I found Wealthy Affiliate 2 years ago, as I was Googling Elite Marketing Pro. It was the beginning of my network marketing career, and I wanted to build my business online without chasing friends and family. I saw a Facebook ad about Elite Marketing Pro, and I was curious. First, I did what most people do: I searched for reviews on Google! I ended up reading a comparison between Wealthy Affiliate and Elite Marketing Pro. The review sold me on Wealthy Affiliate. In the end, I did buy a membership with Elite Marketing Pro about a year later, but that’s a topic for a future post. For now, I want to give you my honest review of Wealthy Affiliate. I am not an affiliate, so you know my review is 100% objective.
What is Wealthy Affiliate?
In case you are not quite sure what Wealthy Affiliate is about, let me give you a brief overview: Wealthy Affiliate is a platform for affiliate marketers.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marking allows you to get paid a commission when people buy products you are promoting online. You can be an affiliate in pretty much any niche. To get a sense of what you could sell on your Website, Google whatever your niche is and “affiliate programs.”
You should purchase the products you want to sell on your blog for yourself first, so whatever niche you choose, you need to think about monetization from the get-go. I talk about that in my post 5 Things You Need To Do Before You Start Blogging That Nobody Else Will Tell You.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
As an affiliate, you get a personal trackable link to the sales page of the product. When people click on it, they are tracked using cookies, and you get paid when they buy. When you join Wealthy Affiliate, you start building your site right away following the training modules on the platform. Your WordPress theme and your hosting are included, which means your Website lives on the Wealthy Affiliate platform. Moreover, you get access to weekly live training sessions and a community of fellow affiliate marketers.
The Good and The Bad
In this Wealthy Affiliate review, we will be looking at the pros and cons of the Wealthy Affiliate platform.
The Good
Let’s start with the good, shall we? Because I am that kind of person. I like focusing on the bright side of things. First off, I was a complete newbie when I joined Wealthy Affiliate. So the training was truly amazing for me. I went through all the modules very fast as I was excited to start my blog. As a newbie, here’s what I enjoyed about Wealthy Affiliate.
- The Education: Wealthy Affiliate includes detailed training modules. You will learn everything that relates to setting up your blog, affiliate programs you can promote, and how to pick keywords to rank on Google. Plus, every week, you get access to live training sessions on more advanced topics.
- The Community: At Wealthy Affiliate, you will find a community of like-minded people. It’s like the Facebook of online marketers. The community aspect is the best thing about Wealthy Affiliate, without a doubt. I have become Facebook friends with some fellow online marketers that I met on Wealthy Affiliate, and we keep in touch to this day. As a bonus, you get to exchange reviews and comments on your blog. More engagement and comments on your posts will help with ranking on Google, so it’s a great way to get interactions fast.
- Free tools: Wealthy Affiliate offers a free keyword planning tool, an article writing tool, and royalty-free images.
The Bad
Now that I have more knowledge and experience, I feel that I am in a position to review Wealthy Affiliate objectively. At first, I was happy with the platform; I even decided to pay for a whole year! It’s been two years, and here’s what I found the cons are:
- Internal Website Hosting Platform: Many would consider not having to pay extra for their Website to be a positive point. However, most experienced bloggers will tell you: You should be responsible for hosting your blog. You should never host your Website elsewhere outside your regular hosting provider. You want to make sure you have full control over your blog, and its CPanel, etc. Self-hosting your blog is cheap, and it’s worth it!
- Incomplete Training: The series of modules that you need to go through when you set up your blog teach nothing about email marketing and traffic strategies that don’t involve SEO. The training lessons focus on low hanging fruit as that keyword strategy to rank in Google, and that’s it for traffic! The main training modules should include info on essential tools like Grammarly, landing page builders, and Pretty Links. Now, there might be some weekly training sessions about some of these topics, but I don’t know for sure.
- The Tools: You don’t need the keyword planning tool. Use Ubersuggest when you are just starting and SEM Rush when you are more serious about SEO. I also suggest you do your keyword research on Pinterest first as this will be your primary source of traffic when you are just starting. Furthermore, you can get most of your stock images for free or very cheap on canva.com.
- The hype: If you do your research on the Internet about Wealthy Affiliate, you will find the most reviews are from affiliates. They get 50% commission on any membership, so members tend to promote the platform regardless of whether they had results or not. Many sites promoting Wealthy Affiliate are of poor quality. Since the other options of affiliate products presented in the training modules range between 5 and 20 percent in commission, it seems like a no-brainer to promote Wealthy Affiliate and get a 50 percent commission.
The Verdict
Non-Affiliate Experience
So what’s the verdict? My review of Wealthy Affiliate as a non-affiliate is based on my experience with the platform. So let me tell you a bit more about what happened after I joined. As I said, I ended up building my blog after purchasing a yearly membership. I did a terrible job of picking a niche. I started a blog about supplements to grow my network marketing business. Not only that but my domain name was supplements-for-health.com. In case you don’t know yet, you should avoid dashes, numbers, and hyphens in your domain name. It’s like a basic rule of blogging! Somehow, I didn’t learn that in the basic training. I have learned a lot since. If like me, you are a network marketer and would like to build your business online, I recommend you check out my 30-minute workshop.
Missing Crucial Training
The fact that the training is lacking as far as email marketing goes is a huge problem. Furthermore, focusing on Google as a source of traffic for newbies is a mistake. New bloggers need to learn Pinterest for traffic generation. However, the community might be just what you need to stay motivated. If you would like a community of affiliate marketers, you can always join the platform on the free plan and give it a try.
In conclusion, Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t cut it considering all the other options available out there. The information provided on the platform is not enough to make a meaningful income from your blog. Most Wealthy Affiliate members who make money do so by promoting Wealthy Affiliate. Members start promoting the platform before they had results, which is a bit spammy.
Other Options
I have since taken many other blogging courses (I am currently working on Elite Blog Academy). While I did enjoy my learning experience with Wealthy Affiliate, I don’t feel the platform was a good investment of time and money in hindsight. Instead, I recommend you consider looking into my niche site course, which is a lot cheaper than a yearly Premium membership with Wealthy Affiliate, and they offer a lot more value. If you launch your blog using this course you will be much better equipped to succeed with your online business.