We all know that there are many scams out there when it comes to making money online and setting up an affiliate marketing business, and I’ll admit that I’ve fallen for some of them!
So when I found a program that billed itself as one of the most advanced and popular platforms you can join today–Wealthy Affiliate–I was still all set to believe the worst.
But what I found was a community based upon the principle of Learning+Working Hard=Success, and it didn’t take long to realize that there was no scam here.
I’ll share my experience in this review as thoroughly as possible so you can decide for yourself, “Is Wealthy Affiliate real or a scam?”
What is Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate is the largest affiliate marketing community in the world. Their system is designed to be an all-inclusive platform where you can create and grow a successful online business.
They accomplish this through a community effort of nearly 1,000,000 members worldwide who are also creating and managing their own affiliate marketing businesses.
The program includes thousands of training modules, which include live and video training, and expert support from those who have made a success of this program.
How Does the Program Work?
You start Wealthy Affiliate by signing up for their free membership. Now I expected this membership to basically be a way to get your email address, they tell you how wonderful it is with their sales pitch, and then I’d spend a lot of time reading emails urging me to sign up for their paid membership.
However, what I found was that I had access to the first phase of their Certification Course training program, the ability to set up 2 websites, 2 training classrooms, live help, and 1-on-1 coaching, all without
spending a penny!
While the live help and 1-on-1 coaching are only available for 7 days, there is no time limit for accessing any of the other information or training.
This means that there is no high pressure selling to upgrade to their premium membership because I can take my time and experience their platform at my own pace, another huge plus in my book!
The community spirit became very apparent as I had members welcoming me to the program and offering to help with any questions I had. I started the lessons and was amazed at the details in their tutorials and videos!
Here is what you’re going to learn in Level 1 training with the FREE membership:
- Everything that Wealthy Affiliate has to offer and just how much guidance and help you’ll receive from this community
- An understanding of how to make money online
- How to choose a niche and you will pick one that works for you
- You will build and set up your website based upon the niche you’ve chosen
- You will get your site ready for search engines
- You will create your initial website content
- You will create custom menus for your website
- You will understand what keywords are and how to use them to create rich content
The comprehensive education and support you get with Wealthy Affiliate’s free membership was not something I was prepared for, and you can stay at this level indefinitely!
Here is a video that walks you through the entire Wealthy Affiliate platform. You can find out how to utilize this amazing system to start your online business and decide if it’s right for you!
Website Hosting Service
The Wealthy Affiliate hosting service is called SiteRubix. It’s a powerful system that uses WordPress websites, and there are people running million dollar businesses with this platform.
The speed and security are excellent, and your site is backed up every 24 hours. If you make a mistake, Site Support can have the latest version of your site back up and running quickly.
One of the best features is their double hosting, which is a mirror of your website running at all times. If your site goes down for any reason, this mirror site gets swapped in instantly. So the downtime is minimized, resulting in no lost visitors or sales for you!
For more information about their website hosting, you can read Who Has The Best Website Hosting Services For Your Online Business?
UPDATE: Wealthy Affiliate has made some changes to their hosting service in 2020. Starting in March, starter members will receive 1 free website instead of 2, and premium members will be able to create up to 10 websites instead of 25 free and 25 with their own domain.
Does this change how I look at the value of the Wealthy Affiliate membership platform? After comparing what you would receive from other hosting services of the same caliber, Wealthy Affiliate still offers the best value for $49 per month. Check out these:
- Pagely (5 Websites) = $199 per month
- WPEngine (10 Websites) = $115 per month
- Kinsta (10 Websites) = $200 per month
As you can see, when you look at what full service hosting platforms offer and compare apples to apples, Wealthy Affiliate just can’t be beat for value.
Community Forum and Site Support–Getting Answers Fast
I think the features of Wealthy Affiliate that I’m most impressed with are their Community Forum and Site Support. It’s extremely easy to put in a Site Support Ticket, and you usually get an answer within 10 minutes. They understand that every minute your site is down or having problems, you could be losing sales, and they respond with urgency.
The Community Forum is the most active that I’ve found by far, which means that when you ask a question, you’re going to get an answer. If you have a question, it goes to everyone who follows you as well as to all members’ Dashboard.
There are WA members from all over the world, so it’s rare not to get an answer quickly. When you’re a beginner, you don’t know what you don’t know about many things. But you can get a lot of information just by seeing other’s questions and the answers they get from experienced marketers.
==>==> Is your dream job to work at home and make money online? You can do it here! <==<==
No Spam!
Wealthy Affiliate has a no spam rule for all of it’s members. No one can post affiliate links to try and promote to or make money from other members.
What this means is that you will get a safe place to learn. You don’t have to worry that someone answering a question or helping you in some way is trying to sell you something. Those who join in order to promote products to other members quickly find out that it is not allowed!
Premium Membership–Is It Worth It?
After you’ve completed Level 1 training, you are encouraged to join the community with a premium membership. You can continue to work on your business under the free membership, but there are some great advantages to being a Premium member:
***UPDATE*** I was excited to learn that Wealthy Affiliate has now included their security package with all free starter memberships!
So when creating your free website, you will receive an SSL certified secure site without having to sign up for the premium membership. To me this shows that security and quality are huge priorities at Wealthy Affiliate, and it’s just one more reason why it is my #1 recommendation!
Best Keyword Tool–Jaaxy
Wealthy Affiliate recently added access to my #1 recommended keyword tool–Jaaxy! You can read my review of Jaaxy, but I’ll highlight the great features:
- First and foremost, a Keyword Search that includes average number of searches each month, traffic of 1st ranked site, number of competing websites, keyword quality indicator, and SEO score
- Site Ranking will find your site’s rank in Google, Bing, and Yahoo
- Search Analysis that will show you details of the top ranked sites for a keyword
- Domain Name Search for those looking for the perfect domain name for their niche
- Affiliate Program search to help find quality programs to monetize your site
With access to Jaaxy, the value you get with Wealthy Affiliate has definitely increased, but the price didn’t go up at all–another plus!
Negatives
No platform is perfect, and Wealthy Affiliate is no exception. Here are a few negatives:
1. Some people have expressed that seven days is not long enough for a trial period for the live chat and 1-on-1 coaching, especially if they don’t have a lot of time during those days. However, you have access to your lessons and website indefinitely. So you can take your time, work on your website, and still have a community of people to help you.
2. While communication is great, I do find that I get a lot of emails letting me know that people have commented on my profile or liked something I commented on. It took me awhile to find where I could change my email preferences so that my Inbox didn’t get flooded with notifications that I didn’t want.
3. Participation in the community is the backbone of the program, and members are ranked by how much they participate. The only negative for me in this area is that some people seem to focus more on member rankings than on building their business.
This can confuse some new people who may think that these rankings have some bearing on the success of their site, which it doesn’t. It’s perfectly OK to concentrate on building your business and participate in the community platform when you want to or if you need feedback and advice.
4. You do have to make sure you’re not following the advice from someone blindly just because they’re a high ranking member. The majority of the ambassadors and top 50 members are very experienced and give excellent advice. But there are those who achieve a high rank just due to how much they participate in the forum, not because they have more experience.
==>==> If I can make money online, anyone can–start today for FREE! <==<==
So Is Wealthy Affiliate Real or a Scam?
There’s an enormous amount of scams on the internet today that are more than willing to take hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars out of your pocket for very little in return.
But my experience with Wealthy Affiliate has shown me that this is a legitimate company that offers a great deal of value for a very low price. I base my assessment on the following:
1. There was no upfront payment that needed to be paid in order to see what I was getting myself into with the promise of a refund later. The owners of this company, Kyle and Carson, are very confident about the value their community platform offers, evidenced by the fact that you get to experience it all without paying one dime. That is a very strong sign of a legitimate company.
2. When you create your website with Wealthy Affiliate, everything you need to make your site run well and run securely is all there. There are only 2 memberships, free and premium, and no pushes to upsell to bigger and better features or constant requests to buy more and more.
For your $49 a month, you have everything you need to grow and improve your business and can even create up to 10 websites! In fact, at times I was advised in training that I didn’t need upgrades that are available with some of the plugins for optimizing my site.
3. The training and content is continually updating, and there is always someone there to answer a question. Many times, there is no one right way to do something. Because so many people are adding their training to the site, you are going to get an answer you understand when trying to find out how to do a task.
4. Lastly, Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t promise that you’ll get rich quick or that you’ll be a millionaire lying on your yacht working an hour a day. In fact, they make it very clear that they provide the tools, the support, and a community to help you, but you’ll get out of it what you put into it.
It will take work, and you’ll need to take the time to write informative, relevant posts about your niche that offer your readers a quality experience. Time, effort, and commitment are what you need to be successful, and they don’t sugarcoat it and make false promises to get you to join.
For me these are all signs of a legitimate company that offers a valuable product to enable anyone to succeed at affiliate marketing. So, in the opinion of Build Your Early Retirement, Wealthy Affiliate is definitely real and not a scam!
Still having doubts? I was so impressed with the quality that I saw with the Wealthy Affiliate platform that I upgraded to a premium membership just 5 days after joining.
I now have 6 websites as part of my online business and have no intention of leaving this program. Why? Because I’m still learning new things every day, and I still get inspired to push myself to the next level from all of the great members there. You can check out my profile by clicking below:
I am so confident about the ability of Wealthy Affiliate to help you make your online business a success, that I will promise you my personal 1-on-1 help if you sign up and create an account with a FREE membership!
Build Your Early Retirement’s Rating
Here at Build Your Early Retirement we will give Wealthy Affiliate a 4.8 out of 5. Despite the few negatives, this program can enable anyone to build their online affiliate marketing business, no matter how little experience they have.
Give it a try, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. I’d love to hear from you!
I was just wondering if there was an average income that people generated with just the two beginner sites, and how long did it take to build up to it (I understand this will vary)? As well as on average how much time did people have to dedicate in order to generate income in this manner. I realize that this is not a get rich quick idea, but rather am just trying to better understand how I may be able to utilize this as a way to supplement my income given my current work/family lifestyle.
You’re right that the average income and time it takes will vary greatly from individual to individual. However, I have put together a basic timeline that I think will give you a better understanding of what to realistically expect with affiliate marketing. You can read it at How Long Does It Take To Start Making Money With Affiliate Marketing?
Two of the best things about affiliate marketing are that you can work on your website around your family and work schedule and that the income potential is literally unlimited. But the trade off is that it takes time to build the foundation of your business and drive significant traffic.
If you need more information, be sure to let me know, and I’ll be happy to help!
Thank you very much for this helpful and thorough review of Wealthy Affiliate! I got ensnared myself more than once in the paws of scammers! But by reading your thorough review, I can track some positive aspects of that platform. I liked that it has no “up-front payement” as you termed it and this really shows that they are not money hungry!
Do you really mean it…no one at Wealthy Affiliate is allowed to pop up with links promoting businesses? This is the most important aspect …because nowadays, this is rare in many platforms or forums out there.
Thank you again for this helpful and informative review. At least, I have a takeaway that Wealthy Affiliate is not a SCAM!
Yep, spam is definitely not tolerated at Wealthy Affiliate. The community is based upon the idea that any answers or help you get from others is going to be as accurate and honest as possible since they have no incentive to give advice in a way that will benefit them financially.
Every member has a blog where they can post questions, information, advice, etc. If WA allowed everyone to post their affiliate links, there would eventually be very little value left. So their no spam policy is one of the best features they offer!
1. Thanks for sharing these videos. I really enjoyed this article, it had a lot of information . Especially for a newbie. Wealthy affiliate is great for people just beginning online because they teach you the basics, and give you a solid foundation. Another thing that helps Wealthy Affiliate stand out from the competition is they don’t rely on hype to get customers.
The fact that they don’t rely on hype is one of the biggest reasons Wealthy Affiliate is my best recommended program. You won’t start making money online until you’ve taken the time to build a solid website and have a significant amount of traffic. The outrageous income claims of most other programs are a sure sign that their system may not be legitimate!
Loving your WA review Janelle!
I’m super attracted at their new feature – the Affiliate program searcher which I think is their best one yet.
I joined a few years back and although the training is superb, the web hosting exceptional as always, and the community warm and friendly like no other, I still have trouble finding programs to promote but with their new release, wow I’m amazed that there are programs that I have never known we can earn from.
I’m in the games niche which can be quite tricky to find reliable affiliate program but after finding out there are game guides I can link to from my game reviews, I started getting better response and feedback on my blog. WA is great, highly recommended for those serious on building an Online Income! 😀
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment! The new Affiliate Programs searcher is a new feature that I need to include in my review, and it’s good to know that you find it a valuable tool.
WA is continually adding and updating features to stay current and give superior value to their members. I appreciate you reminding me of the latest one!
Wealthy Affiliate sounds like a great training program that equips you with all you need to create your own successful website. I really enjoyed your detailed review and it’s helped my to understand more about how Wealthy Affiliate works. I’m impressed by the amount of training you receive on the Starter membership.
The amount of experience you get with Wealthy Affiliate’s features in the Starter membership is awesome! You really get a chance to know if it’s right for you, and I haven’t found this kind of offer in any other program.
Hey Janelle, how are you?
I start with a WA in earlies September/2017 and just 24 hours later I became premium. I saw the right way that this was the online business that I always dreamed of. Everything that you sade is correct: Here at WA, we are building our online business, free of bosses and legitimate. We can work on our time and space. We don’t have a card point every day, we have all the support we need, all the training necessary and we learn so much that I can believe how much information I have now about built my own website, illustration, and market. Everything starts for FREE and to go premium we have to pay only $19.00 and next payment is only $49.00 monthly nothing else. I can not imagine my life without WA anymore.
Thank you for an amazingly informative and powerful article.
Cheers to your success,
Telma
Thank you so much for sharing your great experience with Wealthy Affiliate, and I wish you continued success with your online business!
A very good and thorough overview of the Wealthy Affiliate program. I have only recently begun to use their program and am finding it to be more than I could have hoped for. I think the biggest surprise for me was just how genuinely helpful a lot of the community is at WA.
Many of the people there seem to really want to help you succeed in building a good solid online business.
It really is a nice change of pace from some of the other cut-throat programs that just dump information on you and then leave you to your own devices to figure it all out.
Keep up the good work.
So glad you’re having a great experience with WA, and you’re definitely right about how helpful the members are. Everyone is there for the same reason, which is to create an online business and make money. Experienced marketers are more than happy to help answer questions and guide newbies, and that’s something you can’t find anywhere else!
Dear Janelle,
This is a very thorough and comprehensive review post and you covered all aspects and answered every possible question a reader might have.
How I wish I had found your article sooner when I first started! I had to go through the old way of trial and errors.
In 2016 although I came across WA I was afraid and skeptical to join it. I am not sure whether its a genuine program or a scam and when I read some reviews its really hard for me to digest everyone saying the training is awesome and the platform is great. More positive review itself made me so afraid!
Finally in November 2016 I joined WA and I am still with WA.
What I accomplished?
In November 2017 I resigned my day job and become a full-time blogger working from home. This is not possible without WA and WA is the very best and genuine training program I came across online.
Much Success!
Paul
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with Wealthy Affiliate, and congratulations on your success with your online business! The WA platform can truly help anyone who wants to work from home and make money online. I wish you continued success!
This really sounds like the place to be if a person wants to learn all about affiliate marketing. Free website and at least some free training, how can you go wrong. No credit card needed to sign up and you even get help from a massive community of experts? That is amazing! And you also get a free keyword search and analysis tool? I saw the negatives you mentioned, but to me those are really minor.
I need to look into this much further. I spent a lot of money at another training group and it is very expensive and they don’t have all the benefits you talked about here.
Thanks for providing us with this great information.
You’re very welcome! The best thing about Wealthy Affiliate is that you can check out their program and learn how to create an online business completely free of charge. If you decide that it’s right for you, their price of $49 a month is truly awesome for everything you get. Good luck!
I don’t think Wealthy Affiliate is a scam at all. I do remember when I was browsing through the internet summer 2017 and I stumble upon an affiliate article. Something similar to this.
I was very skeptical at first, but I read the article and It didn’t seem sketchy or salesy at all so I knew right then and there that it was definitely legit.
There platform is really awesome, I mean you get to create multiple emails, classrooms and so many benefits.
Great post!
Thank you, and I appreciate your sharing your thoughts!
I have to say that any other program would be a scam, but not Wealthy Affiliate.I went through more scams than I can count and after a while you just get to spot them a mile away.
When you find something like Wealthy Affiliate that is totally legit, you spread the word about it.It’s a four step process of choosing a niche, building a website, getting traffic, and creating income.
I think you’ve done an awesome job of explaining how Wealthy Affiliate works.This program has the best training and support in the world.
The community of over 4 million people always has someone online 24/7 to help.Would you suggest that people looking to join for free go premium right away?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Wealthy Affiliate! I think that anyone who tries the program should only go premium when they are confident in the value of WA’s features. For me, it was within a few days, but for some, they may want to stay on the starter membership for awhile until they know that it’s right for them.
Hey Janelle,
A great review on Wealthy Affiliate! FYI, l am a premium member, as well for awhile. Yes, l agreed with you that Wealthy Affiliate have some negatives, but nothing is major. They really provide all the necessary features (trainings, tools, hosting, support,etc) you needed to succeed in your online business, all in one platform. Further, l like their Open Education Project and Pay-it-Forward system that benefits every members, going forward.
This is the only platform l see the owners, Kyle and Carson are actively involved in the program and you can reach them anytime for advice and assistance.
I have no hesitation in recommending Wealthy Affiliate to anyone, give it a go after all they’ve got nothing to lose.
Best wishes.
Nax
Good to know that you are having a great experience with Wealthy Affiliate! The spam free environment and the incentives for every member to pay it forward are things that I’ve never seen in a program like this before. It’s just one of the great ways that Wealthy Affiliate stands out from the crowd!
I wish you every success, and thanks for stopping by!
Thank you for sharing with such a great review on Wealthy Affiliate.As many people were disappointed by scams online,they don’t have trust in any make money online platform only after being sure if the platform is legitimate. With Wealthy Affiliate everything is clear,you work hard to get what you want,no easy money with Wealthy Affiliate. After checking the way WA works i directly signed up and start my online business. WA is zero scam tolerance platform.
Best regards
After seeing so many scam programs, it was pretty easy for me to see that WA was a legitimate program and different from all the others. One of the best features is their zero scam tolerance platform, so you can learn without being marketed to every day!
I wish you success in your online business, and thanks for stopping by!
Awesome write up, Wealthy Affiliate is not scam it is real and easy to work with. There are different types of Affiliating marketing online that are full of scam and that are not real. Wealthy Affiliate marketing is quite different from them. Wealthy Affiliate is one of the largest Affiliate marketing over the world and it is a legalistic not a scam and you can earn a lot of money from it without facing any difficulties.
You are right! If someone follows the lessons, does the work, and has realistic expectations, it’s very likely that they’ll be a success. At that point their money-making opportunity is basically unlimited!
Would be just my luck if WA were a scam, honestly.
But it is a great place filled with very motivated individuals who all more or less have the same goals. All you need to do as a beginner is go through the courses and you’re on your way to doing big things.
The motivated people in the Wealthy community are one of the greatest assets of this platform I think. Like you said, everyone has the same goals so they understand everything you’re trying to do. I have learned just as much from the members as I have from the program!
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to comment!
Hey i really enjoyed this article, it had a lot of informative information. Wealthy Affiliate is an amazing program and i love not having upsells anywhere. It is everyones dream to succeed and be able to live life on your own terms and WA can help people with that as long as you are determined and put in the work!
You are exactly right! So many times you sign up for a program, but then every time you turn around there’s something else they want you to buy to really be successful. With Wealthy Affiliate you just need to do the lessons and be willing to put in the work–success will follow!
I saw that it has a hosting platform and I have a couple of questions about that. Is it secure enough? Since I got a lot of spams lately and I just hate it. Also my site was actually got hacked and obviously I don’t want that to happen again. What are your experiences about these with this platform?
I’m so glad you asked the questions! One of the great features about Wealthy Affiliate is their site security. Their hosting platform has security monitoring for their database, malware & viruses, their filesystem, hacking & intrusion, and site performance.
Their premium membership also has free SSL Certificate data encryption and a spam blocker. During the time I’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate, the only times I’ve heard of someone’s site getting hacked is when the owner had it hosted somewhere other than WA.
I hope this helps, and if you have more questions, please let me know–thanks for visiting!
I also a member of WA but not upgrade to premium. As i know the first month is $19 and continue month $49
My questions is
1. If i only pay for $19, will i get all the training listed from level 2 to the highest level?
2. What happen if i not pay for next continue month $49, what will happen to all the training listed Level 2 & so on?
TQ very much for your answer
Thanks for visiting my site and that’s a great question! If you upgrade to the premium membership, it is $19 for the first month, and you will have access to absolutely everything that Wealthy Affiliate has to offer. Depending upon the time you have and how computer savvy you are, you can definitely complete a great deal of the training during that first month. After that time if you decide not to renew the membership, you can transfer your site to another hosting platform if you like. You will always be able to re-enroll as a premium member at any time.
If you decide to become a premium member, I encourage you to involve yourself in the community to get as much information and ask as many questions as you can. Being able to learn from successful affiliate marketers is one of the best features of this program, and I have learned so much from them! Good luck, and if you have more questions, I’ll be happy to help any way I can!
Yeah, Wealthy Affiliate is not a scam. It does have some negatives, but nothing is perfect. Plus, I haven’t come across any other platform that offers so much value for their members. All the training, tools, support, community, hosting and so on… All of it is really great and it’s all you need to succeed online!
You are totally right! No matter what questions I have had, somebody has been able to answer it or point me in the direction of who can. Between the community and all the training tools, you can’t beat the value! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Hi, Janelle, you have shown so many ways to make money online that I never thought to exist photo stack. Now that you have provided so much information in detail I can start planning my early retirement now and lifelike Queen; very interest to showcase Wealth Affiliate and Amazon Affiliate those are top programs to start your way in the online business.
There are literally endless ways to make money online–good luck planning your early retirement!
Hi,
After going through your detailed insight info on the AF concept of WA, I just have one question.
Is this biz a country centric biz or can anyone buy into it from anywhere in the world irrespective of being an American. I am an Indian so kind off confused.
As long as you have access to a computer and the internet, you can do affiliate marketing. At Wealthy Affiliate there are members from all over the world and who speak different languages, definitely not just for the US!
Great post – and lots of detail about this platform – thank you for sharing your experiences and insights. I’m sold! Cheers, Karen
Thanks, Karen! I wasn’t prepared to be impressed with Wealthy Affiliate when I first looked at it, but their system turned out to be fantastic and got results!
That was a very informative post on Wealthy Affiliate. I really like the way you explain the pros and cons of the program. Although I am a member of WA, I didn’t know so much in detail about the program. Your post made me realized that my decision of becoming a member of WA was right 🙂
thanks for sharing your views.
Cheers,
Akbar
So glad it’s working for you!