In this case study, which is now over 15,000 words long, I have created a brand new website using the method taught at Wealthy Affiliate University.

I am going to spend the next 36 months, and then some, building my site and record every step to accurately review whether or not the teachings at Wealthy Affiliate has any merit in the ever-changing world of SEO and ranking in the search engines.

This will a 100% unbiased and honest case study as I am taking years out my own time to create content for this website.

I will record any profits I make along with any difficulties I find along the way.

Hopefully, this will become a success story! Is Wealthy Affiliate a scam? Well, we will find out in the next year or two!

I will also review the training, community and support in this article and how it relates to a real working website. This will be the one article which will show you if you can trust the training and believe in the method taught at Wealthy Affiliate.

If you are a newbie and reading this. Keep working and you WILL make it.

One of the main purposes of this unbiased review is to dispel the idea that Wealthy Affiliate is a scam or in any way untrustworthy.

It's only natural for people to winder if the training is worth the money and so here we go, let's take a look!

Probably the most common question I hear is “How Long Does It Take To Rank and Make Money??”

On the 13th of August 2016, I created a brand new website in the “make money online” niche and I am recording my statistics so people can see the progress.

The purpose of this case study is to show YOU – the newbie – that you simply need to “hang in there” and keep writing. You will make a success of it!

When you hit that wall at around 1 or 2 months and you have written so much but NO one is coming to your website, do NOT GIVE UP!

I know it is hard to keep writing when there is no one reading your material and no cash being earned but you have to understand it takes a while for Google to find you, index you properly and TRUST you!

All the points below are made with the assumption you have done all the WA training before this point. Do not read this and use it as a training module. I am simply recording the steps I took.

The first month is simply about getting your structure of your website sorted and filling it with content to give Google something to work with.

What did I do in the first month – AFTER the basic WA training.

• wrote 20 blog posts.
• chose and paid for a premium theme. (make sure you have a lot of content BEFORE buying a premium theme. Makes it easier to set it up)
• spent freaking hours fiddling around trying to work out the layout of the new theme.
• got a premium banner made to look professional
• worked on a menu layout which I believe will give value to the reader
• posted on WA to get as many comments and feedback as possible – it hurts to be told negative things but they do help!
• spent hours simply sitting looking at my website, trying to think from a reader’s point of view – in order to make it better,whilst drinking tea.
• checked my Webmaster stats and Google analytics everyday – bad habit! But I can’t help myself.
• watched Jay’s webinars as much as possible.
• did a tonne of keyword researching for new blog post ideas
• read through all my content to find new article ideas from existing posts

• Posts = 20
• Comments = 59

• Clicks = 9
• Impressions = 229

• Sessions = 309
• Users = 163
• Pageviews = 1,761

The single most important thing you can learn as a newbie is that you HAVE TO BE PATIENT and keep writing!

It takes at least 3/6 months before you start to see any real reaction in your visitor count, rankings and most importantly – revenue!

The second month is ALL about writing content!

Write, write and then write some more!

What Did I Do In The Second Month?

• Wrote another 21 articles – bringing total to 41
• Did a lot of reading and researching other websites around my own niche to see what they are writing about.
• I also did a lot of competition research to see if there were any cool ideas out there regarding design, plugins and CTA’s.
• Did a lot of keyword research to find new services to review and products to write about.
• Kept asking for feedback and comments from the Wealthy Affiliate members.
• Watched more of Jay’s webinars!

At this point, my design and layout were already in place so basically, I am now in a position where my only job is writing content, and coming up with new ideas for….. wait for it…. more content!

The research I did was in between articles when I needed a bit of a break from writing!

• Clicks = 15 – 66% INCREASE
• Impressions = 747 – 226% INCREASE

• Sessions = 235
• Users = 148
• Pageviews = 548

• it is perfectly natural and normal to get fed up at this point. If you find you are becoming less productive because you are frustrated then take a day or two off and change your routine. But make sure you come back!
• writing a large amount of content when there is no traffic is incredibly hard the first time around because you don’t have the experience to know that the traffic WILL come.
• Just keep writing!

The third month was a difficult one for me. However, it serves as a good example of how life can get in the way and why so many people GIVE UP TOO SOON!

I was all set to complete another 20+ article month. But things kept knocking me off my routine.

First, my sister came to visit for a week, which was nice, but it meant I had to spend the evenings with her and my two nieces.

Then I got invited to a 4 different parties on the weekends where I got absolutely wasted and the hangovers were so bad I did not do anything for days after.

In between this I had a lot of social visits and seeing friends. It was just a busy month for me, socially. Not a bad thing at all – I had a wonderful month.

These disruptions knocked me off my routine completely and I lost all eagerness to do anything, the website was the last thing on my mind. I could barely keep up with my laundry!

This is the important point to take from this. At this point is when most new bloggers give up. After the initial excitement of joining WA and the surge of fresh articles and eagerness, things will always naturally fizzle out a little.

Most new bloggers at this point will give up because they lack the motivation to get back on it. Life will always throw you off your routine. Brush yourself off and get back to work. Publishing a few articles per month is better than giving up. Keep writing!

During this month I only added 2 articles and did little else. However, I am getting a few more clicks on the Webmaster Tools and I will soon be out of the Google sandbox!

• Clicks = 26
• Impressions = 1410

• Sessions = 201
• Users = 174
• Pageviews = 382

Another really slow month on the creativity front. Just been so distracted with life and things going on I barely had time to do anything, to be honest. The initial “oomph!” I had when I first started this website has fizzled and I am finding it hard to get back into it.

I only added 3 more articles this month! But I am still here. I am still in the fight! However, the mistake I discovered during my 3rd month has really winded my enthusiasm.

It feels like when I am writing, I am writing for no one because there is no traffic coming to my blog and I can't see any of my news posts ranking in Google.

• Sessions = 285
• Users = 139
• Pageviews = 553

• Clicks = 17
• Impressions = 1272

At this point, I got back on the keyboard! I added another 10 blog posts and tweaked a few visual aspects of my website I wasn’t happy about. Also, I have seen some movement in my “impression” count on Google Webmaster which is really encouraging!

My impressions have doubled in one month and I can see now that Google is taking more notice of my content. This is very encouraging.

Am I finally exiting the dreaded “Google Sandbox”????

I know these figures may seem tiny, and they are! However, you can see now that they are rising and at this point, the aim stays the same… add MORE content!

Keyword research – Content research – Write – Post – REPEAT! 

The more quality blog posts, relevant and helpful to your readers needs = more impressions = more visitors!

KEEP WRITING!

During this month I also;

• Enabled AMP (accelerated mobile pages) which will make my website more mobile friendly. This no longer needed.
• Make my website HTTPS to make it secure. Which is why I have no stats this month because I had to resubmit my sitemap to Google and reset my Analytics stats.

On the 6th month, it was very clear that my website is building momentum and I got a gust of enthusiasm as I started seeing results in search engines. My impressions are now in the thousands per month and the clicks are starting to come in.

At this point, I am just going to keep writing. I have around 65+ posts and I am going to keep adding to this.

I am at a strange junction here because I am writing with great hope and enthusiasm even though I am still nowhere... BUT... because I can see things slowly increasing I can only imagine what lies ahead and I can't wait to see what happens.

• Sessions = 395
• Users = 319
• Pageviews = 741

• Clicks = 72
• Impressions = 3598

Impressions are rising even more. Things are finally starting to look good.  Added 10 more posts in this month.

Since the first couple of months, I have not really changed much. I just keep adding more content and writing as much as I can. I can see now that it is starting to show the results as my clicks are increasing and so is my impressions.

If I go back and compare it to a few months ago there is a drastic increase! At this point, I have 71 published posts!

• Sessions = 274
• Users = 237
• Pageviews = 458

• Clicks = 74
• Impressions = 4425

At this point, I am starting to see a larger increase in traffic and impressions. Over double from the previous 4 weeks in month 7. This is very encouraging.

Once again, it has been a slow month for me. I have added 16 more articles in this 8th month, bringing my total up to 87 articles.

Ideally, I should have about 160 articles by now. Nevertheless, any progress is good progress. A wise man once said that if you improve by 1% per day, by the end of the year you will be 365% better off than you were one year prior!

• Impressions – 8.913
• Clicks – 155

Key things to remember at this point!

My progress is slow because of my own lacklustre attitude towards posting regular content. My personal and professional life has slowed down my posting frequency – this is totally normal in the early life of a blogger before the blog starts to make money so DO NOT let this discourage you.

If you scroll up to the top and have a look at my impressions and clicks from the first few months you can see how much the blog has grown, despite the infrequency of my posting. This is fantastic! Especially in such a highly competitive niche as the “make money online niche”

• Impressions – 12.053
• Clicks – 339

As you can see the traffic is starting to pick up around this point.

I added another 6 or 7 posts to my blog. My clicks in Google Webmasters DOUBLED and things are looking good.

Also, you can see my traffic is picking up on Google Analytics as well. This is because my BING SERP positions are also appearing and starting to bring in a small amount of traffic.

In month 10, I was very slow at updating my blog. I only wrote another 3 or 4 posts, bringing my total blog post count to 90.

Once again I had a very unproductive month but even so my traffic has increased a small amount – at least it has not decreased!

I can see a definite snowball effect ow building in my stats. My impressions and clicks are increasing at a much faster pace than ever before. Every month is increasing and I have noticed that some of my older posts, which I wrote 4 + months ago are starting to rise in the rankings and get clicks!

• Impressions – 10.433
• Clicks – 436

During month 11 and 12 I did not do too much work – as always! – and I only published some quite loose informational posts at around 1,000 words each. My summer months are hectic due to family commitments and other personal things that come around so I knew this in advance. This is why I decided not to do anything too difficult, I only needed to keep posting on a regular basis.

As you can see my stats continue to grow – albeit on a very slow progression.

The last of my summer months and slow progress. I have some big posts planned for September to kick start my 2nd year of IpoopCash. However I hope you can take some inspiration from this case study so far. Even if you are in the most competitive niche online you can still make an impact.

For my second year of this case study I am now in a great position. I will try and explain why, and also what my plans are for the second year.

• Domain Authority has increased from 0 to 7
• Page authority has increased from 0 to 21
• I can now rank much easier and quicker for bigger articles.
• Sales are coming in – total about $400 for the whole of 2017. (crap, but it is a start)

I am now solely going to concentrate on longer authority articles - minimum 3,000 words each. I will write reviews and informative guides (“best places to..”) kind of posts based on low hanging fruit keywords which I know I stand an excellent chance of ranking for.

My Aim: to increase my monthly clicks to at least 4,000 over the next 6 months.

It is taking a long time because I am trying to simulate the “reality” of blogging. Most people will find themselves in this exact position where their blog is doing “ok” but nothing more. Why?

• Most people choose the wrong niche first time around, just like IpoopCash (mega competitive and too broad)
• My posting schedule has been erratic and random at best.
• I have given little thought to my “overall target keyword”, I am just posting about anything vaguely related to “Making money online”
• The reality of writing for no readers is hitting and I want to give up because I am running out of steam.
• I have made poor keyword choices and a lot of my articles have been written as "fluff" and are not as good as I should have made them.

Do these points feel familiar? Then read on…

Over the next 6 months I will show you how to juice up your old content and to treble your traffic. By February 2018 I will be making at least $400 per month from IpoopCash – ‘touch wood’.

How will I achieve this?

• I will look over my Webmaster keywords that are ranking already and target the top articles which are ranking on page 2 and up. From there I will add additional content on these articles with proper internal linking and additional related videos and some other SEO tricks I have learned.
• I will also publish more videos on YouTube to bring in additional traffic.
• I will reach out to a few blogger to get some guest posting on my website.

Once again mys tats are increasing each month. I have started to go back to my "fluffy" posts and adding more content. 

I have crawled through some older posts to find new keyword ideas and using my keyword ranking inside Webmaster Tools to target similar keywords. I use jaaxy to research these ideas to find low hanging fruit keywords.

At this point I try and make every single article I write as long and as valuable as I possibly can. I have noticed now, when I post an article and submit it to Google, I am ranking on Page 1 in a matter of minutes!

• Impressions = 14,192
• Clicks = 623

Hit 1,000 clicks in a month for the first time! Very exciting. A few commissions have started to come in as well on Clickbank which is nice. Finally seeing confirmation that I am doing the right thing and that my stats and sales will ONLY INCREASE FROM HERE ON IN!

All I am doing at this point is doing keyword research and writing as much content as I can (minimum 1500+ words). I am also making a YouTube video with every single article containing a small description and a link back to my blog post.

I can see there is traffic coming in as a result which is great.

I have also had a few emails from people, and comments on my YouTube videos, from people thanking me for my reviews. They tell me they were about to buy a product I reviews and gave a bad rating to, they thanked me for saving them money!

A very nice feeling.

• Impressions = 21,046
• Total Clicks = 1,115

At this point I have about 133 articles. In this month I did not do much to be honest, I just kept adding more content as best I could and kept writing. Quite a quiet month.

• Impressions = 27,149
• Clicks = 881 

I made a few important changes. I edited my website logo to include a small call to action. Encouraging visitors to click on my mail "sales" page.

This instantly added a few sales and recurring commissions. I have now started going back to older posts and tweaking certain CTAs and trying to make the posts more user friendly.

I have also noticed that many of my older posts, which were ranking nowhere, (page 3/4), have been given a bump. A lot of these articles are now at the bottom of page 1 and started to receive a small amount of traffic.

This does not seem like much but when you have keywords suddenly getting an extra 10/20 clicks per month, it adds up!

This month has been good. I have purchase a green screen, just like Jay has in his webinars, and I have made some videos of me talking to the camera and posted them in my "About Me" page and on my sales page.

The aim is to make my whole website more personable and try and connect with people. I want them to see I am a normal person and I genuinely do want to help, not just take their money and run!

Making videos is so cringe worthy. I hate the way my voice sounds on camera and it is incredibly hard to get your voice across without stumbling and mumbling. Getting a take correct is tricky because you have to look straight in the camera and try to not say "ummmm" all the time!

It is surprisingly difficult! haha! 

I spent 3 days straight, trying to edit and tweak my videos. Writing scripts and trying to make them look at least semi professional. They are ok, but I will redo them in a few months once I have gained some more experience talking to the camera and all that...

My stats in Analytics and Webmaster tools are increasing a lot. I am getting more and more commissions and I can see daily emails coming in about paid leads and small recurring commissions.

I have also started an email list to collect emails. I have 6 people on my list!

• Impressions = 39.681
• Clicks = 1,368

During the 17th month I have focused on writing article about brand new products. This explains the sudden increase in clicks because I am managing to rank very quickly on Page 1 of Google. I submit my article and 'bang!' it's on page one within a few seconds and the traffic comes in.

I have started making additional YouTube videos as well, to complement my articles. Now every article I write I make a video review version as well which also helps drive more traffic to my website.

The revenue remained the same which I am very happy about. At the moment I have had two consecutive months with $400+ months in revenue. Fingers crossed this continues.

The 18th month of my case study has gone a bit slower. A few personal commitments has lowered my content output but I am still getting frequent commissions.

I added another 10 posts or so and am focusing on brand new Internet Marketing product releases, such as Ecom Profit Sniper and 30 Minute Method which have both ranked well and brought in a lot of traffic.

As you can see from both my Webmaster tools and Analytics, my traffic is increasing steadily. I am also receiving huge spikes in traffic when a new product is launched which receives a lot of attention from email marketers and affiliates.

When a new digital Internet Marketing product is released there is a very brief period where this will get a lot of attention due to thousands of affiliates emailing their email lists saying, "You have to try this new amazing product!"

The revenue wasn't great this month but it is clear that things are now definitely on the rise and my traffic and revenue will only increase from here on.

Things are really starting to kick off now!

I am starting to get about 10 or 20 new email subscribers every single day. Today my visitor numbers peaked 180 in one day, is in which insane!

I am now getting up to 6 starter members joining Wealthy Affiliate everyday and I am getting more and more premium subscribers. I have 10 premium members so far and 3 of them have become yearly subscribers.

This month I have concentrated on making training videos within Wealthy Affiliate to help my new referrals stay focused, advance with the training, and make the training more digestible.

This will hopefully, in turn, make them stay members longer and actually make money. If they make money they stay a member and I make money as well.

I tried to address issues like:

• How to choose a nice?
• What is the difference between someone who fails and succeeds online?
• 5 separate inspirational videos, which will be sent out at certain time points, which will help keep them on track. These talk about mentality and progress and the importance of not quiting.

I have written another 10 blog posts and I am concentrating on new product releases in order to capitalise on the traffic spikes that come with those product launches.

My traffic is increasing every single day and I know as long as I keep writing, keep using natural SEO, things will just keep increasing.

Here we are at the end of the 20th month of my Wealthy Affiliate case study.

By now I feel you can see that you should trust the training and that WA is NOT a scam. My earnings are now in excess of $500 per month and is only increasing. 

Back in August, when iPoopCash was only 1 year old, I said I was hoping that the website would be making $400 per month by February, and as you can see, I have achieved that goal.

This past month I concentrated on writing product reviews for brand new Internet Marketing product releases. There are very few I am able to recommend, unfortunately, as most of them are incredibly low quality.

A few examples of the products I reviews this month:

• AZ Code System
• Income Elite
• 20Cogs
• Video Profit Machines

I try to keep my reviews as long and as in depth as I can. I make a point of stating that I actually buy each product, which I do, so I can give an honest opinion about each service as a consumer.

Traffic is coming in steadily. I am producing more and more content and I am making more commissions.

This month I promoted Traffic Flow and FB Master's Training Program quite heavily and made over $600 in the process, which was good.

I have also started doing a recorded Q&A session on my YouTube channel which I have embedded on my website. The feedback so far has been good and I enjoy creating them.

I am also in the process of creating my own product, which is exciting.

The product has no name yet but I am going to simplify the process of making money with Facebook and bring it down to an easy to understand level. 

The concept is a simple landing page, which you drive Facebook traffic to, that captures emails. This is obviously not a new idea but the other products I have reviewed which use a similar method never really give good enough training which leaves people confused.

This month continued to grow. I have had a couple of successful email campaign promoting some products which I reviewed. They were promoted via Warrior Plus and the conversion rate was good.

I have also made contact with a couple of very big product vendors as a result of my commissions. They now know my name and I am going to approach them soon to ask them if they will promote a product I am going to create.

Wealthy Affiliate is a number of things and it cannot be summarized in one sentence so it is easier to list what it is. This way you can get a full scope of what to expect when you join.

I will go into great detail about all these points in a minute, but I will start with a list so you get an idea.

• A community of over 1,000,000 bloggers - spam free and promotion free. Imagine Facebook but with no adverts, irritation memes and irrelevant content. Just a lot of people who want to help each other make money online.
• Dedicated training on how to build a profitable website with over 100 training modules and hundreds of hours of video tutorials. Literally a step by step training, showing you how to make a fully functioning website which will make money.
• Full website hosting service, domain service and keyword research tool, with 24/7 support.
• Full forum and F&Q area where members can get immediate answers to any and every problem they face.
• An innovative "Pay It Forward" system where members are rewarded for helping others.
• and much, much more! I will now go into more detail!

Inside the members area you have a whole plethora of tools and information you can use to your advantage so you can boost your chances of making a successful online business.

What I love is that there are no upsells, and at no point does anything cost extra. Everything that is here is included in the price of the monthly membership. Fantastic value for money.

So, let's take a look at what is inside the members area of Wealthy Affiliate.

The certification training takes you through the whole process of creating your own WordPress website, step-by-step. Kyle walks you through the entire process in 50 lessons and covers everything in the smallest detail.

I am covering all this training lesson by lesson a bit further down in this article. You can skip to it here, if you like.

The live chat feature allows you to ask questions and get immediate responses from other people in the community. This includes the higher ranking members who have a wealth of knowledge to share. 

If you ask a question, you are immediately given a resource or a training module as a solution to your problems. This feature is wonderful because it does solve a lot of problems quickly.

You can also use this feature just to chat and get to know other people. You can ask them more pertinent questions about anything you a curious about. The community is very honest and many people share their traffic stats and earning stats to inspire others.

Every single week there is a live webinar on Friday nights. These are done by a chap called Jay and he is one of the top guys within WA. Each webinar is usual about 1 hour and 20 minutes long and each week has a different them and topic. 

They are always trying to help their members optimize their websites for SEO and for the user experience. As the Google algorithms change, so does the training within WA which makes it so valuable.

As you can see from the screenshot here the topics vary week by week and other areas that have been covered in the past are:

• Changing WordPress Themes
• How To Stream Live On YouTube
• CTA Optimisation
• How To Hows Your Own Webinars
• Using Google Analytics Features

Jay even spends 4 weeks building a case study website right in front of the WA members. You are shown step by step, just as they teach you, and the website in question ranked quickly and started making money with 3 months!

Fast forward to today and it is making over $400 per month, despite only consisting of  a few pages and just being left to its own devices after the initial case study period.

The basic keyword tool allows you to research keyword to find out the competition in the SERPs. This is vital to gain high rankings in Google and Bing because this search tools tells you what people are searching for, search volume and gives you a good idea if your website will be able to compete.

Throughout the training you are taught about keyword research and Jay has made several webinars where he delves deep into Jaaxy, which is an advanced version of the WA keyword tool, and shows all the members exactly how he does keyword research. 

You are even shown behind the scenes within Jay's private Google Webmaster tools, so you can see how well the keyword tools results work.

I myself, use Jaaxy all the time and it is probably the most important tool I have.

The affiliate programme is incredibly lucrative and emotionally rewarding. Not only do you get to invite people to create their own WordPress website, using the training inside, but you get paid to do so.

Normally, earning commissions from a product review is not very rewarding because most of the time you do not use that product after your review period. With WA it is a different story... 

When i get a new referral to join WA it is genuinely exciting for me because I believe in the community and training so much and I know that the person who has joined is going to get the best training available.

I know for certain that if the new referral really immerses himself/herself into the training and applies the strategies, they will make a successful website and they WILL make money.​

It is quite rare to genuinely believe in a product you promote to this level. I certainly have never felt this strongly for any other product I promote.

Inside the WA Affiliate portal you get access to banners and interactive links which increase CTR on your website. You can also set up automatic messages to your referrals,depending on their stage within the training and you get detailed stats on your clicks and traffic through your affiliate links.

This part of the community is wonderful and it is what makes it so interactive, engaging and helpful.

WA operates on a Pay-It-Forward system where you are encouraged at every step to help and guide other less experienced members.

Let's face it: When you try and make a brand new website with no prior experience, with CSS knowledge or technical knowhow, you are going to run into some issues. So to have a place where you can post an issue and get almost an immediate response from another member is invaluable.

There is a ranking system which rewards you for your engagement, your contribution to the forum and training modules and how much you help other people.

Which Is wonderful because it encourages all members to give a little bit back and help someone who needs guidance. This means there is always someone there to help you and show you which training module applies to your problem.

This feature also leads to connections being made as you make new friends within the community and build a strong bond between people.

WIthin this feature you can offer blog comments to other member's websites. The idea is that you write two lengthy and valuable comments on someone's blog post and in exchange you get one back.

This is great for SEO purposes because it fills your blog posts with keyword rich content which is relevant to your topic. It also increases natural engagement as any organic traffic with sees the comments will be more inclined to leave a comment when there is already a discussion going on.

As the pay-it-forward method is in full swing, you need to give two comments to get one back. This ensures that there is ample supply of comments and you can even exchange your comments for cash! 

This allows you to make some very intricate and important changes to your website as a third eye and opinion is so powerful. Other people will see things in a whole different light and this will not only benefit your organic traffic, but it will increase user experience, click through rates and make your blog optimized.

Sometimes feedback can hurt your feelings but at least it is honest and you can make changes BEFORE your website is exposed to the SERPS.

Not only that but you may avoid an important mistake which could end up being penalized by Google or hurting your ranking in someway. Some of the people giving feedback are full time Internet Marketers and they really do know what they are talking about.

The Site Content editor is more or less the same as the editor on your dashboard within WordPress. The only difference is it is optimized on your writing and spell checking. There is also an integrated image database of images from Pixabay, Pexels and Unsplash which gives you instant access to over 1,000,000 images you can imbed straight in your post.

Normally you would have to download them from the database webiste, then upload them which is a bore.

The purpose of the site content feature is to make you focus on just writing solid content and make it simple and easy to read, away from all the fancy template builder plug ins and such.

WA teaches you to focus on creating excellent content and not to spend days and hours designing your website. Just a simple but beautiful template will do just fine, because your content will be epic!

Content will drive traffic and revenue to your site, not a beautiful website.

The training inside Wealthy Affiliate is absolutely worth the money. Every step is broken down into easy bite-size chunks which is perfect for a beginner. Even someone with moderate experience with affiliate marketing will benefit from the training.

The step-by-step training progresses in a linear and practical way where you add content, develop your skills with WordPress and learn more about your chosen niche as you progress.

It takes the edge off of learning and the fact that there is a step-by-step process means its easier to stay on track, as opposed to going it alone and not really knowing if you're doing the right thing.

When you try and make money online it is a very lonely and precarious situation because you never really know if you're doing the right thing.

• Is your website setup correctly?
• Are you performing correct SEO?
• Are you a call to actions enticing enough?
• Why does your menu bar not aligned properly?
• Why do I get an error when uploading image?

These are just a small fraction of the questions you will encounter when you try and build a website online using WordPress, because ultimately, it is a long and frustrating journey.

Trying to generate an income using a blog is not easy and if you compound that with isolation and loneliness it becomes almost impossible but when you use the training at Wealthy Affiliate, and take advantage of the support and the community, you are never alone.

The support at Wealthy Affiliate is incredibly effective and they usually respond within half an hour of you submitting a ticket, regardless of the nature of your tickets.

Compared to other hosting providers like HostGator or Bluehost this is incredibly fast because most other providers will have a 24-hour window where they will respond.

Over the years I have had many issues with my websites ranging from:

• Problems with coding
• Theme issues and coding problems
• Plug-in compatibility issues
• Hidden errors created by myself by mistake
• Problems with webmaster tools and indexing errors such as 404’s, image errors and much more.

Each and every time I had a problem the support staff answered and fixed my problems within the hour. I can honestly say, I have never experienced hosting with support that reacts and helps you that quickly. 

To join Wealthy Affiliate is free and with the free membership you get access to the first 10 lessons within the training area, which will introduce you to the Affiliate Marketing world.

Not only that, but you can build free websites using the siterubix subdomain and you can continue to use a limited version of Wealthy Affiliate as long as you want for free.

The premium membership costs $19 for your first month, this is an introductory offer to introduce you to the life within Wealthy Affiliate. From there, it is $49 per month, which includes all the hosting, the support, the community and also the basic membership of the Jaaxy keyword research tool.

Trust me when I tell you that the $49 per month is incredible value for the tools, services and resources you get inside the community.

You can also pay for a yearly membership, which is $359 per year, which saves you a nice chunk of change. There is also one or two sporadic yearly membership sales throughout the year, where you can get the yearly membership for $299.

The most common complaints amongst new members at Wealthy Affiliate is that they get information overload. This is because there are so many resources and so many training modules they can get a bit lost at the beginning.

Now this may seem like a strange thing to have as a negative feature but this is a very common problem. Beginner bloggers join and soon become bogged down in too much information and they lose heart, become disheartened and some of them do quit in the process.

There are also some complaints about the cost, which is kind of strange when you consider that the $49 per month is cheaper than most other hosting providers who provide a fraction of the resources which Wealthy Affiliate has.

I think this is a cosmetic issue where the $49 ‘looks’ more expensive than the pricing charts at places like HostGator or Bluehost, where they advertise their hosting at $4.99 per month. However, at closer inspection, you will see that the hosting at the competing hosting providers is typically more expensive once you add the extra features, such as:

• SSL certificate
• Keyword research tool
• Premium support
• One on one coaching,
• Hosting features such as bandwidth and storage space.
• And many more ‘additional costs’ which Wealthy Affiliate does not have, but the competition does.

Overall, the hosting provided at Wealthy Affiliate is by far the best you can get for the price.

My overall view of Wealthy Affiliate is that it is the perfect place for a beginner blogger or affiliate marketer to learn the initial stages of creating an online income. The tools and features inside, including the hosting, are fantastic and they are more than suitable for even the most experienced affiliate marketer.

It is very important to feel like you have a home when you're working online. You need a community you can be a part of, in a trusting and honest way, without feeling you are being sold something at every turn.

Wealthy Affiliate is that community.

There are some downsides, but 90% of everything you get inside is a pure positive feature which will definitely enhance your performance in the online marketing world.

That is why I recommend it. That is why I love it. That is why I will always be member and I always recommends Wealthy Affiliate to anybody who wants to make money online.

What about you? Have you had any experience with WA? Leave a comment below and let us have a chat about it.