Wealthy Affiliate Review (My Experience 7 Years In)

Most reviews of Wealthy Affiliate fit into two categories…

A “glorified sales pitch” from an affiliate, who’s sole purpose is convincing you of how “amazing” Wealthy Affiliate is, so you join through their affiliate link.

And those that are overly negative from a rival company, internet troll or someone who thinks that Wealthy Affiliate is a scam because they didn’t make money within the first month.

Personally, I don’t think either of these reviews are going to help you.

Think about it. You could read every Wealthy Affiliate review from here to kingdom come. But unless the person writing it actually knows what they are talking about, and wants to help you make an informed decision by showing you BOTH sides of the coin, then you are flat out wasting your time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that my review of Wealthy Affiliate is going to be perfect.

Not at all.

But I’ve been a member of Wealthy Affiliate since October 2015. And in that time I have literally gone from earning zero dollars as a complete newbie, to earning 6 figures per year with affiliate marketing. Thanks to the tools, training and support I received within Wealthy Affiliate.

And I’m hell bent on telling it like it is.

Which is one of the main reasons I started this site to begin with, to provide people with honest and helpful reviews in the “make money online” space.

In keeping with this, I have a confession to make before we get started:

I am an affiliate of Wealthy Affiliate. So if you join Wealthy Affiliate through my affiliate link (ANY link to Wealthy Affiliate on this page), I may earn a commission.

I’m just being real with you.

I also want to point out that, while I do enjoy helping folks in this space, the main reason I’m writing this review is a selfish one.

The fact is that if people find this review helpful, which I hope they will, then it will lead to more success for me as an affiliate. As in, more traffic and more affiliate sales.

So my “intention” in writing this is a bit selfish. But the more helpful this review is, the more success I will see, and the more beneficial it will be for you.

Win win.

With that being said, here’s what I’ll be covering in the following review:

• My Journey With Wealthy Affiliate
• What’s Wealthy Affiliate About?
• Who’s Running the Show?
• How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
• Wealthy Affiliate Members Area Tour
• Wealthy Affiliate Membership Options
• Ways to Earn With Wealthy Affiliate
• Pros and Cons of Wealthy Affiliate
• Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Join Wealthy Affiliate?
• Is Wealthy Affiliate Legit or Scam?
• Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories
• Top 3 Alternatives to Wealthy Affiliate
• Conclusion

You can click any of the above links to skip to a specific section of the review that interests you.

Or strap in, grab a coffee, and read on for the full review!

My Journey With Wealthy Affiliate

In this section I am going to break down my entire journey with Wealthy Affiliate. Starting with how I found out about Wealthy Affiliate, what happened after joining and where I’m at now.

Before I Joined

My journey began like most people who join Wealthy Affiliate.

I was a complete newbie who wanted to escape the daily grind and do something different. Something that gave me some flexibility and freedom, something I enjoyed and something that could generate me a respectable income.

At the time, I was a wall and floor tiler here in Australia (my home country).

My days consisted of waking up at the crack of dawn, driving long hours to reach the job site, working my ass off all day, and coming home to do paperwork. Because I was running a small tiling business.

The money was okay and I did get a sense of satisfaction in what I did.

But after 13 years it became far too repetitive, boring and quite honestly physically exhausting. Also by the time I worked out all of my expenses, and the time I put in, I was barely making ends meet all things considered.

So something needed to change.

I had been trying to make money on the internet for years. Buying into just about every push button scam you could think of. And stupidly believing all the crap these “gurus” told me. I bought into scam after scam, after scam in desperation.

It wasn’t until late 2015 that something actually did change for me.

This is when I came across a review on a site called onemorecupof-coffee.com. The owner of the site (Nathaniell) seemed honest and trustworthy, and helped me avoid a junk program, so I decided to check out what he recommended- Wealthy Affiliate.

My Experience After Joining

Upon joining, I immediately felt that something was “different” about this place.

The community was active and helpful, the training was straightforward and practical. It just felt like a refreshing change from everything I had experienced to that point.

So I upgraded to Wealthy Affiliate Premium within a few days.

Right away I began following the training and taking action on what I was learning, without looking back.

I’d like to tell you that I started making money right away, but that’s simply not what happened.

The truth is it took me 3 full months just to make my first $1.17 as an Amazon affiliate.

Really.

And it took me a further 2 and a half months to earn my next $8 commission.

So about 5 and a half months in, I was at $9.17 in earnings (lol).

That sounds insane, right?

I mean, why would anyone want to work that hard for that long, to earn such a ridiculous amount of money?

I get it.

But I didn’t see it that way. Because I KNEW that if I could earn even just $1, I could earn $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000, $100,000 and so on.

And that’s exactly what I did.

Within less than two years, I was earning a full-time income and as of writing this, I’m earning six figures per year with affiliate marketing.

And the cool thing about this business is the flexibility and freedom it gives you. I work when, where, and how I want. It’s pretty cool.

Some Cool Perks Along the Way

As someone who promotes Wealthy Affiliate, and who makes roughly a 1,000 sales per year, I became eligible to attend the Wealthy Affiliate “Super Affiliate” conference.

This is an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas and it’s a pretty lux event.

Kyle and Carson (co-founders) literally flew me all the way from Australia to Las Vegas, put me up in a premium MGM Grand hotel room, and paid for practically everything while I was there. Such as dining out at fancy restaurants, live shows and other activities. They even threw me some gambling money lol!

Anyways, I think the main perk is that I got to personally meet Kyle and Carson in person:

Not to mention, I met the other super affiliates:

This was very cool and gave me a LOT more insight into the platform and the people running the show. Who are among the most genuine, humble and intelligent people I’ve ever met.

This made me proud to be part of Wealthy Affiliate, it’s why I continue being part of it to this day and it’s why I will probably never leave.

Safe to say I will be going again next year, and the year after that and so on. I don’t plan on ever leaving.

It took a lot of hard work to get to this point, there’s no denying that. But I can say with absolute confidence that it has been WELL worth it.

I love what I do and I love being part of Wealthy Affiliate.

And I think you will too.

What’s Wealthy Affiliate About?

Wealthy Affiliate is an online community that teaches people how to build an affiliate marketing business.

Affiliate marketing is a business model where you promote other company’s products online for a commission. When someone makes a purchase through your unique affiliate link, you get paid.

Of course there’s a lot more to it than just grabbing an affiliate link and watching the money roll in. You need to learn the right process and work hard if you want results.

In other words, it’s not a way to “get rich quick”.

What makes Wealthy Affiliate different to other sites that teach affiliate marketing?

It comes down to how comprehensive the platform is.

Instead of teaching you one specific method, you are taught the entire process of becoming an expert affiliate within ANY niche you want to get involved in.

And instead of having to go out and buy a bunch of different tools to build your business, you get ALL of the tools you need to implement the training.

Oh.. and instead of being left to fend for yourself or rely on “email ticket support” (as with most programs I review), you get an unbelievable amount of support to help you along the way. Whenever you need it.

Here’s what members get access to in a nutshell:

• Step-by-step “task based” training
• Websites and tools to build, manage and grow your business
• Help, support and mentoring

Absolutely nothing is left out of the equation.

The training is comprehensive. The tools are state of the art and user friendly, which makes building your site and business a lot easier for newbies. And anytime you need help, someone is there for you.

It’s the whole box and dice.

Who’s Running the Show?

Wealthy Affiliate (AKA Niche Marketing Inc.) was co-founded in 2005 by a couple of Canadian guys named Kyle Loudoun and Carson Lim:

How did Wealthy Affiliate come about?

Kyle and Carson met in college and decided to create a keyword list membership site.

The idea was to sell lists of high quality/ high volume keyword lists to people, that they could use within PPC (pay per click) campaigns to generate affiliate income.

That was a hit. So from there, they added training to help people setup profitable campaigns and a forum to help people learn from and help one another.

Since then, over 13 years on, Wealthy Affiliate has grown into what has become one of the largest and most successful platforms of its kind.

Each year Wealthy Affiliate continues to evolve with the aim of becoming better and more efficient. Something which is based largely on community feedback.

Aside from Kyle and Carson, it’s also worth mentioning a guy named Jay Neill. He’s the Live Training Coach within Wealthy Affiliate and hosts the weekly webinars.

He’s also someone I admire, because not only is he an expert at internet marketing, but he’s a top bloke and someone who always goes the extra mile to make understanding everything as easy and enjoyable as possible.

If you become a Premium member, you’ll see what I mean.

How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work (in a nutshell)?

Wealthy Affiliate works by teaching beginner’s the step-by-step process of affiliate marketing. In addition, you are given the tools and support you need to apply what you learn.

When you create your Wealthy Affiliate account and get through the initial welcome steps, there are two main “paths” you can take.

The first path is to undertake the Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) course, which shows you how to create an affiliate business within any niche you want.

The second (and optional) path is to go through the Affiliate Bootcamp course, which is a separate course dedicated to helping you promote Wealthy Affiliate itself.

It’s totally up to you which path you take.

Either way, whichever path you choose, the course material revolves around this core process:

• Choose an interest (niche market)
• Build a website
• Attract visitors (traffic)
• Earn revenue (promoting affiliate offers)

This is the fundamental process that Wealthy Affiliate revolves around. So regardless of which niche you choose, and what training path you take, these 4 steps are what you will be learning.

Each step is key in creating a profitable affiliate business, you cannot leave one out.

You must choose a niche because trying to sell stuff to everyone simply will not work. Your website is the very foundation of your business. You need people to visit your site (traffic) or you won’t sell anything. And you need relevant affiliate offers to promote in order to earn revenue.

So each step is critical to your success as an affiliate.

I created a beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing that breaks each of these steps down in full detail. So if you want to learn more about this process before joining, check out the above article.

Anyways, in addition to the training, you also get lesson specific tasks to complete as you go along.

So you will be building your business while you learn. The idea is to mark off each task off as you go, so you know how far you’ve come and exactly what you need to do next.

That about sums up how this works in a nutshell.

In the following sections, I will be going into a lot more detail about what you will find inside Wealthy Affiliate and how everything fits together.

Wealthy Affiliate Members Area Tour (Inside Look)

Wealthy Affiliate is a BIG platform with lots of moving parts, so it can feel daunting or even overwhelming to navigate at first.

Which is why I decided to give you guys a “sneak peek” inside Wealthy Affiliate.

This way, you will understand where everything within Wealthy Affiliate is, and the purpose behind the different areas, as you begin building out your business.

Let’s start with the “dashboard”…

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the home screen inside Wealthy Affiliate:

This will be your “go to” button if you’re ever lost or not sure where you are within the platform. One click will take you right back to the homepage.

This page consists of the latest posts from within the Wealthy Affiliate community, and a 24/7 chat feed to the right that you can use to engage with people whenever you want.

At the very top of the screen, you’ll see a search box that helps you find answers to any questions you have. Along with some links that take you to other areas of the platform. Such as your Wealthy Affiliate blog, WA affiliate program information, notifications and your WA inbox.

To the far left, you will see your profile image, along with a bunch of menu links underneath it:

If you click on your profile image you will get a popup which contains links to your profile page, account settings and other important pages related to your account.

Directly under your profile image, you will see the following menu links which take you to the different main areas of Wealthy Affiliate:

• Dashboard
• Training
• Websites
• Live Events
• Research
• Affiliate Programs
• Live Chat
• Help Center

I’ve already discussed the dashboard (home screen).

So from here, I am going to focus on the other main menu links (Training, Websites, Live Events etc) so you know what these are all about.

Training

The training tab inside Wealthy Affiliate is where, you guessed it, all of the training is located:

As you can see, there are a few options here. But the most important thing to understand is that there are TWO main training paths depending on what your goal is:

• Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC)
• Affiliate Bootcamp

Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC). This is the core training within Wealthy Affiliate, and it teaches you how to build an affiliate business within ANY niche you want to tackle. The material covers everything you need to build your business, such as choosing a niche, building your site, getting traffic and earning affiliate commissions.

This course consists of 5 individual courses, each with 10 lessons (50 lessons total):

Affiliate Bootcamp. This is an optional training course that teaches you how to promote Wealthy Affiliate itself. It is essentially the same training but it caters specifically towards folks who want to promote WA. There’s also some more advanced topics covered such as Pay Per Click (PPC) traffic strategies. Which makes it worth going through even if you don’t want to promote Wealthy Affiliate.

This course consists of 7 individual courses, each with 10 lessons (70 lessons total):

The cool thing about the above courses is that there are tasks to complete and the system keeps track of where you are up to within each course. This way, you can build your business while you learn, and you will always know what you need to do next to build your business.

In addition to the above courses, there’s also a “Classroom” tab:

The idea behind this platform is to give members access to “topic specific training courses”. Rather than the “start to finish” style of training that exists within the OEC and Affiliate Bootcamp.

You can search for topics, select from a dropdown menu or simply scroll through to find something of interest. The training consists of not just lessons from Kyle, but also from other Wealthy Affiliate members who create training.

There’s a LOT of helpful stuff here that can help you with stuff like WordPress, writing content, SEO, keyword research… basically anything you can think of relevant to building and scaling your online business.

Also worth noting here is that, at the end of every lesson in Wealthy Affiliate, regardless of the course you are in, you can ask a question. Simply scroll down to the bottom of each lesson to ask the community a question. This is really helpful because you are able to get near instant help on each lesson as you go through, without navigating away from a given lesson.

Websites

The Websites tab is all about building, managing and growing your website:

As an affiliate, having a website is essential and it is the cornerstone of everything you will be doing.

You will hear some people say you don’t “need” a website, which is true to some extent.

But unless you have a large social following, a thriving YouTube channel, or  a huge bankroll for paid traffic, having a website is key because it allows you to leverage quality free traffic through search engines like Google and Bing for example.

You can compare affiliate marketing with vs without a website if you want to learn more.

Anyways, these are WordPress sites, which is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) (AKA “site builder”) on the planet. Trusted by millions of site owners across the globe.

The benefit of building your WordPress site with Wealthy Affiliate, is that you get high quality hosting, support and other great features that make building your site easier and more efficient.

For example, each site comes with SitePlus, which gives you SiteSpeed (server level caching for a faster site), SiteSSL (SSL security) and SiteProtect (which protects you from SPAM).

You also get SiteHealth, which helps you keep track of how your site is going in terms of Google indexing, page speed and other metrics to help you get your site in tip top shape, so you get results.

Aside from these features, the whole website building and managing platform just makes your job of running a profitable site WAY easier.

Especially as for newbies who have never built a site.

One last thing I want to mention here is that, also within the Websites tab, there are links to purchase/ manage your domain names, a content writing platform and platforms to get comments on your site, as well as feedback.

All of which is designed to help you create a more successful site.

Live Events

Each week, Jay Neill hosts a Live webinar inside Wealthy Affiliate that runs for about an hour, which you can access through the Live Events tab:

The topics vary from week to week, but there’s always something helpful.

For example, some webinars are about marketing funnels, some are about researching your competition, while others are about making your website more appealing. There’s also topics that run consecutively for a month, such as a 4-part case study series for example.

There’s also a Live Q&A at the end of each webinar, so you have a chance to ask questions and learn from other members who ask questions.

Within the Live Events tab there’s also a full archive of previous weeks, months and years webinar recordings.

And Jay is very knowledgable when it comes to affiliate marketing and SEO (search engine optimization). So there’s TONS of great content you can dig into and learn from here.

Research

The Research tab is all about keyword research for your site:

Keyword research is (in a nutshell) a method of finding out what people are searching for within search engines like Google, Bing and even YouTube.

Once you figure out what people are searching for, you can create helpful content based on these keywords. And when that content ranks on Google, you get high quality (free) traffic to your site. And when you have visitors, you can earn revenue as an affiliate.

So keyword research is a key aspect of getting traffic to your site.

This may sound confusing right now, and that’s perfectly normal.

Because you’ve probably never heard of keyword research until now. Rest assured, this is something that the training walks you through in detail. So, just as I learned this stuff, you can too!

Anyways, as you can see from the above screenshot, there’s a Jaaxy logo at the top, along with some menu links.

Jaaxy is a separate and paid keyword research tool that is integrated with Wealthy Affiliate. So when you click on any of the menu links within the Research tab, you are redirected to Jaaxy.

Jaaxy is an awesome keyword research tool. And the good news is it is free for members to use to conduct keyword and niche research, spy on the competition, track your rankings and perform other useful tasks.

There are different Jaaxy membership levels too. As a free starter member you get 3o searches per month included and as a Premium member you get access to unlimited keyword searches.

There’s also an option to upgrade to either a Pro ($19 p/m) or Enterprise ($49) account.

Neither of which is necessary, but as you progress in your business and start earning revenue, it’s something to consider. I have tried Pro and Enterprise and for me, Jaaxy Pro is all I need and is well worth 19 bucks per month given the revenue I earn within my business.

Affiliate Programs

An affiliate program is a special kind of “program” that sets out what you (the affiliate) will earn by promoting the vendor’s products. These programs are free and every company you promote as an affiliate has one.

For example, ClickBank, Amazon and companies like Best Buy all have affiliate programs.

So when you signup to become an affiliate for any of these companies, you are taking part in their affiliate program, which gives you access to promote products and services as an affiliate.

Traditionally, you would run a Google search for affiliate programs in your niche. So you know what you can promote on your site and how much you can earn etc.

However, Wealthy Affiliate recently introduced the Affiliate Programs tab:

This tool allows you to search for quality affiliate programs related to your niche, right within Wealthy Affiliate.

It also allows you to see key metrics such as commission rate, payment terms and even feedback from other affiliates who have tried the program.

This is a very cool platform and, like most things within Wealthy Affiliate, makes your job of becoming an affiliate simpler, easier and more efficient.

It also helps you avoid scam or low quality affiliate programs. Because Wealthy Affiliate vets these companies before making them available to you.

Live Chat

The Live Chat tab just loads a window so that you can jump into Live chat at any time you like. Not much else to explain here.

Help Center

There are many different ways to get help, support and mentoring within Wealthy Affiliate. And the Help Center menu tab gives you access to these in one handy location:

As you can see from the screenshot above, there are 4 different ways you can get help here:

• Site Support
• Ask a Question
• Live Chat
• Private Message

Other than asking a question after each individual lesson, these are the main ways you can get help and support within Wealthy Affiliate.

Site Support. This is 24/7 support for anything to do with your website and/ or domains. Reach out to support and they typically respond within minutes and they are very helpful in my experience. Going the extra mile because they know many people reaching out to them are complete newbies when it comes to this stuff.

Ask a Question. The “ask a question” tab allows you to submit a question to the community. Basically any question related to your online business is welcome and will typically get you a response within minutes or an hour or two at most.

Live Chat. As I mentioned earlier, Live chat is a way you can get help at any time of the day or night. To be honest this is more of a social thing so I would only use this if you want a quick answer or just feel like chatting with other members.

Private Message. As a Premium member of Wealthy Affiliate, you can privately message ANY member you want. As you build out your network you will build up a list of people you want to message. Also you can scroll down a little where it says “Premium Coaches” and message these people (Kyle, Carson and whoever referred you).

Wealthy Affiliate Membership Options

There are TWO Wealthy Affiliate membership options:

• Starter membership (free membership)
• Premium membership ($49 per month)

Starter Membership ($0 for life)

This is how most people begin their journey with Wealthy Affiliate.

The free Starter account gives you access to 10 lessons (in both OEC and Bootcamp), a free website and access to some Premium member features for the first 7 days.

The idea with this “freemium” model is to give you a “taste” of what you can expect as a paying member. So instead of diving in head first without any idea if Wealthy Affiliate is for you, you can test the waters 100% free of charge.

Without a credit card and without any obligation to ever upgrade.

So it’s a cool way to “try before you buy”. It’s also cool because you do get some training and a website (full live and hosted on a “.siterubix.com” shared domain). Which means you can start building your business as a free member.

You can also transfer your site to your own domain once you are a Premium member. So you can seamlessly progress from free to Premium at any time.

And the last thing I want to mention is that this account stays free for life. Which means that free site (and training) is yours for as long as you want to keep it.

However, once you upgrade to Premium, you cannot revert back to a free Starter membership. Not sure why anyone would want to other than tight funds, but I thought this was worth mentioning all the same.

Premium Membership ($49 p/m or less if you pay for 6 or 12 months upfront)

This is the bread and butter membership option.

You don’t have to upgrade but the reality is you are not going to get very far without doing so.

Not upgrading to Premium (and expecting to build a profitable business as a Starter member) is kind of like taking one course at university, and expecting to walk out with a degree and a high paying job.

It simply ain’t gonna happen.

Don’t get me wrong, the free Starter membership is better than many paid programs I’ve worked with and reviewed over the years. For real. But it’s not enough to take you from zero to profit in my opinion.

As a Premium member, you have access to everything you need to build your business.

All the training, tools, websites, support, mentoring… the whole nine yards. Nothing is left out and there are no hidden upsells.

The ONLY other thing you should factor in, is a domain name which costs about $14 per year per domain. And you only need one domain to be successful.

Here’s a helpful comparison table that shows you some of the key differences between Starter and Premium:

You can read my full free Starter vs Premium comparison here if you want to learn more about the key differences between Starter and Premium.

The price of Premium is $49 per month but the first month you join it’s only $19.

You can also save yourself some cash by paying for either 6 months ($234) or 12 months ($359) upfront. Which works out to $39 or $29 per month respectively, when you do the math.

There’s also an even bigger discount on a yearly Premium membership on Black Friday each year. The sale runs for just under a week and typically comes in at $299 for a full 12 month membership.

Worth noting is that if you upgrade part way through your billing cycle, Wealthy Affiliate automatically reduces the fee you pay to take into account where you are in your current monthly billing cycle. So you aren’t overpaying for anything which is nice.

Ways to Earn Money With Wealthy Affiliate

Other than building a profitable niche site, there are a couple ways you can earn money with Wealthy Affiliate. You can:

• Earn by promoting Wealthy Affiliate as an affiliate
• Earn “cash credits” and convert these into USD by performing certain tasks within the Wealthy Affiliate platform

Let’s go over each of these in more detail…

Earn by Promoting Wealthy Affiliate

Like most online businesses, Wealthy Affiliate has their own affiliate program.

Which means you can earn affiliate commissions for referring people to Wealthy Affiliate. And as someone who has done so for well over 3 years now, I can safely say it has its perks.

How do you get started?

As I mentioned earlier, there is an entire training course devoted to teaching you how to promote Wealthy Affiliate, called Affiliate Bootcamp.

There’s also a program Kyle created called the “Super Affiliate Challenge” (or SAC for short). This is an intensive training that not only builds on the Bootcamp training but also involves a more personal help and mentoring from Kyle. The idea is to get you into profit as quickly as possible.

You can also click on the “$” icon at the top of the screen to access other features to do with the WA affiliate program. Such as details about the affiliate program, your stats, links, banners, affiliate tasks and so forth.

How much can you earn?

Like any affiliate program, there technically is no limit to how much you can earn. It comes down to how committed you are and how much effort you put in. Plain and simple. There are a few ways you can earn as an affiliate for WA, each with differing payouts:

• Earn $1 when someone you refer completes their account (profile image and description)
• Earn $1 when someone you refer purchases a domain name (recurring)
• Whenever your referral’s upgrade to Premium (varying amounts)

The amount you can earn for Premium upgrades depends on whether or not you are a Starter or Premium referral yourself. And what membership option your referral chooses.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what you can earn when your referral upgrades to Premium:

• $4 / $8 when a referral upgrades on the $19 first month offer
• $11.75 / $23.50 for every month that referral stays on the $49 monthly membership
• $87.50 / $175 yearly upgrade commissions

The first amount is what you earn if YOU are a Starter member promoting Wealthy Affiliate. The latter is what you earn as a Premium member, which is double.

In addition to this, if you make 300 sales throughout the year (or 100 sales between September and December) you qualify for the Super Affiliate conference in Las Vegas.

As I explained earlier, this is a yearly “all expenses paid” event that runs for about 4 days. It includes your flights (from anywhere), hotel room at the MGM Grand, meals, entertainment and so forth.

It’s actually pretty easy to make this when you put the effort in. And aside from the fun and good times, it’s also a great conference to learn from Kyle and Carson directly, as well as the other top affiliates. Well worth striving for.

Earn “Cash Credits” Within the Platform

If you don’t want to promote Wealthy Affiliate, there are other ways you can earn within the platform, such as Cash Credits.

You can earn Cash Credits by giving comments on other members sites and by creating training people find useful.

You can also earn these when your referrals purchase a domain but we’ve already covered that under the promoting WA section.

This isn’t going to make you rich or even provide you with a full time income. But it certainly is a great way to earn a few extra bucks. Many of my referrals earn from commenting and some by creating training.

Once you earn these Cash Credits, you can use them towards stuff like getting comments on your own site, buying a domain, getting feedback on your site OR you can convert these into USD.

If you convert them into USD, you will be paid at the beginning of the month via PayPal, once you have at least $10 (20 Cash Credits).

It’s not a stretch to make a few extra hundred per month this way. I always recommend focussing on your affiliate business, but this is a cool way to earn some extra cash.

Pros and Cons of Wealthy Affiliate

Nothing is perfect. So like any platform, there are pros and cons to consider before joining Wealthy Affiliate.

In this section I will do my best to share what I believe are the main pros and cons.

Pros

The most obvious “pro” is how Wealthy Affiliate gives Premium members high quality websites, tools, training, support and mentoring, for a very fair price point.

You are going to be very hard pressed finding ANY platform that offers you this much value, for this price.

You are also going to find it hard to find a platform that is constantly evolving and growing in value as WA. I personally know that Kyle, Carson and the team are constantly innovating to improve the member experience.

Which is probably why they have been in business for over 13 years and will continue to be well into the foreseeable future.

Here’s a breakdown of the pros:

• Free Starter account so you can “try before you buy”
• Most comprehensive training, tools and support in the industry
• Low cost for Premium membership considering what you get
• Newbie friendly in every way possible
• Integrity of the people running the show (Kyle, Carson and by extension, Jay)
• Huge community makes for incredible support and networking
• Constantly evolving platform based on community feedback and industry changes

Cons

The biggest “con” of Wealthy Affiliate is that it’s a big platform and there’s a lot to learn, so it can be overwhelming at first.

I’m not saying it’s “hard” to build a profitable business, not at all. Wealthy Affiliate caters specifically to newbies. But there is a relatively steep learning curve at first.

So it does take time and effort to see real results.

Unlike many “get rich quick” offers out there that promise you the world, and massively underdeliver- Wealthy Affiliate takes an entirely different approach.

As in, Kyle and Carson avoid using hype to sell people into Wealthy Affiliate, and massively over deliver. They also teach you what actually works.

Think of it like you are doing a degree in affiliate marketing.

You should expect that you won’t know what you’re doing at first, and there will be times you feel overwhelmed by it all. You should expect that it is going to take a lot of effort and you should NOT expect to be making money in a couple weeks.

It takes months and even a year to really start developing a business of substance.

This is especially true because you are not paying for advertising (traffic). You are learning how to leverage free quality traffic predominately by creating helpful content. Which is worth it, but it is just something that takes time to develop.

I also want to point out is that there’s a lot of newbies within the community.

Which can make it difficult for you to know who you should and shouldn’t listen to, when asking for help or advice.

If you take advice from just anyone in the community, you may be “up the garden path” without even knowing it. So stick to the core training, listen to people who have a track record of success and always do your own research rather than taking someone’s advice as pure gospel.

Here’s a breakdown of the cons:

• Can be overwhelming at first (lots to learn)
• Takes time and effort to begin earning revenue
• Lots of newbies in the community, some of which do give poor advice
• Easy to get distracted by spending too much time in the community
• Some more advanced level training would be great (especially paid traffic strategies)

Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Join Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate can benefit a lot of people. I mean, there are over 4 billion people online and many of them would love to earn extra revenue using the internet.

But some people really just shouldn’t join either.

So in this section, I’m going to share my thoughts on who I believe Wealthy Affiliate can benefit and who I believe should just forget about it.

Who Should Join WA

Who do I personally believe should join Wealthy Affiliate?

Anyone who:

• Is a complete newbie who wants to learn how to do affiliate marketing properly
• Wants a website for ANY type of business, that gets results
• Believes in working hard to achieve their goals
• Wants to develop real and longterm internet marketing skills beyond just affiliate marketing

I think Wealthy Affiliate can benefit a large audience of people.

Not just those who want to do affiliate marketing. But anyone who can benefit by learning how to promote offers within ANY business model.

People who sell physical products, sell a service, do network marketing, have a social following, do YouTube videos… the list goes on and on.

You need a website, and you need traffic, leads and sales- which means Wealthy Affiliate can help you. Unless you have $10,000’s for this stuff and you just want to outsource everything, Wealthy Affiliate is worth a look.

You might be surprised at the different ways the platform can benefit you.

Who Shouldn’t Join WA

Who do I personally believe shouldn’t join Wealthy Affiliate?

Anyone who:

• Wants to get rich quick or make money quickly
• Isn’t prepared to work hard and take consistent action
• Blames other people for their mistakes and complains about everything
• Looks for excuses, instead of being proactive, working hard and making it happen
• Has a “job mindset” (this is a business)
• Scammers, spammers and trolls (nobody wants you at WA, so don’t bother)

Also, basically anyone reading this who thinks that “making money online” will happen at the push of a button- please do not join Wealthy Affiliate.

Spare me the time and effort in answering your questions and helping you get started.

Harsh?

Maybe. But I spend time helping my referrals on a daily basis. Which is why I do not want to waste my time working with people who are living in “fairy land” and expect results without working for them.

This is not a job, so you are not going to be paid by the hour and you will be working on your business for “free” for a while before it becomes profitable. That’s what being an entrepreneur is all about.

So unless you are serious about building a business online, and you’re willing to put effort in to achieve your goals, Wealthy Affiliate is not for you.

Is Wealthy Affiliate Legit or Scam?

No, Wealthy Affiliate is definitely not a scam.

Wealthy Affiliate is a legitimate program that teaches beginner’s how to start a legitimate online business. The value is high, it is affordable and there’s even a free member option.

There is absolutely nothing “scam” about it.

And in my opinion and experience, those who make this claim are either misinformed or are deliberately trying to trash Wealthy Affiliate for one reason or another. There’s also a lot of skeptical people in this industry and some who believe that everything is a scam.

Whatever the case, I would NEVER promote a scam.

It’s simply not worth it. I work hard on my business and there are tons of programs I could be promoting on this very site. I choose to recommend Wealthy Affiliate because it works and it’s 100% legit.

What about complaints?

Well no company is perfect, so there are some complaints about Wealthy Affiliate.

However, considering they’ve been in business for over 13 years, there’s really not many at all. Wealthy Affiliate also has an A+ rating on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website.

From what I can see, the complaints are mostly from people who changed their mind after buying and want a refund. Which is going to happen from time to time.

There are also some other complaints about Wealthy Affiliate online that I want to address.

For example, one complaint I’ve seen is that Wealthy Affiliate teaches its affiliates to create fake reviews of other companies, to rank high in search engines and promote Wealthy Affiliate.

In other words, some people complain Wealthy Affiliate teaches you to bash legit companies, in an effort to promote Wealthy Affiliate as the “better alternative”.

I’ve seen this from time to time, and some people have even accused me of this.

Now I can’t speak for every WA affiliate, but I take the credibility of my reviews very seriously.

I strive to provide people with honest, detailed and fair reviews that are genuinely helpful. Unfortunately, there are lots of scams and bunk programs online, which means that many of the reviews I publish are negative.

That’s just the way it is.

Either way, I never write a “fake review” and bash a legit company, then tell someone to join Wealthy Affiliate instead, just to make a quick buck.

That is simply not true and not what I do. There are many programs I’ve reviewed that I know, and have said, are legit.

That said, it IS true that reviews are a big part of a successful affiliate site.

This is a proven model across most niches and it works, because people love helpful reviews. Most people will search for a review before making a final buying decision.

So providing quality, honest reviews is a good affiliate strategy and it helps people.

Win win scenario.

In any case, Wealthy Affiliate does not teach you to write fake reviews.

You are taught to create thoughtful, insightful reviews and other types of content that benefits your audience. Which is what I strive to do and it’s what the vast majority of WA affiliates do.

Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories

No member is obligated to share their success story within Wealthy Affiliate, or share their niche site with anyone.

So it’s hard to know the exact “success rate” of Wealthy Affiliate members. However, my honest belief is that success is possible for anyone willing to put the effort and time in.

Because that’s my personal, first hand, experience.

I started out as a total newbie and I followed the training to create my own success. Something you can do too if you apply what you learn.

Anyways, there are many success stories from people (both big and small successes).

Literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of them within Wealthy Affiliate.

Here is a list of 2019 Wealthy Affiliate success stories and income proof I found. Within this same post there are links to previous years (2017 and 2018) success stories you may also find helpful.

Here’s some success stories from the above post I thought might interest you:

• $3,700+ in 1 day from Affiliate Earnings
• It Happened! I Made My First Sale!
• My Blogs Earned Over $100k Part-Time in 2018
• Website Sold For $30,000
• My Highest Single Day Commissions on Amazon
• Finally! My First Commission!
• $4,197 Deposited in Q1 2019

By no means is this an exhaustive list of success stories.

But these are some of the more recent ones and they show you what is possible. Regardless of your chosen niche or whether you choose to promote Wealthy Affiliate or not.

I’ll strive to keep this list updated so this list will evolve over time.

Top 3 Alternatives to Wealthy Affiliate

Wealthy Affiliate is not the only program worth joining, there are other great options to consider.

Here are what I believe are the top 3 alternatives:

• Affilorama
• Clickbank University
• Amazing Selling Machine (ASM)

I have been a member of each of these and they are ALL great programs and for different reasons. I’ll now walk you through each of these in more detail so you know what they’re about.

Affilorama

Affilorama is probably the closest platform to Wealthy Affiliate online.

There’s training, tools and support and the affiliate income methods taught are very similar.

The good thing about Affilorama is that the initial price point is lower and the training is solid. The downside is that the training is not as up to date, there’s lots of upsells and other tools you need to buy to build your business and the community is not very active in comparison to Wealthy Affiliate.

Either way, Affilorama is definitely legit and a worthwhile alternative to consider.

ClickBank University

I joined ClickBank University in July 2016 and found it to be an excellent program.

The program teaches you how to promote ClickBank products as an affiliate AND how to sell your own products. The training is high quality and the methods you are taught work.

So if you want to learn how to become a ClickBank affiliate or leverage ClickBank to sell your own products, this is a great choice.

ClickBank is the world’s largest affiliate marketplace for digital products. So they have the experience and resources to help you succeed.

There’s also a semi-active community and Q&A webinars for members each week. So it’s higher quality than most products in this space. You get training, support and some tools to build your business.

The cost is $47 per month but there are upsells that run into the $100’s.

For example ClickBank Builder (website building tool) cost $594 and there’s an advanced training for $97. Not insane upsells but worth mentioning either way.

You can read my full ClickBank University review to learn more.

Amazing Selling Machine

Amazing Selling Machine is a comprehensive training program about selling physical products on Amazon.

The training revolves around a business model known as Amazon FBA (Fulfilment By Amazon). You become an Amazon seller, and Amazon fulfils the product for you.

I joined ASM back in 2018 after reading tons of reviews and going through a free webinar series.

I went through most of the course and then realised how many moving parts there were in comparison to affiliate marketing. It’s mind boggling in comparison to affiliate marketing.

The good thing is, the ASM training is of a very high quality and the methods taught work. There’s also an acive community of experts so you can get help as you go along.

The downside is that there’s a LOT to learn and a lot heavier risk than affiliate marketing. ASM isn’t cheap either. It cost me $5,000 (USD) because I chose to pay over a 5 month period.

And after I joined, I realised that the costs of getting into business don’t stop there. You have inventory, shipping, advertising and a bunch of little costs to get into business. For example websites, logo design, tools like Jungle Scout and so forth.

There are also upsells (which I didn’t appreciate or purchase) but nothing too sleazy.

In any case, ASM is totally legitimate and teaches you how to run an Amazon FBA business which is a cool business model. So if affiliate marketing isn’t your thing, this is worth considering.

Conclusion

Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to build a thriving affiliate business, as a complete newbie. It’s comprehensive, legitimate and well worth joining.

Over the years I have tried and reviewed a lot of different programs and Wealthy Affiliate is the only platform I can truly recommend with confidence.

Not only have I personally seen success, but I have helped many others get started and earn their first dollars online. I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting Kyle and Carson, and some of the other affiliates.

So I am proud to be part of Wealthy Affiliate and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who’s looking to get started in the world of affiliate marketing.

Whatever you decide, I hope you found this review helpful!

Before You Leave…

Before you leave, there’s a couple things I want to mention.

The first thing I want to mention is that if you do decide to join Wealthy Affiliate through my affiliate link, you will automatically become my referral. And if you upgrade to Premium, I will become your Premium Coach.

Which means I’ll be sending you some cool bonuses.

I’ll fill you in on exactly what bonuses I have lined up for you once you join. You’ll get an automated welcome message that walks you through these.

But in short, you’ll get a $19 first month Premium offer, my personal help and mentoring, my help choosing a niche, access to a 4-part niche case study and more. I’ll also deliver one new bonus to your WA inbox each month you remain a Premium member, for 6 months.

So by signing up through me, you will be getting help and mentoring from a proven 6 figure per year “super affiliate” and 6 months worth of exclusive bonus content.

Here’s what some of the people I work with are saying:

The last thing I want to mention here is that if you have any questions or comments (positive or negative), please share below in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!