Wealthy Affiliate Objective Review – An Unbiased Member
Review: Wealthy Affiliate From An Unbiased User
Product Name: Wealthy Affiliate
Price: Premium member $49/month; $495/year
Cheapest membership: Beginner Package: $0 for 1 website, 7 days limited support, Level 1 Core Training
Guarantee: You can cancel at any time; There are no monetary guarantees
My Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Wealthy Affiliate Overview
Wealthy Affiliate (WA) is an affiliate marketing platform that helps you create passive income through your own website. So what is affiliate marketing?
“Affiliate marketing is an online sales tactic that lets a product owner increase sales by allowing others targeting the same audience—“affiliates”—to earn a commission by recommending the product to others.” (Shopify blog)
Wealthy Affiliate is designed to provide tools and training to marketers that will help them create a website in a particular niche.
But does Wealthy Affiliate really do this, or is it a scam or a pyramid scheme? Read on to get a bird’s eye view of what WA really is and you decide if it’s worth your while to join.
(Some of the links within this post are affiliate links on which I receive a small compensation from the sale of certain items.)
Product Information – Is It a Scam?
Undeniably no, it is not a scam. WA is a platform designed to teach you how to create a website and produce income through affiliate marketing. It does not promise instant cash or gains of thousands of dollars in a short period of time. It emphasizes content and perserverance. WA also teaches you how to create valuable content that will appeal to an audience looking for expertise in your particular niche. It educates you as to how to create a website geared toward affiliate marketing.
Two Avenues
There are two avenues to choose from. One, promoting your own website and the other, “Bootcamp”, which teaches you how to market Wealthy Affiliate. This review evaluates the website avenue.
Website
There are 5 levels of instruction with 10 lessons in each level; a total of 50 lessons. In each lesson you are given tasks to complete to help create a website. After completion, you check off your list and move on to the next lesson. The 5 levels include:
Level 1 – Get Rolling
Level 2 – Building Your Own Traffic Producing Website
Level 3 – Making Money
Level 4 – Mastering Social Engagement
Level 5 – Achieving Maximum Success Through Content Creation
It is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide that teaches the basics and the not so basic ideas of how to create a website. As a retired special education teacher who has been trained to create comprehensive curriculum, I can vouch for the approach taken by the owners of WA.
Product Information – Is It a Pyramid Scheme?
No, it is not a pyramid scheme. I once participated in a multi-level marketing company where I had to invest money in product and sell my inventory. Each month I was required to purchase a minimal amount of inventory to keep active in the company. I also had to recruit people in order to move to the next level and receive payments through recruitment.
Wealthy Affiliate is not like that. There are two avenues to choose from when joining WA. Either you take the training course that teaches you how to create and promote your own website (which is what I did), or follow the “Bootcamp” route in which you learn how to promote WA. You can earn money by following either path.
But Does It Actually Accomplish What It Says It Will??
Creating an Affiliate Website
In my evaluation, yes it does …..to an extent. I am not a techie by any stretch of the imagination. So I have trouble understanding how to use code to create something. (WA minimizes coding by its members, but sometimes you have to refer to a coded page in order to insert codes.) It’s hard for me to follow instructions if it is not written out in a step by step format, including a video. Even when it is step by step, I still find it difficult to follow.
Not Too User Friendly
I have to admit that WA is not as user friendly as I would have hoped. The instructions and the videos are easy to follow, however, some of the training videos are out-dated. They will ask you to open something on your dashboard, then click this or that, but what they are asking you to click is not exactly there. When installing plugins or addons, the actual choice of plugins have changed along with their formats.
I believe the videos must have been made a few years ago, resulting in different choices with upgraded formats. Many times I had to adapt them which, for the most part, worked. However, sometimes it did not, and I had to contact the community or site support for help. I can definitely say though that site support is excellent, as is the community of helpers.
The training provides a logical process for creating an initial website and subsequently making it conducive to affiliate marketing. So, yes it does succeed in providing a person with this knowledge.
Making a Passive Income
You can make a passive income following their techniques and strategies. I am in my 5th month at WA and have just started making affiliate income. This is consistent with their representation that one can start to earn money between 3 and 6 months into the program.
Which affiliate(s) you become active with will determine how much commission income you make from sales. Once your website is up and running, they teach you how to apply to different affiliates. After applying, the merchant will tell you whether or not you are accepted into their affiliate program. From there, you search their products and add a link if it complements what you are discussing in your post.
Wealthy Affiliate Benefits
I cannot speak for other affiliate marketing platforms but as far as WA is concerned, it proved beneficial to me. It provided me with information and guidance on how to:
Choose a niche
Create a website
Create valuable content with income producing potential
Enhance readability through design
Find and apply to affiliate programs
Have internal links
Add a website to Google, Bing and Yahoo, although Bing and Yahoo aren’t used much any more
Drive traffic to my site
After completing all 5 levels, there are numerous live seminars to sign up for to enhance your website. In addition WA offers many videos on separate topics to expand your website and business.
Wealthy Affiliate Product Support
The community is wonderful. They are anxious to help with any difficulties you run into. WA provides a platform for asking and answering questions. There are numerous “how to” videos created by the community that are also very helpful.
If the community cannot help you, you can ask site support. I once thought I lost a post I had been working on for a couple of days, but site support was able to find it for me; as I said, I am not a techie. They also helped me link to other search engines when I was unable to figure that out.
So What’s the Catch, Or Is There Any?
In addition to all the benefits of WA there are a few caveats.
You do everything online. There is no one to speak to directly. I feel this is probably true of all affiliate networks. There have been times when I thought if I could just talk to someone, I’d be able to solve this dilemma.
Not all the videos are timely. This has been a bit frustrating when I was asked to click on a specific item and it was not there. But all in all, it was not that difficult to figure out an alternative, and that’s coming from a non-techie! But why should we be paying for outdated information???
The monthly fees ($49/month) are a little high but this premium membership includes the ownership fee of your website’s domain and up to 10 more sites if you’d like to create them.
So Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth It?
When I decided to try blogging with the intent of making some passive money, I researched programs and decided on Wealthy Affiliate. I feel WA has suited me well up to this point.
However, after completing the levels and creating what I feel is a good website, Best Gardening For Beginners, I think I have learned all WA can teach me. I did not know anything about building a website before joining WA. This platform has helped me understand that.
Being a newbie to the tech and blogging world, I would recommend this platform to others who want to learn how to build a website. But once you have established your site, I would recommend finding another avenue that is more timely, and one that will help you grow and expand your earnings.
Based on the points noted above, I rate WA 4.3 out of 5.
If you decide to join Wealthy Affiliate, click here.
I hope you found this review helpful.
If you have any questions or comments regarding Wealthy Affiliate, please leave them below.
bestgardeningforbeginners@gmail.com
https://bestgardeningforbeginners.com