Have you come across a website called Wealthy Affiliate and you are desperately searching for an honest and straight talking review which is not littered with sales links and BUY NOW! buttons?
Well, I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate since February of 2014 and here is my honest opinion on Wealthy Affiliate.
I will not go into detail about the specifications, facts, and figures of Wealthy Affiliate. There are hundreds of positive review out there which cover all this in great detail.
I have written a full review of Wealthy Affiliate you can read – But for now, let’s delve into the good stuff.
My Honest – NEGATIVE-ish! – Opinion!
I want to say for the record I am and always will be a Premium member of Wealthy Affiliate. This is an honest review of some of the negative aspects of the community. Despite these very mild and irrelevant negative aspects I highly recommend joining Wealthy Affiliate to see for yourselves just how awesome the training is.
Most People Fail Because They Are Impatient
One big aspect which is often overlooked when people join Wealthy Affiliate is the time it takes to create a website. This is why people fail because they do not have the commitment and patience needed to complete the job.
You should ideally get yourself in the mindset where you assume you will not make any money for the first 5 months. However, with some enthusiasm and drive, to also understand that after that 5/6 month window – your earnings will grow and probably grow quickly!
This article is about 2,000-words long and it took me about 3 hours to research, proofread and edit. Let’s put this into perspective.
After one year of joining and creating a website with WA you will have in the region of 100 articles on your website, at roughly 1,500 words each.
- average 3 hours per article
- 3 hours multiplied by 100 articles = 300 hours/per year
- 300 divided by 52 weeks = Roughly 6 hours/per week.
- add 4 hours per week for training, reading and the inevitable time wasting where you get a little distracted.
- Total = 10 hours per week/1.5 hours per day!
Do you have the time to dedicate between one and two hours, after work, to Wealthy Affiliate in order to create content needed to succeed?
I am by no means trying to discourage you here, not at all. I am just being honest and realistic about the time it takes to create and online income stream.
It boils down to this;
Those willing to put in the effort will succeed. The more effort you put in, the more you learn. The more you learn the more you earn in the long run.
The more effort you put in the more you earn in the long run and that is when it get’s easier, and easier.
What Will Wealthy Affiliate Do For You?
Once you start the initial training course within WA, you will see that the training is extensive and if you are a newbie then you will get fantastic value because you are shown everything you need to know about building a successful website.
If you are wondering what benefit there is, joining WA, I would say that it is the foundation you get. You get a real, up-to-date and honest foundation training which will be the cornerstone of your future websites.
By the end of the training, you will have a fully functioning website with content which is ready to be ranked by Google.
If you were to join any other service similar to WA then you are almost always left in the dark in certain areas and not walked through the steps, leaving gaps in your set-up and SEO structure.
So, to answer the question “What Will Wealthy Affiliate Do For You?”;
WA will give you an apprenticeship and a comprehensive understanding of how to build a website quickly, and simply, without a secret agenda. Without the upsells and spammy content. Just straight, honest advice.
You are given unadulterated training which is linear, to the point and it will produce a website worth committing too, in the long run.
The Downsides To The Community?
Absolutely. Like any website or any product, or service – there are always downsides.
Too much information available!
When you join there is definitely a shock to your brain as you try and unravel all the information available to you. This is not so much a bad element, as a side effect of the excellent quality of the information available.
You can easily get distracted by the colossal collection of threads, training, and forum posts that are a few clicks away – outside the official training.
In other words, you can go from learning about the importance of a good about me page but then get totally distracted by a much more advanced article, which is getting a lot of attention by other members, about Facebook advertising.
You are essentially pulled away from your core training by much more advanced learning that you may not be ready for. This can easily determine how successful your blog becomes because imagine if you get so distracted you skip one or two modules of the core training in favour of other, more advanced training sessions, which you “think” you are ready for.
Your blog will then be missing core elements which, down the line, will harm your Google rankings and it is all because you were distracted by information overload.
Can You Trust The Other Members?
This is a tricky one! Make sure you read this very carefully.
Yes, you can trust the other members, and 90% of them will go out of their way to help you! – BUT you have to use your own judgement.
I will explain my reasoning as follows;
Within Wealthy Affiliate you have the ability to ask questions, start forum discussions and get help on any subject – which is so awesome! 95% of the time you get a lot of responses to your questions.
However, you have to be aware that just because a fellow WA member gives you an answer to a question you have, does not mean it is correct!
I see, time and time again, instances where high ranking WA members are giving advice which may not be the best solution or advice. However, the person asking the question takes the response as gospel and will probably act on the advice given.
This is the human element to a forum based discussion because everyone will always have different opinions on what is the correct way to get results, none more so than in the SEO world!
With this in mind, it is vital that, if you ask for help, take the advice given with a grain of salt and double check what they say with blog posts on websites like MOZ or SemRUSH – which are real authorities within the SEO world.
It can take you some time to figure out who the REAL authority figures are within WA and these are the guys who you CAN trust because their advice is always fundamentally sound. This is because there is a flaw within WA, which is the ranking system;
Is The WA Ranking System Flawed?
In my opinions, yes. The ranking system within WA is a little bit flawed, or perhaps, simply misinterpreted by newbie bloggers – including myself!
As you can see from the picture above, the ranking system is based on activity and creativity. In other words, the more active you are within the community, the higher your rank.
Which makes sense because you want people to be active, create training blog posts and answer people’s questions. Kyle calls it, paying-it-forward! Which a fantastic aspect of the WA community because everyone is willing to help!
However, this presents a small issue. Can you spot what it is?
This ranking system means that a brand new, newbie blogger – who may not even have a website built yet – can be in the top 200 rankings, based on nothing more than his/her activity within WA.
As you can see, this means that a newbie blogger who is needing some solid and honest advice, can in practise be given advice by an “ambassador” who has only been with WA for a few months themselves.
I am sure the advice given would be well intended but the flaw is still there and this is something which I do feel needs to be addressed.
Perhaps include other metrics into the ranking algorithm such as website domain authority on the WA hosting or perhaps the length of your Premium membership could be a factor.
The other solution could be to make it perfectly clear to everyone that a high rank within Wealthy Affiliate does NOT mean they are an authority figure, but simply an active and helpful person.
Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth Joining?
100% YES! I will not go into detail again because I have already written a review about how awesome WA is!
Then Why Am I Pointing Out The Negatives!
I am pointing out some negative aspects of Wealthy Affiliate because I have not seen many other people who have done so. I feel that anyone who is going to join deserves to know everything there is to know from the perspective of an existing member.
These few flaws are a minute portion of the awesomeness that lies within Wealthy Affiliate. I love the community and everything that happens within it. Well, apart from the points I have mentioned!
In a hostile and lonesome Internet world of “Guru’s” and Affiliate Marketing scams, WA is a safe haven for anyone who wants to make money online with a blog/website.
My Personal Experience With Wealthy Affiliate
I joined WA in February 2014. I worked through the initial training like any other newbie blogger and found it liberating how straight forward and honest the training was.
Fuelled with enthusiasm I charged ahead and was desperate to get ranked and kept checking my stats on Google Analytics and Google Webmaster – even when I only had a few posts!
Like so many newbies I was too eager, too impatient and I burned myself out after two months.
I completed the training and I had a great looking website but I was too impatient and I felt I had chosen a niche that was not right for me because I found I was getting bored with it.
It really changes your perspective on a topic, which you thought you loved, once you have to write thousands upon thousands of words about it!
At that point, I “gave up” for a while and got distracted by my full-time job and other personal things that were going on at the time. Even though this website would have made me money, had I just worked on it another few months!
A few months later I came back to Wealthy Affiliate with a refreshed mind and I started the training again! This time, it made much more sense and I really took my time with it.
Three months later I made my first commission!
I have not looked back since and if you are wondering how long it takes to make money with Wealthy Affiliate then I can tell you it takes less time than you may think!
Read my full story if you like!
What about you? Have you had any negative experiences with Wealthy Affiliate? Leave a comment below!