Wealthy Affiliate Review [2020]: Pros, Cons, and User Reviews (w/Video Demo)

When you decide to start or grow a business, one major component you’ll have to consider is your marketing plan. You have to ask yourself questions like:

• How can I reach my ideal customer?
• What’s the most effective marketing tactics to use?
• Where do I get the training?
• How will I monetize my business?
• Are there other streams of income I could add to my business?
• and, since the majority of those old enough to make buying decisions use the internet, it’s also important to consider…

How are you going to market your business online?

Most people who have a business idea have to consider these same questions, which is why it’s good to find a platform like Wealthy Affiliate who can help you answer them.  I’ve been a member of Wealthy Affiliate since January 25,2017, and I remember the date because it’s been an AMAZING experience, and in this Wealthy Affiliate review I’ll tell you why. I’ll also give you:

• What it is
• How it works
• Pros and Cons
• What it does well and what it does not
• What others are saying (good and bad)
• My Recommendation
• And, Alternatives (in case you want to do some comparison shopping)

What is Wealthy Affiliate? An Overview

Wealthy Affiliate was started in 2005 by two young guys named Kyle and Carson who were tech enthusiasts! At the time, they were going to school to learn about computers and technology, and starting an internet business was very foreign (even to them).

As they grew their friendship, they both found a developing interest in the internet and found there was a possibility to make money by starting an online business! They started with a keyword business where they’d sell businesses a keyword list they could use to rank their website online, and over the years, they’ve grown the business: from a keyword business to a forum, then to into an engaged community of 1.4 million+ entrepreneurs with a full suite of tools to grow a successful online presence.

Thanks to them, thousands of entrepreneurs (ordinary people like me) are having opportunities to start or scale their passions into a business online!

Wealthy Affiliate offers:

• • Top-of-the-line Website hosting
  • Keyword research software
  • Thousands of hours of recorded internet marketing training

• An internet marketing certification that includes in depth information on social media marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per click advertising, and of course, affiliate marketing (their name gives this away)
• Live weekly training
• One-on-one coaching
• and access to a highly engaged community of 1.4 million people!

They are well known for each of their products as they each can stand on their own, but the combination has been known to propel many internet marketers with little to no skill to become successful in the internet marketing space.  Included with the website hosting is:

• Sitecomments – A platform where you can exchange comments with other online entrepreneurs to boost SEO.
• Sitefeedback – A platform where you can request user testing on-demand to improve your website user experience.
• SiteDomains – Where you can register domain names.
• SiteManager – Where you can evaluate all of the critical components of your website health in one dashboard.
• SiteContent – Where you can write content with a single logon and publish to any of the sites you have hosted at WA.
• SiteBuilder – A platform that enables you to build a WordPress website in less than 30 seconds!

How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?

Wealthy Affiliate has several components: The community, the hosting, the website management, and the training. Let me explain how each works…

The Community

When you CREATE YOUR FREE ACCOUNT TO WEALTHY AFFILIATE, you’ll quickly notice how engaged the community is. It works like a social media platform where there’s a live feed, you have your own profile page, and people can message and engage with one another. You can view updates from members of the community on your live feed, you can also send public messages on their profile, you can live chat with members, or you can private message them.

Engaging with the community is priceless! I’ve been able to find many answers to my business questions by networking in the community because there are entrepreneurs at every echelon of success: from startups to multi-millionaires. Even the owners are actively engaged!

The Hosting

After having reviewed several hosting companies and experimenting with several of them, I can truly say “Wealthy Affiliate is the best hosting company”. They offer so many features you won’t find anywhere else! Here’s a breakdown on the storage, website space, bandwidth, and more…

If you’d like to learn more about Wealthy Affiliate web hosting or how it compares to popular alternatives, check out my review of the hosting here.

The Website Management

If you’ve ever had a WordPress website, you know you typically make your edits, create your content, upload your content, and engage with visitors inside of WordPress. If you have more than one website, you’d have to log on and off of each one to create content and make updates. With Wealthy Affiliate, you can maintain your websites much more efficiently with their SiteContent, SiteFeedback, SiteDomains, SiteBuilder, and SiteManager features.

If you want to register a new domain, you can do so from the interface. If you want to get comments on a post, you can add your request into the peer-to-peer exchange queue. When you want to know whether your site navigation or design is user-friendly, you can add your request for feedback into the SiteFeedback queue and members will stop by to share their perspectives on your site user experience. The Site manager dashboard also serves as a GPS for your online marketing efforts, it tells you recommendations of how to improve your website in order to have optimal ranking capability.

The WA Website management tools are industry-leading for a hosting platform, an internet marketing platform, or a training platform. You won’t find the combination nearly anywhere!

The Training

Wealthy Affiliate also serves as an open market training platform that enables course creators to get paid for creating courses and gives members a plethora of access to training (for no additional costs!). When you pay for your membership, you literally have access to all of the thousands of hours of training the platform offers: some is made by the owners and some training is made by the members of Wealthy Affiliate. The topics are broad but here are a few:

• Mindset
• Social media marketing
• WordPress hacks
• SEO
• Pay-per-click advertising
• Choosing affiliate networks
• Writing valuable content
• and so much more!

Added to all of the recorded training, Wealthy Affiliate also offers live weekly training (on Fridays) with Q&A where you’ll get to learn a business topic and ask questions to the Jay Neill, the Wealthy Affiliate live training coach.

How Do I Get Started With Wealthy Affiliate?

To get started with Wealthy Affiliate, you would:

1. Visit the website

First, you need to VISIT THE WEALTHY AFFILIATE WEBSITE.

2. Create your lifetime free account

Wealthy Affiliate has two plan options: the lifetime free account and the premium membership. There are no upsells. Once you’re on the website, you have to CREATE YOUR FREE ACCOUNT.

3. Upload your image and Bio

I mentioned that Wealthy Affiliate has a component that works similar to a social media platform. When you upload your image and bio, people can get to know you and you can get to know them.

4. Begin the Internet Marketing Training Certification

The Internet Marketing Certification teaches you how to take something your passionate about and monetize it into a successful online business, so it’s important that after you get to Wealthy Affiliate, you start on that training.

5. Begin applying the training to create your own successful business

The training is step-by-step and will give you assignments as you go thru. It’s not sufficient to simply listen to the training. Instead, you need to take massive action on applying the training. It’s knowledge plus applied action that yields results in business, and Wealthy Affiliate’s training program is no different.

Wealthy Affiliate Review | Who is Wealthy Affiliate For?

Wealthy Affiliate was created for:

• Startup businesses looking for a marketing plan that works
• Growing businesses looking to expand their marketing plan
• Individuals who want to promote a product, service, or message online
• It’s perfect for entrepreneurs because they are able to get a free domain name or purchase a website, host their website, and receive internet marketing training to start or grow their businesses online.
• Those who want to learn internet marketing
• Those who want to make money online
• Those who want to make an additional stream of income
• Those who could use the support of a highly engaged and positive community

Wealthy Affiliate Review | The Good & the Bad

The Good:

PRO #1: Other hosting companies and affiliate marketing companies do not invest so much in the website owners’ internet marketing knowledge and success.  Wealthy Affiliate hosts the website, and they provide the best affiliate marketing course on various ways site owners can be good affiliates for their company, and overall successful online.

PRO #2: They offer a lifetime free trial.  If you wanted, Wealthy Affiliate would allow a member to maintain a lifetime membership for free.  Of course, they will not access everything paid members can, but very few hosting companies allow free trials with internet marketing and 1-on-1 marketing coaching included.  With the free membership, you will get to see a portion of the best affiliate marketing course, but with the premium marketing course, you can unlock the rest.

PRO #3: There is a strong community at Wealthy Affiliate.  Unlike other hosting companies or affiliate marketing companies who service one customer at a time–each unaware of the other.  At Wealthy Affiliate, after logging in, the site operates similarly to a social media site.  Members can interact with one another, collaborate, exchange feedback and comments, and serve as accountability partners.  The best affiliate marketing companies should provide support because affiliate marketing is a journey.

The Bad:

CON #1: While they may offer the best affiliate marketing course, the community can become addictive.  Wealthy Affiliate has an internal ranking system that evaluates each member within the community based on how much they help others.  If a member has a question, other members gain credit towards their internal ranking by responding to their fellow Wealthy Affiliates’ concern.  The community is one-of-a-kind and very close-knit, therefore, it can be addictive for a person that is not used to so much attention and care.  Other affiliate marketing companies offer communication with your affiliate manager or a point of contact, but nothing compares to the networking potential of Wealthy Affiliate.

CON #2: The process taught takes 6 months or more to see a consistent income.

Wealthy Affiliate Review | Tools & Training

Here is just a glimpse at some of the tools and training offered at Wealthy Affiliate.  They offer a very in-depth Internet Marketing Certification Course.  You can see the modules below.  Each module has tasks/action steps for you to complete.  If you simply follow the action steps, you are on your way to having a successful online business.  The training is updated frequently, and if you see something out of date, there is a “request an update” button on each module, so you can recommend updates be made.

In addition to the internet marketing training, Wealthy Affiliate offers members affiliate training, so you can gain an additional stream of recurring income by referring other people to use their service.

The SiteRubix platform (accessible at login) enables you to manage all of your websites, evaluate their “health”, build new websites, swap comments or feedback with other bloggers, and even see which of your website pages are indexed in Google!

The Jaaxy Platform is accessible from the login as well.  Jaaxy is a premium keyword research tool that helps you choose terms to include in your blog pages/posts, and enables you to see the number of people targeting the same keyword.  The information that Jaaxy provides enables site owners to gain rankings in Google Search engines.  You know how powerful it would be if a person searches for information, and your website comes up right?  Earning Google rankings = TRAFFIC TRAFFIC and more TRAFFIC!

Then, in addition to the other benefits, Wealthy Affiliate also offers members weekly ongoing internet marketing trainings.  Some of the most recent training has been on:

• 7 Brilliant Traffic Generation Strategies You Must Know in 2018
• Increasing you CTA and Getting Visitors to Click
• 7 SEO Strategies to Improve Your Rankings

They stay to the forefront in the internet marketing space and provide training that is relevant to site owners; regardless of background.  The trainings provided within Wealthy Affiliate can be used for bloggers, freelancers, business owners looking to take their businesses online, or even people looking to change careers into internet marketing.

Wealthy Affiliate Review | The Support

Wealthy Affiliate has many methods of offering support: their community, the Ask a Question function on each member’s profile, Livechat, the Site Support function within SiteRubix, or by contacting individual members.  The owners have made it very easy to ask questions and get a response.

If a member has a question, all they have to do is go to their profile and click the  “Questions” tab.  Here’s an example:

What Does Wealthy Affiliate Do Well

• Wealthy Affiliate has very high customer satisfaction ratings
• They’ve successfully taught many students how to start and grow successful online businesses
• They provide exhaustive step-by-step training
• They’re very receptive to feedback from their customers and constantly improve the platform
• They quickly ban spammers and disable selling on the platform–it’s solely a place to build relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs
• They offer a very engaged community
• The owners are very involved
• They provide some of the best internet marketing tools: hosting, keyword research, and training
• They stand for ethical treatment of customers and help point out scammers and online thieves
• They treat their affiliates very well and even take them on an all-expenses-paid vacation to Las Vegas after 300 sales in one year

What Doesn’t Wealthy Affiliate Do Well

• Wealthy Affiliate does not offer hosting to content management systems other than WordPress
• They offer a custom control panel rather than C-Panel like other hosting providers, so if you prefer C-Panel, you’d need to consider a hosting alternative
• The process takes more than 6 months on average to make consistent income

If you’d like to see Wealthy Affiliate complaints so you can have a balanced and realistic view of the platform, check out the most common complaints here, or check out this video here:

Wealthy Affiliate Review Roundup

I put together this roundup of good and bad reviews so you can see what others are saying about Wealthy Affiliate that’s good and bad.

Common Positive Reviews

• I was able to start a business online and I had no idea how to before
• I make a full-time income from affiliate marketing thanks to Wealthy Affiliate Training
• The community is so supportive like a family
• I get all of my business questions answered at Wealthy Affiliate
• I had been scammed several times before, and Wealthy Affiliate was an honest place to learn how to start an online business
• I’m making a full-time income online and I’m still learning at Wealthy Affiliate
• I attended the Super Affiliate conference and it was one-of-a-kind!

Common Negative Reviews

• Many Wealthy Affiliate members write bad reviews about other similar courses or products
• The site was a little confusing for me to navigate
• Some people feel that the training is too basic for them
• I originally thought I had to promote Wealthy Affiliate, but later I realized that’s not the case
• I was a member during earlier versions of the platform and it had much less features and content
• Some members would like to see more information on topics that aren’t yet published on Wealthy Affiliate

To read more common Wealthy Affiliate complaints, check out my article 9 Top Legitimate Wealthy Affiliate Complaints here.

Most Helpful Positive Reviews

When I joined WA in August 2012, I was looking for a way to make money online, like everyone else who has walked (surfed?) through WA’s doors before, and since that fateful day.

I raced through what was then a 10-day trial, and signed up for premium straight away.

I was full of hope, and dreams, and a ton of excitement, but in the back of my mind there was always doubt.

The doubt wasn’t that internet marketing worked.

The doubt wasn’t that WA could teach me.

The doubt was that I myself would be able to make it work.

I think this is what most people struggle with really, and it was a battle I faced every single day, and sometimes still face.

“Will I be able to make this work?”

“I’m not as diligent as these successful people. I’m too impatient. I’m not talented enough. I can’t come up with a good enough idea. My content isn’t good enough. I don’t know how to network. Waa waaa waaah.”

But in 2017, my company, recorded $1,067,286.00 US dollars in revenue.

So if I was able to get over my doubts, and learn how to build a business, and in five years be able to say, hey, I have a 7 figure business, then so can you.

DomW, Wealthy Affiliate member

“My Blogs Earned Over $100k Part-Time in 2018”

Eddy Salomon, Wealthy Affiliate member

Most Helpful Negative Review

Wealthy Affiliate is a huge community, so when sub-par internet marketing products are created, it easily reaches WA. Many of the Wealthy Affiliate members have been scammed before by someone who said they were going to teach what WA teaches, but who was dishonest and didn’t fulfill. As a result, many of the Wealthy Affiliate members have dedicated their time to point out scams, and scammers or product creators who don’t create good products get very upset.

I’ve seen Wealthy Affiliate members get threatened with lawsuits or bribed in an effort for unethical product creators to continue with their practices of taking people’s money in exchange for courses that have little to no value. Many negative WA reviews come from people who created a course and members pointed out that it was no good. Here’s an example:

Wealthy Affiliate Review | Price

There are two pricing options for Wealthy Affiliate.  Here’s a brief chart describing them both:

Wealthy Affiliate Review | My Final Opinion

They’ve trained millions of students since 2002, and have many success stories.  It’s a very exciting time to become a member of Wealthy Affiliate because they’re continually upgrading the platform to make it better. It recently underwent many major updates and in 2019, there are many more expected changes that will make it even more robust! If the review and price wasn’t a sufficient reason to sign up for the training, check out these amazing reviews!

• This member has his first $500 day!
• Taku had his 3rd $1000 month
• AlexSol had his 1st $400+ day
• This 18 year old is making more than 6K monthly from acting on the teachings in WA

The stories go on and on of ordinary people who started with no background in internet marketing, but gained the tools, support, and resources thru the Wealthy Affiliate training to make money.  With all this said, you should be able to see why I rank Wealthy affiliate as I do.  They are my top rates business opportunity because they have the best program to help entrepreneurs enhance their marketing plans.

Wealthy Affiliate Alternatives

While Wealthy Affiliate is my #1 recommendation across several verticals, and I think it’s best for everyone to try (especially because you can try for free), however, I understand it’s not a good fit for everyone. If you’ve looked over this review and you still want to shop for alternatives, I’ve written other posts that show you alternative hosting platforms I recommend, alternative blogging courses I recommend, and a few keyword research tools to check out. Here are some of my top recommendations for you to check out:

Internet marketing courses

Udemy is my #1 recommended alternative because they have several credible instructors, very affordable pricing, and lots of skills you can acquire including traffic generation, monetization of various forms, mindset, conversion optimization, copywriting, sales, and so much more. You can check out Udemy here.

Blogging Courses

For blogging courses, my #1 recommendation is Dare to Conquer and my other recommended blogging courses can be found here.

Website Hosting

For website hosting my #1 recommended alternative is BigScoots and my other recommendations can be found here.

Market Research

My #1 recommended alternative to Wealthy Affiliate’s Jaaxy research tool is Spyfu. You can check out my full Spyfu review here.

Wealthy Affiliate at a Glance…

Name: Wealthy Affiliate
Website: www.wealthyaffiliate.com
Price: $0/month – $49/month
Owners: Kyle and Carson
Overall Rank: 98 out of 100

VERDICT: Highly Recommend

I recommend giving Wealthy Affiliate a try.  You can sign up for a free account now.  If you’re thinking about taking your internet marketing skills to the next level, check them out now!