Chances are you recently read a review about something (probably a make-money-online program) and the reviewer told you that in his or her opinion, Wealthy Affiliate would make a better choice.
Now you want to know what Wealthy Affiliate is, how it works, whether or not it’s really better & most importantly whether or not it can really help you to make money, right?
Well, the good news is that you’ve landed in the right place because in this honest Wealthy Affiliate review I’m going to be uncovering literally everything there is to know about it.
Plus I’ll also be sharing 5 real (and verifiable) success stories that prove it’s actually legit.
What Is Wealthy Affiliate? | Is It Legit? | How Do You Make Money With It? | Is It a Pyramid Scheme? | How Much Does It Cost? | Is It Worth The Money? | Can You Really Make Money With It? | Who Owns It? | How Long Does It Take To Make Money? | 5 REAL Success Stories | Bottom Line | Quick-Start Bonus
What Is Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate is a program that teaches & enables people to earn money through a method known as affiliate marketing, which basically involves promoting products or services online in return for commissions.
You see, most companies that have an online presence have something called “affiliate programs” through which you can promote their products for money.
This even includes the big names like Amazon, Best Buy & Walmart etc.
In fact here’s an example of the Amazon affiliate program, which is called Amazon Associates:
As you can see from the screenshot above the program is titled “Profit from Amazon” and they state that they’ll pay you up to a whopping 12% in commissions by promoting their stuff.
So it’s safe to say that affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to make money, and it’s actually the same way that I personally make most of my own money online.
The good thing about it is that you don’t have to mess around with refunds, support, sales or anything like that. In fact, you literally don’t even have to talk to anybody to make money.
All you need to do is promote.
You send people to the company’s websites, they buy stuff, you get paid.
The process itself is really simple (as you can likely see from my explanation above) however your success lies in whether or not you’re actually able to get people clicking your links & buying stuff through them.
If you can’t do that, you won’t make money…
But thankfully that’s exactly what Wealthy Affiliate is there to help you with.
Wealthy Affiliate explains the process of affiliate marketing, provides you with step-by-step training on getting started with it & hosts all of the tools that you need to make money.
The training teaches you a bunch of different means of promotion including email marketing & paid advertising, but primarily it has a heavy focus on a free & easy method known as search engine optimisation.
So, in short, you’ll mainly find yourself learning how to build small, simple webpages that target niche topics which will be used to attract visitors from search engines such as Google.
And then you’ll turn those visitors into profits by referring them to websites via your affiliate links.
You see, when you create content online (such as a webpage), search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing automatically discover them & list them within their results for people to click on.
So as an example if you were interested in cycling & decided to create a page about what you believed to be the best cycling backpacks, Google would discover it & show it whenever somebody searched for something related to those backpacks, like this:
Then once it was listed in the search results, visitors would start coming through to your page to check out more information about the backpacks which gives you the opportunity to promote products to them as an affiliate.
And as you can see below, that’s exactly what the creator of that cycling backpack webpage has done himself:
So from a one-time small effort of creating the webpage, you could see yourself generating a long-term passive income which could continue to pay you for many years to come.
And the best part is that you can literally create as many pages as you want via Wealthy Affiliate, so if you’re willing to work at it then you could literally scale your income to any level that you desire.
The more pages you create, the more you stand to earn.
Is Wealthy Affiliate Legit?
In a word, yes, Wealthy Affiliate is indeed legit & that’s proven by the fact that they’re willing to let you try it all out for yourself completely free of charge & 100% risk-free.
You see, most online programs promise the world but then require you to hand over your cash in order to get started & then just leave you feeling disappointed with what you receive when you do.
Wealthy Affiliate, however, works differently.
At Wealthy Affiliate, you can create a free Starter account & check it all out for yourself first. There’s no payment details required, meaning there’s absolutely no risk.
All you need is an email address to get in… And if you decide you don’t like it, no big deal – you can just sign right back out.
There’s no catches, no gimmicks and no tricks.
As a free Starter member, you’ll even be able to begin working through the first 10 lessons of the training course & build our your first webpages, as well as join in the live community chat.
Then, if you decide you want to, you can upgrade to become a Premium member which will give you access to everything… But there’s absolutely no pressure to do so.
And unlike those other programs that just seem to keep on springing up more & more costs and “levels” every time you upgrade, Wealthy Affiliate just has the one plan… Premium.
Once you’re Premium, you’ve got everything… There’s no more upsells & no pesky “hidden costs”.
It’s simple, honest, transparent & upfront… And as you’ll also see further down in this review, it’s also VERY well priced too – especially considering everything you get.
How Do You Make Money With Wealthy Affiliate?
There are 2 main ways that you can earn money with Wealthy Affiliate.
Firstly, you can earn it by building small, simple websites that promote products related to things you’re interested in – and this is the route that most people tend to go down…
Or alternatively, if you don’t have any interests (or can’t think of any that you’d like to pursue) then you can simply leverage Wealthy Affiliate’s own affiliate program to earn money by recommending their training others.
Personally, I do both… But if you’re brand new to affiliate marketing then I’d always recommend starting by building out a site that’s related to something you’re interested in first.
The reason I recommend that is because it’ll make the process much more enjoyable & if it’s enjoyable then you’ll be much more likely to see success since the chances are you’ll find yourself putting more effort in.
If something’s not enjoyable & you’re only doing it to try to make money then you’ll just end up finding ways to avoid it.
For example, when I first started I built my webpages around cycling related stuff since cycling was a strong passion of mine & it was because I enjoyed it so much that I kept pushing forward with it.
It didn’t really like “work”, it was fun… And I think that’s half the reason I managed to see success.
Of course, the commissions you’ll earn will depend on what you promote. If you go down the route of your own niche site then each affiliate program will have different commission rates.
If you go down the route of promoting Wealthy Affiliate though, then their program is pretty lucrative.
Starter members earn 25% commissions from their referrals & Premium members get their commissions boosted up to a whopping 50%.
Plus those commissions are recurring as well… So for as long as your referrals stay subscribed, you’ll keep on earning… And if you’d like to learn more about that you can get the full details about the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program here.
Is Wealthy Affiliate a Pyramid Scheme?
Wealthy Affiliate provides training on how to build a small, simple webpages around things that you’re interested in which you can then use to promote products as an affiliate.
However, it’s true that a lot of members who join Wealthy Affiliate ultimately end up going on to building websites that actually just promote Wealthy Affiliate itself to others too.
As a result, a lot of people have called Wealthy Affiliate a pyramid scheme online.
They suggest that there’s no actual value inside & that the members are just signing up so that they can earn money by promoting Wealthy Affiliate to others.
It’s a valid claim, but is it true?
Is Wealthy Affiliate a pyramid scheme?
The answer to that is a huge NO, Wealthy Affiliate is not a pyramid scheme & anybody claiming that it is a pyramid scheme is quite clearly misinformed, as you’ll soon see for yourself.
You see, firstly, the whole reason a pyramid scheme is named a pyramid scheme is because it operates on multiple levels, with commissions being passed level to level & forming a “pyramid” shape.
Those at the top of a pyramid scheme are usually the only ones that reap the real rewards, due to its shape. They’re the ones getting all of the commissions passed up to them, and that’s why pyramid schemes are illegal because those lower down stand next to no chance of actually making any money.
Those lower down are essentially just lining the pockets of those higher up.
So when you take a look into the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program it’s easy to see that it’s not a pyramid scheme, because their affiliate program actually only pays out on 1 level.
You refer somebody, you earn a commission. That’s it.
If they then refer people, you don’t earn anything from their referrals… There’s no “passing up” of commissions like they’re is in a pyramid. It’s just a standard 1-tier affiliate program.
But on top of that, there’s also the fact that whilst a lot of people do indeed promote Wealthy Affiliate, the majority do not.
You see, Wealthy Affiliate has a member base of over 1 million members (yes, 1 million). So even a lot of them may be promoting Wealthy Affiliate, that number is minuscule compared to how many are building out other sites in other niches.
Instead of earning by promoting Wealthy Affiliate, most members earn by promoting products from Amazon.
Here’s proof:
- Amazon earnings mystery, higher price than expected.
- First Amazon Earnings!
- So Excited, Largest One Day Commissions from Amazon.
- Highest Amazon Commissions Yet
- My first Amazon Earnings!
Nearly all of the Wealthy Affiliate success stories boast earnings from Amazon & other platforms. Very few of them boast commissions from Wealthy Affiliate itself, which I think speaks volumes on its own.
And you’ll also find that the main reason people end up promoting Wealthy Affiliate is because they see so much value in it & want to share it with others to truly help them earn online.
Most Wealthy Affiliate promoters have already built other successful niche websites as a result of following the training prior to going on to actually promote Wealthy Affiliate itself.
They’re sharing it because they believe in it.
How Much Does Wealthy Affiliate Cost?
As mentioned a little further up in this review Wealthy Affiliate actually offers an entirely free Starter membership which lets you work through the first 10 lessons, gives you the ability to launch your first website & provides you with access to the community.
The best part is that the free Starter membership requires absolutely no credit card or payment details. Just an email address will get you inside which means that it’s entirely risk-free so you can check it all out without any worry.
On top of that though, they also offer a Premium membership.
If you decide you like what you see as a Starter member & wish to progress with the rest of the training then you can opt to upgrade to Premium.
Premium gives you access to absolutely everything inside of the program & the good news is that after that there are absolutely no upsells whatsoever.
The price for Premium is just $49 per month, or you can even bring that cost all the way down to just $30 per month by paying for the full year in advance ($359 for the whole year).
That’s it… No hidden costs, no gimmicks & no surprises.
But even though Premium offers amazing value for money there’s need to jump in with both feet. You can still check it out as a free Starter member first to see if you actually like it.
And if you’d like to do that right now, then you can create your account here, risk-free.
Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth The Money?
In all honesty, I literally don’t think there’s any other affiliate marketing training company that gives you as much for your money as Wealthy Affiliate does.
You see, most other companies charge stupidly high fees & then still leave you to find out that you have to purchase additional stuff from elsewhere on top in order to see success.
And when I say “stupidly high fees”, some other training companies literally charge in excess of $5,000 to provide you with access to less training & tools than Wealthy Affiliate.
It’s crazy.
Wealthy Affiliate, however, charges just $49 per month & gives you access to literally everything you could ever need in order to see success.
That includes training, tools, materials, web-hosting & community support.
And I’ll point out that even though the Wealthy Affiliate price for all of that is super low, their service is no joke. In fact, they are actually one of the best managed-web-hosting providers around.
Take a look for yourself at how their hosting compares:
Plus Wealthy Affiliate even gives you the opportunity to lower that price even further by paying for the full year in advance.
If you pay for the full year in advance which costs just $359, then the monthly cost will work out to be around $30 which is $19 lower per month than the normal monthly price.
That’s just $1 per day… In fact, it’s actually less than $1 per day.
Compare that against the average cost of starting a traditional business (which costs £12,601 according to Lloyds Banking Group) & I think you’ll likely be able to see that it’s well worth the money.
Can You Really Make Money With Wealthy Affiliate?
I see a lot of people asking this question.
The answer?
Yes, of course, you can make money with Wealthy Affiliate – but whether you do or not depends on one thing…
YOU.
You see, if you sign up to Wealthy Affiliate & don’t do anything, then you’re obviously not going to make money.
But if you sign up, follow the training & take action on what you learn (as you’re told to do) then you can definitely make money, and you can literally make as much as you want.
The harder you work at it, the more you stand to make with it.
And as I mentioned further up in this review you can make that money in 2 ways.
You can make money with Wealthy Affiliate by following the training, building simple webpages related to your interests & using them to promote products as an affiliate.
Or alternatively, you can make money by recommending Wealthy Affiliate to others.
You get somebody to sign up, they decide to go Premium, you get paid a commission… And in its 10+ years of existence, Wealthy Affiliate has never paid an affiliate late.
They have an awesome affiliate program & the owners run it with solid integrity.
You don’t have to just take my word for it though:
- Does Wealthy Affiliate Really Work? – $400 From One Post
- Does Wealthy Affiliate Work?
- Does Wealthy Affiliate Work – A Question Frequently Asked! Day 3 of 23
Who Owns Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate is owned by 2 Canadian guys named Kyle Louden & Carson Lim (pictured below):
Kyle is on the left with his family & Carson is on the right.
The good news is that they’re actually very open about their identities as they actually introduce themselves to you in the very first lesson of the training course.
They also both have Instagram profiles too… Kyle’s handle is @wealthyaffiliatekyle & Carson’s is @wealthyaffiliatecarson.
You typically tend to see more of Kyle around on the site though as he does a lot more of the training & engaging. Carson spends a lot more time behind the scenes working on new updates & things like that.
And guess what?
The guys even give you the opportunity to meet up with them & hang out if you decide to participate in the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program & reach a certain number of sales.
Cool, right?
They’ll literally pay for you to fly out to Vegas & hang with them. You’ll get your flight, hotel, food, everything covered. It’s a pretty neat perk to their program, to say the least.
And I myself have actually been lucky enough to meet up with them.
Take a look:
That’s me in the middle, with Carson to my left & Kyle to my right. You can even read about my full Wealthy Affiliate trip to Vegas right here (if you’d like to).
How Long Does It Take To Make Money?
How long is a piece of string?
Honestly, there are SO many variables to this question.
How long it takes to make money depends on how fast you learn, how hard you work, and a bunch of other factors. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer to this question.
Some people earn money in their first month.
Some people earn it in their second month.
But realistically, like anything new, you shouldn’t expect things to happen fast. You’ve got to appreciate that there’s going to be a learning curve.
So even though you may well make money much sooner, I would tell you to set yourself a goal of at least 6 months before you expect to begin earning your first commissions.
That way, you won’t find yourself disappointed.
And I know, you’re probably thinking 6 months seems like a long time.
Why the heck should you work at the Wealthy Affiliate training if you’re not going to earn anything for 6 months? Why should you spend that money? What’s the point?
Well, the reason is because once you do begin to gain momentum, things will start building up much more quickly, like the snowball effect.
Here’s a REAL chart showing the growth in a specific member’s income from Wealthy Affiliate:
As you can see, when the member first started out there wasn’t a lot happening.
For the first 4 months, the chart shows that the member was earning less than around $100 per month… However, by month 6, he was then earning over $2,000 per month.
And by month 10, he was making over $6,000 per month.
So put that into perspective.
$6,000 per month is much higher than the average salary, and by just working at Wealthy Affiliate consistently for some hours per day, that member is now earning exactly that level of income.
What’s more though is that the member can now earn that income from wherever he wants, and he can choose to work whenever he works. He’s his own boss.
So hopefully you can now see that even though it might take some time to make money with affiliate marketing, it is most certainly worth it in the long run.
5 REAL Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories
I could talk about what’s included inside of Wealthy Affiliate & how it works all day long, but what you’re probably really interested in is whether or not people are actually finding success with it.
Right?
So I decided to put this section together in which I’ll outline some of the Wealthy Affiliate success stories that I felt really stood out to me for one reason or another.
1. ericcantu – $4k Per Month In His First Year (Working Part-Time)
Eric is a firefighter from Texas who discovered Wealthy Affiliate in January 2017.
He managed to build up an income of $4k per month within his first year of getting started at Wealthy Affiliate, and the best part is that he actually managed that in his spare time.
He still works as a firefighter & never came to Wealthy Affiliate with any real intention of leaving his job… He just wanted to pick up an extra paycheck each month.
Here’s what Eric has to say about Wealthy Affiliate in his blog post:
2. JerryHuang – $340k In 8 Months (Aged Just 22)
Jerry was working part-time in a restaurant as a cleaner when he first came across Wealthy Affiliate. Here he is pictured back working in his restaurant job below:
Wealthy Affiliate enabled him to leave that job, and it also made him to decide to drop out one of the top universities in Asia which is where he was also studying at the time.
It might initially sound like a bold (and potentially risky) change in direction, but when you hear that Jerry was able to earn $340k in a period of just 8 months from his business, you’ll probably realize he’s got it pretty figured out.
3. littlemama – $1,300+ Per Day
Grace, known as littlemama inside of Wealthy Affiliate was totally brand new to affiliate marketing prior to coming across Wealthy Affiliate & was just looking for a way to earn extra money whilst taking care of her children at home.
Now she’s sometimes earning in excess of $1,300 per day – and her affiliate business has earned well over $85,000 in total since she initially got started with it.
The great thing about Grace is that she literally documented her entire journey inside of Wealthy Affiliate so you can really see how things started to take off for her if you have a read of her blog posts.
You can check out her profile here.
4. Dylanrieger – $40,000 From One Website
Dylan followed the training Wealthy Affiliate built out a simple little website using the tool that’s provided, added some content & then later sold it for a whopping $40,000.
The best part is that Dylan is yet another person that had no previous experience prior to coming to Wealthy Affiliate.
According to his bio, he actually used to work in a call centre which he hated, and he literally quit his job on the same day of joining Wealthy Affiliate upon getting inside & realising the potential of it.
I mean, I obviously don’t recommend quitting your job so hastily, but Dylan’s proof that it can be done & he says that since doing it he’s never looked back. You can find his profile here.
5. saco – $14,000 In 3 Months
When Jesse (known as saco) joined Wealthy Affiliate, his goal was to make a modest $1,500 per month. Little did he know that a year and a half later he’d actually find himself making $4,000 to $5,000 per month instead.
In just 3 months alone he managed to rack up a whopping $14,000 in commissions, which is pretty impressive considering he was totally brand new when he first got started.
You can read his blog post here.
But Those Aren’t The ONLY Success Stories…
I picked 5 random success stories to highlight to you, but don’t be fooled into thinking that they’re the only success stories because there are actually thousands.
To prove it, here’s a whole bunch more than you can check out at your leisure:
- Best Affiliate Commissions – A New Record!
- First commission from Linkshare just in!
- WA Success! Going To Ibiza!
- How I quit my job to earn full-time income online thanks to WA
- I love December! 91 Items ordered in one day!
- $5k per mo is possible – Follow the training and you’ll get results
- One Year In quit my day job!
- 4 Figure earner made possible by WA
And of course, there are many, many more.
The Bottom Line
Wealthy Affiliate is an awesome place to get started with affiliate marketing & it provides you with literally everything you need in order to actually begin making money.
On top of that though, it also provides excellent value for money.
You see, yes – there are indeed other places where you can go to learn affiliate marketing… But the problem is that they’re either more expensive, or they simply don’t include everything you need.
There’s nothing worse than paying for a program only to then find out that you need to purchase a whole bunch of other things in order to just actually make a start with it.
At least at Wealthy Affiliate, you can rest assured that you have access to everything you need all under one-off & all bundled into one small membership cost. No extra payments.
And the other great thing about Wealthy Affiliate is that you can get to try it out for free without any risks.
The majority of other programs require you to hand over some cash first to get started, and if they don’t, then they almost certainly require you to enter payment details for a “free” trial.
Wealthy Affiliate does none of that though… There’s no payment details required whatsoever – just an email address will get you in. Then it’s completely up to you if you decide to upgrade, based on what you see.
Sound good?
Well, why not check it out for yourself by creating a Starter account here. You’ll be able to check out the first 10 lessons, build out your website & engage with the community.
Plus Here’s a Quick-Start Bonus For You
I’m a member of Wealthy Affiliate myself (it’d be a bit ironic if I wasn’t, after all the good things I’ve said about it above), so here’s the deal…
Wealthy Affiliate has an affiliate program, I mentioned it earlier in this review.
Meaning if you sign up via my link & happen to go Premium, I’ll get paid a commission from Wealthy Affiliate at absolutely no additional cost to you whatsoever.
And so in return for signing up via my link & going Premium, I’d be willing to you offer you my personal mentorship, working 1-on-1 with you to help you launch a thriving business in the shortest time possible.
It’ll cost you $49 if go via my link… It’ll cost you $49 if you don’t… So basically you’ll be paying the exact same price, but getting the added bonus of my personal support.
Hopefully, that sounds like a good deal.
And if it does, you can create your account here via my link right now to take advantage of that.
But don’t worry – you still don’t have to rush into going Premium. You can check it out for as long as you like as a Starter member, I won’t put any pressure on you to upgrade.
Just know, though, that when (or if) you do upgrade, I’ll be there ready to help you.
I hope to see you on the side.
Speak soon.
P.S. Here’s a direct link to my Wealthy Affiliate profile just in case you want to reach out with any questions.