The Wealthy Affiliate Review | Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate?

This review has been a long time coming. I’m a big proponent of trying something out before touting its benefits or lack thereof to others. Now that I have been with Wealthy Affiliate (WA) for several months, I’m ready to write the Wealthy Affiliate Review 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

As proof of my experience with Wealthy Affiliate, I invite you to visit one of my websites that was built following the training provided at WA. You can check it out here at https://mavicmaniacs.com. Please let me know what you think of the site as I’m always looking to improve the user experience. Much of this review will be based on my experiences as I was developing this site.

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

What Does Wealthy Affiliate Have to Offer?

This topic is actually hard to narrow down. There are many aspects of Wealthy Affiliate that I can say is an offering. Here’s a list of some of the more prominent features:

• Unbelievable Training – The training courses offered on WA are top-notch. There’s content produced, not only by the founders, but by other members as well. There’s even a live webinar training provided every week. Don’t worry, if you can’t make it the recording is usually available that evening or the next day.
• Outstanding Web hosting – Web hosting at WA includes many features that would cost way more if you went somewhere else and is part of your membership fee (no up charge)!
• Live Chat – This is arguably the best feature by far. Live chat is one of the top places to go when you have a question, want to mingle with your fellow members or would like to offer help. I’d go as far as to say that its a self-contained social media site focusing on niche marketing and helping each other.
• Blogs – Each member has their own blog within the community and we can follow each other, comment on posts, ask and answer questions and so on.
• Awesome Support – If you have an issue with your site, your account or in general, you can reach out to support. They’re quick to respond and just as fast, if not faster, in resolving any issues.

What’s Does Wealthy Affiliate Teach?

In a nutshell, Wealthy Affiliate teaches you affiliate marketing. There are two distinct routes of training you can follow: Online Entrepreneur Certification and Affiliate Bootcamp. They’re pretty much the same training but customized to focus on your intended path to either promote your own business or niche or promote WA itself. I actually followed both training courses starting with the Online Entrepreneur Certification as I wanted to validate that the training works before promoting it. Once I confirmed that my efforts were earning money, I became excited to share the program with you.

The basic training elements are:

Selecting a Niche – For lack of a better description this just means selecting your focus. A niche can be anything from your own products/services to things such as photography, drones, and so on. The niche can also be promoting a company or service such as Wealthy Affiliate.

Building a Website – This is the true bread and butter of the program. As you follow along in the training you’ll actually be creating your own website. It will be complete from head to toe when you finish. You’ll be amazed at how simple it actually is once you break it all down into its basic elements.

Generating Traffic – There are several ways to get traffic to your site. Advertising, promotions, word of mouth and so on. These all have their place but the best way to get traffic to your site is to offer quality content. WA will teach you what you need to know to generate quality content that will have your visitors coming back for more.

Monetizing – This is another multifaceted category. You can sell your own wares, become an affiliate with various companies to promote their products and earn a referral or commission fee, offer your services and much more. The training at WA will cover these topics in detail.

This Sounds Complicated. Is it?

That’s really a subjective question. For me, it was a breeze. For my grandmother, maybe a small learning curve, as she’s not computer-literate by any means. That said, the training is aimed for the basic user and there’s always live chat and the comments section when you have a question or need assistance.  Additional, more advanced training is also available once you have the basics down.

If you follow the training and don’t try to jump ahead, you should be fine. If you take shortcuts or run into a term you just don’t understand, reach out and someone will be happy to help.

Are There Other Options Out There?

Absolutely. You can’t get on Facebook without seeing some sort of make money online offer pop up. The question to ask yourself is which option is best for you?

I actually found Wealthy Affiliate by mistake. I clicked to join the free hour-long webinar for a competing program and found myself questioning it and the claims made by the presenter. I started exercising my Google-foo and within minutes found very unfavorable reviews (many of them) for this particular program.

Oddly a few of those reviews also had alternative suggestions and many of them suggested WA. This intrigued me so I did a bit more digging and actually became a little suspicious of WA. All I was finding were good reviews and nothing bad (that’s a red flag for me). After a few more searches I was able to find a few disgruntled WA members so that helped me to validate it was a legitimate program with pros and cons and not just all fluff.

A little more digging and I began to see a pattern with the disgruntled reviews.  They either didn’t give the program a true try or were looking for instant gratification, skipping the training and just moving forward without knowing what they were doing and expecting the community to do it for them.

Why Wealthy Affiliate?

Rather than rehash what I wrote in the section titled “What Does Wealthy Affiliate Have to Offer?”, just go back up there, re-read the section and then come back here.

Now that you’ve re-read the offerings, here’s the reason to give them a try:

• They don’t make get-rich-quick claims. They promote a tried and true program that simply works but expects you to apply yourself.
• They are way less expensive than the other programs out there. The free tier is, just that, free and the premium tier (the only other tier) is
  either $49 per month or $495 per year (saving you even more and making it equivalent to $41.25 per month, just paid all at once). There’s no gouging for the next level. It’s free or Premium, that’s it. That’s a steal for just the hosting features alone, not to mention the training, community and support.
• There’s a free option – The free option gives you the basic training and 2 websites for you to develop. That means you can give it a try and it won’t cost you anything but your time! Even better, you can stay with the free option forever if you want. It won’t go away after 30 days or anything like that.
• If you upgrade to the Premium offering, its all-inclusive. There aren’t different tiers tugging at your purse strings everywhere you turn. There’s just free and premium. In fact, the free offering gives you many of the Premium features for the first 7 days so you can experience the most of the bells and whistles. If you love them then go premium. If not, stay free.
• The Premium level also offers these bonuses: A free .com domain ($14 value), 100 Community Credits, a bonus live class (AMA With Kyle, Succeeding in 2020)
• The founders are active in the community. They didn’t just put this program together and walk away to simply collect money from others. They are actively involved in the day-to-day operations, chats, blogs and so on and are continuously looking to improve the services and offerings of WA.

Here’s a comparison of the Starter vs Premium options:

Wealthy Affiliate Sounds Too Good to Be True. Is it a SCAM?

I totally understand how you can be skeptical of Wealthy Affiliate. After all when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. That said, I can tell you wholeheartedly that WA is not a SCAM but rather an excellent source of training, hosting resources and an impressive community of members willing to help each other succeed. The best part is arguably the free membership option. Test the waters and find out for yourself. If its not your cup of tea, great, no harm done, but if it is, your opportunities are really limitless. I’ll tell you that on day 3 of my free membership I went premium. The features and training were well worth it to me.

One thing I can’t stress enough. You’ll get out what you put into your site(s). This is a business and requires you to put forth effort. If you’re looking for the get-rich-quick scheme or are of the “I want to make money but don’t want to work at it” mindset, this is not the place for you. With WA you can succeed but, just as in any business, you’ll need to apply yourself, follow the training and work your site(s).

Conclusion

So there you have it, the Wealthy Affiliate Review. Is Wealthy Affiliate Legitimate? Absolutely. Is it for everyone, no.

See if you can learn anything from them. If you’re already a self-made millionaire and know all there is to know about affiliate marketing, WA may not be for you, but, if you’re new to affiliate marketing, know that you don’t know everything, and can see a benefit from training, a community willing to help each other and excellent hosting then check them out, try the free account and say hello. Heck, if you’re just looking for a good hosting solution for your web site(s), check them out.

If you follow any of my links in this post and sign up, then your account will be associated with mine and I’d be happy to help mentor you on your journey. Join Wealthy Affiliate. If you don’t follow my links, that’s fine, follow someone else’s or go to the website directly and sign up. Just keep in mind that I won’t be your direct mentor if you don’t follow my link. In the end I just want to help you succeed and I truly believe WA is a great opportunity.

Update – 5/18/2020 – This post was updated to reflect the new Premium Annual Membership option, removal of the 6 month plan, and announcement of the bonuses for Annual Plan members.

Is there something missing from this post? Do you have an experience with WA that you’d like to share (good or bad)? Has this post helped you in some way? Please comment below. I read and respond to each one.

Thank you,

Scott Hinkle

SmallOnlineBiz.com

What is Affiliate Marketing? – What is Wealthy Affiliate? –  A Little Bit About Scott Hinkle… – How Does This Program Work? – Let’s Get Started