to use the system, how to rub elbows with others in the community, and how to build and start making money with your first affiliate site.
Who Owns Wealthy Affiliate
WA is owned by a couple of entrepreneurs from Canada named Carson and Kyle. They have been in business together since 2005 under their business name “Niche Marketing Inc”
As of today, Kyle and Carson Have grown WA to over 1.4 million members, making their program one of the most popular affiliate marketing courses in the world!
If you’ve been around the internet for any given amount of time… odds are you’ve heard of Wealthy Affiliate.
Because it’s so popular, you’ve probably asked yourself is wealthy affiliate legit or a scam.
Which is why we (over here at Scam Risk) have decided to provide you with an honest and unaffiliated review of WA.
Let’s take a little deeper look at the people involved in this operation…
Kyle Loudon
Kyle and Carson really seem to be great guys, and it’s abundantly clear that they’ve both had success as affiliate marketers before…
And you can see this as Kyle takes you through some of his affiliate sites in the initial part of the training.
The traffic to his site looked pretty good, so at least from the surface, it sounds like he knows what he’s talking about in his affiliate marketing course.
So, it’s pretty clear that he’s not a con artist.
In fact, he’s built up so much authority with his affiliate sites from 2005-2015 that he could just coast.
Couple that with the fact that wealthy affiliates has continued to grow exponentially throughout the years… he’s probably just been chilling on a yacht somewhere.
And can you really blame him? I mean I’m sure we’d all like to just be cruising not just physically, but also monetarily. He’s basically living the dream that we all wish for when looking to make money online.
Just a shame that he doesn’t seem all that involved in coaching anymore.
Jay Neill
Not too many people, outside of Wealthy Affiliate, know about Jay…
He’s the live weekly / live chat trainer for WA Premium.
Jay joined in 2007 and has since become known as the “the world’s first WA influencer”.
Not to toot his own horn or anything.
Still the title is appropriate… if you want to learn how to make money with wealthy affiliate.
Especially considering that he’s probably the one who is single-handedly responsible to all the members who has joined Wealthy Affiliate.
So, we decided to do some digging on this guy:
Now while this website seems to be doing much better compared to the 3 Kyle shows in the training… the numbers aren’t high enough, in my opinion, to match the type of lifestyle he’s living.
Clearly Jay’s website has a decent history of traffic, but you can see that his site hit it’s peak in September of 2019.
So, this might leave you scratching your head.
At least until you factor in that the site shown above is basically just a giant funnel site geared on getting you to join Wealthy Affiliate!
If you hang around long enough on the site, you’ll be hit with a barrage of pop ups that want you to watch his live site build that claims it makes $300 a day!
Those are some pretty lofty claims though, so naturally we continued to dig.
Here are some of the numbers according to ahrefs…
Pretty low huh?
In my opinion, that math just doesn’t add up on this one…
For easy numbers let’s just say he’s getting 500 visits a month and every single visitor clicks his link (which never happens in real life btw).
Of those visitors, 250 decide to go ahead and buy the most expensive helmet offered ($65) and assume he’s earning an 8% commission on those (which again is impossible now).
That’s only $1,300 for the month… much less than the $9,300 he’s advertising…
And our calculations were generous!
Now if you sign up for their email subscription… you’ll eventually be sent a screenshot of this exact site and the payment he received.
Sounds transparent and honest right?
Hmm…
You’ll need to notice a few key elements here, so we’ll break them down.
- This screenshot is nearly 5 years old!
- Amazon reduced commission from 8% to 5.5% in 2017
- His conversion rate is much lower than our generous estimate
As you can see the numbers just don’t add up.
In my opinion, Jay Neill doesn’t do so well responding to specific questions. The internet is filled with disappointing responses when it comes to Jay’s treatment of people. Here’s just a quick example from Reddit.
We’re not telling you he’s scammer… but there are programs out there with a better network of support.
For the record, here’s a more recent screenshot of his Snack Helmet site… you be the judge.
Should You Join Wealthy Affiliate?
That’s something you need to decide for yourself.
I’ve spent more than 60 hours going through every little nick and cranny of the wealthy affiliate program.
In good conscience I just can’t recommend the course to any of you. To just be frank, the odds of success with wealthy affiliate by itself are low, in my opinion.
Since the training hasn’t been updated recently much of it really doesn’t apply anymore…
On top of that, you’d think they’d be able to send more recent screenshots than from something 5 years old!
Unless of course there hasn’t been success with it in 5 years…?
But I digress.
Here’s a short list of why we don’t really like it.
- Core training has misleading claims
- Bad advice
- Missing information
- Poorly structured
Wealthy Affiliate Cost?
So how much does the most popular affiliate marketing course in the world cost?
Well…there’s actually two different options:
Yep, this option is totally free!
No strings attached!
However the training you get is limited (although up to date).
You’ll also get access to the group for 7 days, however…
This training doesn’t give you nearly enough information to get started in any sort of capacity
It’s pretty much giving you just enough so that you cave with anticipation and buy premium.
WA Premium Membership
Wealthy Affiliate premium is $19 for the first month and $49 per month after that.
But!
If you pay for the whole year in advance, it’ll work out to be about $30 per month!
So, if you do decide to join the program, it sure doesn’t hurt to save yourself an extra $19 per month.
Does Wealthy Affiliate Make You Money?
Yes, it could…
But…
There’s a lot that comes along with affiliate marketing that many people struggle with.
In fact, check out these Top 5 Reason Why Affiliate Marketers Fail.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea…
It’s not impossible to make money with Wealthy Affiliate, but if you’re gonna put in the amount of grueling work to do this business (which, trust us, isn’t easy), you might as well bring in some REAL money while you’re learning the ropes.
As a starter member (free) odds are that you really won’t make any money. In fact, even if you decide to take the jump and start Wealthy Affiliate Premium, your odds don’t increase that much.
The sad fact of the matter is that Wealthy Affiliate members were making decent money up until about 2016, then something, somewhere, went terribly wrong…
Success stories have been fewer and far between ever since!
Here’s a little break down of the Wealthy Affiliate site building process:
As a starter member, they encourage you to build out a free site on the SiteRubix domain.
But, in my opinion, here’s where the misleading begins…
These sites you build are said to be fully operational and profit ready.
Are you ready for the kicker?
Kyle Loudon has said that to really have a successful affiliate website, you’re not going to do it on a SiteRubix domain. It has to be on your own.
But you can bet the house that it isn’t mentioned in the free training!
So… maybe Kyle misspoke? After all, people mistakenly put things on the internet all the time…
Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Oh come on…surely if I join premium I’ll make the big bucks right?
At the end of the day, it’s still Affiliate Marketing and, in my opinion, I just don’t believe that it’s the best business model.
I believe, the Wealthy Affiliate training was very effective as far as 5 years ago… but today not so much. The lack of screenshots from successful members is a key indicator.
How Much Money Does Wealthy Affiliate Make?
Wealthy Affiliate made approximately $10,000,000 in 2019, numbers for 2020 have yet to be released.
But that’s $10,000,000 that members have made right?
Nope…
That’s, $10,000,000 they made off of members in the course paying monthly dues!
What Is The Wealthy Affiliate Refund Policy?
They offer a 30 day money back guarantee right?
Not even close.
In fact Wealthy Affiliates offers no refunds at all!
A quick peek into their terms of service will show you all you need to know.
Wanting to jump in and go for that yearly subscription…?
Hold your horses because it might not be worth it and you won’t get your money back!
If you decide to join, Scam Risk recommends to just try the monthly plan out for a few weeks first.
But what could be worse than a no money back guarantee?
What about an email that softly digs at you not being a yearly subscriber…
Yep, if you are on the monthly plan and you are trying to refer people yourself to purchase the yearly option, Kyle sends out an email that says “If you have a Honda and you’re trying to sell a Chevy, it is going to be tough”.
Even boxing has rules against low blows…SHEESH!
The Wealthy Affiliate Affiliate Program
Nope, you read that right.
Wealthy Affiliate has an affiliate program itself that it offers to members.
It’s one of the more popular one’s and has been known to pay out upwards of $121 per sale!
Keep this in mind when you read all these “Wealthy Affiliate Scam or Legit” articles… I’m sure you’ll spot their affiliate links pretty easily.
Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth It?
Honestly, for the greater time of its existence, WA has offered some really solid affiliate marketing training.
The issue in recent years though is that people from all over the world have been coming out and calling it a scam!
Now we can’t in good conscience call it a scam because some people really have had some massive success that was life changing for them, however…
According to some customer complaints in TrustPilot, WA and its teachings have become increasingly outdated and ineffective as time has gone on.
"After just a few months of being a member, I realised that a lot of their training is outdated and there are better courses out there - I wasted my time doing a website on a 'health" niche which I only found out, after wasting time and resources, was a waste of time because I can't rank well because of already-established professional authority health sites (they don't tell you this). I was sent several emails from Wealthy Affiliate encouraging me to "upgrade" even though I had done so the same day I joined (months earlier). When I responded to the emails saying I had already upgraded, I didn't even receive a polite response apologising for bothering me – which suggests to me that they are very money-oriented."
Lynn C.
Here are just a few things to note:
- Most of the core training hasn’t seen updates since 2015
- Bad advice littered throughout
- No real solid structure
- Kyle and Jay’s sites haven’t been doing too hot since 2016
- No refund
- 60% of the WA training is dedicated to just recruiting more members!
Is Wealthy Affiliate A Pyramid Scheme? Is It MLM?
Legally speaking…
Wealthy Affiliate CANNOT be classified as a strict pyramid scheme or multi level marketing (MLM) scheme.
But it does have elements of both, so it’s easy to see why so many people make the assumption.
Look…
Most of the reviews you’ll see from WA today will be from students selling to other new students… not necessarily selling items online as an affiliate marketer like the course promises.
Comparatively… there are plenty of other affiliate marketing programs out there where students are having success in being affiliates of products outside just the program itself.
Unsubstantiated Claims In Wealthy Affiliate
So how can it get worse than no refunds AND having one of the founding members kick you when you’re down?
What about claims that are just outright false, proof-less, or misleading?
One of their claims is the members of WA have the highest success rate of any other platform online!
In my opinion, that would be a bit difficult to prove unless they are personally a member of all other platforms.
They also promise that you won’t fail…
Unless of course, you quit.
Yep, they say that “we have never seen a member of Wealthy Affiliate fail that didn’t quit”.
See the play on words they did there?
The thing is, it is certainly possible for someone to quite Wealthy Affiliate, join another program and hit it out of the park
Dream Research Platform
In training they really gas up Jaaxy, their keyword research tool.
The thing is, out side WA, very few if any has even heard of it. Not unless its mentioned in a review like this.
In my research, I have never seen Digital marketing experts and affiliate marketers refer to Jaaxy as a tool that has helped them immensely.
Wealthy Affiliate Members Own Google Rankings And Own A Huge Share Of All Traffic Online
From what I can see, no evidence has been provided to support this claim.
Plenty of evidence of the opposite is true though… they don’t get much traffic according to the sites we’ve seen.
Misleading And Deceptive Claims In Wealthy Affiliate
You Can Build A Profit Ready Website In Less Than 30 Seconds
Again, speaking from my own experience, I have a hard time believing this one.
Now, I suppose you could easily put up a wireframe site with no content in about 30 seconds, but I doubt it would be fully functional and pulling in traffic.
On top of that, it takes weeks to climb the ranks in Google, unless of course, you decide you want to pay for traffic.
Another one bites the dust!
Traffic Boosts After Google Updates
In my personal experience, unless you have good, high-quality content, you would be lucky that Google keeps your rankings as they are.
You Could Easily Scale A Campaign To Make Over $1 MILLION Per Year
In my opinion, although this MIGHT be possible…
Unbeatable Website Hosting
You ever start rolling your eyes when someone starts talking about themselves too much?
That’s the feeling you’ll get when they start talking about their website hosting…
Now, I will applaud them for the hosting services they provide to their members… but in my opinion, there are better hosting providers out there for a better price.
Lack Of Structure In Wealthy Affiliate
You know when your high school teachers said you can’t just do a project over night?
I don’t think Kyle and Carson took that to heart…
Upon entering the program I found everything to be jumbled and repetitive.
If there was a significant portion of time put into this course… it sure isn’t noticeable.
To the average person looking for an affiliate training platform that creates a traffic producing website in a step by step easy to follow process… they will be sorely disappointed, as I see it.
They have very contradictory training videos. One says google ads is good, the other says its bad. One says social media is good, the other says its bad.
On top of that Kyle teaches you how to make videos twice…
Why is this necessary?
What about how to write, that’s important right?
Not until lesson 46 of this online entrepreneur certification apparently!
They also don’t have smooth transitions, which makes it difficult to get started.
Relax, Pick What You Like
These are the little instituted breaks that are riddled throughout the training platform.
Some people might appreciate this… but some people might see it as lazy internet marketing.
If you ask me… a real successful affiliate marketer doesn’t take many breaks…
What Does Wealthy Affiliate Actually Teach?
WA’s Affiliate Bootcamp teaches you how to build a website that promotes, you guessed, Wealthy Affiliate.
The online entrepreneur certification has training material that teaches you how build affiliate sites like dog training, pool cleaning, and website hosting. These are called MMO’s (make money online) niche.
Inside the OEC and Affiliate Bootcamp there are literally 100’s of training videos which is awesome!
However… they all vary in quality and how relevant they are for today’s internet marketing.
What Doesn't Wealthy Affiliate Teach?
Pretty much anything and everything that is relevant today. The core training lacks much of the important seo training that is needed to rank theses affiliate websites.
When I went through and thoroughly reviewed all 120 training videos… I found that the content lacked severely in several different areas listed below:
- Nofollow
- Building backlinks
- Affiliate disclosures alongside affiliate offers
- Google Adsense
- Alternatives to Google Adsense
- Caching
- Updating content
- External linking to authority sites
- Citing sources
- Outsourcing content
- Schema markup
- Featured snippets
- Video
- YouTube SEO
- Alternatives to Jaaxy for keyword research
- Which sources of traffic are best and why
- Email marketing
- WordPress page builders
When it comes to content creation and coming up with great ideas that Google likes and will benefit people… it seems to me that you’re kind of left to figure that out on your own.
Bad Advice In Wealthy Affiliate
In my opinion, there is some bad advice that you will find in the core training as well…
For example, they tell you “There is no such thing as choosing the wrong niche”…now although they might be telling you that just to ease your fears and get you to start taking action…
They really should clarify that because there are certainly some bad niches out there
Ever heard of underwater basket weaving?
But seriously… not every niche is going to be profitable and they should let you know that… many other courses similar to this one offer at least a couple different niches to avoid like the plague!
Kyle says that there are literally 1000’s of low competition keywords you could be going after and that you are actually being to broad in your targeting!
Again, we have to step in here, I’m sorry but if you’re going to try and sell beach chairs in north pole Alaska… you’re going to have a hard time!
It really frustrates us going through the program and seeing what we feel is simply bad advice.
Again…don’t take our word for it…just check out their premium members forum!
He also says that instead of using H1 and H2 to headers that are “too big” he prefers to use H3 and H4 headers.
SMH everyone knows they’re for SEO!
Maybe if Kyle would update the training a little bit he’d change his mind…
Some more bad core training advice in WA is when it comes to listing the price in your amazon review.
Thankfully a premium member let everyone know about this back in 2019 and people could make the appropriate changes.
Why is it so serious though?
It could get you banned and whatever source of income you did have goes straight down the drain!
Perhaps one of the worst advices in the WA training is when Kyle said you could pay $5 for posts with a lot of traffic that generate a lot of revenue…
I’m sorry, I have to call BS here. Anyone who has spent any amount of time trying to make money online knows what \$5 in content writing gets ya… and it ain’t much.
Is this purposeful misdirection so that he gets all the good content writers to himself?
Another good question to ask is would anyone who just learned how to write content his way be want to be paid just $5?
Probably not…
So why recommend going for cheap $5 writers? It really won’t benefit anybody…
Outdated Training In Wealthy Affiliate
We’ve probably beat this one like a dead horse…but in case you’ve just been skimming…
We believe the training in Wealthy Affiliate desperately needs to be updated.
So much so that there were several different posts asking for it to be removed from the training and even a couple that ask for it to be updated.
Not to mention Google+ isn’t around anymore, yet it is still found all over different areas of the training.
And what about stats?
There’s one blog Kyle has that seems to require a lot of faith, trust, and pixie dust in him…
It says that Bing and Yahoo are still getting 33% of the search...although the article is outdated…the point is that Bing and Yahoo never, and we mean never, received that much of the traffic.
And according to Statista.com:
In June 2021, online search engine Bing accounted for 5.56 percent of the global search market, while market leader Google had a market share of 87.76 percent. Yahoo’s market share was 2.71 percent during that period.
Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the worldwide market share of all search engines has been rather lopsided. Google has dominated the search engine market, maintaining an 92.47 percent market share as of June 2021. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2020 with roughly 181.69 billion U.S. dollars.”
Social media training is extremely outdated as well, nearing one decade actually. There is a video made going over Facebook that appears to be from 2012!
Wealthy Affiliate Support
There is some good and bad things about this support system that WA has going on…
The good news is that you are very likely to receive an answer to any question you might have…the bad news is that it’s typically Kyle responding and it doesn’t help when he leaves things so open ended:
As we were writing this review, one of our team members had informed us of an email they had received from a WA premium member who said the Kyle is also not that responsive to email… despite what the newsletter says.
Needless to say, they felt very misled.
Wealthy Affiliate Community
The Wealthy Affiliate community is pretty active and there is the ability to do chat sessions like any other social network.
However most of your feed will probably get filled up with newbie posts about the affiliate marketing business.
Our team found the group a little bit distracting tbh. Anytime we made a post, we just got a bunch of generic replies from the newbie crowd that aren’t all that helpful.
Not to mention that it seems like the community is very much lacking in moderation lately…there are many senseless blog content posts that get shared and the occasional dude with a whatsapp number begging for money…
There are better community groups on Facebook who service the group and get rid of posts like these more often!
Honestly, having a community is pretty common amongst online training programs today.
But hey, training programs that come with a community are better than those that don’t come with a community!
Rankings And WA Ambassadors
Remember all those generic comments we were just talking about? We just found out why there are so many…
This ranking system that you see here basically shows the people who have given the most contribution to the community.
There’s no tangible reward for doing so either…
If you try to look up any financial incentives to these rankings, you’ll find that there are none and be disappointed.
But you’ll find a little rah rah statement from a premium member along the lines of this…
And while there might be something to “not thinking of me me me”…
We’re missing the big idea here though.
Just because someone is highly active in a group means nothing… it is not a guarantee that they know jack diddly about what it takes to be an affiliate marketer.
In fact, we’d bet the house that the most successful affiliate marketer in that group probably isn’t active all that much because he’s too busy working on developing his own training material, pushing his own affiliate content on blogs, and running the freaking business!
There really is a sad part to all this…
Those who haven’t made much money with Wealthy Affiliate are the ones that seem to defend it the most…
Now that’s Stockholm syndrome in my opinion!
Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories
If you pay attention to the time stamps, you’ll notice that many of the Wealthy Affiliate success stories are dated 2016 and earlier. Very few are from 2017 an beyond.
This is because most of Wealthy Affiliate’s training modules are old news. The online world is changing and Wealthy Affiliate is being left behind.
It’s a shame too, the reason they became so popular among the masses is because at the time they provided a very niched service. At the time there were very few online courses offering the amount of content that they were. Unfortunately they just haven’t kept with the times.
Wealthy Affiliate 10 years ago is not the same Wealthy Affiliate we see today.
The Problem With 99% Of Wealthy Affiliate Review Writers
The biggest issue with 99% of “Wealthy Affiliate Scam or Legit” reviews is that they are written by affiliates of WA and have their affiliate link (worth $121 apparently) peppered throughout the article in hopes that eventually you’ll click and buy through them.
And why is this an issue?
When people are financially incentivized to write about a specific program…odds are they’re going to shill out a little bit.
And boy, are there several Wealthy Affiliate reviews with all sorts of affiliate links.
Want to know if you’re reading a legit Wealthy Affiliate review?
Look pretty close to the beginning for a sentence or heading that says they are unaffiliated with Wealthy Affiliate similar to we have on ours…
It’s reviews like these you can trust to provide an honest unbias review!
Another issue is that some of these people just don’t know what else to become and affiliate for, maybe it’s because their creative faculties have been subliminally blocked?
What we’re trying to say is that there are literally 70 videos dedicated to promoting the freaking thing with your own affiliate websites!
We’re not joking either… if you take a look at some of those success stories and the screenshots of their payment history…
You’ll see most of their payments are from Wealthy Affiliate!
Now you can see why some people think this is a pyramid scheme, all the public sees is people making money from referring people… not from actually building affiliate websites in other types of niches like the football snack helmet Jay likes to brag about without showing ongoing proof.
Pros Of Wealthy Affiliate
So although we have no shortage of issues with the Wealthy Affiliate, it does have some things we have to give it credit for…
Ok Training On Fundamentals
If you’re brand new to being an affiliate marketer, or making money online in general it does a good job going over the basics like how to:
- Use keyword research tools
- Work with WordPress websites
- Firm grasp of the affiliate business model
But the further you go into the training…the more disappointed you’ll become.
Good Sense Of Progress
The Wealthy Affiliate training modules are broken down into smaller chunks which does well in making you feel like you’re making progress.
It also helps keep your motivation high when you’re struggling as a brand new affiliate marketer.
Writing Reviews That Are Honest
In the affiliate program, Kyle makes sure to tell you that when you’re writing affiliate reviews to be honest and not to falsify any statements in your reviews.
The sentiment is nice…but clearly lots of his affiliates aren’t taking his advice…
WA White Hat Training
Now this is the content we are proud to see!
Throughout the training, the content presented is clearly white hat and Kyle himself says it’s best to play by the rules.
We love it when we an Affiliate Marketer training program that teaches its students to play by the rules. There are way to many programs out there that practice and teach black hat, leaving their students worse off than where they found them.
And in the affiliate marketer space…that is one of the most important things!
Video Text Descriptions
Sometimes you’re gonna forget where you left off in the training, that’s ok, they have text descriptions that help you remember where you left off.
Cons Of Wealthy Affiliate
Training Is Old
Most of the training hasn’t been updated past 2015-16 and the affiliate game has changed immensely since then.
Support In The Community
Although getting a lot of comments on a post will make you feel heard…it may not be all that helpful to affiliate marketers who are looking to have their questions answered by pros.
It also didn’t rub us the right way when we saw a lot of complaints about Kyle and Jay not handling in-depth questions as nicely as they could have.
There Is A Lack Of Proper SEO Knowledge In The Program
When going over the content portion of WA, Kyle mentions how he like the look of H3 and H4 headers better than H1’s and H2’s.
Everyone in SEO knows that H1’s and H2’s are one of the signals that tells google what you want to rank for!
Is Wealthy Affilate Legit Or A Scam?
Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam? No, Wealthy Affiliate is not a scam. Opinions can vary and you can love it or hate it, but it’s definitely not a scam. They claim to be an affiliate marketing training program that offers training videos, tools, coaching, and a helpful community, and they do actually offer that.
You can make money with this program, but making money with affiliate marketing definitely isn’t as easy as Kyle and Carson makes it sound.
Driving traffic is extremely difficult. In order to do it successfully, you need to at least understand all these things, if not be a ninja at them:
- Copywriting
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Content Writing
- Website Building
- Conversion Optimization
- Automation
- Email Marketing
- Click Tracking
- Retargeting/Remarketing
- SEO
- Backlinking
And a lot more.
There’s a ton of work to be done upfront, no real guarantee of success, and – most importantly – the actual commissions are pretty small.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with front-loading the work and making the money later.
But if you’re grinding it out for 3 months and then your reward is a $50 commission, it’s not really worth it.
What if, instead, you could do that same 3 months of work (in your spare time), and your reward was a $500 to $2,000 payment that came in every single month?
And what if you only needed 1 or 2 of the above skills to get started, instead of mastering all 12 before seeing your first dollar?
And what if you actually didn’t need to wait 3 months? What if you could get started today and have your first payment in a week?
And what if you could double it next week?
Well, that’s the power of Digital Real Estate.
Your laptop and an internet connection is all you need.
Some of the most successful students in this program run their entire 6-figure businesses from:
- A camper in the middle of the woods
- A beach chair on the water in Mexico
- A small villa in Greece
They’re able to travel around, living their lives first, and focusing on their income second.
Because even if they stop working for an extended period of time, the money keeps coming in.
So adventure, memories, and experience are the top priority.
And they never have to worry about how to pay for the next trip, or consider asking for time off.
If this sounds more like the type of life you want to lead, just click here to find out more about Digital Real Estate.
FAQ's
On top of the Wealthy Affiliate review… many people have questions related to WA, so we decided to give you our best answers for each of the following:
Is Wealthy Affiliate A Beginner Program?
The Wealthy Affiliate marketing course is made for those at any level! If you are more of a mid to pro level 3 making money with affiliate marketing… you’re probably just joining the course so you can promote your Wealthy Affiliate Reviews and add your affiliate link.
The WA training and Affiliate Bootcamp walks you through how to get started, set up your websites, write good content, and use a little SEO keyword research with their own keyword research tool.
How Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money?
The main way people learn how to make money with wealthy affiliate and affiliate marketing, in general, is by promoting items on their sites in the form of reviews. The idea is that by writing a good review about a product and leaving your link, while using some SEO best practices… people will come across it and buy the product through your link.
In most cases you will earn a small percentage of that sale.
However, If we take a look around us today… many affiliate marketers make their money off of promoting Wealthy Affiliate and other programs.
The thing is that to become one of these high grossing sites, your site has to come across as an authority site… and to do that, you have to be good at building your own traffic towards it!
What Are The Highest Paying Affiliate Marketers Programs?
Here are just a few affiliate programs that have made many different people a financially successful affiliate marketer:
- amoCRM.
- Leadpages.
- Teachable.
- GetResponse.
- SEMRush.
- Aweber.
- ConvertKit.
- PromoRepublic.
As you can see, Wealthy Affiliate is not on that list…
Probably because many people have seen through the facade at this point and don’t want to waste $49 per month. After all that’s about a 1/2 tank of gas and that $49 per month is probably better used on a weekend getaway.
If you wanted a make money online niche to get into with affiliate marketing… it’d definitely be worth a look!
Just remember… these are some high ticket programs… that means you will need a real strong authority sites to compete.
Can You Make A Living Off Affiliate Marketing
Yes, you can make money off of affiliate marketing… but truth be told most people in affiliate marketing make a lot of their money by promoting different affiliate programs.
Take for example Wealthy Affiliate.
Many a premium member have shared their screenshots of payments they’ve received by promoting Wealthy Affiliate.
In fact, if you look at the reviews of affiliates, most of them are shown how to make money with Wealthy Affiliate by dropping their link in the review descriptions! Which is why you will seldom see a Wealthy Affiliate negative review.
So what’s the bottom line here?
Most affiliate marketers make the lions share of their money by promoting other affiliate programs or Online Entrepreneur Certification like the ones they’re in (ie, Wealthy Affiliate).
How Can I Succeed In Affiliate Marketing?
Yes you can succeed in affiliate marketing!
It is just important that are surrounded with the right people and have access to some decent market research tools.
Affiliate marketers everywhere know that your network is your net worth and if you start hanging around the right people long enough…odds are you’ll get the jump on the next hot money making niche alongside them before it gets saturated!
The key to affiliate marketing is definitely research, you should always be striving to be ahead of the trend or better yet, a trend setter!
See that’s the thing…
A big mistake that people make in affiliate marketing is hopping on the train too late and before you know it, the market is too saturated for you to make your entry.
Can I Be An Amazon Affiliate Without A Website?
Yes you can!
To qualify to become an Amazon Associate, you are expected to have some sort of active online presence and it does not always have to be in the form of a website.
In fact, you can get started as an Amazon Affiliate by having an app or YouTube channel. It is important to note though, whatever route you decide to go down, your chosen platform should some sort of content on it that looks authentic to both users and Amazon!
It’s also worth noting that you can promote Wealthy Affiliate in anyway you know how whether it’s through a website, social media, or in some other way.
As long as you have the link, you are good to go and start collecting those commissions!
Does Affiliate Marketing Still Work In 2023?
This is a tricky one to answer for sure.
The obvious answer is yes, affiliate marketing does still work today, people are still making bank off of it.
However, most of that is being done in the high ticket arenas that most affiliate marketers aren’t even aware of.
And those high ticket guys like to keep it that way.
The thing with affiliate marketing is that it is extremely saturated.
Couple that with a low barrier of entry and boom…
You have a lot of competition.
That’s why this question get’s asked all the time and why the average affiliate marketer only makes a couple hundred bucks a month with this online business.
Not to mention why many Wealthy Affiliate premium members are making little, if any, money at all.
But if you’re still looking to get started with an online business, especially post covid, we think we might have something right up your alley!
Are There any alternatives to wealthy affiliate?
Yes, there are plenty of Affiliate Marketing programs and resources to choose from if you want to pursue this business model. Here are just a few:
- Affiliate Marketing Mastery
- Amazon Affiliate Marketing
- Commission Junction
- Wealthy Affiliate
- Clickbank
What is My #1 recommendation for making money online in 2023?
Our review team has spent months researching, reviewing, and vetting dozens of business models and thousands of programs.
While there may be no “perfect business”, the research IS conclusive:
Digital Real Estate is the #1 online business model for those just starting out.
Whether you’ve never made a dollar online, or you’ve been in this space for a while but never really “made it,” Digital Real Estate is for you.
Why?
1) It’s Flexible: got an hour a day? You can do this. Ready to drop everything else and dive in full time? You can do this. Yes, the more time you put in, the faster you see results. But even with a little time each day, you can move the needle in a Digital Real Estate business.
And because this system is so flexible, you don’t have to constantly be working to make more money. It’s called PASSIVE INCOME because if you stop working, the money doesn’t.
Imagine taking 3 months off to just tour around Europe, rent a cabin in the woods to write a book, hike the Appalachian Trail, or live on the beach and surf all day.
This is only possible if you have an income stream that’s not tied to your time.
2) You Own & Control EVERYTHING: With Affiliate Marketing, you don’t really own anything. You have no control over the quality of products. You don’t even own customers.
Look at the fine print for most affiliate agreements. At any point, the company can change your commission structure, reduce your profit margins, or kick you out entirely.
With Digital Real Estate, you own the assets, which means you have all the power and all the control.
3) Little To No Startup Costs: It’s possible to get into Digital Real Estate with zero dollars upfront. Because, using the strategies outlined in this program, you can get a client to pay you BEFORE spending a penny out of your own pocket…even before you do any work.
Even without getting paid in advance, you can have your first Digital Rental Property up, running, and generating profits for less than $100.
4) Easy To Duplicate: Ok, here’s the best part: once you have your first Digital Rental Property up and running, you can literally DOUBLE your income with a few clicks, a couple keystrokes, and a single phone call (and you don’t actually need the phone call).
Remember: each Digital Rental Property is worth $500 to $2,000 a month in semi-passive income (over 95% profit). Every time you decide to create another one and increase your income, it gets easier.
Because you have more knowledge, more experience, more results, and more momentum.
If you wanted to double your income with affiliate marketing, you’d have to double your traffic, double the average order size of each customer, OR double your commission rate. And, guaranteed that’s a lot harder than a few clicks and a few minutes of your life.
5) Make Money Helping Real People: This part is what makes it all worth it. With affiliate marketing, you’re selling the product with the best commission rate, NOT the one that’s going to improve the most people’s lives.
And that makes it pretty hard to sleep at night.
But with Digital Real Estate, you’re actually helping people by solving your clients’ biggest problem:
Small, local businesses need more customers, and with Digital Real Estate, you are unleashing a flood of happy, paying customers for these businesses.
You make money by helping them make money.
Not a big, faceless corporation either…a small business owner who’s using that money to put food on the table for their family, start a college fund for their kids, or take care of a sick parent.
Once you see how Digital Real Estate makes a real impact in the lives of real people, you’ll sleep like a baby with a big smile on your face.
Now, the choice is yours. You could continue browsing, looking at opportunities like Wealthy Affiliate which could one day make you money.
You could continue researching, never making a decision.
OR, you could take a look inside, consider what you really want, and join a program that makes your dreams a reality. At the same time, joining a community of over 2,000 successful students that are living life on their own terms thanks to Digital Real Estate.
A consistent, reliable, semi-passive stream of income that doesn’t depend on you or your time to keep producing profits.
All while genuinely helping real people who are grateful and happy to pay for it.
If this sounds more like what you want out of life (or if you just want some nice side income), click here to learn more about Digital Real Estate.
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Wow this is the first wealthyaffiliate review I’ve seen that hasn’t just blasted a wealthy affiliate affiliate link everywhere. Finally someone that just tells it how it is. And I also like the fact that you pointed the pros and cons and it wasn’t just a wealthy affiliate negative review.
I had a feeling wealthy affiliate was too good to be true…I just saw too many positive reviews everywhere from bias sources. At least you guys are honest about it.
Good on you guys for not being sellouts like the rest of the wealthy affiliate reviews. Hopefully everyone understands now that you can’t get rich by just paying $30 per month. BTW I checked out that digital real estate business model you guys mentioned at the end, gonna give it a shot!
right i also saw so many and was going to jump in but noticed it sounded so complicated …. felt overwhelmed and .. thank you so so much for your review…
It’s definitely nice to see an unbiased review like this. I was one of those “free” wealthy affiliate members, and can definitely attest to the fact that the one dude is douchey. Glad I left.
If you’re thinking of joining wealthy affiliate just don’t. They don’t update anything and the affiliate stuff they teach is straight outta 2005. At least the business model you guys talk a little about is modern.
I am so glad that I came across your wealthyaffiliate.com review, I had planned on joining WA now I will not be joining WA. Thanks Bill
Howdy, There’s no doubt that your web site could possibly be having internet browser compatibility problems. When I look at your site in Safari, it looks fine however, if opening in I.E., it has some overlapping issues. I simply wanted to give you a quick heads up! Apart from that, wonderful site!
I’ve tried wealthyaffiliate. In fact, it was my first “go” at an internet business. In my opinion most of the money is made in simply just promoting wealthy affiliate. And that’s easy to an extent since it’s cheap and everything…However it’s super saturated.
Hell even regular affiliate marketing is saturated. I learned the hard way that you need a budget in the thousands each month just to build a blog strong enough to compete. And even that doesn’t yield immediate results.
At the end of the day though you typically get out what you put in. I paid cheap for wealthy affiliate and got cheap results…Hopefully this lead generation thing is better.
I’ve seen nothing but hyped up reviews everywhere. This is the first of the wealthy affiliate reviews I’ve seen that kinda calls them on their BS. There’s just no way that any “average” person is making a bunch off of what wealthy affiliate teaches. The evidence of that to me is when the people making ACTUAL money in the group are just selling wealthy affiliate over and over. Not necessarily becoming affiliates of other products or companies.
Dang, not a single wealthy affilate affiliate link in this article. Nicely done lmao.
Yeah no kidding… it’s like everybody and their mother has written a wealthyaffiliate.com review at some point in their life. 🙂
So, is there a way to find out what the positive wealthyaffiliate.com review count is on the internet as well as wealthyaffiliate.com scam reviews?
I swear they haven’t updated their training since 2015. People need to be careful of these low buy in programs. If it only cost $30 odds are you and thousands of others are going to be competing and the only one that wins is he/she who has the biggest budget. Which I’m guessing is tough to have considering you’re trying to make money for cheap without investing much in yourself…
The Wealthy Affiliate program is a great way to learn and grow as an affiliate marketer. It has everything you need for success, including training modules with step-by-step instructions on how to get started in the industry! The community offers help when needed–so don’t be afraid of asking questions if you’re not sure what’s going on at any point during your time here. They also offer personalized contact from top affiliates who are happy to answer all your questions about their own experiences so that YOU can have the same success that they’ve had.
Lol looks like another one of those wealthy affiliate drones.
LOL! Honestly though, how often do you see a wealthy affiliate negative review? I could county them in one hand.
Yeah, whatever. I’ve learned quite a bit about affiliate marketing. But I’m actually trying to sell other products online through Clickbank and Share-a-sale instead of just trying to sell memberships like most people do in all the wealthy affiliate reviews.
Only thing I’d disagree with is that the program isn’t truly white hat. I’ve seen many people promote black hat techniques to get results with wealthyaffiliate.
Cool business model btw. I might check it out in a few days when I’m up late contemplating quitting my job again lol.
Great post
Thanks so much
I keep going back and forth with this reviews. So really… is wealthy affiliate worth it?
I’ve read alot of “wealthy affiliate scam or legit” articles and this is probably the first one that I seen that wasn’t pushing you to buy wealthy affiliate.
Yeah, I was never really part of the “wealthyaffiliate.com scam” crowd because I know you can make money with affiliate marketing. I just didn’t know how affective the training at wealthy affiliate is. I don’t really care about members writing wealthyaffiliate.com reviews and throwing in there affiliate links just so long as I can learn how to make money with wealthy affiliate.
Honest question, how much money can you make with wealthy affiliate and how long does it usually take?
Ah yes, the old “how much money can you make with wealthy affiliate” question. That’s kind of like asking “how far can I run in 5 minutes” or “how long can I drive on a tank of gas”? Well, honestly (and I don’t mean to sound flippant here), but it all depends on you. I mean it depends on how determined you are and how fast and how far you want to push it. There are people in wealthyaffiliate that are making over $10k/mo and it only took them about 6 months to get there, while it took others longer.
Thank God I found it, I was about to waste money and time. Now let me check your recommendation and be sure that I’ll be back.
Glad I saw this I joined yesterday and put in for account cancellation. Thanks plus I already know how to build my own sites and I did not like the fact you pay so much just to have a WordPress site when I can get one with a domain for around $10 a month and all the plugins I want to install and themes jeez. They even want you to upgrade to contact the CEO really! I’m out Thanks
Nice.
What about “Affiliate Legion”.
Got any indights on that $7 / month start up?