Wealthy Affiliate: You have probably heard the name by now, especially if you have visited my website before or been searching for ways to make money online. If you have been searching for online marketing training then I’d be really surprised if you hadn’t heard of this company. But is Wealthy Affiliate worth it? Is it worth trying? Will you learn what you need to learn to set up a successful online business?
In this post I’ll give you a brief rundown of my own personal experience since joining Wealthy Affiliate.
How I Came Across Wealthy Affiliate
I came across Wealthy Affiliate probably the same way you have just now. I searched for affiliate marketing training, read a review on someone’s blog about Wealthy Affiliate and decided it was worth checking out.
Just to let you know, before actually taking action with Wealthy Affiliate, I had heard of the company before, having seen it mentioned in numerous website posts. Once I really got serious about affiliate marketing and making money online, I did some more research on Wealthy Affiliate specifically. All the reviews seemed positive, it didn’t sound like a scam in any way and the training sounded excellent, so I clicked through a link and arrived at the sign up page.
Free Wealthy Affiliate Starter Member
I was glad to see that there was no upfront cost to join, no credit card details required, and the amount of information I needed to input to join was minimal. So I created my free Starter Account, uploaded one profile picture and just wrote a few lines on my profile about who I am and what I wanted to achieve. It was all seamless and very easy. I now had full access to everything the site had to offer for the first 7 days, barring the more advanced levels of training.
The Community At Wealthy Affiliate
This is what really blew me away once I joined. The level of interaction, the warmth with which I was welcomed, the help I received, and the direction and guidance with how to get started with it all. The community there is amazing and still is. That’s one of the reasons I’m still a member after all this time. The community of active members has helped me out possibly even more than all the great training on offer. We've all heard that if you want to be successful, then mix with successful and like-minded people.
Getting Started With The Training
As a free Starter Member I could access the first 10 lessons of the Online Entrepreneur Certification training. I didn’t actually do the lessons as such the first time, I just read through the text and watched the videos that accompanied each lesson. The lessons start with teaching you how to set up your first website step-by-step and were very easy to follow. I was impressed and started to believe I could actually create websites and successfully do this affiliate marketing thing.
Still, I was busy with some other things at the time and didn’t really get started for a while. When my 7 day free trial was up (by the way, you can remain a free member for as long as you like), I still hadn’t upgraded to Premium Membership. You will get email reminders about this, and I’ll admit I found it a little annoying to be asked sometimes several times a day to upgrade before time ran out. I resisted this as I didn’t want to upgrade and start paying a monthly fee until I was ready and convinced this was what I really wanted to do. I ended up getting an extension on my free trial time. I think it was another week or something, but by that time I had already made up my mind and decided to upgrade my membership.
Just to let you know Premium Membership can be cancelled at any time, so it’s no big deal to upgrade, really.
Why I Became A Paid Premium Member Of Wealthy Affiliate
I saw the value in the training on offer for one, but really it was the community that swayed my decision. They were so welcoming and helpful (and still are to this day), that I realised I was definitely in the right place.
There were so many advantages to upgrading that I knew I just had to go that direction if I was genuine and serious about setting up an online business. Here’s a quick breakdown of the benefits:
- Access to the community
- Access to all of the comprehensive training
- Hosting for up to 50 websites
- Can use your own domain names (instead of a subdomain)
- Keyword research tools
- 1000s of Word Press website themes
- 24/7 technical support
- Double the commission for their affiliate program
Those are just some of the benefits to being a paid member, but like I said, no one is obligated to upgrade and you can cancel your membership at any time.
The Affiliate Program
This is one of the best features of Wealthy Affiliate. Both free and paid members can refer other people to Wealthy Affiliate and receive a commission. When you become a Premium Member your commission rate doubles.
Just to be straight here. Wealthy Affiliate isn’t all about just referring other members to their training. It’s all about learning the right way to set up an online business, or more specifically, an affiliate marketing business. You can build websites and promote any products you like for any niche. You never have to promote Wealthy Affiliate or participate in their affiliate program if you don’t want to.
Also, just because you might join through someone’s affiliate link doesn’t mean you pay more for membership. The price is the same whether you join through an affiliate link or not.
There is specific training that runs you through how to set up a website to promote Wealthy Affiliate as your business model, if you decide to go that way. This website is an example of that training. I don’t just promote WA on here, though. I promote and write about anything to do with making an income online; as you will see if you explore my site further. I also run 4 other websites that have nothing at all to do with promoting WA.
My Journey Since Going Premium
There are 2 main training programs at Wealthy Affiliate:
Online Entrepreneur Certification – Teaches you how to set up a niche affiliate website from scratch, get your content ranked in search engines and monetise it with affiliate offerings.
Affiliate Bootcamp – Learn how to set up a website from scratch that enables you to effectively promote Wealthy Affiliate and making money online.
As I wanted to do a website targeting the Health, Fitness and Beauty niche, I started with the Online Entrepreneur Certification training and worked on my first website all the way through to completion of the 50 lessons of the course. By that stage I had a pretty solid website created and, with the help of the community, managed to improve it even further. I then went on to the Bootcamp training and commenced setting up this site, while at the same time still contributing posts regularly to my first site.
If I had my time over again I would probably just stick to the one website for some time. It takes a while for a site to get established and trusted by search engines, so I would recommend working on just the one site for 6 months to a year before starting a second site. That way you will give your site much more focus and the road to success will be quicker.
I actually now have 5 websites in total, but mainly work on this one and the very first one. The other 3 are just very small niche sites. One is an author site for my books, another was a tiny site that I quickly put together as an experiment, and the third is a work in progress that deals in the online dating niche.
So Where Am I Now?
I am in a good place right now with my online business and things are going really well. I’ve made some mistakes along the way, but I’ve learnt from those mistakes. The training and the community at Wealthy Affiliate has set me on the right path to online business success and I’m here to tell you that Wealthy Affiliate can do the same for you too. All you have to do is make up your mind to get started, so go on over and check out my detailed Wealthy Affiliate review by clicking below. You will be blown away and soon realise, as I did, that it’s the right place to be to learn how to start a successful business online.
Darren Burton
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Hey Darren,
I can totally vouch for you on Wealthy Affiliate, it is the best Online course on the internet to start a real Online Business. I’ve been a member for almost 2 years now and never been happier.
The community, the keyword tool, the website builder and the awesome training are all that I need in order to succeed online. Literally.
It’s no fluke that Wealthy Affiliate gets so many positive comments around the place, as there are hundreds of thousands of happy members. The owners of Wealthy Affiliate obviously must be doing something right. Thanks for leaving a comment.
Darren,
I totally agree with you. WA has been one of the best investments I’ve made in myself. And it continues to pay forward years later. I’ve been a member since 2007 and I’ve seen it continue to improve. I just don’t think you can find a community like it on the web that offers so much.
So I totally agree with you! Here’s to your continued success. WA has helped me earn a full time income and I know it can do it for others as well.
Hi Eddy, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
You’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate for almost 10 years. That’s a long time. That just goes to prove that’s it’s well worth it; not just for the initial training, but for all the ongoing support and encouragement.
To everyone’s continued success in reaching their goals.
Hi, would you say it’s still possible to create a succesful online business? I keep hearing people saying it’s too hard for it to be worthwile
Hi Michael. It’s definitely possible. I personally know some people who do really well online. But it does take work and some patience. Making genuine money online is no get rich quick scheme. I’ve personally been living off an online income since 2010. If you are going to get into something like affiliate marketing then it’s important to get trained. Otherwise you’re just shooting in the dark.
I promote Wealthy Affiliate on here a lot because I’ve learnt a lot there; not just from their official training either. It’s really the other members on WA that help you out the most. They always answer question if you need to know something, help you solve a problem and freely share what tips and tricks they know. It’s like having your very own training and support group.
It’s hard to go anything totally alone and succeed. We all need help. Even though I’ve completed all the official training at Wealthy Affiliate, I remain a member because I both like and need to be a part of the community there to help my online enterprises grow and prosper.
I always seem to find that I struggle with learning things online – I think it’s something to do with the text against a screen…I just lose concentration!
What are the lessons like here – do they mix it up a bit with media like video – I always find I tend to learn faster when I’m actually watching something
Just about every lesson has a video to accompany it. Me, I prefer both text and video, and Wealthy Affiliate offer both, so all good.