Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate?

With so many scams out there, it can be difficult to tell whether an online business opportunity is just that, an opportunity or a scam. Today’s post is going to briefly touch on what Wealthy Affiliate (WA) is all about, what the platform offers and answer the question “Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate?”.

• Name: Wealthy Affiliate
• Owners: Kyle and Carson
• URL: https://wealthyaffiliate.com
• Features/Offerings: 4.5/5
• Training and Education: 5/5
• Ease of use: 4/5
• Support: 4.5/5
• Price: Starter Membership (Free), Premium Membership ($49/month or $495/annual)
• Annual Member Bonuses: A free .com domain ($14 value), 100 Community Credits, a bonus live class (AMA With Kyle, Succeeding in 2020)
• SmallOnlineBiz.com Rating: 4.5/5

I’m also going to cover what I like as well as what I don’t like about WA. As with any platform, there are pros and cons and Wealthy Affiliate is no different in that respect. To each is own and what I may like you may dislike and vice-versa. That said, let’s take a look and determine if WA is legitimate or not…

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE SEE MY AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

A Brief Introduction to Wealthy Affiliate

So what is Wealthy Affiliate about? WA was brought about by co-founders Kyle and Carson as a way to share their experience and expertise in the field of affiliate marketing and to build a business that, not only trains others but, provides a platform with the tools and support to help people succeed.

As I stated this is a brief introduction, if you’d like more details on Wealthy Affiliate, please check out my Wealthy Affiliate page.

What Does WA Bring to the Table (What Do They Offer)?

Wealthy Affiliate brings quite a bit, actually. Let’s touch on the main features:

• Keyword Research – If you want your site, pages and posts to rank in the search engines, you need to do your keyword research. The subtle changes to your target keywords can make the difference between 5 visitors and month and 500. As a member of WA, you have access to the Jaaxy keyword research tool. It’s actually much more than that and I suggest you check out my Jaaxy, a Review post.
• The WA Community – Let’s face it, everyone needs help, or at the very least a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, from time to time. Wealthy affiliate has a great community ready to help at any time.
  • Live Chat – As a Premium member you have access to Live Chat (Starter members have access for the first 7 days).
  • Private Message – Premium members can also private message each other within the platform.
  • Post Questions – The trainings and blog posts have comment sections where you can discuss the topic and ask questions.
  • Create Trainings – Members can create trainings of their own to help other members.
  • Write Blog Posts – Members are able to write blog posts within the WA platform on virtually any subject they wish.
• Training – Wealthy Affiliate offers great training, including two primary courses focusing on affiliate marketing. There are also live trainings every week, several more training courses and even courses created by fellow members.
• Feedback – WA offers a tool designed to solicit feedback from others on a variety of subjects related to your site, page or post. It’s a great way to get constructive criticism and help you your site better.
• Comments – Engagement is critical when it comes to ranking in the search engines. The SiteComments tool is all about getting quality comments on your posts and show that you’re engaging with your audience.
• Hosting – As a free, Starter member you can build one website on the SiteRubix.com subdomain (you’re never forced to upgrade to the Premium offering). As a Premium member, you actually get quite a bit more with 10 free sites using your own domain names or subdomains on SiteRubix.com (domain name registration is additional).

It’s quite a lot to take in at once. Believe it or not, there’s actually more but these are the main features.

What Do I Like About Wealthy Affiliate?

Hands down, it’s the community. Never before have I joined any program or training course with such a large diverse group of people, all with a similar goal of building or bettering their life or business and willing to help each other out in the process. Have a question? Want to bounce an idea off someone? Post it in a blog on the WA platform or reach out in Live Chat. There’s always someone that will come to your aid.

Don’t get me wrong, the training is great too. Need to know how to do something, what tool or plugin to use or what something is/means? Check out the various classrooms, training articles and videos.

The hosting platform is also top-notch. Free SSL for your site; SiteSpeed, to serve up your pages fast and hosting on servers in AWS help to provide, secure, fast and reliable service.

What Don’t I Like About WA?

As odd as it sounds, the WA community or, to be more specific, the disruptive members. As with almost anything else out there, there are going to be those few people that are either jealous, completely clueless, trying to be funny or just plain rude, trying to stir up trouble.

Occasionally someone will start arguing, making useless comments, asking the same questions over and over or spam the community in an effort to discredit the platform, someone on it, start an argument, solicit the community or simply waste people’s time. It’s hard to say why they do it, but it does happen. When it does it’s very disruptive and leaves members irritated.

Wealthy Affiliate does have a reporting mechanism that, when enough members use it, will block the user from various services such as Live Chat. It works but, by the time enough people report the offender, the damage has already been done.

One other issue is too much content. It can be difficult to find that one training article or video you’re looking for with all the content that’s available. There is a search feature and the trainings are organized into classrooms but it’s still not as easy as it could be.

Conclusion | Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate?

So they offer training, a diverse set of tools and services, a great supportive community and an advanced hosting platform. Does that make them legitimate, maybe but let’s dig just a little deeper…

Do they make wild promises like making money with little to no effort or making so much within a certain period? No. Are the reviews and testimonials paid for or do they use actors to produce fake reviews? No. Both of these are red flags to look for when evaluating a product or service.

One more question that should be answered and it’s probably the most important… Does the program work? Yes. Before I built this site and started to promote Wealthy Affiliate, I joined the platform and followed the training. I built a drone site where I blog about drone related topics, product reviews and so on. I was able to build traffic and monetize it successfully.  Check it out yourself at https://mavicmaniacs.com.

Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate? Yes

No platform is perfect but I believe Wealthy Affiliate is as close to it as you can get. Do yourself a favor and sign up for the free Starter membership to see for yourself. The only thing it will cost you is the time you spend to check it out. I think you’ll find it to be a great platform to help you start or grow your online business.

Thank you,

Scott Hinkle

Small Online Biz