This is a comprehensive collection of reviews about Wealthy Affiliate (2022 Edition). On top of that, as a current member of Wealthy Affiliate, I will also be giving you a tour or sneak peak behind the 👀 paywall.
I would say this is the ultimate Wealthy Affiliate review because in this article, you’ll be learning more about the platform in depth.
What You'll Learn
- compiled reviews from different sources across the internet
- common complaints from current and previous members
- pros and cons of joining the program
- whether it’s legit or scam
- a sneak peek behind the paywall so you see what goes on behind the scenes
- my honest review of Wealthy Affiliate [2022 edition]
- my expert and personal recommendation if you should join or avoid
- other alternatives to Wealthy Affiliate
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Before we dive into the nitty gritty of Wealthy Affiliate, let’s do a brief review of what affiliate marketing is all about.
What is all the hype with affiliate marketing? Why do bloggers always mention this as a form of generating income as a writer or influencer?
The answer is simple. ☝️
Affiliate marketing, to say in the simplest words, is commission by referral.
The referral can be made simply by clicking on an affiliate link. For the most part, the reader must make a purchase or transaction using this link in order for the affiliate to earn a commission.
Wait, what? Explain like I’m five.
Okay. So, you read an article about how good Proactiv is for acne. In the article, there’s a link on the word Proactiv or it says if you want to try it out, click here. Then, you click the link and it takes you to the Proactiv website. That is likely an affiliate link.
Now, you decide to try it out and you bought some. The person who referred you to that website then gets a commission! Easy peasy!
Moving on, commissions can be in the form of credits, money, or points. Mostly, it’s through monetary compensation.
Is it really that simple?
Yes, it is. However, it can also be very complicated once you consider a variety of factors that affect this so-called affiliate link. We, will however, not go in depth about affiliate marketing in this post. So, let’s get a move on.
What Is Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate is an online learning platform for affiliate marketers of all levels – aspiring, newbies, intermediate, and professional ones. Co-founded by Kyle and Carson in 2005, the platform has grown its following since then.
A membership with Wealthy Affiliate will give you access to trainings and workshops that could cost you hundreds of dollars for just a single course.
👉 Check out what Wealthy Affiliate has in store for you here
Reviews About Wealthy Affiliate
I have personally researched high and low to compile a list of reviews that people from all across the web have left about the Wealthy Affiliate Program. Moreover, I have filtered only the best and most helpful from the platform itself. Yes! I have searched within the 🔐 site to show you what current members say!
Common Complaints
What’s a review without mentioning the complaints that people have, right? No one product is perfect, which is why Wealthy Affiliate also has its own imperfections. Here are the top 3 complaints about Wealthy Affiliate:
❌ Outdated information
❌ Awful tech support
❌ False promises and exaggerated claims
Outdated Information. I would agree to this. I am not an expert in affiliate marketing, but their basic trainings need major revamp because it has not changed at all since 2018.
Awful Tech Support. I have tried seeking tech support once and the turnaround time was 1 day for a response, but a lot of people say it is a nightmare. When I say tech support, I don’t mean the chat box where random members try to help you. I mean tech support who actually works for Wealthy Affiliate.
False Promises & Exaggerated Claims. On their website, they claim that “members own Google rankings”, “own a huge share of all traffic online”, .
They also have this “Zero Risk” guarantee seal. I mean, you’re only risking time and money. To me, that is a major risk.
Behind the Scenes of Wealthy Affiliate
Are you ready for the most exciting part? 🧐 A sneak peek behind the paywall! You will finally get a sneak peak on what it looks like as Premium member of the community and platform. The picutre above is basically how your homepage would look like as a paid member.
Wealthy Affiliate Training Platform
Wealthy Affiliate Member View
Wealthy Affiliate Sneak Peak
Pros & Cons of Wealthy Affiliate
You scour the web looking for Wealthy Affiliate reviews and find a ton of them talking about whether it’s a scam or not. Well guess what? It isn’t.
Again, I repeat – Wealthy Affiliate is not a scam.
What’s one reason that people think Wealthy Affiliate is a scam?
⁉️ Their referral commissions pay a fat ass check, which makes users want to promote the program heavily. Mind you, a lot of the articles I found online are also not very well written and sounds overly scammy trying to convince you to sign up. 🤢
✅ Pros of Becoming a Member
- You can try the platform for free with limited features
- Premium WordPress hosting is included for up to 10 websites (and you only need one to start)
- Access to their proprietary Jaaxy search engine optimization and research tool
- 24/7 live support (including community support)
- You get your own blog within the platform
- Thousands of pre-recorded trainings + live daily workshops
- Incentives for being active such as awards/badges
- Connect to thousands of like-minded people and potential clients
❌ Cons of Becoming a Member
- It is quite expensive starting at $49/month for Premium Membership and $99/month for Premium Plus+
- Lots of outdated materials
- Lack of adequate information on market trends
- Domain hosting is not the best deal at $14.99/year (you can get cheaper rates elsewhere)
- Lots of members give bad advice even though they are legit trying to help
- A tad bit shallow education
- Slow growth on platform value
- You can only use WordPress for hosting your site (not a con for me, but might be for some people)
- Heavily focused on article writing
My Official Review
Without further ado, it’s my turn to roast Wealthy Affiliate! 😈 JK. I will try to be unbiased in this portion to be fair to you and to Kyle and Carson as well. We will also go more in-depth of what I meant with the pros and cons above.
What makes me qualified to give this review, you may ask?
👉 I have been a member since 2018 (4+ years and counting!)
👉 I am among the Top 200 contributors on the site (pushing for Top 100 😅)
👉 I am a Premium member (aiming to go for Premium+ soon)
👉 I have the Online Entrepreneur Certification (earned by completing trainings in the site)
In my honest opinion, if you are absolutely new to affiliate marketing (as in you don’t have any idea what you’re doing), I would only join if I can dedicate a lot of crunched time focused on learning. Why? So you can make the best bang for the buck! Otherwise, I would just take advantage of good ol’ Google.
Since I’m still a premium member, that already says I like the program and the platform. Obviously, there are things I don’t like about it, but the benefits to me far outweigh the cons.
✨ Read about my Wealthy Affiliate Review on Medium here
I specifically do not like Jaaxy. If you don’t know yet, Wealthy Affiliate has its own keyword research tool called Jaaxy. If you sign up for membership, you get access to it.
That thing is garbage 🗑. If I use it, I only use it to get keyword ideas, but I don’t trust it with its sketchy algorithmic scoring. Use it for keyword ideas and then utilize a different engine to check its scalability.
Web hosting is purely WordPress powered. No issues for me because I love working with WordPress. All of my sites run on this powerful content management platform.
I have to say that I don’t trust my main website to run under the Wealthy Affiliate hosting plan. I only trust an established web hosting provider with excellent technical support such as Hostinger. I utilize it for other smaller projects, and this website is not under the Wealthy Affiliate plan.
Another thing I hate about it is the rampant bad advice or teachings some members relay especially on the live chat. I understand they’re trying to be helpful, but they are clearly ill-informed.
Take an example down below.
The scenario: Website is MMO-related and is getting traffic for a way different niche. Niche A is about earning revenue online (getting about 100 visitors) and Niche B is mosquito-related (I know, weird right?) with about 1K+ visits per month. The question was, which route should be the best option?
Okay, he has a point but hear me out. 👂
The bad advice that made me 🙄 cringe was him saying “You’re not looking to reinvent the wheel here”. I mean, have you ever heard of the term “kaizen” or “innovation”?
Times change and saying the wheel cannot be reinvented is plain bad advice. Thinking creatively and thinking out of the box is what you should be promoting, not some old adage to restrict or prevent someone from exploring what possibilities they can do with what they currently have.
Moving on, the mediocre blog posts members create that are not worth sharing, nor comments people leave just to boost their rankings.
Here’s an example, someone sharing about how cold it is right where they live and how they are going about their day (with pics and all). Like, who gives a crap? Mind you, this is in the Top 10 blogs. Whaaat? And then people just saying have a great day. I do not want to see this. This is not what I’m paying for. Literal vomit. 🤮
Ah, yes. The outdated trainings. Don’t get me wrong but there are trainings that get uploaded that are updated and keeping up with the trends, but the older ones need to be updated; If not, trashed.
Also, they focus heavily on article writing and leave out important social medias such as Pinterest, Twitter, etc. There’s a few of them there, but not comprehensive enough given the price you pay for.
At this point, I’m starting to wonder if I should renew my next yearly subscription. 😬
On the flip side, I really love learning new things from the platform itself. Everything that is affiliate marketing related is in one place. Makes it easier instead of having a million tabs open.
Also, the fact that I can host up to 25 premium WordPress sites (grandfathered from my 2018 membership). New users only get 10 nowadays. Sorry folks!
I also love the gamification of the community platform. Meaning, you get badges and incentives for being an active member. Again, this is also one of the pain points of Wealthy Affiliate itself because a lot of members put up nonsense stuff. 🙄
If I give a star rating, I would say Wealthy Affiliate gets 4/5 stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wealthy Affiliate Membership Tips & Tricks
Okay, so you finally decided to sign up for membership. The next question is, how do you get membership for the lesser price? Can you squeeze out a deal or two to make this less financially burdensome for you? The answer – YES!
👉 Check out the full features + membership pricing for Wealthy Affiliate
For those who have limited funds…
If you have limited funds, join for free to check out what’s inside and get a feel of what it’s like. Once you become a member, you’ll get a “special discount” to go premium for $19. This gets you 1 month of Wealthy Affiliate Premium Membership.
💢 Make sure you set aside a dedicated time to learn as much as you can about affiliate marketing in one solid month.
- Take advantage of the $19 promo upgrade when you sign up for a free account. But! Do so once you’ve extinguished all available free information.
- Black Friday 🖤 is a great time for upgrades! I signed up for Premium membership during Black Friday and paid $299 (regular $499) for a whole year. That’s $200 off!
- If you’re Premium, you will eventually get a discounted offer to sign up for Premium+ and I highly suggest to wait until you are ready for more learnings. Maybe a cheaper Blalck Friday offer will also be available!
- Pay on a yearly basis because it will be far cheaper.
WA Monthly Plan: $49
WA Yearly Plan: $499 (Save $89 or get about 1.5 months FREE)
In Summary…
Sign up as a free member ➔ upgrade to premium for $19 ➔ upgrade to yearly on Black Friday ➔ upgrade to Premium+ on a Black Friday
‼️ Reminder:
- Only upgrade if you are ready for more
- Upgrade around or during Black Friday or when you have the best promo deal
Alternatives to Wealthy Affiliate
I’m sure there are probably hundreds of programs out there that serve as a good alternative to Wealthy Affiliate. In this post however, I will suggest the top that I believe is worth signing up for (that I will purchase myself… but I already have too much expenses 😅).
💎 Authority Hacker
If I only had lots of extra money, I would definitely purchase Authority Hacker’s two products: Authority Site System 3.0 and Authority Hacker Pro.
Their program is relatively different from Wealthy Affiliate in a sense that its main focus is about building a website on a specific niche and making sure you have the best authority on it. Hence, building an “authoritative” website.
Founders: Mark & Gael
Founded: 2013
Number of Programs: 2
FAQ
Wealthy Affiliate is most definitely NOT a scam. It is an affiliate marketing community where you can learn about how to monetize your blog so you can earn money from home.
Joining is quite expensive, but you get the benefit of a condensed platform that is dedicated to affiliate marketing itself instead of having to do your own research. If you are determined enough, you ill probably learn a lot from this platform.
A lot of reviews scattered across the internet bash the platform to promote other products using their affiliate links, so do your own judgement. On the bright side, there’s also a lot of members that love the community. So I would say, it’s a mixture of both good and bad.
You can make money from their referral program with an average of $8 per member. If taking in and learning from the platform, yes you can but it might take you a while.
I would say it’s worth it for those who are absolutely new to affiliate marketing. Otherwise, you are better off learning elsewhere.
As mentioned above, yes it’s great only for beginners. If you already have intermediate experience, you might find the trainings sort of redundant.
Did I miss something?
I’d love to hear from you! 🙏 Please do leave a comment or drop me a message!
Ready to the Join Wealthy Affiliate Community?
If you’re looking for a community-driven affiliate marketing platform that will not only teach you the basics of affiliate marketing, but will also encourage you to keep moving forward – then this is the platform for you!
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