There are a lot of questions surrounding WA, and in this article, I would like to address the ones, more frequently asked. This is NOT a typical Wealthy Affiliate review but a commonly asked questions and answers post. I do try my best to answer questions as thoroughly as possible so bear with me if it is a bit long.
Visit my detailed Wealthy Affiliate Review, if this is not for you and you require more information.
How Long Have I Been Using Wealthy Affiliate?
Since 2013
Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam? (Most frequently asked question.)
WA is a program that has been around for over a decade, so the question you have to ask yourself this; do scams normally last this long? The answer would be no, they don’t. The definition of a scam is someone who takes your cash and then never gives you what you paid for. Now I might be delusional, but when I last checked, i.e., a few minutes ago when I started working on this post, everything I paid for is still there and working perfectly. Heck, there were even new updates and scheduled upcoming training like always.
Secondly, I’ve been with the WA Affiliate program for 10 years on and off, and not once did they miss a payment, right on time every 1st of the month as you can see from the screenshot below.
Why Does Everyone Call it a Scam Then?
Who can tell the minds of people? I would wager that it is mostly those who did not finish the training, had a non-interesting niche, didn’t put in the work, and so forth. I mean, it is after all, much simpler to just put the blame on the program, rather than admitting you failed somewhere along the line.
It has been many years since WA was first founded, and numerous people have designed websites with Wealthy Affiliate during those years and been very successful at it. The platform in 2024, remains the same platform it had been back then, with the usual updates to keep up to date with technology. You still get amazing WordPress hosting and a great Keyword Research tool and they are still going with the regular webinars. They keep their training up to date, and it is just up to you whether you want to put in the time and effort.
So what Changed?
Higher commission payouts, that is mostly what. You do not get much by promoting a cheap platform, however, if you go for high ticket sales, the commission is much more. Training platforms that offer high payouts in commissions have become more attractive to affiliate marketers, hence why they trash the cheap ones as a means to promote their own expensive alternatives. It is an old game between affiliates and the competition is high.
Bottom Line…
If you cannot do a simple task like choosing a nice, setting up a website, posting on a weekly basis, and driving traffic (the core of WA training), I very much doubt that you will be successful anywhere else. To be able to call WA a scam, or any other similar platform for that matter, you need to tick all the boxes and ONLY then you can call a platform dogy if you still fail…
Choose the correct niche – Some people seriously have the ability to choose a niche that is not profitable or without any potential at all and then get angry when they fail. I’ve seen niches like “Christmas socks for babies” and think to myself, how can you possibly produce content on a weekly basis, all year long for a topic so limited to time?
Consistency – To be able to be successful at almost anything online, you need to be consistent. The competition is stiff and those who put in the extra hours will outsmart/outrank you. When it comes to blogging, you need to at least post new content twice a week and keep at it forever. You cannot have a website with only 10 posts on it and then complain about not making money or having visitors.
Feel Free to Read More About What It Takes to Work Online.
Is Wealthy Affiliate the perfect and number one choice for learning affiliate marketing and website development?
Only in your dreams. Perfection does not exist in the online world, not when it comes to websites, and especially not when it comes to learning programs, they all have at least a flaw or two. There are, however, people of all kinds, some who can invest, and others who cannot, some have limited time to work, whereas others have eternity to give, those who love blogging, and those who can barely bear it, some who fancy creating lead pages, and then others who despise it with everything they have.
Now of course there’s also the fact that there are many different ways to make money online, and teaching programs for most of them, so deciding on which program is best, means finding the middle ground.
Yes, Wealthy Affiliate is an all-in-one platform, but you won’t learn absolutely everything there is to know in the online world from WA. You will have to explore and learn through trial and error, and such. WA is your intuition. It gives you the basics, tells you how to navigate the college/university, and then it is up to you to attend different classes and learn from them. They teach you the basics, such as keywords, website building, blogging, and so forth, but when you finish the 5 years of training, and you are still clueless, well, you got yourself in quite the pickle then.
What are My own hiccups with Wealthy Affiliate? (Yes, they too have problems, or maybe I have)
There are two main issues I have with the program…
Community Support
Yes, I am one of those who have problems with community support, but let me explain why. With community support, any person can sign up, and become an expert, whether they’ve even completed the training or not, which can lead to the wrong info being given because they only did a simple Google search. Now it might just be me, but if I wanted to use Google search, I would not have bought the product in the first place.
Wealthy Affiliate is a platform that recommends and relies on community support, with your ranking on the WA platform depending on it. A lot of people have become so focused on the support that they forget about working on their websites, thus not practicing what you preach and becoming broke as you fail at your site, because of how noble you had been. Wealthy Affiliate ambassadors are great, but the same problem, anyone can become one. My personal opinion is that they should remove this entire part of WA, and make it so only a few select few could become ambassadors paid through commissions, to teach the rest. (Maybe get an AI to handle this LOL)
Affiliate Program
As I already mentioned, WA relies on community support for successful affiliate marketing. Now, this would not be such a problem if you only had a few affiliates to teach, but times that number by 50, 30, or perhaps for some, even hundreds, and you have a night terror on your hands. The saying ‘you can’t help everyone exists with good reason and my greatest respect for the ambassadors who pull it off.
Now all of this makes it start looking like an MLM (Multilevel marketing), the likes of which I despise greatly, not for believing they are scams, but because of the work and effort going into teaching so many people. Basically, in summary, keep referring until you reach your limit, which is a bummer, because who doesn’t want to be making profits?
How to Make Wealthy Affiliate Work For You?
Focus! It is easy to get distracted on a platform that has this much going on, so stay focused, and do your training, if you don’t understand it, then do it again.
Create and work! This is the literal definition of the story. The more content you create, and the more work you put in, the more visitors you will get and the more money you will make. If you finish one site start with the next, but be always busy creating. Websites are what bring in the money, so why be wasting time and effort on unimportant stuff? Keep in mind, that no matter how many sites you build, if they do not have at least 50+ posts, then they will not be very productive.
Do not Promote WA as a newbie! Ever see a bunny trying to play catch with a pack of wolves, whelp that is what you get if a newbie enters the make-money-online world. It’s cruel, and it’s a literal online war, to see who gets the leads, so pick an easier niche like pets, health, and so forth to start out with.
Pretend that the Wealthy Affiliate ambassador rankings don’t exist until you have at the very least completed training, and finished your website, with at least 40+ posts published. You can’t teach someone how to swim if you do not even know how to tread water, because you will fail, and drag them down along with you.
Do Affiliates Write Bad Reviews to Promote Wealthy Affiliate?
The online world is as previously stated a warzone, so, yeah, of course, you get people who unfortunately write biased/bad reviews about some products just to promote another, the same goes for WA. It is the same with any business, you get your dirty players, and then the ones who don’t hold back when retaliating, that’s the way it goes, everyone trying to find a way to get ahead of the competition.
Keep in mind, that the role goes both ways, just like there are people who label others as bad and/or scams to promote WA, there are also others who label WA as bad/scams to promote their “perfect program”. That does not mean either program is bad and/or a scam.
As with everything, just keep an open mind, read a few different reviews, do some research, and then make the choice of what is best for you. I always recommend going for a program that has a free plan, or a free trial version does enable you to test it and make sure it works for you first, before investing any amount of cash.
What Makes WA Different Than the Other Programs?
For me, there are a few features/tools that make it stand out from the crowd, specifically the Jaaxy keyword tool, the option to earn credits, the WordPress Hosting, and the comment features. What about the training? Well, personally no need for it anymore as I am already educated after all these years.
Let’s break it down…
Hosting – A Lot of other companies are knocked straight out by Wealthy Affiliates hosting, and websites hosted there, do very well. Their WordPress interface is easy to use, and depending on the plan you have with them, you can host up to 20 websites with WA. The interface has been made beginner-friendly, and not to mention, despite the amount of competition that exists, WA still finds a way to dominate the search engines. If all fails, you can always move your WP site to another host, Wealthy Affiliate does not hold your site “hostage” as with many other programs.
Keyword Tool (Jaaxy) – Keywords are the most important thing in the online world, and Jaaxy is a very nifty tool for such research without a complicated interface. Works just as well, and in some cases even better than the more expensive tools, and I have to give it the credit for a lot of my first-page rankings.
Feedback/Comments – Feedback in the form of comments can make or break a site within the search engines. When it comes to beginners, this is one of the hardest parts. You need the traffic to get comments, but you need comments to rank better and get better traffic. The WA’s comment tool will help you get the feedback you need on your site, and the feedback features will get you exceptional advice from other individuals on your site and/or help you correct mistakes.
Credits – Now, I have never gone out of my way to earn credits via commenting, nevertheless, I do try and make things as insightful as I possibly can, which includes trying to help others not have to spend everything they have. You can pay for Wealthy Affiliate, by collecting WA credits, thus, the program will pay for itself. I have been using credits to pay for my membership for a couple of years now, not to mention you can buy and pay for domains with credits as well.
Credits can also be bought and added to your Wealthy Affiliate account if you want to spend them on other things, or if you are a few credits low on paying for your membership, then you can just breach the gap. The point of all this, WA offers ways to help soften the money blows for their clients. Name any other program that has this feature that allows you to get hosting, keyword tools, domains, membership, and so forth with credits earned, this is one of the reasons why WA will stay my recommended starter platform.
To sum this up, if you go with training, then there are better programs around, but most of them do not include the other tools and/or features WA does, such as hosting, at the very least, not hosting for up to 20 websites. They also do not provide in the, earn your membership department, not to mention the lack of proper keyword tools, comment posting, content writer, and such. These are tools and/or features that usually have to be acquired separately, and can add up to quite the price tag.
Why Do I Stay with Wealthy Affiliate?
My old blogger site just got old and I wanted to move it to WordPress, the choice for my WP Hosting was easy. So, here I am, posting on my new WordPress site, hosted by Wealthy Affiliate. In addition, I host my other niche website with them (shaggydragon.com). They provide good hosting, Keyword research tools, and a lot of other great goodies, so where else would I possibly want to go, not to mention, still one of the cheaper platforms?
On the topic of training, I kind of moved on years ago, left the nest, and broadened my mind and knowledge, after all, WA training is mostly created for newbies, and eventually, everyone has to spread their wings. Now I just stick around for the hosting, price, and tools which are still the best in my opinion.
Let’s Sum This Up…
Wealthy Affiliate offers a free version for most countries, and a credit card is not needed to sign up. If you discover the program isn’t for you, then just move on to the next, no money lost. Internet is full of possibilities and you do not need to stick with WA alone, and if you don’t find the training to be for you, then stick around for the great tools and hosting. Honestly, they have something for everyone, including experienced individuals.
Have Questions?
Please leave them in the comment section and I will get to them as soon as possible. Have something else to add that I have left out, it would be appreciated as well so we can refrain from making this a one-sided opinion.
Thank You and Have Yourself an Awesome Day!
