Computer ATM Machine

The Problem with Wealthy Affiliate

TL;DR Update: DO NOT promote Wealthy Affiliate. Sign up for a free trial, engage with the community and learn what you can before your access expires, but DO NOT GO PREMIUM. They are selling a fantasy built on a dying business model which serves only to benefit (no surprise here…) the founders of Wealthy Affiliate. You can glean some value from the trial, but do not invest in their training and by all means do not even consider building out any sites using their proprietary services. If you want to know why, then read on…

October 2020 Update: This article which was written 6 years ago has attracted a lot of attention from Wealthy Affiliate members – past and present – along with a few of their shills who have yet to come to terms. As a result, I’m planning to resurrect this topic in an effort to answer the question: if not Wealthy Affiliate, then what other service or resources do you recommend? I’d very much like to provide answers to that, so in the meantime…if you have questions related to affiliate marketing or WordPress site management, leave them in the comments below. -Craig

The problem with WA is… they don’t put their members through any sort of review process before they let them set off into the world of internet marketing. Sure, they provide some resources and tutorials (albeit a bit outdated in terms of best practices) which cover the basics of internet marketing, but they also do a good job of making it sound so easy. I feel like a lot of folks sign up thinking it’s going to be a convenient way to generate income once they know how to post a blog, install a few plugins in WordPress, and get their affiliate links added. Ha!

Obviously, holding people back until they’ve “graduated” from the program wouldn’t work anyway, but I can tell you honestly that…

99% of the people in the WA Community will make next to no money in affiliate marketing and will likely give up.

I hate to sound like a Downer Donna, but I’m calling it like I see it. I’ve perused many of the sites linked in comments within their community portal and in user profiles, and most of them are pretty awful. Now I know that we’ve all got to start somewhere, but the glaring issue here is that most of these people are wondering why their sites aren’t earning them mad cheddar. They paid their dues, they followed the lessons and did what WA told them would make them abundant cash in no time, so what’s the deal..?! Why haven’t they become rainmakers overnight?

To me, it’s painfully obvious, but to them…they’re confused. WA said that they’d have their money-making site up within seconds, so what the heck..?!

Wealthy Affiliate’s candy-coated sales pitch

Now I imagine there are some highly motivated and disciplined individuals who could utilize the membership training and community resource to build a profitable businesses; however… The main sales page is a bit misleading in that I feel it grossly oversimplifies the process of establishing a profitable site, and it nowhere near emphasizes just how much work will be involved. Not to mention, the several months and hours upon hours of sweat equity you will have to invest before you start seeing any sort of income.

Let me dissect the Wealthy Affiliate sales pitch…

If you’re not yet a Wealthy Affiliate member, you can check out their sales page at wealthy affiliate dot com.

Choose an Interest

They tell you that the first step in the process is to choose a niche. In my opinion, this should be pretty easy for you determine before you even decide to get started. If not, then internet marketing may not be for you. The reason I say this is due to the amount of effort required to build a profitable business from scratch. If you can’t think of one single thing that excites or interests you, then you are going to have an uphill struggle if you plan to make a go of it in affiliate marketing.

Wealthy Affiliate will help you select a good niche, and some of that process is covered within the free membership. However . . . they also quickly position the option of you marketing Wealthy Affiliate itself …if you are at a loss, in terms of deciding upon a vertical.

This is a BAD idea.

NO ONE that is new to internet marketing should pursue a niche solely based on the prospect of money-making. To be successful, you must pursue a niche that you are passionate about.

Think about it…who in their right mind is going to be sold a service that you have yet to make a dime from yourself. If you’re able to make some money as a Wealthy Affiliate member, then you might think about trying the Wealthy Affiliate Bootcamp route, but it’s highly unlikely anyone will ever create a sustainable business marketing Wealthy Affiliate. In order to be a successful affiliate marketer in 2020, you must be an authority on a given niche.

You may be able to convert a few Facebook friends, or your mom, but you will not succeed as a Wealthy Affiliate ‘affiliate’ if you choose their WA Bootcamp as your niche. They’ll lead you to believe that you will, and while you could…maybe… it’s what I consider to be a very advanced (and very bullshit) niche which only experienced or uber-motivated shady internet marketers should pursue.

Alright, so the ‘choose an interest’ step is pretty self-explanatory, provided you arrive at WA with at least one interest. 😉

Just don’t do the Bootcamp . . . I’m serious. I’ve seen a boatload of abandoned WA affiliate sites where the site owner followed the same cookie cutter methods outlined in the training, worked hard at it for 30-60 days, never to return.

Follow your passion, not the money. Don’t be a soulless Wealthy Affiliate pie-in-the-sky zombie slave who tries to start a business by promoting something you know very little about and have yet to see success with yourself.

That is deceptive and that is lazy.

Instead, seek to provide value. Be informative. Be helpful.

Ok…on to the next step in their ‘how to get started’ sales proposition…

Build a Website

Oh my god…this step is so misleading. I especially love this bit…

In a matter of seconds, you will have your own website up and you can choose a design that appeals to you.

HaHa! If I were new to online business, website administration and WordPress, I would assume they meant you can have your site up and ready within seconds. That’s what it says, right?!

Bullshit.

Wealthy Affiliate has an install wizard which can technically have your site themed and online within seconds, but that is just the beginning.

It is going to take you weeks and weeks of online training, loads of content creation and endless tinkering before you’ll have a legitimate web presence. You may think your website is great and you’ll be proud of the fact that you did it yourself, but I’m telling you…to build a competitive and professional web presence requires a great deal of experience and/or resources.

There is no misinformation outlined in this step, but so much about the process of building an internet marketing site is left out. It’s devoid of actionable and valuable info, and is arguably deceitful. Even if you progress through their free course, you’ll still only possess the basics of the basics. To have any hope of knowing what to do with your site you’ll absolutely have to go premium and be prepared to spend tons of hours learning and asking questions.

Attract Visitors

They tell you that you need visitors to your site in order to profit from your new business. Shyeah..! Of course you need visitors to make any money.

Good news is, Wealthy Affiliate goes on to say that within the first few lessons you’re going to learn the techniques that will allow you to get an abundance, no wait…ABUNDANCE of relevant customers to your site by way of organic search. Most folks reading this have no idea just how difficult this is. If you know how to do it, then it’s mainly just hard work, but for those of you that don’t understand the process…you’re in for a long education full of trial and error.

If rankings were easy to obtain, everyone would be doing this, am I right..?! No way anyone new to IM is going to learn even a smidgen of what they need to know through those first few lessons. I’ve gone through the lessons. I know.

Earn Revenue

Once your site is built and gaining relevant traffic, making money from it is entirely possible. It’s all of the stuff leading up to the monetization part that is difficult.

The problem with 90% of those who join Wealthy Affiliate is that they fast-forward right to here. Some of that could be delusions of grandeur, part of it may be impatience or desperation, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Wealthy Affiliate lures people in by having them believe that the process is so easy.

It’s not. It’s really f**king hard!

But it seems like as soon as people get their WordPress site up and running, they want to add their about page, privacy policy, a few posts, and then immediately start harassing visitors with ads to the face . . . at which point I imagine them sitting and staring at their computer waiting for the money to start pouring out of it like an ATM.

This is not how IM works.

You’re only seconds away from starting a business…

This is true. Within seconds you could have access to the training and website launcher that will allow you to start a business, but you are months and months (and more likely…years) away from making any money.

Is Wealthy Affiliate a legit service..?

This is a tough one to answer, but I’ll try to be as objective as possible here. On one hand, a very soft yes. They do provide some adequate training in the way of affiliate marketing and WordPress site management, but it’s more than a little self-serving and there are much better resources out there to learn these things. They really tout their platform as a magic bullet solution for IM, but it’s not. They’re also quick to suggest WA as a good affiliate marketing niche, but that is a definite NO. Again…DO NOT even think about starting an affiliate marketing business that’s built upon the model of evangelizing the Cult of WA.

In my opinion, there’s no harm in signing up and peeking behind the curtain for a bit. Go through a few of their tutorials, learn what you can, see for yourself what all the chatter is about, corroborate what I’m telling you in this post. and if affiliate marketing is still of interest to you after a few weeks, then get after it.

However, DO NOT give WA any money and by all means DO NOT host any websites with them.

Do I recommend Wealthy Affiliate?

If you go into it with realistic expectations and are aware of the sacrifices and suffering involved with being successful as an affiliate marketer, then WA can provide you with an easy to follow – albeit very basic – road map.

Do they provide a blueprint for sucecss? F**K NO.

The lessons can be useful to those just starting out, but I think that their service attracts a lot of misled buyers because of how easy they make it all seem. Sure, you could make some money in affiliate marketing if you follow their training and tutorials and put in an ungodly amount of work. I’m sure of this, but . . . most people who arrive at Wealthy Affiliate with thoughts of creating that additional digital entrepreneur revenue stream will be lucky if they make enough money to pay for their membership.

If you’re pursuing affiliate marketing with visions of grandeur – thinking you’re going to crush it as a Wealthy Affiliate ‘affiliate’ – STOP IT. I’m serious. Don’t. You will fail, and the internet is already rife with thin ‘make-money-online’ websites. We don’t need any more of those – especially those created by impostors, opportunists and wannabes.

Since joining Wealthy Affiliate, it’d been my goal to help new and existing members speed up the process for getting results. If you’re someone who’s wanting to try it out and see if affiliate marketing is right for you, go sign up. If you join through my site, I will personally follow you and provide answers if you get stuck. But that doesn’t mean I’ll do the work for you. I’m here to help facilitate success, but creating a successful business is on you. 😉

Update: 12/08/16

Sorry folks, but I’m afraid I jumped ship on Wealthy Affiliate years ago, so I won’t be able to offer any advice or support through that community. Even if I was compelled to drop in from time to time and answer a few questions, I’m unable to do so now unless I renew my premium membership, which is a complete and utter bullshit policy.

So be forewarned…if you upgrade your membership to premium, it must be for life. If you cancel your membership, your access to the site becomes restricted.

Wealthy Affiliate Premium: Proceed With Caution
Shame on you, Wealthy Affiliate

This is very shady, Wealthy Affiliate.

I’m not terribly worried about it, however, as I have completely washed my hands of their garbage service. I have no intention of promoting their product, but I did feel compelled to update this post so that others may think twice before committing to the premium membership. Based on this business practice, Wealthy Affiliate is now firmly on my avoid list.

I don’t necessarily regret going with a paid membership, as it satisfied my curiosity about their platform. My intention was to see first-hand if they had any secret sauce to share, but they clearly do not. Wealthy Affiliate is milking a dying business model and I’m willing to bet they are not providing additional value or evolving their ‘curriculum’ to adapt to the ever-changing rules of internet search.

My other motivation was to offer an insightful take on their program – from an experienced developer, SEO and affiliate marketer’s point of view – so as to help others make an informed decision on WA. Based on the amount of people sniffing this post, I hope that I’ve been able to do just that!

If my honest analysis of Wealthy Affiliate’s service and bullshit value proposition has saved a few of you from making a poor investment (which judging by the comments below, it has), then I’d consider my experience a huge win!

486 thoughts on “The Problem with Wealthy Affiliate”

  1. Stranger to you

    Oh, OK so you want me to join through the same window that bullshits other people? Really, you’re going to be there for me as a new member? Wealthy Affiliate is a joke and it’s NOT a university. That’s a load of garbage.

    “Don’t go through bootcamp to promote WA” but that’s exactly what you are doing. Really, dude????

    1. I want you to make an informed decision based on the information and analysis included in my post, which is a no-bullshit overview of the IM process and an objective view of the WA USP.

      WA is not a University – you’re correct – but for fuck’s sake, who in the hell would take that literally?! The ‘university’ term is just something they use in their branding to help illustrate that it’s intended to be an educational program, which it is.

      WA is a decent program. It’s no magic bullet solution for making money online, but it provides members with a simple road map for how to go from zero to making a couple of bucks. For a guy like me, it doesn’t have a lot to offer beyond providing me with some warm fuzzies I get from helping some of the noobs out, but I think for anyone looking for an easy-to-follow means of understanding IM, it could be a good value.

      Maybe you were upset by the inclusion of affiliate links in this post, but…hello…DUH.

      I’m sorry you missed the point of this article, but if it dissuaded you in anyway from joining WA then maybe it DID do its job, I don’t know.

      1. Hi Craig,
        Great article !! I am a premium member for two more weeks and iI have only written a hand ful of material to date and to be honest with you, the last one published today will probably be my last a nd your article seemed to verify that for me.
        You’re right in that they make it sound so easy snd everybofy wants to help, we have a great community, great training, bullshit sfter bullshit!!
        Thats sll they consist of is training videos. Training for this snd that and everytime you ask for help, they send you to another video..bullshit!! I dont need to watch 50 million viideos yo find out what is going on when someone can just tell me.
        Its ridiculous !! Their websites suck and they’re not websites their just statical blocks of information and thats all. Yesh, they are a very misleading orhanization a d i think im toast as far as they are concerned. Great article.

      2. I agreed that once a member cancel the premium membership, assess is out.
        My last words to the founder was how much is ethics worth.. Well not much by my Premium subscriptions

        1. Hello
          I recently upgraded to premium and after the first day , I could no longer continue my training. Each time I logged in , the site continuously interrupted me asking me log in / join page . Each time , I clicked on any thing , join / log in page will appear . I tried sending a private message , it said I need to be a premium member in order to send a private message , I was very embarrassed because I am already a premium member . I sent a yahoo email to kyle and Carson but they did not reply .

          1. Hi Gloria. I have exactly tge same experience as you. I also cannot anymore access higher level training for two days now. Evry time I try to access I an beung bkocked by WA ‘ ad asking to join premium membershio and pay (again) the $19 fee.
            I messaged Kyle and Carson through instagram repeatedly but no answer.
            I am helpless now, as you.
            I also messaged WA, philippines since I an a Filipino, but no answer yet.
            I am inclined to believe the negative reviee i have just read.
            I dont know now what to do.

          2. Hi Gloria. I an also a premium member and experiencing the same thing as you. I message Kyle abd carsin seversk times but no answer.

          1. Daniel, I use their information. I’ve been with them for a few years. I have taken their information and use it towards. Tell me with my knowledge I’m building my website and personally I can’t afford $300 to build my own website. So you know I went to wealthy affiliates to do it. What I think I’m finding those cuz I couldn’t pay on it for a few months cuz of COVID. I think somebody else took my website and they’re taking over my name. It’s women’s prime.com and somebody’s claiming my website that they they wrote all this stuff and I don’t know if they try to sell my website. But I use them to build up knowledge and to do what I could because you know what some knowledge is better than none and there’s a lot of stuff on there that can help you

      3. That’s a load of shit, your expecting me to take a bite of your bullshit sandwich, buddy there isn’t enough bread on that sandwich. I joined June 2019, and in the first month, they charged me monthly fees three times, I asked for a refund, and never got it. So by August of 2019, I had paid monthly “dues” for four months when I had joined in June of 2019. Let’s see, June to August isn’t four months. It was then I had figured out they are a Facebook of people trying to become affiliate marketers. It’s not really “training” in the way that most people think of training, its a scam more or less. In August of 2019, I asked to cancel my membership, and WA, has just kept right on charging my debit card, so for over a year, WA has been lining their pockets with my money. Not anymore, my bank will deal with them, and I’ll get my $540.00 bucks back, and then I’m going to cram it right up their collective asses.

      4. Oh my!!!. you almost made me depressed. I am sitting now for about 3 days thinking if I should join WA. The money you have to put in is okay but I had this feeling if I would make ends meet with this online business. I have listen to 3 of the first 10 introduction bits. Since covid-19 struck the world I am out of business. So I turned to online business as an alternative to make some income. Something like $2000 – $4000 per month. This does seems almost mission impossible as all prospects I wanted to engage always have something they don’t tell you in the beginning unless you join. after you join before you can make any income the real cost kicks in. After your blog I am of the opinion that online business is more fake than the traditional corporate world that in way make you a slave and kick you out when ever they feels please. So if there are still some real online business that can be trusted (not get rich quick) I will appreciate if someone can lead me to that. I am somewhat desperate and we all know not to start anything in a hurry

      5. Atfer read all your comments,can you recommend a reliable web site that offers a decent and honest job opportunity to make any money?

    2. So mr. Stranger check this out man I’m going to the same thing with the wealthy affiliate people right now they’re undecided and not really uplifting on their program and I think I’ve spent my money for nothing and I’m not just going to keep spending money so what do you think I should do I need to get some money generated like really fast me not for no messed-up reason is for my kids man yo I’m living in my truck and my two kids living in my grandmother at their grandmother’s house and I would like to get them into the house of their own I need to get some stuff start up what do you think I should do and could you help me in this matter and if so I will pay you to set me up website and help me out through the process I will pay you good man if we can get some domain traffic going in there and things happening right man I’ll pay you good bro or kick whichever one you are

      1. I signed up for premium membership but I am disappointed already and I
        Want to end my subscription now
        before I am charged again!!

        I cannot get anybody to answer my
        emails.
        What do I have to do to end my
        subscription? Who do I have to contact to get out of this mess!!!
        Do you know who I can contact or
        call. Please contact me ASAP!!!

        Floyd Bell
        floyd.bell246@yahoo.com
        517-494-0451
        1106 s DALRYMPLE street
        Albion, Mich.49224

        Please hurry,hurry,hurry!!!

        1. Click on your picture and select settings and then it membership billing and subscription check there?

        2. Sebastian Ellis

          that’s so surprising because their service always answers my questions… usually within 30 minutes .. no matter what time of day… I would be really interested in finding out what happens with your process….. I am a member there for 2 months now…. I didn’t agree with everything in this article… As you go through the training they tell you many times that it is hard work and that most people fail… but if there is a training that has proof of a very high success rate please let us know which school/program that is…

          1. Jenny-Lee Porteous

            I joined two weeks ago and am really enjoying the training. It is far superior to anything godaddy or bluehost provides. The community is welcoming and people answer my questions within mere seconds. For a beginner looking to navigate wordpress I already feel my initial 19$ for the first month has proven worth it.

          2. I signed up for a premium membership but got really impatient with the pace of the course. I also became frustrated with much of the training which is outdated…like modules made in 2014 when here we are in 2020. Instead of the guys who own the business updating their modules, it seems to fall to other members to create training and post it…? Plus most of the “support” seems to come from the members who are doing the work of the “instructors.” If you ask a question, most of the time it is the members who do the answering although most seem to have experience under their belt and sound credible. I somewhat regret moving my website to their hosting platform and wonder what I might lose if I choose to move it…what will happen to the content already created there? Anyone?

        3. Floyd. Iam akso ss disappointed now as you with WA. I JOINED PREMIUM but i can anynore access the highe kevel training. Everytime I tryvto open I am being blocjef by WA ‘s ad asking me tobjoin premium and oay $19 again.
          I an akso thinking now onhowcto get out.
          Delfin Perez

  2. This is the best thing I have read about WA , which I am going to join soon, probably next month. I totally appreciate your frankness about the hardness of the work required to reach any meaningful mark, despite the decent platform and tools offered by WA. I will seek you out when I go premium.

    1. Hi Jim, Glad you liked the post. 🙂

      Wealthy Affiliate is a good service if you’re the type of person who knows next to nothing about IM and wants a quick blueprint for how it works. There is better information out there, for sure, but what WA does well is aggregate that info and provide a very easy to follow, go-at-your-own-pace method for getting you up and running. I went through their first 2 courses in an effort to rate the quality and accuracy of the lessons they give you ad they’re really not bad. There were things I think which could have been done a little better, but all in all, I feel they provide a good primer for IM and getting started with WP.

      The support in there is really hit and miss, which can be a bummer, as the quality of response you receive can vary greatly depending upon who replies, and it’s seldom you’ll get much from either of the head muckity mucks. They profess to be active in the community chat, but often times it’s a lot of “hey, great job…keep up the good work and you’ll be making money in no time” kind of fluff. Be prepared to do some Googling when you have a question.

      I’ve been quite busy with other pursuits so I’ve not been lurking around WA much the past few months, but if you do have a quick question about anything, feel free to poke me here or through WA.

      1. Veronica Robertson

        So what kinda of other business pursuits have you been pursuing that you see generate a good profit.

        1. Hi Veronica, I’m not someone who’s motivated by profit potential. For me, it’s more a case of doing what I enjoy and providing services for others which make their lives better. I’ve continued to grow my agency business, and more recently, I’ve become involved in a compelling startup with a mission to improve the world’s health through coffee.

          That being said, I do still dabble in affiliate marketing, but it’s more of an indulgent hobby and research tool I use to try and keep my seo saw sharp. Were I looking to make some money online right now, I would either sell some sort of product – whether it be a course or productized service – or start a drop-shipping business.

          If you have knowledge or a service which you can bundle up and sell at scale, that’s a great way to build a sustainable business. If you have an interest and a desire to put in the work, I think that a focused and informative site centered around a curated group of drop-ship products is also something that can work well.

          1. Hey man, I made a affiliate site, promoting most of the amazon products, the site is made from wealthy affiliate “websites” thing, my question is, should I delete that site from there and make the same site again out of wealthy affiliate? if I will let it there and continue like that, will it affect my income from amazon affiliating and other things?

      2. Great review or anti-review ??? Wish I had read this article a few months ago . I parted ways with WA around a month ago . I have been out here still pursuing my interest and it’s pretty FREAKIN rough . Just this afternoon i found myself engaged in a three hour batitle royal with Jetpack , WordPress , and the God that is Google over one post . Wealthy Affiliate is like that way cool app you’ve been wanting and the download is freeee , it’s just that , We’ll …. you need $575.00 in memberships , plug-ins and add-ons to make the damn thing work . Plus , they stole my domain !!! I been out here on my own for a month . I’ve pulled in $11 bucks . So yeah , you could say I’m Ballin. UP YOURS KYLE & CARSON !!!!!!!!!

        1. Monica Bouteiller

          Lol… I’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate since December 2015.

          Jetpack is not even associated with Wealthy Affiliate.

          I don’t know how you can even have a royal battle with WordPress. Seriously??? WordPress is one of the easiest and yet most powerful content management system in the internet world. There are tons of support you can get inside Wealthy Affiliate and also from WordPress if you get stuck on anything WordPress or Wealthy Affiliate training. All you had to do was ASK QUESTIONS.

          If you made $11 bucks in your first month and you’ve only been with Wealthy Affiliate for 1 month, you should be considering that a major success because you obviously were doing something right. Imagine, had you remained on Wealthy Affiliate’s platform and continued with the training what you would have accomplished. You simply gave up.

          Wealthy Affiliate does not even state that Google is God… where on earth did you get that from? Billions of people use Google search engine and that is not the only teaching. We’re also taught Bing and Yahoo search engines to get free traffic.

          Wealthy Affiliate does not steal domains…lol! If you clearly went thru the training which you obviously did not and the fact you were only there a month, were you looking for a fast money making scheme by chance? If you were, you made the right choice of leaving. There are NO SHINY BUTTONS inside Wealthy Affiliate. You were told at the start of the training that having your an online business requires HARD WORK, PERSEVERANCE, and the ability to not just simply give up which you did.

          In fact, anyone in business, whether it be a local business or an online business, the successful entrepreneurs will always tell you they worked hard and had to make personal sacrifices. I’ve been there … I still work hard and I get rewarded for my efforts. I’m only in the low 4-figure income…

          Wealthy Affiliate has a FREE Starter Membership and gives you 2 FREE websites. The 2 FREE websites reside on their sub-domain. It only costs you no more than$15. for the year to own your own website domain. You can be there for FREE for as long as you wanted.

          Unfortunately, you did not stay long enough to even know about their Black Friday special which is near the latter part of November each year. I’ve been paying I think it’s around $356 USD a year and it’s less than a $1 a day. I don’t know how anyone could complain over that to become a Premium Member.

          In closing, I wish you well and sincerely hope you find a training platform that suits your needs.

          Regards,
          Monica

          1. Monica, maybe you need re-read Jason’s comment. If there is one thing I have an issue with is when people want to get their name out for “Clout” before reading a comment thoroughly. If you had you would have known that not once did he ever say that Wealthy Affiliate stated that God is Google. What was said is that he was having a discussion with someone who commented on his post and stated to him that God is Google as well as Jetpack and WordPress. It had nothing to do with the difficulty of WordPress, that was a very ignorant comment. Secondly, maybe next time before you state that someone simply gave up after one month go back and re-read again cause you obviously missed the part that he had been with Wealthy Affiliate for a few months and only made $11 and now he’s been on his own for one month. Let me summarize it for you in case you didn’t quite understand what I am saying, WEALTHY AFFILIATE IS FILLED WITH DREAMS OF MAKING A DECENT INCOME MORE SOONER THAN LATER, YEAH A FEW YEARS LATER AND THAT IS IF YOUR LUCKY. I was with them for almost three years and worked every day for a minimum of 3 hours to a maximum of five hours per day and was bringing in on average $300 a month, are you kidding me? Kyle and Carson are making hundreds of thousands off of us while we struggle and eat crap. Then what makes matters worse is if you decide to leave in order to stop paying their high membership fees and miss the part of having to move your paid domains 30 days after you cancel or else you lose them, which means they own them and can sell them off to make even more money! How is that for a dose of reality.

            * WAKE UP EVERYONE, THE ONLY REASON WHY MONICA IS MAKING WEALTHY AFFILIATE LOOK LIKE A BED OF ROSES IS BECAUSE SHE MAKES MONEY OFF OF THEM BUY BRINGING UNKNOWING NEWBIES TO THEM AS A REFERRAL WHICH IN TURNS MAKES HER A DECENT SIZED PROFIT, THE OLD MLM SCHEME!!!!!!! How is that for a dose of reality?

          2. True ANITRA lol so true, I’ve learned never to listen to any make money online BS. And of course WA won’t mention practically all programs to affiliate with ask for your SSN/SIN and you don’t just give that online lmao, so done.

          3. Monica Excellently said…
            I came across WA and really know nothing about AM and just need to learn the fundamentals first.
            Than came upon this post…
            Now I am more confused than ever …ugh…

          4. You’re very right my dear! Yes, of course WA in their training motive you up in affiliate marketing field and give you a future zoom as though you are already there. However, they also at the same time let you know it a long term profit making deal, you’re into. What’s bad about it; to boos and motivate you but telling you, you have to work hard enough before being there?

            So unfortunate you that is so upset is the hack with this great degree of condemnation when you haven’t gone through all their teaching stuff both with one that goes on live after subscribing to attend live in your local time? Yes, they used video tutorial class course as their teaching material.

            What hold do you really have against if you been shown the step by step process to get through and become successful as an affiliate?

            I guess, perhaps you were a spy and not rather a student or was quite inpatient with the system you find yourself in! I am there fir many months now since 2019, truly haven’t make money as yet in affiliate marketing. But I know and is convicted that l have to put in all requires to get through my financial gaol as a member there. So, how do I know all that if I were not thought all that also from there?

          5. Thank you, I joined 2 days ago and I did research before about WA and I know very well that it can even take a year to see first earnings but am not gonna give up will work hard

          6. Monica
            I like what you wrote. It seems like an honest and well balanced answer. My question is, can one make money a run a respectable/profitable business using WA’s free account? Just curious if you can link a primary (not sub domain name) to their starter package and promote the site.

          7. Well said Monica,

            You covered all the bases that I was thinking about. I’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate for over a year now and am making money from my two websites. It’s been really hard work learning all about the internet as I knew nothing. I find their training excellent. And even if some videos are outdated they are still relevant, that’s why they haven’t been updated. I think people need to grow up and come into the real world and stop wanting to be spoon-fed and whinging. Being part of a supportive community is not the warm fuzzies as some egomaniacs want to propose, it’s great support to keep you working on your business. If you want someone else to do all the work, then go and pay them to do that and some whining.

            I would prefer to get many answers to my questions from experienced entrepreneurs on Wealthy Affiliate than trust a person just bagging the system because they didn’t work smart.

            Craig said, ‘I’m not someone who is motivated by profit potential.’ (That’s an I’m a better person than you statement if ever I heard one.) So I guess he is just here playing on the internet and not interested in running a profitable business. Not someone I would be listening to on how to build a business! You don’t ask the butcher on how to trade stocks, my friends. Be careful who you listen to.

            I’m so over hearing people bag Wealthy Affiliate when they haven’t even tried to make it work and just quit. It’s always easier to blame the system and not yourself.
            Everyone seems to be missing the point that running a BUSINESS takes time, effort, and money, and Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t hide that fact, they tell you often.
            Dah, what did these people think would happen when they joined? A free ride I think.

            Thank goodness there are some intelligent people in the world who understand that there aren’t any free lunches, you need to come in a do the learning. Wealthy Affiliate offers the safest and lowest cost training that I have found on the internet. Plus the cheapest value hosting. I’ve found the tech guys brilliant when I have any problems and that is worth the money just on its own.

            Time to grow up people!

          8. Hendrick Rammidi Sefawanyane

            I’m looking forward to going premium. I’m only a month old with Wealthy Affiliate and I really enjoy being there. I have been to things like Click2sell and few others but never really got to get anything constructive with them like what I have progressed at WA.
            I will just stay with WA

          9. Monica, I agree with you. Wealthy Affiliate is a decent platform. I have been on the platform for years. I even use them as my business tax off.

            I have not only learn online affiliate marketing, but many (monetization) skills I never imagined I could be capable of. I can only speak from my view, it’s well worth it, for the value given.

            They sum up the steps of Affiliate marketing, in a less complicated way, so that newbies can easily understand. They do not say the journey is easy. It depends on your ability to apply whay you’ve learned and consistency.

            I have never had any problem with their 24/7 support team. My questions are answered promptly. There are even other members always eager to help. They support each other as well.

            People should always understand that, the fairest reviews, will be those which generally share personal pros and cons about a platform. Usually, a review that discredit a legitimate decent platform from beginning to end; Are usually throwing personal shade or “beef” due to their efforts.

            They will likely never tell you what they actually did or didn’t do, to cause failure on their part. But everything they claim, will be due to their idea of the company they intend to badger.

            I suggest people should not accept the first couple of reviews, but research more if really interested. It’s not uncommon to run into “attack reviews”…

            But, if a large majority of people are giving them bad reviews… Then there’s a possibility you may need to take heed. Just my thoughts.

      3. Hi There.

        Thank you for your deep insight. I was looking for someone like you who would state the true. I did take notice about the “fishiness” of the site as soon as I got in; you need to “buy” comments, feedback and what not? How can that be of assistance to anyone? Of course, you can change your “magic money” for USD… It is not ethical for them to play with the desperation of the people.

        Anyway, thank you for your input. You’ve saved me lots of time

      4. Tracey Stevenson

        I joined just over a week ago and questions were answered within seconds but once my free 7 days was up that’s it your cut off and on your own you can not ask a single question,and now I’m stuck and can’t get help I’m put off upgrading because you are cut straight off,if you were allowed to ask one question a day I may have upgraded but not now,they are so rude

        1. There are better alternatives out there. Try Income School Project 24, youtube, or Authority Hacker/Pro. There is so much more to learn from other platforms/courses. If you’re into niche site development, look up Jon Dykstra’s course, FatStacks.

    2. I’m confused with this site if it promotes Wealthy Affiliate site or not. Because I saw some confusing articles – one that brutally knocking out the credibility of the site and another one that lay down the “flowery” words about that site.

      1. Bill, sorry for any confusion, but the post you’re commenting on here, which was last updated a few months ago, reflects my current opinion of Wealthy Affiliate. If you’re curious about it, by all means, sign up for a free trial and have a look, but I strongly advise against shelling out for their premium membership.

  3. In most blogs I usually skip the post to the end. But your post is one in a million, so I read it from start to finish. I was a member of Wealthy Aff (2007 – 2010, then 2013 -2014). 110% agree with you. It seems that not just the sales letter but thousands of WA members are over praising WA all over the internet, like it will make people money 100% guarantee, while in most cases that just isn’t true. The main method is SEO and thanks to G Panda and Penguin getting ranking takes months and even more time to produce first sale. While it is a good place for beginners, since they walk you through steps like WordPress and important SEO techniques, but it will take time, perhaps years to see result. Which is a problem since WA charges monthly for their training. New members could spend over $500 on WA membership before seeing their first check. Also, I agree with you with the WA Bootcamp part. It misled newbies to promoting back WA while they still fail to make the money. I tried promoting WA myself and it was very hard to make even one sale and even worse, that referral only stayed for 3 months and then cancel his membership. That time I already have experience and made money in other niches. Despite all that, over 100,000++ websites on the internet a promoting WA, especially review sites like onemorecupof-coffee. Those review sites kept bashing other legitimate products like Bring The Fresh and recommending the readers to go for WA instead.

    1. Glad you liked the post Azlan.

      Promoting WA is one of the most crowded and competitive niches one could hope to tackle, and yes, even if someone did manage to rise above the rest, it would likely take 12-18 months or more. And even then, you’d still be outranked by most of WA’s other website properties and social media profiles. BY promoting the WA Bootcamp so aggressively, WA is able to bolster its authority even further by facilitating so many inbound links coming from sites indexed for their keywords.

      It’s not an outright scam, but it’s very delusional and misleading.

      I set out to be one of the few that would try and promote WA in a unique way, but after a few months there I began to grow more disillusioned with the product and found that it would be harder to sell because I am not going to bullshit anyone. I think it’s a decent value as long as someone enters into their membership with realistic expectations and are not in a period of financial desperation. They do provide a pretty comprehensive nuts and bolts breakdown of how to do WordPress and basic IM practices, but I think anyone who is serious about IM will find that they will quickly outrgow WA within their first year.

      I think early adopters would have been poised to see more success due to how search algorithms worked back around the time WA launched, in addition to there being a slightly less competitive landscape, but now…good luck. And even if you were to manage to get yourself to page one for a few different longtail WA searches, in the time it took to do that you’d probably have realized there were other more lucrative or interesting opportunities you could have pursued.

      1. Wealthy Affiliate may be alive, but it’s not fulfilling its promise. How many of their members are actually WEALTHY through AFFILIATE marketing? Probably a very small percentage.

        Their sales page is very misleading. “Build Beautiful, Profit Ready Websites”…”The process takes less than 30 seconds to build a beautiful looking, mobile, and revenue ready website.” Shut up! It takes 30 seconds to install WordPress, and that’s not even unique to WA. You won’t have a “profit ready website” after those 30 seconds.

        “1,400,000+ members” – how many of them are actually active?
        “10,000+ new businesses built monthly” – how many of them are still going after the first year?
        “1,800+ expert coaches” – I highly doubt it.
        “23,000+ people helped daily” – helped to do what? And by whom? Other people who don’t really know what they’re doing most of the time.

        “Endless Opportunity. Zero Risk.” – nonsense! The free starter membership is a total waste of time. You have to upgrade to Premium to learn anything worthwhile, and then you could waste a lot of time and money without actually succeeding.

        1. Well I couldn’t have put it better myself! I joined as a free member several months ago and fortunately didn’t get brainwashed into going premium. The “community” is full of hopefuls who just part with their money which they probably get from a regular job. They are all under the impression that the founders of WA are some kind of gods or heroes. I have been robbed off by one of them with a lame reply which told me they don’t use cpanel because it’s outdated and their platform is state of the art. I didn’t even bother to ask why as I suspected it was just an excuse.
          I feel sorry for the gullible victims who are all living for the hope that soon the money will start rolling in. I have also been offered the first month’s discount indefinitely. Seems they don’t want me to disappear.

        2. I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate for nine months. The wisest decision that I have made in the past nine months is cancelling my membership last week. 🙂

        3. Exactly, a profit ready website in 30 seconds, you will get good traffic yeah yeah yeah no. And I saw under a title like “How much money could you earn?” It said 100 clicks a day for example but who on Earth thinks their website will CONSISTENTLY get people on a day to day and month to month basis of clicks and clicking their link to the website they are promoting, maybe like the top 1% of websites in WA get CONSISTENT traffic, and like the top 10% of websites in the world but 99% are dead websites as soon as they’re made. You’d be lucky if you get 10 people CONSISTENTLY coming back. But if they buy the product why come back again? Plus if they broke it for example they’d just go to the website you’re promoting not yours to click the link LMAO.

    2. I do not have an issue with people having or voicing their own opinion about anything but please tell me which type of business, whether it’s a bricks and mortar business in the real world or an online business, can make you enough money to live on by spending less than $500 and it only takes a few months? I’d love to know?

      Everybody knows that in the real World a new business usually loses money in the first year, which is why so many go bankrupt in the first year – why do people think that starting an online business should be paying you a liveable wage or more within a couple of months, no hard work and no money investment spent?

      Nobody sets a business up without putting together a business plan, getting marketing done, buying stock, leasing or buying a building etc the list is endless. Even on-line you have to spend money. You will need to spend way more than the annual fee at WA just got your website hosting.

      Yes you have to be in it for the long haul but there are so many very successful people on WA who have worked hard to achieve success. But again any person who is successful in business has had to work damn hard at it – so it seems to me that the people who are slating WA are the people who don’t want to put any work in, expect to set up a fully functional successful business without paying a penny and expect riches within a few months. Not a chance. Not in any type of business and if anyone tells you differently they are lying to you or scamming you.

  4. Maybe it has also something to do with the Las Vegas trip that prompted more members to jump into the Bootcamp bandwagon. Yes, I understand this comment is quite tactless, but I also confessed that I tried Bootcamp too. And I simply failed.

    The irony is that today I am earning more from a website with a niche that is not even part of the Big Three (IM/make money, dating/relationship, weight loss/fitness). So I am still thankful for the knowledge I acquired in WA and it was still worth it. For me the bootcamp is for those who already have advanced knowledge of Internet marketing.

    1. This is a very good question, but it may be better answered if I used it as a new post topic. I need to get back into some sort of routine here anyway, and I am not going to renew my WA membership when it expires tomorrow. I still it can a decent value, but if anyone is really serious about trying to do something in IM, I feel there are better options.

      I will expand on this soon, but it will likely be in a post. I’m writing it on my to-do list right now!

      1. Good to hear. I started on WA free account and was thinking about the premium but it is so hard to get an honest review in IM that it takes a lot of time to read as much as you can on a course before pulling the trigger on one. Im thinking maybe a mentor would be good. Do you know of any programs like this ? I think talking to someones would be the best way to learn. Hope to read your new topic on IM. thanks

        1. Jan 2020,

          I am/was a free member. “After you have found a make money online/off line company which is relying able than that of WA,pls kindly alert me.”
          Me too!

      2. Hello sah pls after you have found a make money online company which is relying able than that of WA,pls kindly alert me.Thank you.

  5. Hey Craig, you have very interesting blog and WA review here and I wish I’ve read it when I was first choosing my niche.

    Unfortunately I have chosen promoting WA as my niche and so far I have only one paying referral which is covering half of my WA monthly membership price. I am still waiting for other paying referral to break even and am at this for a full year now. So much work has gone into this with so little to show for it.

    I also have read Napoleon Hill’s book Think and grow rich and am following Bob Proctors you tube videos on the law of attraction. I’ve dropped out from college because I hated what I was studying there which is law.

    As soon as I have found out that money can be attracted because this is a vibrational universe and we are sending vibrations to which the universe is responding I left college and am pursuing this dream which we all internet marketers share which is making money online.

    Anyways, wish I could contact you somehow because I sure could use your advises in mastering affiliate marketing in terms of making profit from it and Law of attraction.

    1. Hi Ante, I’ve been really busy working on client work these days, along with rebuilding my business site, so I’ve taken quite a break from this blog. I am, however, hoping to get back to posting some helpful tips on here once in awhile. What specific questions do you have?

      Promoting WA is a tired and oversaturated niche. They have funneled users into this niche to further their own SEO and to turn their customers into their marketing team, but I believe WA’s best days are far behind them. The lessons they provide are alright, but the tools they give you to work with are pretty bad. For example, there is no way you can use their hosting platform and WordPress installer to set up a successful site. There may be sites which are doing well on their platform, but they were built 6-8 years ago and are well indexed by now. Removing this from the equation significantly lessens the value of their membership.

      Anyone who knows how to search for things on Google can uncover more useful information, and in less time, than interacting with the WA support community, which means the only useful things you have access to are the training vids which are passable, but not fantastic. The other selling point with going premium is the higher referral fee, but what good is that if you only sell a handful of WA memberships per year?

      I can think of far more cost-effective resources which would net better results than WA, which is something I should probably put together for a future post.

      1. Hi Craig,
        Your WA review is by far the best one I’ve seen and it helped me to decide not to re new either so Thanks! One thing that drove me crazy was that any time I would enter my site dot com I could never reach my site from ANY device ( cell phone or computer) and would simply see an error message. Yet if I clicked on the link to my site from WA’s control panel I’d reach the site. This use to drive me crazy! I had no plug ins on my site and my upline the aforementioned One more cup of Coffee dude said he had no clue and suggested typing /wp-login.php after dot com to see if that would work. I asked why in the world would I have to add /wp-login.php or expect anybody else to do that when going to my site?

        “I only ask you this because you made the above comment “there is no way you can use their hosting platform and WordPress installer to set up a successful site. There may be sites which are doing well on their platform, but they were built 6-8 years ago and are well indexed by now. Removing this from the equation significantly lessens the value of their membership.”

        Would you mind explaining how what you posted possibly related to the problem I was experiencing? Anything to do with the /wp-login.php my upline suggested I type after the dot com?
        And could you please clarify what you meant by ” There may be sites which are doing well on their platform, but they were built 6-8 years ago and are well indexed by now. Removing this from the equation significantly lessens the value of their membership.”

        Sorry I didn’t quite get that but if could answer at least my 1st question I’d really appreciate it.

        Thanks again!

      2. “For example, there is no way you can use their hosting platform and WordPress installer to set up a successful site.”

        That is no longer true. You can now use their hosting platform and WordPress installer, you no longer have to register a domain at a separate domain site like godaddy.com. They have updated some things and added some great new tools. I do respect your opinion, but there are still lots of people becoming successful from what is being taught at Wealthy Affiliate especially when they start getting into niches they are really interested in. Wealthy Affiliate is not perfect, but there is nothing out there that is. It isn’t for everybody, but if you definitely want to get the basics and some great tools, WA is definitely a great place to start.

        1. It’s really advisable to register any domain outside of wealthy affiliate and also ensure that you have a full backup of your site stored somewhere else in case of any problems. It seems that members can only use WordPress to build a website which I feel is a bit limited. There is a big world outside WordPress and they could teach so much more than just building a site with one platform. There may me a few making money from their sites at wa but would certainly be a small minority. Many claim to be doing very well but if you bother to really check them out, most are doing very little and have low traffic.
          I have joined using several profiles and you don’t even need to confirm an email address. I even tried 123@abc.com which worked fine and clocked up another member for them making that 1500001 total members. What a joke! At least I don’t receive any contact from them with that address.

        2. Your right Sir WA is a great place to start i join WA not for Money but it’s for experience to do more things related to internet. I want to say something about having money in any kinds of affiliate marketing yes I know that you owned many money and some of us don’t have money but we appreciate those simple training that WA have

      3. Hello, Craig,

        Thanks for your honest opinions and for shedding some light on the subject of WA!

        I’ve got about a year in with them and I have not made one penny yet and right now, I truly feel that this has been such a waste of time, Effort and Energy! I realize now that there will not be any money coming in whatsoever! So, after I finish up here, I’m quitting WA! I’m tired of paying out so much money and seeing zero results. It’s very depressing and I can’t believe that I fell for their lies! ZERO RESULTS- ZERO PROFITS – ZERO LIFE!!

        I do have a question for you Craig, if you don’t mind?

        Is it worth the money and or worth the time and effort to fall in with WPMU DEV? Their plugins are great and I found them to be a great help With SEO and my worst nightmare, Meta Data!

        They are offering all plugins in one package along with two or three hosted websites for 47.00 a month?

        What would your opinion be about WPMU- DEV? And are they the actual creators of these plugins? I still have so much to learn and being 52 years old with very little computer knowledge or skills, what’s one to do?

        I’m partially disabled, an basically no longer able to work a physical job! This wasn’t supposed to be so dam hard to do according to WA!

        I could surly use some honest suggestions ?

        I thank you very much for your time sir. I hope you have an awesome and productive day.

        Joseph 🙂

    2. Ante, I don’t know what universe you’re in that vibrates, and you can quiver and quake as much as you like but sending out those hopeful vibes is like farting against thunder. Affiliate marketing has got nothing to do with a vibrating universe.

  6. I’m just getting started in IM, no, actually what I should have said is I’ve just started reading up on what IM is….for what i see in WA, I cant get my head round to seeing a tangible product. Craig here is a clever writer, giving you the “i’m a good guy” by telling you it’s not plain sailing, this much is true – he gets you nodding your head saying to yourself – see, I knew some of the make money stuff wasn’t going to be easy, he gets you to agree that it can be fruitful but you gotta get the work done, then he drops in his link with an offer to help you. Craig is a good wordsmith and based on what he has written here and with his link drop in, I would be more likely to sign up under his link than many other reviewers, why ?….because he’s doing it right by telling you the way it is, and he’s in business to make money. Nothing at all wrong with giving some honest advice and saying, hey, if you’re going to sign up, do it as one of my downlines. Now, to post this, I need to add my email address, good work Craig, your list now has one more added. All the best from Bonnie Scotland.

    1. Bonnie Scotland yet your name is Billy Graham? Anyway only the top 10% make good money online so I wouldn’t do anything that ha to do with MaKe MoNeY oNlIne, lmao

      1. RAWRIOT OG,

        I’m pretty sure online is not for me. I live off my disability check. Need to get extra income, oh well.

  7. Hi Craig,
    I think that you would succeed a lot if you put your effort and knowledge and ability for excellent writing into a positive promotion of such a great University like WA is instead of pointing to what is individual.
    Yes, people fail and give up. But that’s their decision.
    I have learned a lot promoting the WA and when I grab my niche which I love and am passionate about I am going to be ready for it 100%!!!
    You forgot to mention in your review that people get to learn how to choose and find their niche. And that as members they get hosting for their sites and learn so much about online marketing and WP and affiliate marketing. All in one place!

    Well, I believe that this is just a smart way to get into business since you probably are expecting this kind of comments which will make people sign up and check what you are talking about and BAM there is your referral. Your blog wouldn’t be ranked so well if you haven’t worked on it, and you apparently work on it a lot since you are getting referrals. Good trick! That’s just one kind of the affiliate marketing.

    And that’s also what they teach in the WA. “Promote other online business platforms too; you are still referring!” Thanks for showing me how that looks like, although I don’t agree with you on your review here.

    I would love that my comment brings you thousands of the referrals and that one day you will do a review which shows what my site promotes too! The real side of the WA. I will be featuring your page somewhere on my site one day 🙂

    Since we are both members (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to promote) see you on the other side 🙂
    And yes, I would appreciate if you would check and give some feedback on my site since we know that Google loves visitors and I feel I can learn a lot from you 🙂
    Cheers!
    Sunny

  8. Thank you very much, Craig, for this review! It is very honest- one of the best reviews of WA I’ve ever seen! I am also a member of WA for more then a year and I’m promoting WA on my site and I have only one premium member there- WA has become only a cost and burden for me. What do you recommend me to do with my site on which I’m promoting WA because it doesn’t bring me the money?
    Thanks for your answer and best regards!

    1. My apologies for the late reply, Sandra. My advice would be to treat your site as an online IM journal. Share your experiences and use it as a tool to hold you accountable. Share what is and isn’t working for you, try to post on a regular basis, and you will start to see a bit of traffic. You can monetize this traffic by promoting useful apps, books, services, etc. – of which you’re an affiliate.

      However…if you want to be a successful affiliate, don’t pick a broad and flooded vertical like ‘make money online’; instead, choose a niche you’re passionate about. This can be something you already know a lot about, or it can be a topic or product which you’d like to pursue. Either way, it has to be something you’re excited to work on and it has to offer value.

      Once you get that project off and running, then you can focus on a ‘this is how you, too, can do it’ type of site.

  9. Hi Craig,

    Great post. I just signed up to the starter membership at WA and am a bit sceptical of it. Like someone has said in the comments above. It seems that I only would be able to progress if I sign up for the premium membership which I do not want to do at the moment and I would be waiting ages to see some return.

    The only reason I wanted to do it was because, I am learning programming (Web Development – Javascript) and want to keep a blog of my progress of my learning (successes and failures).

    I then stumbled across WA, and thought hey maybe I’ll do this. But it seems to me that it might be better simply just to set up a wordpress blog and go from there. If I do want to start IM I can learn SEO all over the net. I saw that on WA you have to be a premium member to get comments on your wordpress sites however I am very sure if I set up my own WP blog I can get a plugin of some sort to have comments.

    What are your thoughts on my situation, as I feel I am wasting time going through the WA starter content (as I know about wordpress and could set up my own blog – just not with the SEO part), which is taking up time where I could be focusing on JavaScript!

    1. I wouldn’t invest too much time or money into WA. SEO has become much more about the user experience and the quality of the content, and less about the little ‘insider tricks’. Those who rank well these days are people who are creating rewarding experiences and working hard at doing so.

      My advice would be to take the money you would spend on WA and invest it in Treehouse. They offer very high-value information across a broad range of topics, from deep dive programming tracks to SEO, plus the community experience there is so much more rewarding. The knowledge and skills you would gain from a Treehouse membership would be worth infinitely more than what you could possibly get out of WA.

      If you’re really interested in learning more about SEO, spend some time reading through Google’s documentation and following their blog. Most people don’t think to do this, but the fact of the matter is, Google spells out pretty clearly what it is they like to serve up in search results.

      These days, I think the hardest part of the SEO formula exists in the more technical aspects, i.e., good coding practices, site speed, site architecture, etc. Provided you have the desire and ability to write quality content, your time and money is better spent on learning the more technical nuances of SEO, which is why I recommend something like Treehouse over WA.

  10. Hi, Craig!
    I’ve left Wealthy Affiliate in January this year but I didn’t know that I have to transfer my sites before closing my paid membership and after that they didn’t want to give me access to WP- admin area of my sites and after a month they destroyed both of my sites. They didn’t want to give me technical data necessary for transferring my sites to hosting somewhere else. I also had one referral on WA and that person is still there but after leaving WA, I didn’t get my commissions. I had awful experience with them and I’ll never promote them again! Best regards!
    Sandra

    1. That is terrible, Sandra. Their hosted WordPress offering was one of the key reasons I had left them. Being a web developer and experienced WP user, I began to see the limitations of their service right away. Once you remove its value from the monthly WA membership cost, the service is nowhere near being a good deal.

      I’m sorry you had to experience this. If you don’t mind me asking, how long were you with them?

      Not sure if this will be helpful, but you may be able to copy some of your previous content if there’s an available snapshot in the wayback machine. https://archive.org/web/

      1. Thank you very much, Craig! You’ve helped me a lot with that link! I hope I’ll succeed to rebuild my sites again! Best regards!

      2. Hey Craig I have about 20 days before they delete my site. Any idea how I can get admin access to my wp site since I cancelled my WA premium membership and cannot log in through their site?
        They lied to me and told me i had 30 days to move it -now won’t respond to my emails.
        I hate to lose all that work. Is there a way to backup my site when I cannot access through WA admin or am I just out of luck?

    2. They just did the same thing to me! I spent lots of time building a site and decided to cancel my premium membership which was set to renew on 11/28/18. I emailed tech support and questioned people in their “live chat” and was told by both I would have 30 days after the renewal date to move my site. The problem is I cannot access it. I am working 14 hour days and had planned to ,move it yesterday on my only day off and I am beyond angry they are holding my work hostage. I have tried to email them twice to find out how to access the site and no response. I do not want access to their entire platform just admin access to my site. If I have to pay a month of premium to backup my work I will file complaints with the FTC as well as the BBB. This is terrible business practice. They already got 2 years worth of premium fees out of me and then lied or gave me incorrect info about the amount of time I would have to back the site up. I WOULD NEVER RECOMMEND WEALTHY AFFILIATE TO ANYONE. They are friendly as long as their hand is in your bank account. Does anyone know how I can get admin access to my wp site outside their platform so I can back it up before they delete it?

      1. lIm going through the same shit as we speak. Ive only been a member since december but while there I built a site that I think is awesome even it never made any money I just love it. Youd think that their training would include the importence of backing your shit up to your computer rather than relying on their every two minute automatic backups since they plan to cancel you, not answer your emails, not give you your files, not to mention make it nearly impossible to even find a way to contact them at all if your not a paid member. They are straight out f*#*ing crooks that take advantage of people by painting a pretty picture then telling them how easily they can paint that same picture. I wont say I didnt learn some things as a member but once you go premium within the first lesson they already have you needing to buy something else and then again and again and again. I just want my shit from them and cant even get a response to my emails F$*& fake ass Kyle and fake ass Carson and their fake ass wealthy affiliate. Ill never get back the past couple months I spent working my ass off only to have those crooks keep my shit from me.

  11. Hi Craig, I like your review, it’s very honest. I have some questions because it seems that you are the right person to answer those questions. I would like to start using Wealthy Affiliate because I’m young (16 years) and I’d like to have some money later because I will need it. How much time specifically do I have to spend using WA for getting my first $150 and $200 a month? My age helps me to know that WA is not totally necessary now, but this is an opportunity to have some extra bucks and be prepared in the future doing something that I love. I’ve searched a lot and it seems that WA is the only program with most chances of getting money and it’s free. That’s why I’m interested in this. In 2 years will I be able to make like $500 a month? I will dedicate time to this because that’s what I have right now.

  12. Hi Craig,
    I appreciate the opinion you have of Wealthy Affiliate and I agree with some of the observations you made. However, I believe there is another side of that coin. Am I a member of WA? Yes, I am. And, I will share with you why I joined and why I remain a member.

    I don’t think that WA should promote the training platform by stating that one can have their business up and running in 3 minutes. However, I recognize that is a marketing ploy. I consistently tell my readers that affiliate marketing is NOT easy and requires a lot of motivation, determination and patience because earning substantial passive income will not happen over night.

    With that being said, I think that anyone who joins WA with the expectation they will make it big overnight is destined to fail. But, can we hang all of that on WA? Maybe, you don’t recall, but within the early training, the co-founder explains that your success will depend on you completing the training and putting forth the needed effort. I have seen many fall be the wayside because they do not put forth the effort and don’t complete the training. The want to move forward doing things ‘their way’ and they hardly put in any time working to build their business.

    Yes, there is a lot to learn. I personally, have been willing to learn and do a lot of research in addition to the courses in WA to gain better understanding of things. I do that because I have the determination to not quit. I have been a member since 2015 and no, I have not had any earnings. However, I also recognize that I still have a lot of work to do and my inability to get some things completed sometimes can keep me from moving forward (like promoting via social media). But, I’m working on my own schedule going at my own pace and that is okay with me.

    Building an online business is no different that building a brick and mortar business; it takes time. Some brick and mortar business don’t see any real profit sometimes for 2 to 5 years! Why should people think it is necessarily different because it’s an online business?

    My first site was the promotion of WA, but I made the decision to do that because I decided to use that as my on the job training site. It really had nothing to do with anyone convincing me to do it. If I learned everything to do with that site, then when I started to build the site of my real interest I would really be ready to’go at it’!

    I joined WA because it was the first site I had found that gave you real training, allowed you to work at your own pace, an opportunity to try it for free and included the hosting along with other features.

    I also started an e-commerce retail site that I went with another company on and it ended up costing me thousands of dollars, held all the so-called training over the phone for 30 minutes that they rushed through, the only writing training instructions were very generic and general in terms. I am still with them since I had a year. I have 4 months to go and can’t wait to move my DNS over to WA! It is difficult to get questions answered and have to wait until whenever they got around to returning a call. They complete the basic website framework for you and it looks like someone still learning to be a designer did it! I paid monthly for hosting, which alone is as much as WA’s fee for everything, paid separate for social media marketing training, which was next to nothing. In general their training platform was the pits!

    So, I stay with WA because I truly believe that the training alone is better that you can get anywhere for the cost and I don’t have to worry about the hosting since it is included.

    I didn’t mean to be this long winded, but I honestly feel that WA is worth the monthly fee for what is provided to a member. Face it, there is a cost to having a business. No one should expect to open a business without having to lay out something. However, the monthly fee is far less than many other places.

    But, I think the return on your investment has a lot to do with each individual. It takes some people 6 months to earn, some a year and some 2 or more years. There are many variables that can come into play as to why a person is not seeing any earnings and they all can’t to put on the shoulders of WA. WA provides what you need to get the business started, but the effort one puts into to getting a business where it needs to be must come from the individual. Like they say, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink!”

    As I said earlier, yes, WA uses certain marketing strategies just like all businesses do, but I believe when you begin the training WA openly tells members they have to put in the work and WA can’t do that you them.

    I appreciate that you recognize that WA is not a scam and definitely provides what is necessary to teach individuals how to create an website for their business and more. I also agree that in their promotion, WA makes it seems to easy, when in fact it requires much hard work. One has to have the desire to work hard to build a business, no matter if it’s brick and mortar or an online business.

    Cheers,
    Verna

  13. I joined wealthy Affiliate back in April 2017 because i, like many others, was taken in by their sales patter and their” GUARANTEE” to help me build a successful money making website. but i became disillusioned after about 3 months, because i found that what they promised and what happened was 2 different things. The only time you hear anything from Carson is when you join you get a nice welcome message to join his community and when you ask to cancel your membership you get a message from him saying he can help you sort things out,by then it is too late. The videos are not as detailed as they make out. He shows instances of what he has done more than what you should do now. some times he would talk and fumble about so you have to watch it through about 5 or 6 times before you got the message. The so called ranking system should be phased out completely because that is the biggest distraction of all. I myself got into the top 200 but it didn’t help in any shape or form. The point at the beginning where you are asked to state how much you would like to earn and you tell them the mega thousands you want to make and someone replies saying “well done, go for it” is just a phoney gimmick in my opinion.I completed all the so called 5 course training in about 8 weeks , and you are just left to your own devices. I done the best thing and copied all my content from my website and saved it because i spent a lot of time on it. I will still pursue my ambition to be an affiliate marketer but i shall search and scrape all the information i can and do it my way.

    1. Please get back to me when you can soon! I know your comment is literally 3 years old now, but I was wondering if you think it’s worth it for a beginner with no knowledge to just pay the $20 first month to watch the course? I can get the courses all finished in that amount of time, so I was wondering if you thought it worth it? Or not at all? I’m text savvy but know nothing about SEO and marketing.

  14. Craig,

    I wish I would have read this post before I became a premium member at WA in June 2017. I tried it out for a month but suddenly realized I was doing more to promote WA then I was working on my blogs. I didn’t realize that if you bowed out of premium that basically you could never log back into your WA profile unless you became premium again for life. I couldn’t see paying $49 a month for building blogs where I wouldn’t see any income or very little for quite some time so after one month, I decided to jump ship. My stomach turned afterwards when I realized that I cannot get back to my profile. To this day, I still have people following me on WA and little do they realize that I cannot respond to anything because the owners won’t let me back in.
    So, right now I am building blogs on my own domains and promoting them myself. At least I can do this with the knowledge that I have and I won’t have to worry about losing any money if it takes a long time to start bringing any cash in. Thanks for writing this post!

    1. Hi Kathy, I thought to read this article first before going to premium and I thought that they will help all their members when they go premium but having read all your comments here I’ve changed my mind already. So sad that you haven’t got back to your followers, that’s must have been very upsetting for you when all you’re hard work just went down to nothing.
      I would just like to ask for some help on how did you build your own website and promote them yourself? can you do your website on WordPress by yourself? did you buy your own domain name and where? there’s a lot of questions I hope you can e-mail me for your response. Here’s my e-mail ad: lauremarjorie96@mail.com

      1. Hi Marjorie, you can find tons of information online regarding purchasing domains, etc. I recommend checking out DreamHost for your web hosting needs and installing a plugin for themes. Also, check out Udemy for affordable comprehensive courses on any topic you can think of. Good luck!

  15. I started with Wealthy Affiliate last December. I am going through the same bullshit with them.

    I had them change my DNS servers for my sites. Well, when I had to remove them and re-add them on my new domain, I was no longer a member.

    So, they expect me to pay another month, just so I can get my DNS servers pointed.

  16. Hi Craig

    Thanks for your honest reviews. I am about to join WA. I just have one question – Is WA only about writing blogs? I am not interested in writing a blog at all but willing to open by own affiliate web site. Is WA for me?

    ~AMol

    1. Hi Amol, You can’t really expect to make it as an affiliate without a blog, e.g., content strategy. You don’t necessarily need to ‘blog’, but you would need to continually add new content – whether it be evergreen content, product pages with detailed descriptions, etc. WA basically attempts to show you how to manage a WordPress site, how to get it ranked and options for monetizing it.

      But as I’ve mentioned many times, there are much better resources out there than WA. WA can be an OK starting point if you are totally new to this, but DO NOT give them any money. Glean what info you can for free and then look elsewhere.

  17. Awesome Review Craig!

    As a former member, please allow me to sum up what Wealthy Affiliate teaches their students:

    Step 1: Write a review of a competing Internet Marketing Training Product, even if you’re never tried it or seen any of their training.
    Step 2: Go out of your way to call that product a scam (again, without even trying it first)
    Step 3: Recommend Wealthy Affiliate as your #1 Way to Make Money Online, despite not knowing shit about making money online yourself.

    This is the same shit that got WA Sued by Mobe for

    Source:
    http://mobeaffiliatesupport.com/lawsuit/ &
    https://mobe.com/why-ive-decided-to-sue-a-competitor/)

    At any rate Craig, glad you’re no longer drinking the Kool-Aid either 🙂

    Jt

  18. Greetings Craig!

    I was a FREE member at WA for several months. I had used both of the two free domains provided. For what it’s worth, I joined the boot camp, & was promoting Wealthy Affiliate with one of the free domains. I really wish I’d have read your post – which I appreciate by the way – before embarking on that journey! I put in a ton of hours building content for each of the domains. So whereas I didn’t pay for a premium membership, I did spend lots of valuable time. I felt no sense of urgency to upgrade regardless of the constant push from WA to do so. I feel that they push you into thinking you have to rush. Logically speaking, I knew I’d be throwing money down the drain based upon the free training. I saw this as something you need to build over a length of time. So I took my time continuing to build & considered that I would finally upgrade to a yearly Premium Membership once I had something substantial.

    After a small hiatus I returned to WA to see that both of my domains were gone! I had received this email (which I hadn’t checked during my time away), and one a few days prior stating *note I removed my domain names.

    Hi Mimi,

    Just wanted to send you another quick reminder. The following domains will be removed in 5 days.

    ****************

    To free up room for those folks that are serious about creating a business online and for our newcomers, we are clearing up space on our hosting platform to keep it of the utmost quality.

    If you are still using the domains and you want to keep them, that is no problem at all. You can absolutely keep the domains if you are interested by upgrading to our Premium membership which will allow you to retain the websites and will also give you access to 25 websites on your down domain, 25 siterubix.com domains, and Premium hosting within WA (plus everything else you need to run a successful business online).

    Learn About & Upgrade to Our Unbelievable Premium Membership

    This is something that you may want to consider if you are still serious about creating a business online.

    Cheers,

    Kyle, Carson & The Team
    @WealthyAffiliate.com
    PS. This is the last notice you will receive regarding the domains and if you wish to retain your work that you invested in the websites, then please act quickly by upgrading your membership to Premium (which includes unlimited website and domain hosting).

    There you have it! Let this be known, being a FREE member at Wealthy Affiliate does expire. I certainly do not recall seeing that anywhere. While I did learn some new information in IM and I was singing the praises of WA, this experience has me looking at the company in a different light.

    I will be seriously investigating alternative places to host my domain in the future. Do you have any good advise for a beginner?

    Peace & blessings!
    Mimi

    1. Their free site are even a junky subdomains that Google labels as an instant spam, Unbelievable how they’ve been fooling people.

      1. Really? ive signed up a few months ago but still havent thought of a good niche anyway. should i go else where? and where?

        1. What I shared was just a heads up Renee. I wanted others to be aware that the free membership does seem to expire. Thankfully I backed up almost all of my content, because WA deleted both of my siterubix domains.

          I had a niche I was passionate about for one of my websites & the other was through boot camp (which focuses on promotion of WA). I was on the WA every day for months putting in work. When I took a break, what I described in my previous comment, had happened. What if I hadn’t backed my work up? It would have been lost. I do not want somebody else to experience this.

          I know there are other people who are in the position of being a beginner like myself, who are wanting to learn about IM, & would like to take their time in doing so. Unless you have nothing else to do with your time, because this stuff takes time.

          From my experience, I will tell you to make the most of your time there as a Starter Member.

          Gain as much knowledge as you can for FREE.

          Do not waste your time going through the boot camp! It’s basically the same lessons you get in the free training & sets you up to promote WA.

          Save your work! Back it up! Put it in the cloud, external hard drive, in a word doc, etc.

          You can actually learn a lot by browsing through the WA community. You are of course limited in many ways whenever you hit the, join premium today roadblock.

          Make sure you find a niche you are passionate about, because in order to build lots of content, you had better love talking about whatever you chose.

          So my advice to you Renee is get everything you can from WA Starter Membership for free, have something substantial built & saved, love what you do & do what you love! Then go elsewhere. If you are already paying for a membership, I’d suggest making the most of what’s left & cancelling. Make sure you understand the process for cancelling as well!

          Wishing you all the best!
          Mimi

      2. Tom, I think they’re business model is based upon luring in the non-internet-savvy desperate unemployed worker and the retiree. It is a shame that they’ve been able to continue extorting money from folks, but in time they’re pump and dump scheme will eventually be exhausted. More social proof of their racket will emerge on blogs and social media, and they’re ownership over the search results for ‘wealthy affiliate review’, ‘wealthy affiliate scam’, etc, etc…will begin to slip. As Google and search continues to mature and evolve, their dying business model will continue to erode.

        Still, I think that as long as users don’t give them they’re billing info, there is some value that can be gleaned from their website. The problem is the fact that they con their users into thinking that a premium membership is necessary for success – even going so far as to what I’d consider employing trickery (see Mimi’s comment above).

    2. Hi Mimi, I really appreciate you sharing your experience with Wealthy Affiliate. These guys truly are awful. I discovered early on that if you utilize all of their value added services contained in premium, that you are basically leasing everything from them. And not only that, but the limitations imposed are a deal-breaker.

      Since you didn’t invest any money in their program and because you had the good sense to keep your work backed up, the lesson you learned wasn’t too costly, thank goodness.

      In future, I strongly advise keeping all of your services separate – making sure you have direct control and complete ownership over your domains, content, site assets, etc. The fact that they’re holding your domains hostage unless you upgrade is downright unethical.

      What really needs to happen is for me to put a list of recommended tools, services and resources together. In the meantime, If you have any specific questions that I can answer in a sentence or less each, reply to this comment.

      Thanks again for stopping by, Mimi!

    3. Mimi, I am really sorry for what happenned to you on WA. I was premium member on WA for a year and a half and at the end they didn’t want to give me all technical data necessary to transfer my sites to hosting somewhere else. It doesn’t matter if you are payed member or not- they are only interested to take money from you. Kyle and Carson are online scams!
      Best regards!

  19. Best review of WA I have seen. I now know youre a straight shooter and will be looking to subscribe to your blog and look forward to your future content.

    1. Back to the subject instead of fighting back for flight kids are as per earlier in I did join WA and I got indexed like the second day on that little stupid site that you got to do I’m not interested in blogging apparently you guys are this is a really long site so you kept on logging in that’s good Craig and Marcus I guess whatever I don’t care anyway if your index WA Right away like that I have the traffic I’ve got a hold of Amazon do you think I’ll make money or they’re going to con me out of the whole dang thing
      Hope your blog works out well for you and yours truly fatty of Chancey

  20. Hi Craig,
    Your WA review is by far the best one I’ve seen and it helped me to decide not to re new either so Thanks! One thing that drove me nuts was that any time I would enter my site dot com I could never reach my site from ANY device ( cell phone or computer) and would simply see an error message. Yet if I clicked on the link to my site from WA’s control panel I’d reach the site. This use to drive me crazy! I had no plug ins on my site yet and my upline the aforementioned One more cup of Coffee dude said he had no clue and suggested typing /wp-login.php after dot com to see if that would work. I asked why in the world would I have to add /wp-login.php or expect anybody else to do that when going to my site?

    I only ask you this because you made the above comment “there is no way you can use their hosting platform and WordPress installer to set up a successful site. There may be sites which are doing well on their platform, but they were built 6-8 years ago and are well indexed by now. Removing this from the equation significantly lessens the value of their membership.”

    Would you mind explaining how what you posted possibly relates to the problem I was experiencing? Anything to do with the /wp-login.php my upline suggested I type after the dot com?
    And could you please clarify what you meant by ” There may be sites which are doing well on their platform, but they were built 6-8 years ago and are well indexed by now. Removing this from the equation significantly lessens the value of their membership.”

    Sorry I didn’t quite get that but if could answer at least my 1st question I’d really appreciate it.

    Thanks again!

  21. Hi Craig,
    Your review was good and comprehensive. For those of us who don’t quite know where to go now what suggestions do you have about where to go to take what we learned at WA and move to the next level in a more legit and money making way? I will have to start again and where to start is the question of the day.

  22. Thanks for this post Craig. Seldom do I leave comments on blog posts unless I really mean it.

    I was planning to hop to WA this January. But a bit cautious, went on to read reviews of most are positive. Hardly will you see this kind of honest review about WA. Now my questions about WA has been answered in your post and in the comments of your readers. So this instance I won’t be joining WA anymore.

    Now may I know if you ever heard about shopmozo.co I’m a member of this new-launched e-commerce site (but didn’t purchase the referral rights). They offer one-time membership but with too much upselling. It seems promising though and I want to recommend it to friends but I am thinking twice if it is worth it. Also because all the reviews I read about it are from affiliates.

  23. Hi Craig I’m glad I’m doing some research about WA, and I’m extremely new to the process and work required for blogging. I read through some comment threads and I’m going to admit I’m so new so fresh to blogging I actually am learning the ropes now.
    I have a question: I need to first register a domain name and on WA it is $13.99 for basic free membership. I’m not going to start with premium until after a lot of tutorials or researching or discovering the site and other sources. I feel that this hesitancy has always been required but a great impediment to my decisions. I’m too play it safe and I don’t know what to do to initiate a good quality blog or endeavor. I’m actually my worst enemy in many things.
    However I read starting off with a domain registration is great. What is your recommendation please ?

  24. Hello, Craig,

    You are so right about what you say. I have just pulled the plug on Wealthy Affiliate after nearly nine months (May-2017 to Jan 2018). To succeed using the WA training requires a lot of hard work, dedication, SKILL with handling images, and being able to write clearly to get your messages across to visitors.

    I achieved this because I’m an old hand, yet still my web pages and posts weren’t on the first page of Google. No problem with Bing and Yahoo, though. But Google, however, is where we need to be on page 1 of the SERPs under targeted keywords to get anywhere. WA teaches us to target ‘low hanging fruit’ keywords. In other words, to be bottom feeders. Talk about scraping the barrel!

    Nine months is NOT long enough. I pulled the plug because WA had a DDoS attack. Not a suitable web host. I now host my site on a server that is always on.

    Still, I learned quite a bit but staying with WA as a premium member is not a good long-term online business idea.

    Janice.

  25. Thanks for this very true review. I just canceled WA after about five months with them. I started to smell BS and how dated the training was. I am grateful for learning a bit of stuff because I was a beginner. After canceling, you can not get access as a free member. I will not be back and warn anyone looking into it. It is way to pricey, and their websites are not anywhere close to competing with other websites out here. If you were a real beginner, then do it for two months. Learn the knowledge and apply it somewhere else.

  26. I just went back to wealthy affiliate today and saw exactly what you said Craig! its true they at WA make it sound so easy and for the unsuspecting that can be so misleading and unethical not to give their customers their existing sites baxk if they choose to move to another site.

    It sounds like you are a very savvy internet marketer Craig so now I have real suspicions as to why you with all your experience could only get one referral. I have to wonder what Carson is doing working with 25 Information Techies on a daily basis are they stealing their customers referrals? I am aware that IT professionals know how to create backlinks etc and my next question is what else do they do with peoples sites that have been left because their premier memberships were not updated.

    When I was last at WA I wrote a few things only to find that when I went back and had a look there was something written up that reminded me very much of what I wrote back then? Feeling dissillusioned again.

    I’d like to hear more from you and join you how do I do that?

  27. I just got on this WA train a few days ago and have already finished the free training of it. After reading numerous posts I think my decision is to not pay for a premium membership and take the info I’ve learned and move on. I have no doubt that I can find valuable resources online just by googling but my question is how do I save my work from WA? I would think they put some sort of block so you can’t as a free member right? Also I read somewhere on these comments that as a free member you cant access your free websites from any other computer unless it’s from there dashboard. I think they do this on purpose as well as another type of pitch to get you to pay for a membership. seems to me that your free websites will never get recognized online for anyone to find you. They have you spend numerous hours building a website that will never get any attention until you pay and by doing this people will be coned into buying into a membership because of all the hard work that will be lost after your free membership expires. I may be wrong about this but its funny that when I try to go to my website from another computer it wont let me in and says I need to sign into my affiliate dashboard and buy a premium membership to view. Kind of like a copyright they put on it until you buy in and they remove the copyright afterwards.

  28. I just bought my first month of premium for WA.
    I came to look for scam reviews because I smelled BS. This was the first one I came across. Thanks!

    I also followed the clickbank university course which I cancelled now.
    I did this because WA gave me a lot more value in a lot less time.
    As I am totally new to IM (been doing research for aout a month now), I kinda believed what they told me, because I wanted to.
    I want to create a better life for myself and those around me, and if you have any tips conciderring a better IM or skills program, please advice ;p.

    I payed for the premium right now, and because of the discount it was 20 euro’s, I think in the long term this program can make me a lot more than this so I will keep learning from them this month.

    grts Wilm

    1. Hi Wilm, You can get some value from the lessons provided within WA, but I can assure you they are not selling any secret sauce. IM is hard work. Plain and simple. If it were easy, everyone would be making a killing off of it.

      Do you… Enjoy creating good content? Adding value to people’s lives? Have a subject in mind that you could talk about endlessly with passion and vigor? Like tinkering with websites (or a desire to learn)? Want to learn more about interpreting and analyzing traffic and behavior data?

      If so, then affiliate marketing could be a great hobby for you, but I would approach it with the value-first mindset. Pick a project that you could conceivably work on without pay, because that’s what it’s going to require at first..a lot of contribution with little reward (monetary reward anyway).

      The key is to first validate your niche by looking at search trends, analyzing the competition and making sure it’s something that can be monetized. Once you’ve got that, start building it out and producing great content. Focus on nothing but the rankings for at least 6-12 months. During this time I would advise putting nothing on the site except for maybe a simple adsense ad. Adsense is not a profitable way to go per se, but it’s an easy way to get started, plus Google must continually sniff your site in order to serve up relevant ads. Site visitors generally find adsense to be less invasive since the ads shown to them are usually relevant anyway.

      Once you have established a nice little site with a bit of traffic, then start leveraging some of the more premium networks like CJ, Shareasale, Amazon can be good for some niches…as well as ebay. Clickbank can be profitable, but most of the products they sell are of the pump and dump variety. I would proceed with caution.

      That was a bit rambling, but hopefully there’s some takeaway in there.

      Regards,

      Craig

      1. Well Craig, you sure do know how to get people debating on your thread for YEARS! LOL! That’s an entirely different talent that is extremely lucrative in building your online followers–just look at what a real estate guy did for Twitter and Facebook recently! There is talent is directing the visitors to engage in your content–whether it’s pulitzer prize content is another debate; however, you accomplished the REAL goal, which is keep your chats “chatting.”

        That’s cool. Of course, there is the other part to this: the human reaction/trigger thing we have all become really good at doing since Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat,etc…. We’ve all just become really reactionary to everyone’s thoughts and writings and I am not sure that it’s so difficult to get a debate happening–however–you have managed to keep it on for 6 years, and the dialogue is fairly fresh! Lol! That’s really a cool thing: you have the talent for choosing the topic that lasts forever! Timeless debates! Lolol!
        I am not even making fun…I am laughing for real.. And I think there’s truth in it! Right?
        Well…I have to chime in, now, too!
        I do have an entirely different view and I think, after reading so many of these responses over so many years, I think my opinion could be an important addition. (Keep in mind, I did read quite a few of these, but I did not read them all, and so another viewer could have said the same thing!)

        Ok, I was interested in learning more about websites and how to draw traffic back in 2010, and my reason was for an entirely different one altogether: my seasoned, original, Detroit Rock Band mates had no interest in taking on the big monster–taking on the whole “online persona” thing which our very well-known and successful music peers kept nagging us to do. We wrote great songs, with great sound recording engineers and producers (sometimes we were lucky enough to have our good friends co-produce with us!) We were all professional musicians with an onstage presence and sound that ALWAYS captivated our audience and we were really good at our crafts, and we were finally doing semi-arena rooms; we were producing our own events and creating a really positive vibe in the music scene and in the general social surroundings. We were nominated for the Detroit Music Awards too and I have had the honor to sing back up for quite a few of Detroit’s celebrities. Now, I was also teaching English full time, in Michigan’s second largest school district (I did teach music for a time too,) and I loved all of it!
        I was learning all the nerdy-techie stuff in the classroom with my students because our district was given a huge amount of money to become high-tech back in 1998!! Yes, I am not young anymore! The point is this, Craig, I was about 32 in 2002 when my band really started to get momentum, and by 2005, we were really earning street cred; however, none of the guys (who are all younger than me!) wanted to take on the burden of really understanding how to use this social media tool to build our own following. It didn’t make sense to us. We were old school! They wanted to pass out flyers still! We had a our website, too, but we thought we had to physically market the site at our shows in order to draw traffic.
        DING! DING! DING! WRONG ANSWER!!
        I got married in 2005, had my “oops/omg/how?” Moment when we found out I was pregnant only 3 months after the wedding–I was almost 35…. The guys told me, “Di, it’s just not my wheelhouse!” (Ok reference to me asking them to take this one on since I had a baby and was over loaded..and so….)
        This is long, I know, and I am sorry! It’s totally worth the background for my point: if people are born in 1970 like me, the idea of websites when they first arrived seemed easy enough to get–however, we had no clue the immense power and complete Jedi-minded way the computers were being TAUGHT TO BEHAVE–HENCE ALGORITHMS.
        How to draw traffic to anyone’s site is like a total mystery–it was–to me and my band–until I got mad enough to sit down on the last day of school in 2010 to finally see about “this online persona.”
        10 hours later–no joke–the English teacher in me was super excited, and the song writer in me was like, “This IS WRITING! IT’S ALL CREATING A FOCUS AND A THEME AND PROVING YOUR POINTS AND… AND…. AND…” MY MIND WENT WILD WITH ALL OF THE OTHER PROJECTS I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD EVER DO BECAUSE LIFE ONLY HAD ROOM FOR ONE DAY GIG AND ONE MUSIC PASSION LIFE-LONG PURSUIT!

        I found WA NOT FOR AFFILIATE MARKETING, but for the actual detailed, step by step, from before domain to the back end of your first post–detailed steps that helped me wrap my head around this very huge, alien, tool for creativity and self development, and hopefully, financial freedom.
        I had no intention–never have-of ever taking on these advertising deals; I did, however, intend on drawing my own traffic, relevant to my content, and my goal was/is to get paid through using ads I hand pick, through using Google Analytics and cultivating a real following through organic, social networking ways—chatting and developing relationships. THIS IS IS EXACTLY WHAT BANDS MUST DO ON ORDER TO BECOME “HYPE” AND POPULAR.
        KYLE AND CARSON have to teach this stuff at a level that may seem like a scam, but it’s not. They were having to teach ENGLISH SKILLS AND ESSAY WRITING SKILLS- and I think they provided a wealth of examples and short lessons that caused the member to have to “do the homework” –the next step. Learning is never cut and dry. All of us came to WA with a degree of backgrounds from zero knowledge to expert–how do you teach that classroom? I ask this of all your readers who are so quick to nail these guys too the wall. They have to get paid, people! I do a show; I want to get paid! You do a job–you want to get paid! Right?
        If you all really were doing your homework, and if you were stopping to research the things they were introducing to you, then you would have been able to see that whole nugget picture–forget the AFFILIATE PART! LEARN THE SKILLS AND GET ALL THE PRACTICE OUT ON THAT PLATFORM–USE ALL OF THE TOOLS THEY GIVE–AND YES! TALK TO THE COMMUNITY!
        Friends, when you were in school, didn’t you learn the most about something when the teacher let you get into groups–don’t do it! Don’t give me the cliche response! I taught for 20 years and GROUP WORK, FACILITATED CORRECTLY, NEVER HAS THAT KID THAT DOES ALL THE WORK WHILE THE LAZY ASS GETS THE GRADE! NOT IN MY ROOM… NOT IN REAL LIFE. We learn better when we can talk to each other, ask questions, see how someone else “does it,” and these websites are not full in the blank assignments, are they?
        I know this is way too long! I suck at succinct, please don’t send me hate responses!! ?
        Bottom line is this: I went back to school as a student in 2018 at SPECS HOWARD SCHOOL OF MEDIA ARTS just to find out if I needed to learn more before I start this new business…. And I wanted to learn it all–graphics, video editing, web layouts—guess what? After $12 grand in an accelerated course that kicked my ass, I found out that I LEARNED IT ALREADY ON WA!!!!
        Creating websites is like creating magazines, or short films, or really good-looking portfolios of WHAT YOU ALREADY ARE DOING IN LIFE! AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, THESE WEBSITES THAT DRAW TONS OF TRAFFIC ARE WRITTEN WELL, AND THE BETTER BE FACT-BASED OR AT LEAST HAVE EXPERTS QUOTED/REFERENCED.
        There is nothing easy to creating something out of nothing, guys. They are not ripping you off. They give you a platform to start, at the very least, with a mediocre topic, but a topic that gives info, and you get the option to build it like a book/writer would, and then you get to have advertisers on your pages and you learn from there.
        For me, I already knew that I was not ever going for that audience; although, they gave me everything else I needed in order to build a website, plus learn SEO AND I get to use my same skillet, but in a different medium.
        I believe we are ALL CREATIVE BEINGS AT CORE–not spiritual here….not this time…but truthfully, we are bored doing jobs that turn off our thoughts–even if the pay is good, and we are a society taught to go to work and to be told what to do….we FREAK OUT WHEN EE ARE GIVEN THE AUTONOMY TO CREATE WHATEVER WE WANT! WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE AND GUYS LIKE KYLE AND CARSON USED THEIR ITEM KNOWLEDGE TO CREATE A NETWORK –SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE HUGE TRAFFIC, BUT I’M EXCHANGE, THEY DO THEIR BEST AT TEACHING US A NEW TRADE.
        I hope that made sense to everyone. I tried to share with my friends, over 10 years ago how much we can actually make and how tremendous it is in terms of changing the entire trajectory of our lives, growing into our retirement years….. people ultimately are just tired and don’t really have that fire to do the kind of work it takes to dig into yourself and then to actually presen it to the world. That’s the bottom line. We are only scammed if we don’t use the information or the platform they offered us. I really beliebe that.
        Also–FYI: IF YOU WANT TO BUILD A WEBSITE THROUGH WORD PRESS, AND YOU TRY TO FIND HOSTING THAT GIVES YOU EVERYTHING WA DOES, GUESS WHAT? YOU’LL PAY ABOUT $50-100 /MONTH! OH! And Kyle and Carson always write me back–always.
        Craig, thanks for the inspiration to share today because it is exactly what I needed for my own growth at this time!
        And architecture–Craig–that’s really cool! We were starting our shipping container home right at the lock down!!! I am planning to film the steps.. Of course, there’s a few couples who got me beat since they started in 2017 and kept going… Hate looking like the “copier!”
        Last thing: the generations born from mid-80s till present (my own kid included!) Really don’t have a real understanding of what it means to truly develop an entertaining talent–dunt get me wrong! I know there are so many talented people younger than me! What I mean is that this technology gives the idea that a) everyone’s story is worth hearing, and b) everyone has the talent to be filmed, or to be writing, or to be teaching or to be doing anything live for the masses!! I just think that today, there are millions of so-called YouTubers, writers, influencers, and really, just like singing–just because there are hundreds at the audition that thought they should be there, there are only about 25-50 who really should have been there! Don’t look at the examples in Facebook or Twitter or YouTube to compare yourselves to. Develop a website that YOU ARE THE EXPERT IN AND THAT YOU LOVE AND FORGET AFFILIATE MARKETING. JUST LEARN SEO AND CREATE YOUR OWN SHOW WITH PEOPLE ALREADY WHO BOUGHT A TICKET! That does take some time… Is a year worth it? 2 years? That’s up to you.
        I hope I have given your readers different way to look at all of it.
        Thanks for letting me finish without kicking me off!!
        Have a great rest of 2021!! CARPE DIEM!
        –Diana from Detroit

        1. Diana, you need to make your reply much more succinct as I really wanted to read it, but I started and after two minutes you still hadn’t made any point so unfortunately I just skimmed through. However two bits stood out:

          “FYI: IF YOU WANT TO BUILD A WEBSITE THROUGH WORD PRESS, AND YOU TRY TO FIND HOSTING THAT GIVES YOU EVERYTHING WA DOES, GUESS WHAT? YOU’LL PAY ABOUT $50-100 /MONTH! OH!”

          That 100% ISN’T true and is an example of buying into everything WA tells you, as I see Kyle stating that continually. When I left WA I moved five of my sites to another host, where I get unlimited hosting that is better than WA (ie the uptime of my sites is much higher and site support is better) and I pay $116 every two years. That is $4 a month for as many sites as I want.

          “They were having to teach ENGLISH SKILLS AND ESSAY WRITING SKILLS”

          Then they evidently haven’t done a good job of it with you! Your reply is rambling and doesn’t say anything.

          1. Steve,
            Do you research anything you state? Here’s succinct: can you just answer this question, and if you did do this research, can you provide the links? I can. I don’t make written comments without credible facts to lean on.
            Also, DID, actually, write that “I suck at being succinct,” and I should have added that when I am using informal, conversational tone, I do ramble. I just don’t have the time to do the rewrites on these kinds of platforms; however, I used to. I stopped that because people don’t read, period. So…. My connected were not at all negative or combative. You might be right about length, but you don’t read “tone” well.
            It’s a turn off.
            Anyway, show me the money, Steve! Send me your research!

          2. Steve,
            While you are sending the links, I am going to respond to your overall comments to me.

            1) We have already gone over the “succinct” comment, so I am jumping to your next point in which you extract a quote, but you have already stated that after 2 minutes, you stopped reading, but you scanned over the rest. It’s that right? Well, if you don’t know how to scan for information, you missed a lot, and my quote states that if you want to receive EVERYTHING WA offers, you’ll find that you will be paying the same or more…basically…right?
            Steve, what you and I need to have an understanding of is WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT THINGS YOU GET FROM WA THAT YOU WOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR SOMEWHERE ELSE?
            Now, that alone is a longer conversation that you probably won’t have because it won’t be succinct–and I mean no rambling and no extra details.
            You have a website, you say, or 5, and you state that you transferred them all to new hosting for about $4/ month and you have unlimited hosting, which I think you mean you have the ability to create as many sites as you want for no extra cost, correct?
            Ok. Steve, really? Why would challenge me to have to respond when you don’t want to be objective and you don’t want to read more than 30 seconds?
            There’s so much in your debate that you totally left out. It is irritating to me because, really, I don’t really care to argue over dumb stuff, but you called me out in a social place, and you are questioning my credibility, and that’s like saying I am a liar, or that I am ignorant. (Yes, I know that ignorant doesn’t mean stupid–no, you didn’t call me stupid, but you challenge my ability to properly understand what I am staying.)
            I don’t like that shit.
            So, read, don’t read, but I will help your argument out a bit:
            a) FIRST: your expectations goals for your websites are not the same as mine. That’s clear. You choose your hosting based on a number of factors, and those factors are probably not the same as mine or many others, really. So, what you want to accomplish with your site WILL DETERMINE WHERE YOU HOST.

            b) For me, I enjoy the SEO work and I don’t need to use apps or add-ons to help me write content that uses the SEO data. Do you use the data available to you for keywords? If you do, you will want hosting that also allows you to have all the analytics you can get your hands on. Right?
            c) The content you are creating (and me too) WILL ALSO DETERMINE WHERE you choose to develop your site. Who’s your audience? Are you selling a product or are you creating social awareness or trying to change the popular opinion on something? This is really important.
            d) What is the server situation? Are you on shared? Private? Are you efficient at trouble shooting and do you know how to do your own back up and how to retrieve files if you have an accident? And how fast is the server? If you grow monthly, can they handle your growth without slow-downs?
            e) What does your site look like? Do you use animated graphics? Do you have a lot of photos that need to look good? Can you have a video playing right on your website? Are you using Word Press or templates from another generator, or do you write your own code?
            THESE ARE IMPORTANT FACTORS.
            f) What about security? Do you get free SSL? Can you find your domains right there? If so, do you get all the accredited certification that goes with and supports the DSL/INTERPOL regulations…. And of course, you would need the WHOSE IS IT–meaning you are being transparent with the public in the case that someone accuses you of intellectual property theft; THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. I DO KNOW ABOUT THIS FROM EXPERIENCE.
            g) FINALLY, ARE YOU MONETIZING? DO YOU NEED E-COMMERCE ADD-ONS? DO YOU OWN 100% OF YOUR TRAFFIC AND DO YOU GET CONTROL OVER WHO YOU GET TO ADVERTISE ON YOUR SITE?
            These are just some factors off the top of my head.
            Your answers would determine the rest of this conversation, so I can’t speak to that yet.

            2) ENGLISH SKILLS
            I am curious why you think that WA does not do a good job on that. I didn’t say that they teach GRAMMAR. You can use editing software for that, and I think WA does offer that option; I was referring to the content in general. I mean that paragraph structure, topic sentences and detail-rich sentences, and the overall rule of “Beginning, Middle and the End.”
            I was referring to the Informational form of writing and how that looks on a page.
            I do believe that they go over that very early on.
            The other thing I liked that they do (or did) is taking time to talk about how to reduce your topic and niche. That is, basically, creating a strong focus statement–otherwise known as the THEME, which essentially is WHAT YOU WANT YOUR AUDIENCE TO LEARN FROM THE CONTENT.

            So, see? Not succinct, and I wasn’t rambling. If this is too long for you, don’t respond please. I only took this time, today, because I can’t allow myself to appear half-cocked in my writing. Technically, it doesn’t really matter, but it always matters to me when I put something “out there.”
            I hope you do respond! I didn’t even mention the top 10 list of host providers!

          3. Diana this time I read all of your comment and again it is confusing and rambling and really difficult to pinpoint what you are trying to get at. I will try and answer what think you are asking:

            HOSTING
            Can you tell me why/what hosting has to do with:

            b) SEO/keywords – this is nothing to do with hosting, they are two completely separate things
            c) Again the content you have on your website has nothing to do with where you host it.
            d) Yes this is a fair point, my sites that cost $4 a month are on shared hosting like WA. Support is much better.
            e) Of course I can have animated graphics, photos, videos – every host will allow you to do that
            f) No I don’t get free SSL. I paid $13.99 for lifetime SSL
            g) Yes I am monetizing, I don’t need E-commerce add ons, and I own all my traffic. I have never found a host where you don’t own your traffic.

            I would presume 99% of people choose their hosting based on uptime, speed and security. What else is there to consider?

            Can you tell me what research it is you are expecting me to provide links to/send? The only thing I told you was that I pay $4 a month for as many sites as I want. What research are you expecting me to provide? Would you like me to send you a link to my billing statement there?

          4. Also just to add, are you aware WA uses an outdated version of PHP? That is a big no no when you are hosting a website anywhere.

  29. When I come across sites like WA promising to show mw how to make money, I immediately begin to wonder… if you know the secret to making money online, why aren’t you doing it yourself? Or is it a lot more profitable ‘showing’ people how to make money online than it is to actually make it yourself?

      1. I bought into WA a few months ago and have been working diligently. My impression is that although they talk about great support, if you need support, most of the time you’re directed to the community for answers…or some link which might be totally unrelated to their site. I am a confessed Luddite and need help with technology – however my impression is that they do not update their training modules when appropriate and sometimes their site operation does not seem to be working. If you are teaching Affiliate Marketing – especially in relation to Amazon – then update your training modules and provide instruction which actually works. Today my site’s operation was crazy. What was supposed to be an Amazon link, had one of my other pages pop up. I have asked for assistance and am getting nowhere. I am a business owner and know that customer service is crucial. I’m not receiving it here and I am now completely ticked. I see so many people signing up with such hopes of making this their main revenue stream and I know it will not happen. I am halfway through this course and have transferred one of my domains but it will be the last. I will finish the education portion and then I am totally done. My impression is that their members do their work for them – promote their business – provide the “support” they do not and it’s all about money. Very disappointed.

  30. Just one search “should i promote wealthy affiliate?” and i came across your blog in the first position in Google..

    Awesome post i must say – Happy i read it first.

    I was considering to promote WA. Ii am currently a free member who always get training emails but can never click through not even the webinars cause they are intended for premium members only – so you’re prompted all the time to upgrade..

    Anyway, i decided to do some due diligence first since i didn’t plan to waste time on shady programs on the internet.

    1. Hi Ian, Glad you found this post valuable. 🙂 WA are the kings of upsells and lock-in. That is what they are #1 at. That, and continual reputation management through their legions of new recruits.

      1. Hello Mr Craig pls have you heard about Clixsense? how are they too? are they reliable and that people can make money working with them?Thank you

    1. Jonny, I’m not entirely sure who SFM is, but I’m guessing you might be referring to these guys. I’ve never heard of this site before, but it looks like a package similar to WA.

      My advice is to seek courses which teach SEO and management of WordPress websites. Without those skill sets it’d be very difficult to get anywhere with affiliate marketing. The monetization aspect is the easy part and doesn’t require the same degree of specialized training required to make a high ranking and well-converting site.

      Most of the useful teachings for affiliates are lessons you need to uncover through diligent search, trial, error and first-hand experience. A few of the resources I leveraged the most were Warrior Forum and the EPN community. There were a few blogs I used to follow as well, but most of what I found that worked was by way of focusing on building great sites, not on ‘how to make money’.

  31. Hey Craig,

    I think you’re very confused about what Wealthy Affiliate is all about. They certainly don’t sugar-coat their sales pitch, and it’s 100% obvious right from the outset that 96% of people WILL quit because they don’t have the perseverance to continue on even in the face of not making a single cent.

    The thing with WA is that what they promise is a great resource to help you succeed, but that you yourself have to show up continuously, probably for years to come, to see any real results.

    Why do you think WA is the #1 most successful affiliate training website where people actually stick around?

    If their business model was based on scams and lies, they would’ve fizzled out in the modern age of having knowledge at one’s fingertips. You cannot refute this argument by stating that most, if not all, WA members are ignorant and oblivious morons therefore keeping the WA business model alive because that would be blatantly assuming that most people are plain idiots.

    There’s a reason that WA continues to thrive, but you have to remember that only about 2% of Wealthy Affiliate website owners actually take their blog and turn it into a full-time cash cow.

    Most people just don’t have the patience to see things through, and instead of continuously learning, they say “screw this, I’m out” whereas they may very well be at the cusp of success, had they have just kept going, learning and eventually made it to the big leagues.

    As far as I am concerned, WA is a great platform that will teach you how online marketing is done and each person just has to have a determination and willingness to succeed which most people just don’t have thanks to the modern-day ADD syndrome that seems to plague the majority of our “instant-gratification” society.

    Cheers.

    1. Thanks for weighing in, Michael, and I’m pleased to hear that your experience with WA has been beneficial so far. You seem very motivated and I wish you success with your IM pursuits.

      However, I think you may have misconstrued the tone of my post. I never suggested their business model was based on scams and lies, but rather shady, misleading practices.

      1. Hi Craig, after re-reading my comment, I apologise if I came across as attacking you, that was not my intent.

        I just wish that people out there understood how frikking hard it is to make a living with IM – and that in order to see any kind of results, they will have to show up consistently for 3-5 years.

        WA is what it is, and they can capitalise because most people just aren’t aware that it takes a TON of work.

        Thanks Craig.

        1. Old comment I am answering to but the issue is:

          Yes, it seems implied the hard work will take years and it may not materialize fully even then, but in the meantime WA is taking their $49/month cut from you, plus they are locking access to one’s website, so is like they are taking you hostage for this monthly amount. It is this issue they are capitalizing on, desperation, confusion about their policies, and the fact most of us are naïve – no shame in saying so. Perhaps if the monthly price was $10/month or so, maybe it would be fine.

          (this coming from someone who might renew membership, just to finish the training modules, then see what to do next)

  32. Hi Craig – Correct me if I am wrong, but your information about not being able to access your website after going Premium is also misleading. Your domain name is your own and you can move it to any other hosting company. When you quit your hosting from any company — including Wealthy Affiliate — of course you can no longer access your site from there. You make it sound like your site is “lost” or somehow WA makes it “disappear” when in fact all you need to do is pay someone else to host it and move your domain. You will pay for hosting no matter what, it is often $25+ per month for not even as many features as are offered by Wealthy Affiliate. This means that for an additional $25 you can access on-going training on SEO updates, social media, and other necessary services. This seems like a deal to me. Yes, Wealthy Affiliate makes it sound easier than it is to get to the money, but I would rather that people figure out that they are not willing to do the work for a $49 loss than for a $300-$1000+ loss as is the cost of other programs.

    1. Hi Dr. Doug, When I referred to lock-out in the article, it’s in reference to the account area in WA. I was completely locked out of my account unless I re-upped. There was no downgrade option. Perhaps they’ve changed this policy, but that was not my experience.

      As far as using WA as a registrar and web host, that is not advisable. As the old saying goes, you never want to have all of your eggs in one basket, and it’s extremely important that you retain complete control over all of the moving parts involved with running an online business, i.e., hosting, domain, dns, email, etc. WA’s hosting services are very canned and restrictive – negating a lot of the flexibility and extensibility which is the beauty of WordPress. As a beginner, you may not recognize these limitations early on, but if you begin to succeed and start looking at ways to improve your online presence, you will undoubtedly realize that WA’s hosting services are less-than-mediocre. Those who are using WA’s hosting and are running successful sites are members who’ve been online for probably 6-8 yrs or more and are deeply indexed.

      I think the key thing to note here is that their hosting is not the “value-add” that it appears to be. You’ll be much better off seeking an affordable $20/mo. reseller hosting account from a reliable provider.

        1. If you’re just getting started, my favorite budget shared hosting options are SiteGround and RochenHost. The second option is a much lesser known host but they are the official host for Joomla CMS and I’ve been using them for a few misc clients who still use cPanel email and I can tell you they are solid.

          If you’re looking for something a little more premium, there’s Flywheel and my absolute favorite, Kinsta.

    2. wealthy affiliate does your shit. sure I can host my domain elsewhere but as soon as you do you no longer have access to anything. I thought that once i added content to my domain that content was now part of it if i moved it the content moved too. now I have nothing but my domain name that I cant even register elswhere until the first 60days is up. Wealthy Affiliate Is A Bullshit Scam!!

  33. I joined WA with all the excitement and I was really pumped up. Created a website, posted about 4 or 5 blogs and BOOM! The reality of juggling my day job as a doctor and continuing with WA hit me. I simply haven’t got the time to effectively continue. So I’m forced to quit.

    Why pay for the Premium service when I literally have no time to go on it?

    Cancelled my membership today. What a shame right?

    WA isn’t for everyone. It clearly isn’t for me.

    1. Kanayo, You made the smart decision. IM is incredibly labor intensive and if you can’t conceivably devote the time and energy required, it’s not worth pursuing. I arrived at a similar conclusion once my agency business grew to a point where I had to choose one path or the other. For me, as it was for you, the choice was easy. At the end of the day, I feel much more fulfilled when I’m helping others rather than simply making money.

      IM is a fun hobby and it’s not to say that it can’t be fulfilling and meaningful as well, but I derive more satisfaction by employing my IM skills in a way that directly helps others.

  34. Wealthy affiliate sucks. The free membership for 7 days is no where enough time to get your head around everything they provide you, 14 days would have been better. After this you only get access to level 1 training that teaches you hardy anything, to learn the rest they charge 50 dollars per level! A complete rip off. If you go premium they charge 49 dollars per month! Pure extortion. If you want to comment or ask questions you can’t unless you go premium! Any what would be your advice to getting into affiliate marketing? The steps. Any ideas. Thanks

    1. Hi Carl, One of these days I hope to answer this question in either a post or (more likely) a video blog, but let me ask you this…

      Why do you want to get into affiliate marketing? Is it solely to make money? Do you have a desire (or already possess the skills required) to build a website that people will want to visit, learn from, purchase from, etc? Are you willing to build the best website imaginable for your chosen vertical? What skills can you contribute and do you have any leverage points that could make you competitive, e.g., writing, web design, seo, video creation, free time, and/or a strong desire to learn and work hard?

      Would you be willing to continue working on a website for 6 months to a year without ever being paid for said work? Would you be willing to write no fewer than 2000-3000 words – of quality content – per week, for a year?

      It’s never been more difficult to become successful at affiliate marketing, so before you enter into it, you’ll want to consider those questions.

      1. I am willing to work hard at it, I am very tech savvy. I just need some step by step pointers which I don’t to pay for.

  35. WA is a bull shit program and I totally agreed with crajun.com. Most people are misled with WA pitch as Starter to make a crappy website in 30 seconds of going thru 10 lessons of training level # 1…. Then you have to buy the premium membership to have access to the lessons in training level 2 to continue in finishing your crappy website without any affiliate links added to it… to fill it with affiliate links from Amazon, Nike, Adidas… etc, you have to sign up for their affiliate programs, then wait and see if you get approved and most likely you will not get approved because your website has no traffic and has no links to your what they call a Niche. Because your niche is based on affiliate links… I am so glad I did not go for the premium…. it’s a waste of time and money….

  36. Oh Lol Lol. You really did struggle then. I think it’s a shame really that most people do not see the bigger picture of Wealthy Affiliate yes building a website in seconds can be done that’s if you want it to look like this one. Obviously pretty part takes a whole lot longer.
    To be honest they do stress that it’s a not quick get rich scheme and most really good affiliate marketers will tell you it took them a good few years.
    Actually I dont know why I am writing this because you probably wont approve it. You pick out your good bits. Take it from me every one that leaves just about comes back. They come back more skint when the left lol. I shall be keeping my eye out for you no doubt you will return too.
    Happy days. TTfN

  37. This review is right on the money. I know exactly what Craig is saying here because I’ve been in the online space for quite some time now ;). The information in WA is not incorrect, but as Craig said, the process is grossly oversimplified. This is probably intended to draw in newbies more easily. Look at it like this, each of those main steps probably have like 50-100 substeps, if not more, lol. You have to be disciplined, learn and absorb all the theory and apply it, but folks suffer too much from Get Rich Quick mentality and impatience online. Think about it, if it takes REAL work to build a regular bricks and mortar business, what makes you think it won’t take you work to build a business that just simply happens to based online? It is still all within the realm of this universe, law, and universal laws hold haha. Anyway, not meaning to be facetious. All else being equal, the best thing about an business that happens to be based online is the ability it has to SCALE! That’s where the real advantages come in IMHO. Best of luck to you all

  38. I am a long-time blogger and decided to join WA premium for a month. I was looking to build an affiliate site and had no experience in that area. I figured I could get through most of the premium training within the month. But the thing that I didn’t like was the way they guided you to use their system to set up your domain. No way. I want control over my domain name and WP site. That’s where people get trapped because they don’t know how to do this on their own. But the only way I would know that is having been a blogger before registering. I’ll finishe out the month. Get what I can from the training and apply to a site I start outside their “silo”.

    As someone who has years of experience doing lead generation on a local blog. Getting enough “traffic” for an affiliate site is damn hard. Over the past couple of years, an injury to my foot has left me slightly disabled. Affiliate marketing makes sense for someone like me with prior blogging experience who now has limitations. I will start with one niche and add another site later. I’m hoping to see good results in within about 18 months. But that’s only because I know how to do a lot of things and I know what’s involved. You have to write consistently, work your SEO, pick your poison in social media and be engaged in it. It’s a lot of hard WORK. I feel sorry for anyone who got their site shut down because they didn’t know how to transfer their site to another host. That’s terrible.

  39. Vivian Villareal

    I joined WA and it was really helpful in the beginning because I was new to Affiliate Marketing. I haven’t given up on affiliate marketing, and I am currently learning how to piece together my own resources that seem more up to date. This has given me piece of mind and I feel this will provide more stability. I do see a lot of people promoting WA by comparing them to other similar programs. Craig’s review is very refreshing and spot on. Thank you Craig.

  40. Edward Mijarez

    You described my experience at Wealthy Affiliate very accurately. Like you, I am no longer with WA. Thanks for posting and being honest, perhaps you will help others!
    Thanks,
    Ed

  41. I have my reservations as well. They were trying to get me to convert my already existing blog that I have worked hard on to their platform. Or get rid of mine completely and just use their niche site. I think I’m fine with their training but I’ll keep my already established domain name that I own.

  42. Hi Craig,

    I joined WA March 2015 as a premium member and left December 2016. I did learn the foundation to building a website, but I ageee with you about their hostin – too controlling.

    Before leaving WA, I did back up my sites and transferred them to Host Gator without any issues. Since then I having moved my hosting to Namecheap and paying $46 a year for unlimited hosting sites.

    WA has a lot of benefits, but like you said 90% of the folks do drop out because of not making any money and steady shelling out $49 a month. In fact, most of the affiliates I got to join dropped out maybe after 2 or 3 months.

    I still have a free membership with them, I use to get info and stay in contact with a few of the top ambassadors there – which 2 of them are very helpful and sincere.

    I am profiting from Affiliate Marketing – but I DO NOT pay to join anyone’s membership programs. There is so much readily available with having to take courses and buy continuous upsells.

    Thanks for a very informative blog.

    Robert Vallair

  43. Hi Craig!

    Being a current premium member of WA since 2015, active on and off mostly off, but hosting three sites with them, two professional and one monetized, I was expecting to thoroughly disagree with your review; however, I was in many respects surprised and pleased. For the most part, it was insightful and spot-on and while I do see and agree with many of your assertions, I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusion.
    Professionally I have been a practicing primary health care provider for just about 30 years. The one thing I will not do as a WA member is review a healthcare-oriented website done by individuals who are not professionals. I recognize the knowledge I have acquired over 40 years is so ingrained in me I’d find it hard to sort out “common” knowledge from “trained” knowledge; hence, I believe my review of their websites would be unfair. Sort of like a judge who has personal knowledge of a matter, reclusing themselves from hearing a case. Now if someone asked me, in my professional status, to critique a healthcare website…that’s a horse of a different color. My educational background makes me very confident in my professional life BUT in the area of website development, not so much.
    When neophytes in the area of website development look for help, they need WA or something very close. The saying goes, how do you eat an elephant? … the answer “one bite at a time”. WA feeds the “website-development-elephant” one bite at a time. I am, by nature, critical. I listen carefully and read carefully not only what is being said but also what is not being said. Do they promote their system, of course, why wouldn’t they?
    When one considers the massive abundance of information, clearly and consecutively presented, personally, I’m amazed. I believe credit should be given where credit is due and you have done that except in your conclusion.
    It is my opinion you may be discounting the significance of your background and assuming others, with no idea as to how to even start such a journey, would easily know how to begin. So, to me, WA jumps into the fray rescuing the neophyte, is it perfect? Nope, but they are highly successful in laying an effective foundation on which further study can be obtained. From my perspective, for their concerted effort, I give them a resounding applause!!!

  44. Hiya, Craig – Standard Reply -“Great Article!!”
    I agree with EVERY WORD you say here. Having been a member of WA who was acttively trying to mentor new members I discovered that WA mentorship actually does not exist. Not one person who I asked at WA knew who their mentor was, let alone got ANY help from them. Whenever I contacted my up line mentor the reply I always got was the standard reply as above.
    From my research asking people about their success it seems that only 5 or 6 people in any single year ever achieve what they set out to achieve – making money from WA promotions. The average time to become successful and recover the premium fee each month is over 3 years as far as I can discern.
    I think WA are extremely misleading in their sales pitched. The moment you arrive at WA they are bombarding you with UPGRADE promotions including their LIMITED time offer of $19 for the first month. This offer has no time limit – my wife is still being offered that rate after 3 years even though she gave up with WA long ago.
    What people don’t realise is that SEO is not a child’s game – it takes expertise and great effort to reach page one on any search keyword. The vast majority of WA members seem delighted that they’ve made page 10 or 20 as it’s the first time they get to see any results anywhere and even that after months and months of extremely hard work.
    From decades of online experience I know that there are far quicker routes to making money online – eShops, for example. Yet when mentioning this on WA chat all the WA members disagreed – UNTIL I PROVED IT TO THEM LIVE IN FRONT OF THE WA CHAT – then they all fell silent because they had no answer.
    I don’t ever promote WA & recommend people approach them WA with extreme caution or, as you say, if they no longer keep paying $50 or there-abouts each month – THEY WILL LOSE ALL SITES HOSTED BY WA. I’ve seen this happen time and time again and have witnessed the bitter taste this left in ex-members’ mouths.
    Overall, I personally think Wealthy Affiliate does much more harm than good. The average membership is about 3 months because that seems to be the time it takes on average for WA members and wanna-be marketers to wise up to the FACT they have been entirely MISLED by the sales process.
    Never has ANYONE had a money making site up and running in 2 minutes – they have an empty WordPress shell that they have to stock themselves. This can take months or years.
    If this upsets anyone that’s tough – these are the FACTS Of LIFE when dealing with Wealthy Affiliate.
    All the best and – (standard answer) – great article- you’ll be making a profit sometime next century.
    Andre

  45. I remember I use to be a free member but once I saw Kyles own website that compares Swagbucks to Wealthy Affiliate then I knew it was B.S… Comparing a reward site to a “training” site is ridiculous.. Not to mention all the hundreds of fake sites that pretend to review other sites that are in competition with wealthy affiliate and give them bad scores and put wealth affiliate as #1… All the information that they give on their crap website is free on the internet if you know where to look.
    The BBB doesn’t recognize them as a “business” and that is a bad sign right off the bat. They go after the desperate people. To me they are no different than those fake Indian Microsoft support scammers.

    waste of time.

  46. Wow. It’s a testament to you that we’re even able to find this review under all the WA crap.

    I tried IM several years ago but didn’t like the article spinning. It just felt weird.

    I almost got sucked into WA . The fact that they have basically taken away a good part of makes WP so wonderful was one reason I wouldn’t want their hosting. Then you could lose your site or be in for tons of aggravation if you try to move it? Then what’s the membership for? Some of the info is decent, but you’re also paying their affiliate fees .

    I agree with you about Treehouse. Completely unintimidating for newbies. Also Udemy, Lynda, Coursera, edX, Udacity, Skillshare…so much else out there.

    What is nice about WA is the sense of community. Then you look , really look, at many of the members. Some are helpful; perhaps trying to lure new members so they can get commissions. Sunk cost, anyone?

    Otherwise, many do give a somewhat naive and desperate air.

  47. Anusuya Choudhury

    I joined WA a few months and a premium member now. For the 1st time, I am reading WA from outside. I decided to join WA by reading a few articles from the web which I really liked. There is not a single day I have not enjoyed. Every day I see people converting, sites getting ranked, people getting to 1st page, even ranked #1 of Goole. It is lots of hard work and you got to be a skilled writer in your niche. The community help is unparallel. The longest I have seen the conversion is 3.5 years. But the person said he started the website before completing the training and made a mistake. He was about to give up when he saw 4 figure/ month conversion. He has ~200 posts. It feels good to see lots research and authority gained over the time. It is lot smaller time frame compared to my Ph.D. You are always told it takes 3-4 years to see any conversion. People having no tech knowledge are making a good income. I am learning SEO and WP management in my spare time to help myself. It is addictive.
    It is you who has to put hard work. Which in life is easy? This is freedom and financial freedom. It can never be cheap? It needs lots of passion and strict discipline for success. The training is excellent and there is help available always. This is probably one of the cheapest programs in In industry unless you bye pieces and do yourself. An 18-year-old guy has got >300 referrals and showed the amount he is making in 3 years.
    It is not an overnight rich scheme. People having experience and some in 6-7 months, few of them got ranked as #1 in Google. Many are on Page 1. I am there. I see it.
    Well, I am quite upbeat and very positive about this program. Who and why anyone will offer free stuff. There are scams out there. Many have lost money.
    I will agree it is not for everyone. So they try free and figure out if it is not them, they leave. As you described it is not a scam and it is legit. There are successes happening every day. I am 36 years in this country. It is one of the best organizations I have come across.

    1. Yep, I agree with what Anusuya Choudhury said. Many people are looking for easy $$$$ and fall for the promise to make lots of money. But can you blame WA for that? They explicitly tell everywhere in the training that you have to work hard to achieve any success. The sky is a limit. And that limit is you. So, you don’t have to give a negative review just because someone did not hand you everything on the plate without hard work. You can’t just be so negative because your level of expertise is high and WA couldn’t give you what you were looking for. Support is amazing there. Not everyone is a tech like you. But they can start and learn from 0 on WA platform. Writers, cooks, motivational speakers – they all can surpass you and generate tones of money just following their passion. You are affiliate yourself. So, it doesn’t matter where you get your knowledge as long as it works for you.

    1. There are two options to get website comments. One of the methods is regulated and exclusively for websites hosted with WA. Members can use your free credits for comments. However, there is a thread called ‘Give and take website comments’ on which you can post your external website URL and exchange comments. It is not regulated though and it depends on the goodwill of others.

  48. Richard Cooper

    I have a paranoid idea, but as a newbie to this world of WA , I have a dark feeling that there’s no reason why WA could not simply read business ideas that are posted in their free membership sites and then copy any of the feasible ideas you’ve researched through their free ‘limited trial’ research tool for keywords. The owners thereby get vast free market research, and snap up any lucrative ideas, and you have no legal ownership of the free site content. Am I paranoid? Would love to get your take, or anyones’s take on this. I didn’t buy a domain, I have as yet not signed up, and have removed my content, – but have I just potentially given my business idea away?

  49. I have been a Premium member of WA for the last five months and have to agree with you. I have gathered everything that seemed of value tonight and will cancel the membership tomorrow.

    It took me quite some time to find your post. Usually, when I’m potentially interested in a course or a membership like this, I try to find the negative reviews and ignore the so-called scam reviews that are actually laudatory articles promoting the product, but for once I couldn’t find any at first.

    When I enrolled in WA, I almost immediately had misgivings, which I ignored at first, about two things: 1) using their platform to build sites, as you mentioned, and 2) the bootcamp, which had too much of a circular flavor for my taste – and for my trust. I was actually surprised that so many people would promote WA instead of developing a personal niche. Looking backwards, bootcamp sites are easy to spot: they all have a link at the top called “My #1 Recommendation” or something similar. So much for originality.

    Still, I went through part of the training but had very little motivation after a while. I don’t think I learned a lot that was worth the membership fee, and the rest of the site is like a maze to me.

    One thing I didn’t like is that they give no guidance as to what constitutes a good niche. They imply, if they don’t say it outright, that you can make money out of any niche, you just have to choose one you’re passionate about and money will necessarily follow. I wholeheartedly disagree. Let’s take an example. If I’m passionate about, say, jigsaw puzzles, does that make them a good niche? Sure, there are such products sold on the net and probably you can earn commissions from them, but 1) this is the sort of things people will more likely buy at brick and mortar stores, 2) most of them are not expensive enough to make significant commissions from them, and 3) most importantly, if, as they say, you must first give value and help people, how can you write tens of posts that will “help” people about jigsaw puzzles? I for one would run out of ideas before having used all fingers of one hand. And that’s also why I disagree with their suggestion to select very narrow niches. One can only write so much about so little.

    Anyway, I’m thankful that I didn’t spend too much time on creating sites there and that I didn’t put any significant content before deciding to leave. I will now peruse some free training and then try two courses that are a bit pricey but seem more useful, The Authority Site System (from the Authority Hacker site), and SEO Affiliate Domination. I’m just starting to read the SEO Affiliate Domination free crash course, and as far as Authority Hacker is concerned, I can say that I got far more useful information in their free webinar alone that in all five WA courses combined. I first learned about these courses on Jeremy Harrison’s Hustle Life site. (He also says that WA is good but not great.) If anyone has tried the two aforementioned courses, I’d like to hear about it.

    Kudos to you Craig!

  50. Are there any good free websites that I can use to make money the way wealthy affiliate claims if I put in work?

    Should I try to make money through the free version of wealthy affiliate, or should I use free WordPress? Or is it just not really possible going the free website route?

  51. Hi, could you give me some advice on how to set up a website elsewhere? I may decide to get my own domain one day and it certainly will not be feasible if I continue on Wealthy Affiliates. Basically, I need a good website to host my website for free for now and also the ability to move my domain over for a small fee if I wish to buy one in the future.

  52. First of all Craig, I want to congratulate you. This is an extensive and VERY HONEST look at Wealthy Affiliate.

    I have been an Internet/Affiliate Marketer since 2008 and I am now very successful. did not achieve success through building niche websites, though. I did it by building a targeted email list, which, in my opinion, is the quickest and easiest way to start earning a substantial amount of money from your online business.

    I tried the WA free trial a couple of years ago and left quite unimpressed. I was particularly disgusted at the “negative review blog” and product bashing tactic that I see being recommended there. In other words, they want you to write negative reviews and trash every single product in the “Internet Marketing/Make Money Online/Biz Opp” niche and then subtly recommend Wealthy Affiliate towards the end of the review post.

    There are probably hundreds of these blogs floating around, and some of them rank quite well. I guess one could give WA props for teaching some decent SEO techniques, but that seems to be about it. I find the “bait and switch” review tactic particularly nauseating. It’s quite obvious that most of these negative reviews are nothing more than “cookie cutter” posts, and that the “reviewer” hasn’t even personally gone through the product they are bashing. Anybody that writes reviews about products they don’t have themselves and know nothing about is a fraud as far as I’m concerned.

    That practice alone is enough for me to know that WA is just something that I’d never want to associate my name with.

    Also, I see a very high number of people whose sole game is to make money by promoting premium Wealthy Affiliate memberships to other people. That seems to be the main revenue stream that many WA members have. Isn’t that a bit like an MLM scheme?

    At any rate, I commend your honesty and thank you for being candid. Well done!

  53. I have to agree, you article is different from the rest of WA’s reviews on the internet. You are very negative about WA’s ways of promoting themselves. Do you have any insights about ClickBank and ClickBank University?

  54. Sound advice indeed Craig. Not sure if you or anyone else has mentioned all the content added by member’s of WA to their blogs all goes towards higher ranking in Google for the WA website. Pick any example of text from any blog, search in Google and guess which site is at the top! More potential clients for WA. I signed up with them several months ago and have remained a free member. After many attempts to get me to go premium they extended the discount offer for the first month indefinitely. I still receive many email notifications from them containing info about new blog posts by their member’s. Seems most of them are dedicated to religion so not really surprising that they keep plodding on with no success. They already have the “faith” mentality.

  55. I was a member of Wealthy Affiliate for 2.5 years. I made a little bit of money through my own niches, but nowhere near enough to justify the work I put into it. I did the bootcamp course and made some money referring other people to WA, but I did so mainly by churning out fake negative reviews of competing products, which is the direction that the bootcamp course leads you in. The whole setup of the bootcamp course is bullshit. It teaches clueless newbies to shout out to the world that WA is the best way to make money online, all before they even know whether this is true or not.

    The name Wealthy Affiliate is misleading. It makes it sound like you are going to get rich from affiliate marketing. Yet they say it’s not a get rich scheme, so they contradict themselves there. WEALTHY means RICH. You can’t call your website Wealthy Affiliate and then tell your members that they won’t get rich from it. That’s like having a website called Slim Athlete and then telling your members you probably won’t lose much weight or get too fit.

    My experience from being at WA was that the vast majority of members there were anything but wealthy. In fact, most of them seemed to use it like a paid version of Facebook, posting pointless personal and motivational updates each day.

    And anything too negative gets hidden, so you never get a true picture of how people feel there. The place could be filled with many unhappy members and you wouldn’t know. To any new member, WA is full of happy people all saying how wonderful it is.

    But it’s not wonderful. It seems to have a very low success rate from what I could tell. A big part of that might just be that affiliate marketing is really hard. But WA seems to make it sound far easier than it really is. Make a website about whatever you’re most interested in and then turn that into a business. Yeah, if only it was that easy…

      1. If you’ve upgraded to paid, I would request a refund asap. What you’ll find is a community full of aspiring entrepreneurs who are new to internet marketing & website administration – all of whom will be very enthusiastic for about 30-90 days, then never to be heard from again. I could argue that WA’s business model could be called downright predatory given the way they sell this bill of goods.

        My best advice would be to seek a refund and then put that towards something infinitely more useful, e.g., a membership to Lynda.com.

        1. Yes, Craig, and it’s often a case of the blind leading the blind. Often the most active and most helpful members on WA are quite new, and they get enthusiastic about interacting with other members and all helping each other out. So you get a bunch of enthusiastic newbies all giving each other advice even though they don’t really know what they’re talking about.

          Related to this is the Ambassador title. The more active you are in the WA community, the better your WA rank, and if your WA rank gets good enough then you become an Ambassador. I reached Ambassador status several times and saw absolutely no benefit to it at all. The whole thing is a con.

          And so what the owners of WA are essentially doing is getting their own members to pay for the privilege of doing work that they should really be paying fully trained members of staff to do – helping members and doing their marketing.

          It’s a very clever con: Tell all members that WA is the best way to make money online, tell them to tell the whole world that too, get them to all help each other in the hope of some kind of reward, and suppress any negativity. What you end up with then is a site that appears on first look to be the best thing that has ever happened to anyone wanting to make lots of money online, but which in reality turns out to be a big disappointment.

          Sondra, I am currently making a bit of money through matched betting. Beyond that, I’m still figuring things out and exploring the various possibilities out there…

        2. Craig,
          Lynda is great but you won’t learn Affiliate Marketing with it or anything of the kind…
          I’ve been spending over 2 hours reading most of the comments. Great content really although it didn’t really get me any further. I got a yearly paid membership and at least I’ll finish it. Craig, you’ve said since 2015 up to this year you’d write an article about “the alternatives” of WA and sure, you seem like a great guy, but when will i get to read this article? duhh. Some disgusting practices of WA are a huge turn off now but I’m kind of a slow learner and having a community and a step by step way to learn to start an affiliate website is bringing me “from nowhere to finally somewhere” and if you know any platform with a community that can do that better than them then I’d be glad to know which one. Of course thanks to you and other comments I now lower my expectations and know that the faster i’ll be done with the basic there and then feel more self-confident the quicker I’ll leave and go for something more authentic and efficient but what exactly would that be?

    1. Thanks for chiming in, Marcus. Your comment is spot on. I definitely agree with your remarks about the community feedback loop. There’s a lot of hopefulness and friendly, supportive chit-chat, but very little in the way of experienced guidance or constructive criticism.

  56. Thank You
    I didnt give into the bootcamp but I came close. I did upgrade and purchased 2 site names (which I no longer have access to) and one readon why I became tempted to switch to the bootcamp.
    Long story short, I couldnt afford monthly fee . So I sit here sad.
    Although grateful to have learned , I am disappointed to have gone from a fire burning under my rear to a now and empty time slot. I did enjoy the learning. Iean, nobody can take away what I learn, right?
    Anyhow, I will be searching down the same avenue as it all grabbed my interest pretty strong.
    Unfortunately I am barely keeping my head above water, likelihood for me to have another extra few dollars, AND win again penny keno, is even more rare.
    (next to homeless, but when I chose to put my change , at the corner store, into a machine, I won. Ran to get a mobile phone and service, signed up for task apps and searched to find that online path..thay search introduced me to WA and the fun idea of my winning my opportunity lol sounded fun to me. Haha..) I wish I had read your information prior to purchasing 2 domain names.but cant pass up an opportunity tio share , just in case theres someone who can relate to the good point you made Regarding those of us who have less , at the moment. WA can add to your knowledge, howrver, things dont move any faster with premiun membersgip, so, I agree on holding back.before making that purchase. Because it doesnt feel all that wonderful when you purchase a domain, only to lose it. Its harder to get into the “better to have loved and lost than…” theme when it concerns the loss of your “online real estate. Anyhow thank you for the information, it helps me to feel less of the “coulda woulda shoulda’s. (Ha)
    “Live and learn”
    is getting to be older than I am. (Haha)
    Good luck all
    And keep yourself full of what and who you love!

  57. Hi Craig
    I have been looking through a lot of your website and blogs and i am quite impressed by your knowledge of blogging and the internet in general. I too was a member of W A but i moved out because i found myself restrained by all their rules and other restrictions. One thing i will mention in their favour is that their platform is already equipped with the use of WordPress. I have been scouting around and i have discovered that in order to use WordPress on other hosting platforms you have to first download, then upload to the hosting platform following a complicated procedure. Can you give any information where there is anywhere that wordpress is available without a load of technical procedure.

    1. WordPress comes free with cpanel which incidentally, Kyle at WA told me is outdated. I purchased a reseller account from Greengeeks which will host unlimited websites. Each domain has an independent cpanel which includes a load of free software (including WordPress) All this for only 20 Dollars/month. I recently built a dozen websites all with WordPress using that account. I think it could be done even cheaper if you shop around but I’m really happy with the service I get and no need to change. If you only want one website a cpanel platform from Greengeeks will cost you around 4 USD/month if you pay in advance. Of course you don’t get the “community” that comes with WA but you don’t get the brainwashing or stupid restrictions either.

  58. Craig, do you not think it’s worth signing up even for £49.99 per month 50 website hosting access. Which is a lot cheaper than doing it individually through other hosting providers (cough cough go daddy). Or am I missing something?

    1. If you could even manage 50 websites ( and why would you want to?) it can be done for much less than 50 Bucks/ month.
      I am currently using 10 websites but have an unlimited option each with their own Control panel with a reseller account for which I only pay 20 dollars/month.
      Realistically I can only take care of 3 of those sites on a regular basis and I really only concentrate on one of them. I could earn the same income if I only hosted two sites and paid less than 10 bucks/month.

      1. Antonio, I’m with Malcolm on this one. Owning 50 websites is utterly useless for a beginner. It’s only possible to successfully run 50 websites if you are outsourcing most of it. A beginner can’t possibly do that.

        A beginner doesn’t need 50 websites, they just need a reliable way to make money. Unfortunately, advising people to set up a website about their favourite hobby and hoping for the best is not the best way to do that.

  59. I have found out that even when you actually leave Wealthy affiliate your account is never erased. Unlike other hosting companies when you cancel your subscription with them you are erased from the system. For some reason W A wants to show that it never actually loses members, but gives the impression that it is continually growing in membership. I can only assume that the majority of the members that are actually active are the hard core long time followers, and a large proportion of the membership is empty unused accounts that never get erased. At present W A boasts over 1.4 million members but what is the real membership number?

    1. The 1.4 million members figure doesn’t even make any sense. If WA had 1.4 million active users it would be totally unusable. The “classrooms” there would just be far too busy to keep track of. And aren’t all members automatically set to follow Kyle? According to his WA profile, he has 365,319 friends. So there are 1,034,681 members that don’t follow Kyle?

      The figure is actually a lot lower if you go by SiteSell’s statistics. According to them, WA is hosting approximately 17,000 active websites. And if we take into consideration that many members have several websites, we start to see how low the true figure really is. There’s probably just a few thousand active members at most. Rather pathetic for something that’s been going since 2005, don’t you think?

      1. Marcus is absolutely correct. He cancelled his membership with Wealthy Affiliate well over a year ago and yet he is still listed as a premium member with a current rank of 1 048. That alone is laughable. There are countless people who have come and gone and still play a role in this fictitious membership claim.

        I left a comment recently on a blog stating that in my nine months at Wealthy Affiliate, the wisest decision that I made in this time was to cancel my membership with them. No doubt I’ll still continue to be listed as one of the phantom 1.4 million members for years to come.

        1. Just a slight correction, Eurgene. I didn’t actually cancel my membership, I just simply had my write access taken away. Technically I am still a member and I still receive monthly commissions for the small number of Premium referrals I still have, which has been steadily declining and is now at just two members. I am on a yearly membership, though, and that runs out soon, so I might cancel then.

          1. Hi Marcus, I was aware that your write access had been revoked and believed that you had let your membership run its course and cancelled its renewal. My apologies. What a shame that the work and effort that you put in has dwindled down to two remaining members. I can say that I have read your WA blogs with great interest which is one of the few good things that came out of my membership along with a handful of friends that I made along the way. Much success to you in your new pursuits.

          2. Thanks Eugene, I wish you the best too.

            I became a bit of a disruptive member at WA. I often wrote things that questioned what was going on. Multiple times I had comments and posts hidden because I asked uncomfortable questions or pointed out something that wasn’t right. Then I went a step too far, which was when I lost my write access.

            My only crime was that I went from being a wide-eyed happy-clappy WA evangelist in the beginning, to being totally honest. My goal evolved into being totally honest about everything, including Wealthy Affiliate. I was looking for the best way to make money online, and writing honestly about what I found.

            For me, Wealthy Affiliate hadn’t lived up to its name. It hadn’t made me WEALTHY through AFFILIATE marketing. The most money I made from Wealthy Affiliate was when I was writing fake reviews about other products and saying how wonderful Wealthy Affiliate was. But even that wasn’t really much money.

  60. I might be a bit late to the party but nonetheless it’s good to turn up in style.
    This article is well written and to the point that am even taking notes and jotting down all the essentials of this well written piece as testified by the dozens of replies and comments to this article.

    It’s the first am reading an article where from my own vantage point there is not one single relevant opinion that has been left out of this well written masterpiece.

    Case in point : The Wealthy Affiliate System makes no distinction in respect of your color, creed, status, qualifications or otherwise when being prompted to sign up as a premium member.

    I have covered totally all the basics and intermediary aspects of IM and am looking for advanced strategies that can milk the cow so I can take the bacon home but this platform does not offer such an opportunity to me nor anyone like myself.

    It’s an information product website and you could scream blue murder until the cows come home that’s all you get and nothing more as there are no value service packages available otherwise rumbling through a series of “How To” videos other than that the Wealthy Affiliate system really does nothing for you and that insane price of $49.00 a month!!! what’s up with that??!!

    1. Regarding the price, I remember they used to have a line where they would say that all you need to do is get two friends to sign up and that’s your monthly subscription paid for. The major flaw with that is that those two friends need to also get two friends to sign up who also need to to get two friends to sign up and so on. Very soon they would run out of friends to sign up. Pyramid scheme anyone?

  61. Just got an email to say that my free website at WA will be deleted unless I upgrade to premium membership.

    _______________________

    Hey Malcolm,

    We really want to thank you for using the Wealthy Affiliate platform and we hope you have enjoyed using your SiteRubix.com domains for the last 6 months along with the service inside of Wealthy Affiliate. 🙂

    To free up room for those folks that are serious about creating a business online and for our newcomers, we are clearing up space on our hosting platform to keep it of the utmost quality.

    As a result the following domain that you have associated with your Wealthy Affiliate Starter membership will be removed in 14 days.

    youronlinebiz.siterubix.com

    You can absolutely keep this domain if you are interested by upgrading to our Premium membership which will allow you to retain this website and will also give you access to 25 websites on your own domain, 25 siterubix.com domains, and Premium hosting within WA (plus a ton of other stuff).

    Learn About & Upgrade to Our Unbelievable Premium Membership

    Something that you may want to consider if you are still serious about creating a business online.

    Kyle, Carson & The Team
    @WealthyAffiliate.com

    _______________________________

    So apparently you cannot remain a free member indefinitely. It was an interesting experiment if nothing else but no chance of me paying them 50 bucks/month

    1. As a quick follow up, I just received exactly the same email from WA regarding the second free website that I built a little while after joining as a free member. Also received several emails from them promoting their Black Friday offer of discounted membership. The price was a bit more realistic but still wouldn’t encourage anyone with an ounce of common sense to sign up. Incidentally, it seems that as I am still a free member, I am still able to have 2 free websites which I can create at my leisure. ?

  62. Craig. Don’t care if you publish this comment or not but this needs to be said. You are a tool. A fuck-wit. A stupid moronic poophead. A no good idiotic piece of rodent poo. You should be silenced…gagged, water-boarded and smacked in the head with a blunt object. Get out of your mother’s basement, turn off the internet kiddie porn, put out your blunt and go outside for some fresh air dude, I think your brain is fried. Cheers, Rachael

    1. Haha! What a great post! Sounds like a former teacher’s comments about me! Perhaps a new post could be written entitled “The problem with Rachael* Perhaps a monthly problem?

      1. Notice how Rachael’s comment contains zero reasoning or evidence to backup her claims. It’s just a series of random insults. In my book, the number 1 rule is that as soon as you resort to personal insults then you have instantly failed (even without a pedophilia accusation). I think Rachael must have mistaken this website for YouTube.

        1. She also doesn’t make clear who she is addressing although as it is under my last comment I would assume her insults are directed at me. She is really picking on the wrong person and simply displaying her own lack of intelligence. However, it was quite entertaining and I’m glad that Craig has the guts to publish it on this post.

      2. Sorry I wasn’t clear I forgot I was addressing the very reason the gene pool needs a lifeguard. You must be hurting yourself by overthinking things. I will put you out of your misery. My reasoning for what I said is that I just don’t like you. Simple as that. I think you are very, very stupid. That’s all there is to it. The fact that you posted my comment has nothing to do with guts. It will very likely bring you a little attention which is the only reason you’ve published it. And Malcolm, you sir, are an oxygen thief! If laughter is the best medicine your face must be curing the world! I love what you’ve done with your hair. How did you get it to grow from your nostrils like that? Sorry, I must be “displaying my lack of intelligence” but then, how else would you understand me?

        1. Okay, everyone give Rachael the applause she wants. She’s just learnt how to write clever sounding insults and she’s showing off her new skills.

  63. Firstly, I must apologize for my earlier spell of paranoia! Perhaps I indulged in too much marry youarna over the weekend and imagined that Rachael was referring to me. Perhaps she is just one of those sad individuals who are financing the lavish lifestyle of WA’s founders and unhappy that she has not become an “Ambassador” yet!

    She certainly has the right amount of intelligence to be a fully paid up member.
    Getting back to the original topic, I am still receiving several emails/day from the team at Wealthy Affiliate and many giving me gentle reminders that I should go premium. So no upsells! Complete rubbish, they never seem to give up. Luckily I gave them an email address that I rarely use and can safely ignore.
    If anyone is considering paying for premium membership I think it’s best to read everything here and stick with Craig’s advice.

  64. I have been following the video’s on Youtube involving Income school, and i am quite astonished at the information that the 2 founders have compiled and are freely showing. They are displaying some really good advice and facts, backed up by actual evidence that i think that anyone serious about learning internet marketing should have a look at. When you see what they have to offer i think you will be quite surprised. The best part about it is that there are 2 actual live persons that you can see and hear and not just a voice behind a microphone .

    1. Hi Andrew, I have also been following the YouTube videos presented by Income School. These guys are genuinely nice guys and they really do have the stuff to back up their claims. I have actually been considering a registration with them. They have been building passive income sites for years now and I believe that when they say that they guide you to do exactly as they do – and have done for years now – one has the confidence that they will deliver on their promise.

  65. Its a real shame when people don’t really find out what is on offer. Many people on here have only put their toes in the waters of Wealthy Affiliate. Whilst I do not do reviews and mock other educators or websites, I do promote Wealthy Affiliate within one of my blogs.
    As a starter member (free) you have access to much more than just the first of the 10 certification levels on training in general and affiliate marketing. You can still read the blogs of members, and many of these have helpful information, you just can’t comment.
    You still have access to member training tutorials if they have made their training available to everyone, and many do. You even have access to some live events, both past and future.
    You also have access to the search area and can search for the above information, as well as find some of it on the left hand side tabs. You need to use a desktop version as mobile is more limited.
    Wealthy Affiliate is not a get rich quick scheme.
    Anyone who is not prepared to put a lot of time and effort into any business will not succeed. Online, or bricks and mortar.
    Whilst I do not prescribe to the mock one product and offer an alternative syndrome, it is not exclusive to Wealthy Affiliate promotion. It is just that the membership is so large and the Google indexing is so good that they appear to be everywhere on the internet. This is why you keep seeing them!!!!
    As for Mobe, just recently when the Government department got involved that all changed. Wealthy Affiliate was finally vindicated.
    I suggest that if you are not ready to put time, effort and a little money into building a website that you do stay a starter member, and look around. Use the information that is available. But please don’t expect to get everything for free. If your boss only paid you to work one hour a week, would you put in the effort to work 40. If you are not prepared to pay for further information, please be thankful for that which you can access for free.
    Like any website, or loyalty program. If you do not attend, don’t expect everything to be left open just in case you dein to return. A shop will not keep it’s door open 24/7 if people only attend 9-5… Get in and keep looking around. New information, new training and new blogs are added every day.

    As for hosting, I have one external website which costs just under $700 a year to host, and this was hacked once before and I had to find another host. Result one lost website and a complete rebuild. I have not moved this simply because it is not a WordPress site.
    I have 4 dot com sites hosted with Wealthy Affiliate. The hosting fee savings alone well and truly pays for the premium membership.
    I guess you only get out of something the effort you are prepared to put into it. It also depends upon how you view something as to whether you wish to see all the good, or all the bad.

    1. 700 bucks seems a lot just to host a single website. I am currently paying 240 for 10 sites and each with their own cpanel. WA cannot compete with that and actually told me that cpanel is antiquated compared to their platform. Incedently they didn’t reveal what kind of system they are using.

    2. This is the bait-and-switch that Wealthy Affiliate pulls on new members. It is called WEALTHY Affiliate, wealthy being a synonym of RICH. So, everyone who signs up is indeed hoping to be shown how to make a lot of money, then they get told: sorry, don’t expect to get rich any time soon. It’s kind of like signing up to Weight Watchers and then being told, “It’s going to take you ages to lose weight. You’ll probably stay overweight for a long time. But since you’re here, why don’t you pass the time by chatting to the other overweight people.”

      When Wealthy Affiliate first started in 2005, it was a list of hot keywords for those wishing to make money by promoting affiliate links on Google Adwords. That was actually a fast (but risky) way to make money. So, if you had money to invest up front, it was indeed possible to get rich quickly. And that’s why Kyle and Carson called their website Wealthy Affiliate. They were showing people how to get rich through affiliate marketing. The clue is the name.

      Even when I first joined WA in 2009, they had these pre-built product review style landing pages that you could just throw PPC ads at and make money. So, even then, if you wanted to get rich quickly and had some money to invest, it was possible to do so.

      As the years passed they moved more towards the blogging model and the concept that anyone can build a business by blogging about whatever they are most interested in. This approach is far more long-winded and very hit-and-miss in terms of how likely people are to succeed. Sure, some people will eventually find great success if their chosen topic happens to be a profitable niche and they are good at writing and stick it out for long enough. For many others it will not go beyond being a hobby site that pays a bit of spare change. No need to sign up to Wealthy Affiliate to do that. Just throw up a free blog at Blogspot.com, write about what you’re interested in, and throw in some affiliate links here and there. It’s not rocket science, folks.

  66. Some useful advice there Marcus. It really is easy for anyone to set up a blog these days and there are many platforms to choose from. Of course WordPress itself is probably the most popular and not difficult to understand. I recently set up a few just for the backlink value and found that Strikingly was probably the most straightforward to set up. As I linked to my regular blog it was listed in Google within a few days. Totally free and as good if not better than the free websites that are dished out by WA. If you feel the need for community support, there are many groups on Facebook that won’t cost you a cent!

  67. Hi Craig
    I’ve been looking all over for a truthful review on WA and you are the only one thus far being totally honest. Everyone is rating it so good because they are members and promoters of WA where they will get a commission if I join. I never join but did the level 1 course and I myself knows its not easy to build a site, get traffic and ranking far more for revenue. My problem with them was their monthly/annual fee. I find it a bit too high and after 1 year if I had subscribe, I don’t think I would have generated revenue to match the annual fee. Many other issue I came across that were similar to what you mention. Thanks alot.

  68. Hi Craig,

    Thanks for making an honest review, and one that I can full out respect. I’m a current member of WA, and I’ll be honest right from the start, it takes a TON of work. And I don’t mean the type of work that’s included in Making commissions, I mean all the amount of hours to dedicate to your blog, content, sharing it via social media, getting commented, and all the SEO elements. And that’s just the thing, you’re putting all the hard work in, pumping out sometimes 3 articles per week that are quality/quantity on what you know and are very well experienced with to not make a dollar amount in return. Am I supposed to get a couple dollars once every 6 months lol, like cmon right? Some people work at a different rate, and I’m one who’s busted my butt off for the last 9 1/2 months, churning out content with only analytics, small amount of Traffic to show for. I’m seeing the progress in all the “other ways” like getting to page 1 of bing and yahoo for search phrases and writing types of targeted post to attract buyers, and that it’s not about the money which I’m 100% on board, I’m here to help and make money second.

    It’s awesome to learn and implement as a broad sense, no doubt that everything is great, and I’ll keep riding this wave for a little more time-giving it a year to a year and a half at least. My main site is in the health niche(don’t want to add more specifics for obvious reasons), and a second on MMO for WA but it doesn’t feel natural whatsoever. There are many sites, and people with their success stories but I keep thinking…wow it must have taken them quite awhile, and stacked on all that domain authority just to be where they are. These are people who started early in the game. How are the little guys supposed to compete you know? It’s saturated, and really tough(I’ll have an example below)Just the other day I wrote about a very credible 4,000+ post that was ranked 1 on bing and yahoo, and after a weeks time I moved down to 5th. Checked the person in the #1 spot under the same phrase with way less info, but 2 points higher in DA. It’s a complete pain most of the time to work with. There’s more I can talk about in regards to WA and what I believe and the theories but a lot of it was covered here. Lastly, I do see that many of the people make more money promoting WA than anything else, and look who it’s designed to look better and push more money towards-WA themselves. Thanks for sharing.

  69. Hi Miguel,

    If you want to earn money by promoting WA, even though you haven’t seen any other success from WA yourself, that’s up to you. I did that for a while myself.

    But if you decide not to promote WA and just focus on your health niche, you have no particular reason to stay at WA. If you have done all of the lessons and know how to blog and all the rest of it, you don’t need to be there. You can move your websites to other hosting and just continue blogging about your favourite topic.

    The only other reason to stay there would be for the community, but in my experience that mainly serves to waste your time. It becomes like a paid version of Facebook.

    All the best,
    Marcus

    1. Hi, what’s up Marcus?

      I agree you with 110%, staying with wealthy affiliate is more so
      For the community then anything. Yes there’s the every Friday videos, once like very week updates from people showcasing how they are making great money or little money and to stay, or
      The learning something new that someone brought up, but it’s a lot to pay for, and most of these people don’t validate anything-oh they made money? Wow, is it consistent, did you work hard at it, promote something other than WA and bait and switch people and what not. Those are behind the scenes, and even if some people have had success, it’s through WA boot camp, and they spend forever doing it. I’m sticking around for more comments to post/pages and a couple other things, but yeah I though about that already. Only time will tell right?

    2. And another thing, I’m glad that just recently my works getting noticed by some buffer companies and they’re asking to to editorial/ content collaborations, and some Instagram marketing, so we’ll see where this goes. Thanks.

    3. Hi Marcus,

      I’ve been part of WA off and on for a few years. Every time I think about leaving the one thing that keeps me there is Jaaxy. They now offer a “lite” version of Jaaxy as part of the membership. (not the trial 30 searches but a version you can use every month as much as you like) I don’t know how else I would find good keywords (besides google itself which doesn’t give numbers). If I were to pay for hosting AND Jaaxy outside of WA it would cost me more than the membership for WA. Any suggestions?

  70. Ex WA member here. Woke up after the first month when I realized the website is nothing more than a fishing ground for other members to pitch their make money fast schemes to.

    It just came up on my radar again as I got *7* emails about the black friday pricing in as little as 5 days. No thanks.

  71. Hi,

    I canceled my Premium Membership now after 1 year. Today I wanted to sign in as a free member, but they give me no access. Only 2 Websites which I have paid for, I can transfer this in the next 30 days… But unfortunately, I will get the EPP Code for 1 website on my email address which is a host on WA. I wrote now Kyle and hope that he will send me the code or give me 1-day access to my Email Hosts there. That is very strange what they do. But I think I have to subscribe for 1 Month to get this 🙁

    Till yesterday I thought that they were legit, but this is not legit.

    As I wrote the Keyword “no access to Wealthy Affiliate after cancel Membership” I came to your website. Hope much people will see this before subscribe there for paid membership.

    Thank you for this post.!

    1. Unless you really need the domain name, there isn’t much point wasting time and money on it if WA don’t cooperate. Many companies will offer cheap hosting and even throw in a free domain name for the first year. Put it down to experience and use what you have learned to start a fresh project.

      1. My subscription with wa ended 11/28. I was told I would have 30 days to move the site after my membership expired I still have 16 days left. Prior to cancellation I asked tech support and people on the live chat and all confirmed I would have 30 days to move the site. At first I could not even figure out how to login but I figured out a way around their platform and was able to access admin to my site. NOBODY TOLD ME i WOULD BE BLOCKED FROM DOWNLOADING THE PLUGIN TO BACK UP THE SITE.
        I just got new hosting and went to install the plug in to back up my site and WEALTHY AFFILIATE throws up an error message that says I am blocked from installing plug ins unless I pay them $50 for premium??? How can they get away with doing this? I have repeatedly emailed them and gotten no response. Is this legal? They are basically holding my site hostage. They are hosting how can they do this???
        My options are now to pay these *@#$%&* another $50 or lose my website and all the work I put in to build it. Anyone know how I can get around this?

        1. Hi Michelle,

          It looks like you’re just going to have to suck it up and pay the $50 to get access to your website. Once you’re done with with your WA membership, you can then write a negative WA review and then use the website traffic to promote a different money making site. A perfect opportunity to turn the tables and play WA at their own game.

          1. Yeah except I would be telling the truth! They are really nice and good about responding as long as their hand is in your bank account. I have sent 8 emails over the last few weeks and no response. I work 14 hour days and if I had known they would pull this I would have taken time off to get the site moved- I went through the training there but I couldn’t get past the idea of posting reviews for products I have never tried. It seems like that is their method and I personally find it despicable. They clearly are not an honest company. I found most of the education there to be really basic and the live chat is basically just the blind leading the blind. There seems to be a quiet desperation among many the members. It is clear not many are making decent money but are afraid to complain for fear of being banished. Anyone that wants the straight scoop on this company should go look at the ripoff reports. They just lost a big lawsuit for their fraudulent practices and it may well put them and all the affilliates that posted fraudulent reviews out of business. Apparently the judge in the case is pretty disgusted with them and they are saying he may order all the fake reviews be removed on top of paying damages to the companies whose reputation they have harmed so there goes their marketing plan. What they did to me was reprehensible. I was a member for over 2 years and they got $600 out of me. What a waste of money! Telling me I would have 30 days to move the site and then blocking my permissions so I cannot is fraud. I plan to spread the word. You better believe this will be the most expensive $50 they ever stole.

          2. This is the big problem with Wealthy Affiliate providing everything all in one place. They sell that as if it’s a good thing, but it’s actually not. It means members become totally reliant on WA for everything. This creates several problems.

            Problem 1: members are not taught how to succeed outside of WA. They don’t get taught how to build a website on a regular web hosting account.

            Problem 2: other money making methods are not encouraged, e.g. you don’t tend to see people at WA saying that matched betting is a quicker way to start making money online than blogging about your hobby.

            Problem 3: if you decide to leave, you risk losing everything.

            This is the big lesson I’ve learned: don’t get everything all in the one place. The place you get your training should be separate from the place you have your web hosting which should be separate from where you chat to other internet marketers which should be separate from your keyword tool, etc.

            I mean, WA might indeed have excellent hosting and a great keyword tool, but if the methods they teach don’t make most of their members lots of money, that’s the weak link the chain, and the whole thing kind of falls apart.

        2. I have followed this thread with interest. Only a few people are actually offering alternatives here. The reason why I signed up with WA is because I did a lot of research and after having some people selling lead Generation for thousands of dollars upfront WA was affordable for me.
          I knew nothing about building a website nor blogging. 4 months on I have built a niche website and created one for my existing brick and mortar business. I am a happy camper. I’m not in it for instant money but to help people like you say Craig and I’m doing that.

          Now, here is my problem, promoting WA. I recently decided to create a website to promote WA but I have not been able to get my head around it, what do I say, I myself don’t know enough about WA yet to write articles saying it’s the best of the best.

          So, I’m conclusion, I believe I am getting what I want out of the investment. If/when I get a better alternative I will take it. Has anyone offered a better alternative in this thread? No, maybe I haven’t gone through the thread thoroughly but I don’t see what the alternative is especially for someone who is not experienced in that sort of thing. And that my friends is why I and many more are on WA. We are happy to lear and when the time comes we will make our exit.

      1. Probably not Michelle. You should be able to log in to your Domain provider and just update the Nameserver details to your new hosting account. Can be done in a few minutes and in most cases the site will be transferred the same day.
        A bummer about the files on your old site. I have in the past used wayback machine to retrieve files which are no longer online. OK for text and photos but if you have anything else stored on WA’s server you may well have to be nice to them for a while.

  72. It would be much appreciated to get some replies back from Craig as he is the main man who started this post . I have put some comments relevant to this post with the hope of a reply from the man himself.

  73. Hi guys,

    The thought of WA had been circulating around my mind this week, and wanted to drop in and share as how really difficult it’s been to write this week. After writing over 200,000 words in almost a year(more than 100% of members), I’ll have to discontinue my efforts in creating new conten. It doesn’t make sense for me to write write write-as they say and continue to be held back by little traffic and so much work for little monetization; there’s a sense in helping people, but to see little to nothing in monettization, am I wrong for thinking that? Further on, in relation to promoting WA, which Rattled through my mind about minutes ago, it’s very off center to have people in the make money online niche put a blog for example about how to setup a wordpress website, and then at the end tell them how WA helped them out and to sign up here. And here are the reasons…

    Many people are doing this tactic, and it’s a deceptive strategy because not only are people working to get their referrals, they are suckered in to pay their full yearly prices, and almost baits people to stay and see it through. That’s the catch, otherwise many people at WA wouldn’t go into the boot camp. It’s usually aided to promote WA.

    So keep in mind that if you’re promoting WA in the MMO niche, to be aware if one day you decide to leave WA, continue your blogging elsewhere, and every one of your articles somewhere points to joining WA.

    1. Hi Miguel,

      I know what you mean. Regularly writing lots of content and getting not much in return, it’s a hard road to go down. And the thing is, if you are able to write lots of content and you want to earn money doing it, you can join Textbroker and get paid per article. I know it’s not residual income, but it gives you a better return on your time up front.

      One big problem with Wealthy Affiliate’s selling point is that it sells people on the idea that affiliate marketing is the best way to make money online. I’m no longer convinced that’s true. It was probably true back when WA was in its infancy, when Google Adwords’ rules were not as strict and you could link ads to direct affiliate links.

      But the main method that WA teaches these days – blogging about your favourite interest in the hope that some people will click your affiliate links and buy stuff – is a long hard road, and one that has a high chance of failure for a lot of people. But if you fail, WA will just say that you gave up too soon. What a convenient get-out clause for WA! If you succeed, WA takes the credit for showing you how to do it. But if you fail, it’s your own fault for giving up to early.

      I’m sure there are people making lots of money from affiliate marketing, but these probably tend to be people doing launch jacking. If you have no conscience and you want to earn lots of money, go for it. I’m sure it’s not actually that difficult to learn. Jeff Lenney has a blog post all about it. By the way, he’s the guy who got taken to court by WA for daring to write a negative review [Craig, feel free to remove that bit if you want].

      But if you want to take the honest route and blog about your favourite interest in the hope of eventually earning a full-time affiliate income, the odds seem to be stacked against you.

      1. Hi Marcus,

        Good to hear from you man. I couldn’t agree any more, continuous writing and not being rewarded for it in the ways you want can be very disappointing. I’ve never heard of Textbroker until now, I’ll make sure to give them a look, I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah, I was reading through a couple of your comments in this article and it sounds like WA had that direct linking system back when they were starting out, and then grew into blogging. Those are the two systems of affiliate marketing-one for direct linking and doing as many niches as you’d like, while the other WA claims is a “long term business” to stick to one niche and build out your links through articles, reviews, etc. Great points, WA does make it seem like you didn’t try hard enough to breach your success, and the same goes for the people there…

        Many make claims to “keep digging”, your just a few blocks away and crap, and it’s enticing to see, but these days I steer away from the catchy dashboard headlines and money making attention articles that people post about. Not a minute after you mentioned Launch Jacking I had to look into it, and I read Jeff Lenney’s article. I actually can pin point a couple people who I can see doing this, and they are not the ones who have even tried out the product for themselves, or likely have an honest review, it’s just for the cash.

        I have a couple lessons to finish with the bootcamp, and what I’m thinking about doing if I even think about continuing to blog is create a site not around WA but to help others figure out how to make money online, wordpress, how to create a website, select a hosting platform like Hostgator which I had previous experience with before WA, clickfunnels and so forth. But yeah, it’s been real, and an eye opening experience. I’ll likely be transferring my domains back to Hostgator here.

        Thanks,
        Miguel

        1. Hi Miguel,

          Have you ever taken a look on MunchEye? It’s a website purely dedicated to product launches for the Make Money Online niche. A look on there is eye-opening to say the least. Just for today there are 7 products being launched!

          With so many products being launched all the time, it must be because there is a high demand. And if there is a high demand for products showing people how to make money online, that must mean that there are lots of people failing at making money online. That means one of two things: either making money online is really hard, or these products don’t really succeed in showing people how to make lots of money online. I mean, there are product creators out there who launch multiple products per year. Why? If their first product was actually any good, they shouldn’t need to release anymore.

          On MunchEye you can take a peak at the JV pages for these products, and on those pages they often show what the upsell funnel looks like. Some of them are utterly ridiculous, like you pay £4.99 for the front end product but there are £500 worth of upsells. And this is how affiliates are able to make so much money from these launches, because people get tricked into all these upsells.

          So, it is possible to make loads of money online, but not how most people are being led to believe. The best way to get rich online is to own a website like Wealthy Affiliate and get lots of people to join and then get a good percentage of those to pay you for the previlege of doing your marketing for you by trashing other websites. Failing that, the 2nd best way is to launch products that promise to show people how to make money online but don’t quite live up to that promise. Failing that, the 3rd way is to promote those products as an affiliate.

          The way to get rich online is not to blog about your hobby!

          And the one thing that used to really annoy me when I was a member of WA is that we would often get told that making money should not be the main goal. Not the main goal? The website has the word WEALTHY in it for f***’s sake! Saying that your #1 goal should not be to get rich is like telling a member of a weight loss club that their main goal should not be to lose weight!

          Imagine if the owners of WA didn’t have making money as their #1 goal! Wouldn’t be a particularly successful business would it?

          1. Hi Marcus
            I must agree about the point that blogging to make money online is is now a losing battle, because so many people have different ideas about how to write a successful blog that the internet is now overloaded with so called ways to help. Any one new to the blogging world would be too overwhelmed about what is the best advice to follow.
            It seams that owning a membership site is the best policy for making any real money online ,this way you are more or less guaranteed a monthly and even an annual income. All of the top people in affiliate marketing have used this method, and are getting quite rich using it. These people did not get rich by merely applying the affiliate marketing strategy that they are offering to their members, which shows that you will not get rich by what they are offering to you.

          2. Hey Marcus,

            I have heard of Muncheye, and I gave it a good look some time ago, but really never thought about going back to it. It’s a landmine to say the least, there’s a lot of information and continuous repetition of pushing out new material and more make money online products. I mean, I know marketing is always changing, but c’mon how many more need to keep showing us how to make money online right? Funnel creation is a whole other game in its own, and yeah it’s the motto that “funnels are the next big thing” and that websites can no longer do it. However you look at it, everyone needs a motto, a hook, an attention grabber that needs to make them standout and persuade others how awesome their own system is.

            With Wealthy Affiliate they have so many multiple streams of income to where their money comes in from- the hosting, the referral program, jaaxy, the premium accounts, the illusions of all the community help that is spectacular, the writing of reviews that will promote WA and make them stand out in search engines, and social media, etc. I mean, the goal is to first help people and then make money in the process, but many of these people fail at #2. What the heck should I be writing content for to just make it a hobby and never get payed for? It’s more so a waste of my time, and I’d be crazy.

            Speaking about writing content, It does some days get hard to hold back from writing on my site, and that’s mainly due to the time and hours I built up to the point where it almost feels in a way “natural”. And everytime I tell myself to just do it, I have to remind myself it’s going to bring me right back around to where I started. Right now, I’m actually trying out an affiliate program with Fueledleads. I want to see how far I can get with them. Some passive income is better than no passive income.

            Thanks,
            Miguel

  74. Hi guys!

    I am a premium member in WA and my membership expires in 10 days, it is first month there and I feel like I do not have enough time, so I cannot subscribe again. What happens to my account if I do not subscribe, do I become a starter member again or they just lock me out completely?

    If they lock me out then I would like to transfer my website somewhere else, any recommendations? And anyone knows the procedure of transferring who can brief me on it. Will very much appreciate.

    Thank you

    1. They will lock you out completely! You should transfer your sites to hosting somewhere else as sooner as possible because after the payed time for you passes they will forbid you to access your sites through your account on WA and they won’t give you the necessary data to transfer sites to hosting somewhere else. That also happened to me. So, hurry up and good luck!
      Regards!

    2. Also don’t forget to save a backup of your site/s to your computer. In WordPress a plugin called “all in one migrate” is available which will create a compressed file of the entire site. You can download and save the file to upload to any WordPress installation. Then it’s bye bye Wealthy Affiliate! You won’t ever need to contact them again. As Sandra mentioned, you must act quickly before your membership expires! They won’t do you any favours if you no longer send them money.

    3. Also don’t forget to save a backup of your site/s to your computer. In WordPress a plugin called “all in one migrate” is available which will create a compressed file of the entire site. You can download and save the file to upload to any WordPress installation. Then it’s bye bye Wealthy Affiliate! You won’t ever need to contact them again. As Sandra mentioned, you must act quickly before your membership expires! They won’t do you any favours if you no longer send them money.

      1. Hello everyone, thank you so much for your responses, they are very helpful. Which hosting sites do you recommend? Malcolm Scott where and can I contact you?

      2. Hi Malcolm- You ain’t kidding they won’t be nice if you cancel. I don’t get how it’s legal to say I have 30 days to move the site and then block my access to download the plugins to do it. I mean they are hosting??? How do they have the right to block my permissions??? ai get that they have rights to delete after 30 days but this is just shady!!! Anyway – will this “all in one migrate” plug in also move my media library?
        Thanks

        1. Michelle! I checked the plugin which is called “All in one WP Migration” and it will create a compressed file of your entire site including media and database from any WordPress installation. I used it a while ago to move a friends site to another server and seemed to work very well. Totally free too. If you have bought your domain name somewhere else, all you need to do is update the nameservers in your account with the domain provider. No need to bother with WA anymore. Personally I would use wayback archive to copy the original site and build a new one somewhere else. As most of your work is probably writing you could simply copy and paste each page and create a new one. Shouldn’t take too much time unless you have thousands of posts!

          1. Hey Malcolm
            Is there a way to use wayback machine to backup and copy my entire site just like if I used the all in one migration plugin? Really don’t want to give wa any more cash. I already did an export but would like to image the site and move

          2. I only ever used Wayback Machine to download and copy odd files and photos that I no longer have. I’m not sure if you can copy/download the whole site but maybe possible with something like HTTrack. In any case, I think you would be better off just saving the stuff that you no longer have and build an updated version of the site on a new server. It shouldn’t take long unless you have hundreds of pages.

    4. Hurry up or you won’t be able to move it. They said I had 30 days after cancellation to move my site and then blocked my permissions so I could not download plug ins to move or access the necessary files. Don’t believe the lie.

  75. Just for a bit of entertainment and amusement, I recently opened a new account with Wealthy Affiliate. My intention is to ask a few awkward questions in the week that I have before they expect money. Please let me know if you want me to ask either “The Community” or the man himself any questions. I don’t care if I get thrown out so any question is OK. I doubt if I’ll last a week so make it snappy! BTW I already asked why Kyle does not follow all his 1.5M members and got a standard reply which has absolutely nothing to do with the question.
    ——————————————————————————————————–
    ” @Kyle
    One thing that bothers me Kyle is that if there are 1.5M members here and you automatically follow them, why do you not have 1.5M friends?”

    And here is the reply straigt from the horse’s mouth:

    Kyle Premium Ambassador
    “No problem at all, it is great to have you here at WA and I absolutely look forward to working with you and seeing you progress in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead.

    I am connected to WA throughout the day, so if ever have any questions let me know. I am always around! :)”
    ———————————————————————————————————–

    I also posted the same question in the community section and so far only one member has bothered to explain:

    ” If he has 380,445 followers then that is the amount of people who have actually clicked on his ‘Follow’ button and he theres.

    Take me as another example. I have over 6,000 followers but I don’t follow them all simply because I have not clicked on their ‘Follow’ button.

    It is a personal choice and not written in stone that you have to follow anyone if you don’t want to.

    Another thing is that all Kyle’s followers could be his personal referrals.

    All my followers are not my personal referrals and neither will yours be once you have been here for a while.”

    That is complete rubbish! I was followed by Kyle immediately after opening the account as I suspect every other member is.

    I wonder why some of these long term members are protecting him. Perhaps they are just scared of being chucked out.

    Will have some fun this week and keep you posted.

    1. Hi Malcolm, this is going to be very entertaining. I myself am an ex-WA member and yet I am still listed as a “premium member”. I created a fake log in to check out some things and this was one of them. You’ll find that the reason Kyle claims to have this many people he follows is because it is a figure that has accumulated over the years but at least 50 – 70% of them are actually not even there anymore. Make the most of your time there incognito because you only have a week before they isolate you from chat and commenting. I look forward to your follow-up posts.

      Brian

      1. Oh dear, it seems that in only a few hours of being a member, I have already upset the apple cart! Some of my questions have been hidden and even comments from other members deleted. I think they might be onto me!
        The name I used is an obvious joke and not one of them has even commented on that yet.
        I’ll reveal that before the end of the week while I can still comment. That is of course if they don’t chuck me out first!
        Unfortunately, I don’t have a great deal of time to dedicate to this little game but will have fun while it lasts.

        1. Hi Malcolm, I’m seriously LMAO!! I logged onto WA with my fake ID to see if I could find you and I think I know who you are. HughJarse. I saw you in Live Chat and it was very entertaining. Thanks for the laugh.

          1. Bullseye Brian and I’m happy that you were entertained for a while. Looks like the “Ambassador” put a stop to my little experiment. However it confirmed my suspicions that you don’t need an IQ of 130 to be a member of WA. I would’ve thought that most people would recognize a name like HughJarse as a potential troll and leave well alone. However it seems to make no difference with that lot as they all appear to be brainwashed by the cult of “Wealthy Affiliate”. It looks very similar to most religion which I suspect maybe the key to their success.

          2. You really were being a Huge Arse (HughJarse) and nobody actually picked it up. I want to say these people are pathetically sad but I remind myself that I too got sucked into it for a few months before I woke up to the sham. I’ll say it anyway, “They’re pathetically sad.”

            I still want to create another profile one day to get my 7 days and have some fun replying to some of the ridiculous blog posts that go up every day. I’d love to let some of the newbies know that they are in for a big shock down the line when they find out that they are pissing against the wind or farting against thunder.

          3. No need to worry about past mistakes, we’ve all had them. The important thing is you survived and hopefully learned something from the experience.
            I think my brief time as a new member was enough as I was getting bored with “The community” it’s easy to get thrown out as you witnessed. If you prefer to stay a bit longer, I suggest that you keep well away from the live chat. None of the members there like being put on the spot and will report you for a secret fart.
            I achieved what I set out to do and found out that Wealthy Affiliate have not published any cancellation policy other than a couple of lines in the “terms and conditions” A bit poor if you ask me, I would have thought it was a legal requirement with such a company. Additionally there is no refund policy as far as I know either. I’m sure they haven’t overlooked this due to their past experiences with the legal system.
            So Michelle, it looks like you are out of luck unless you have a very good lawyer. Personally, I wouldn’t bother and would try and retrieve as much as possible from any site hosted with WA. I hope that you bought your domain name somewhere else if you intend to keep it. If not many hosting companies will throw one in for free if you buy a hosting package. In any case Good Luck!

          4. I’m always amused by the photos of Kyle and Carson with their squeaky-clean perfect families. Anyway, reading these comments is so much fun! Thanks for educating all the possible “pathetics”. I remember when I was one!

      2. I’m still listed as a Premium member too, and I finally cancelled my account in November (just as my yearly renewal was coming up).

        It’s kind of like if a guy was to brag that he was currently dating 20 women at the same time, when actually 20 is the total number of women he’s ever dated over many years.

        1. That’s exactly the analogy that typifies the member count. They may have had 1.5 million members since the inception of the company but it is certainly not the case today. All it takes is simple logic to figure out that at best they probably have 200 000 members and even this is a generous count.

          What’s really amusing is that when I logged in the other day with my fake account my original account was listed under the heading WA Members Know How To Rank. They are terribly deceitful in many aspects. I also saw a post by a guy who had not received his commissions for three months and sent Kyle a message asking about this. He got a reply saying that Vegas 2019 was going to be a blast, etc. A totally automated and unrelated reply. You can imagine how pissed the dude was.

          I’d love to create another fake account and send messages to as many newbies as possible with a link to this post so that they don’t sucked into the pit of despair for too long. I’m not so sure though that Craig would appreciate me directing people to his post as it will probably make him look like a jerk. What do you think?

          1. Hi Brian,

            Yes, I knew of someone who wasn’t getting all their affiliate commissions either. And you are right about Kyle not always answering messages properly. This is probably because he has so many messages to repond to. He mainly seems to be concerned with keeping beginners enthusiastic.

            Regarding your idea of creating fake accounts, I probably wouldn’t bother. You’re probably better off recording a YouTube video detailing your thoughts on the matter.

  76. Hey Malcolm, Why don’t you ask this, ” I an considering going premium and was told if I wanted to leave wa I would have 30 days after cancelling to move my website but I have found several people online who say they cancelled and wa immediately blocked their access to download plugins necessary to move their site. These people said they had to pay for a month of premium to actually get access to move their sites and their emails to kyle and carson were ignored. What is the exact policy on this?”
    OR any way you can word it that is a shorter and more concise. I just don’t see how it is legal to do this. They are hosting the site. That is it. They have every right to delete it from the servers 30 days after cancelling but since the SUBSCRIPTION IS PAID A MONTH IN ADVANCE ( as it states in their terms of service) they are violating the contract by restricting my access. I should have full access to MY website for 30 full days after cancellation. If you can find some way to ask that i would really appreciate it. Also do you know who I would even report this to? I really do not want to give them any more of my money and at the least maybe some other people will be saved from this dirty tactic.

    1. Well that certainly set the cat upon the pigeons but so far no useful answer from any of the members there. I think that a few have decided to cancel due to your question and even one who only just paid the first month. I think he’s lucky to get away with it although gullible enough to submit his payment details in the first place.
      Incidentally, I realize that your last payment should allow you 30 days but did you see this stated anywhere? all I could find was this:

      5.3 Effects of Termination. Upon termination of this Agreement for any reason, (i) you will immediately cease all use of the Services; (ii) you will have no further access to your accounts provided by Wealthy Affiliate.

      Looks like they might be covered, but I am not a lawyer. Maybe you could have a case there.

  77. Well after upsetting an “Ambassador” in live chat. I nave had my write access revoked by Admin in less than 24 hours of being a new member at Wealthy Affiliate. I cannot say that I’m disappointed as it was becoming quite tedious and stopping me from doing something more exciting. I can no longer edit my profile as Hugh Jarse or submit any new blog posts. However, I am still able to write and publish content at the free website. In any case, back to my proper job on Monday so no great loss. As far as I know the profile as I suspected will remain visible as they don’t want to be seen losing members.

    1. Thanks Malcolm- YOU ARE AWESOME!!!
      I hope they lost some business over the question. I am going to pay the $50 to get the month of access to move the site but plan address this issue while I have access. LOL. I said this would be the most expensive $50 they ever stole and I meant it! To answer your question It also states in the TOS that membership costs are paid a month in advance plus their tech supp and live chat specifically said “you have 30 days to move the site after cancelling”. I am not going to bother with a lawyer. Based on what I read they won’t be in business long anyway now that their marketing strategy has been sanctioned by the court.

      1. No problem at all Michelle, It was a bit of fun that filled in my spare time and I might even earn a few bucks from some members there who are desperate to break away from it. Good luck with the move and hope it all goes smoothly.

      2. Hi Michelle, I’m very curious to know more about this marketing strategy that has been sanctioned. Please can you let me know where I can read more about this.

        Thanks.

        1. You can read about it in the ripoff reports or on SBI site or in the public record. They lost the lawsuit and waiting for the judge to rule on damages. Probably a hefty award of cash to the damaged party and an order to remove all the fake reviews. Since training people write fake reviews bashing products and programs they never used is the gist of their marketing plan (just dirty) they will likely lose alot of members. SBI they had some actual studies done with interesting results that totally debunk WA claims. I think those are on the site

          1. If you are referring to the MOBE case, I think that WA appealed earlier this year and were awarded 130 grand which they claim to have donated half to mobe victims. Not sure if true as I could only find the details on the WA site and may be biased.

          2. Hi Michelle,

            I think it’s well worth you getting your thoughts out there about all this. Perhaps you could record a YouTube video?

            Just one word of caution, though: make sure you just stick to the facts. Avoid going too far by saying anything that’s not true or insulting the owners of WA too much. Jeff Lenney got taken to court over his WA review, but it was a particularly scathing review.

            When I wrote my review, I actually set my website so that it can’t be viewed by anyone in Canada without using a proxy. A bit too cautious maybe?

      3. Hi Michelle,

        One thought would be to dispute any credit card payments to WA you may have made where you feel they did not provide the service promised. I believe you may have up to 180 days to make a dispute. Your credit card company will handle the dispute on your behalf and make a determination. I’m not an expert or lawyer but you may be able to get the month’s payment back where they shut your promised services out. Just a thought. Good luck!

    2. Write access lost within 24 hours??? Wow, that’s quite an achievement!

      What did you say to upset the Ambassador? Did you point out that their title is utterly meaningless and is just a carrot on a stick to lure members into doing Kyle and Carson’s work for them for free?

    3. Yes, it is like a religion or a cult. The fact that you were shot down within 24 hours just goes to show what’s really going on. Anyone who is too negative or who questions things get silenced. If WA was completely open and people were allowed to say anything, it would probably quickly get filled with disatisfied people and the whole thing would collapse under its own weight.

      Wealthy Affiliate is successful not because most people who join end up becoming WEALTHY through AFFILIATE marketing, but because the many people who don’t succeed get buried under the carpet. What you’re then left with is 3 types of people at WA:

      1) The rare few people who have genuinely had success.
      2) Wide-eyed newbies who are fueled entirely by blind enthusiasm.
      3) Established members who have not yet achieved the success they want but have not yet woken up to the possibility that they are wasting their time, and they treat it like a paid version of Facebook, forever posting personal and motivational updates to fill their day so they can lie to themselves that they are actually doing something productive with their time.

      So, to anyone joining WA, it gives the appeearance of being filled with happy people who are either succesful or who give the impression of being on their way to being successful. And if they do eventually succeed, WA takes the credit, but if they fail, WA doesn’t take the blame.

      And throughout all this, I can’t help but wonder if Kyle and Carson ever have conversations where they say to each other, “Shit, you know what? I’m starting to wonder whether telling people to blog about their favourite hobby is not actually the best business advice after all…”

      “It probably isn’t, but let’s keep quiet about it. The few people who do succeed doing that will probably shout it from the rooftops, and the many people who don’t succeed at it, we can just keep them quiet.”

      “Sounds like a good plan.”

      1. It was a bit of fun fo a while Marcus but I must admit that I got bored with “The Community” and deliberately engineered my ejection from it. The whole process took a matter of minutes after I got into a live chat and dared them to chuck me out. It was then that I had my wrist slapped for disrespecting a so called “Ambassador”. What a joke! I stated that I have no respect for authority in the real world so that little group meant nothing to me and I would say whatever I like. Didn’t take long for one of them to report me to their god and I then got an on screen message to inform me that Admin had revoked my write access. Really did me a favour as I don’t think it would’ve taken long for real insults to start flying. Some of the long term members there seem to be badly infected with the WA bug and have serious delusions of grandeur. I noticed that a lot have psychological problems and other illnesses which prevent them from having a “proper job” and are not shy to share their personal problems with fellow members.

        Judging by some of the messages that I received, I’m not convinced that Kyle is actually running the show anymore. It’s more likely that several people are employed to deal with enquiries on his behalf and send out a lot of standard replies. I got a couple that had no relation to my queries and some of my more awkward questions were not even answered.

        I know for a fact that English is not the first language of my “sponsor” and got several automated messages from him. I actually challenged him at his own website about WA several weeks ago using my own name and any negative comment that I made have now been removed from his sales page. Direct messages sent to him can produce some interesting answers as he clearly does not understand English. So in conclusion, I have enjoyed most of my dealings related to WA, although they can become annoying at times. If anyone is gullible enough to part with their money to spend on such a charade, they only have themselves to blame. I just glad that I was never infected even though I thought about it once upon a time. Now I have no doubts and will continue with my own “proper job”. ?

      2. After wasting a solid two hours going over their model and deciding whether or not to give it a shot, I have come to this conclusion: what they are trying to get you to believe is that all you do is click a few buttons, give ‘em access to your checking account, and you will be able to move to Belize and languish on the beach forever while your website deposits a couple grand into your bank account automatically every month. Who WOULDN’T want that job?

  78. Hello Everyone. I have 2 days to move my site from WA, but i am still confused about hosting options, When i check hosting sites they have shared hosting and wordpress hosting, Thats where i get confused…if i choose shated hosting will i have access to wordpress, same way i do now with WA or i have to choose wordpress hosting?

    1. Hi Ray,
      WordPress hosting is optimised for use with the platform but shared hosting should be ok. Just make sure that the software is included in your package and it’s only a case of activating WordPress in the control panel of your account. Hope you got the backup sorted. If not you’re living on the edge. Good luck!

    2. Ray, As Malcolm pointed out, WordPress hosting simply means the servers have been optimized for the platform. WordPress can require a little extra care to improve its security and performance, but most any shared hosting plan can accommodate it. If I were to recommend one budget host it would be SiteGround. You can set up a few installs on one of their basic plans and support is quite good. If you’re serious and willing to spend a bit more, Flywheel is a fantastic option from a performance, security and support standpoint, but you’d be limited to one site. My 2 cents.

  79. Hello guys, please help me. I need your suggestions, if I host my website outside WA, would it be wise to leave my domain there? or I will lose it if I leave it there? I am contacting some hosting sites so they ask me if I want to transfer the domain as well…I don’t know what good. Please anyone advice me

    1. Hello Ray, DON’T leave your domain with Wealthy Affiliate. It’s not a good idea to have your host be your domain manager as well – especially those guys. You want to maintain full control over your domain and it’s best to use a dedicated registrar for this purpose. A few I would recommend are: Google Domains ($12/year and free privacy), NameCheap (free privacy), and Hover (little more expensive but the best domain management interface out there). You’ll find that you’ll likely switch services from time to time if you stick with IM, and it’s a huge benefit to not have all of your eggs in one basket.

      1. Ok thank you. I have contacted namecheap and they said my domain is not eligible for transfer at the moment, it will be eligible after January 27, so for now I can transfer my hosting

  80. Anyone else noticing how this article is beginning to make its way up and rank higher? One genuine among 1,000’s of exact
    Look alikes lol. Except that instead of being a little fish in an ocean of promoting WA, this article might just be the “big fish” sort of speak.

  81. Looks very likely Miguel and let’s hope so. I haven’t seen another post on this subject with even half as many comments and it should rank well.
    Getting back to slagging off wealthy affiliate, I saw some “training” only a few days ago from a so called “expert” which was instructing WA members how to install the Alexa rank widget. The plugin that was recommended hasn’t been updated for 3 years. In fact Alexa widgets have been obsolete for over 2 years.
    Speaks for itself really.

    1. Hi Malcolm,

      So far so good. No way? What a shame. I’m wondering if these “experts” even are aware of checking their own plugins, not to say they have the Alexa widget themselves but it goes to show that they’ll say anything to please people. There are people with knowledge at WA but sometimes I wonder what and why some of the responses to people are so vague or so general, while others don’t make complete sense at all. I’ve had my fair share of people replying with off centered comments and they normalize everything with no real answers. It’s bizzare. So much shiny object syndromes.

      1. It gets worse! Here is part of a response to a comment at WA from a so called “ambassador” ranking at number 4 only 14 hours ago!

        “Without paying attention to all of these, your website may lag behind and this may lower its ranking speed in search engines. So, one of the ways to build Alexa ranking for your website is by installing Alexa traffic rank on your website to keep tracks of all the visits to your site every day Thanks for asking!”[sic]

        I think to reason for other obscure comments is that many are either automated or simply chosen from a selection of templates. I suspect that the name Kyle is often used just to make replies look more personal.

        1. Unbelievable. Well It’s just as believeable which ever way you look at it, so much deception it feels like. And I do get a feeling that these are just automated responses from fake people at times, not like I’m saying it’s true but some of these responses I receive in a comment I would rather not even bother replying back to sometimes. It’s likee you get a third of everything…1/3 beginners feeling happy for an accomplishment share, 1/3 for keep staying motivated and the 1/3 need help…but they’re never centered on how to really do it because it’s the beginners telling beginners what to do, or people who are “experts” spitting out the same over and over info.

          1. Saw another “great tip” as a response to the same member from a guy who claims to rank very highly in the search engines. Apparently he does all his SEO work at around 3am when everyone else is sleeping. Just the image in my mind of him sneakily switching on his computer in order not to wake the rest of the world was enough to make me spill my sherbet all over the desk.
            Apparently this is a top secret strategy that really works, so please don’t tell anyone.

          2. And here it is! Posted only 5 days ago. What a little gem:

            “Back in 2011, I had a website store that got rank 67,000 what a battle to keep it under 100,000 My secret was getting up at 2 am and 3 am while the whole world was sleeping and did my SEO that how I did that. My Secret is out now I never told anybody before, but I let you know, in case you need to know.” [sic]

    2. Oh, don’t get me started on the “training” created by members. I once saw someone create some WA training on how to use Gmail. HOW TO USE GMAIL!! What the actual f***!! If you can’t even use Gmail, you have no hope of building up an online business.

      Whatever next? A course on fitness with lessons on how to tie your shoelaces and put your shorts on?

      1. Lol! And, of course, when it’s 3am here, it’s 3am everywhere? And everyone in the world goes to bed at the exact same moment every night…smh!

  82. @Malcolm,

    You can’t be serious? Lol! That was worth me getting up at around 2:05 am here to check. You have me cracking up man! I almost pulled the charging port with my iPhone plugged, out the outlet while reading that. I got an hour left but don’t let anyone else know I’ll be writing too…sarcastically Ofcourse.

  83. I’m still on their email list but haven’t opened any of the emails in a while. Perhaps I should just for kicks, but I often feel bad for the people there.

  84. I’ve traded my time for money for about the last 10-12 months copyrighting, content marketing, free traffic methods, commenting, finding that community and what not, and now I’m starting to put in more money in front of time by using Ads, leveraging CPA offers, and then fishing more in Facebook Ads, Google, Bing, Instagram, etc. I’ve already made my awareness on Facebook Ads, and now I’m adding more intent by using Google Ads. So,I’m gathering information, pixels to retarget later. Hopefully it gets me somewhere.

    1. Well, if you’re into putting in the time for mere pennies, have you tried Amazon’s Mechanical Turk? If you’re into tedium and enjoy transcribing copy and/or correcting others’ grammatical faux pas, you should check it out. I wouldn’t buy that cabana on the beach just yet, but, hey, it’s a start, and if you put in a couple hours every day, you will probably make out better than with IM, and you can feel slightly superior to the guys with all the money asking you for help because they don’t know a homonym from a dangling participle. 😉

  85. Hey,

    Can anyone tell me what social share plugin Craig is using? I’ve seen it across multiple sites and I’m interested in giving it a further look? I have Sumo at the moment. I tried the inspection tool by right clicking but I couldn’t see it. Thanks.

    1. Hi Miguel, The plugin is called Social Warfare. It’s on special through the end of today for half off, just fyi. It has a ton of bells and whistles on the backend, but main reason I went with it initially was because of how it handled social counts when transitioning from an http:// to https:// url.

      1. I’ve seen that plugin around in my research but never went too far in depth with it. I have added it to my website, and it looks really nice as it is in its basic features. The part I enjoy is that it doesn’t have the branded logo like the SUMO plug in does. I’m sure I’ll be a basic user for quite some time. Thank you!

  86. Hello guys, I received this message from Kyle;

    “Hi Raymond,
    This is a notice that the webspace for the following domain(s) will be deleted from the Wealthy Affiliate Hosting Network in 5 days.
    chesstime.siterubix.com
    chesstimecenter.com
    You are receiving this 5 warning because you are no longer a Premium member. To keep your websites up and running you can re-open your Premium membership at Wealthy Affiliate by resubscribing.

    When you resubscribe your websites will no longer be queued for removal and your websites will resume at the highest level of WordPress hosting in the industry.”

    I have already transferred my hosting to namecheap but I could not transfer the domain as they said it is not yet eligible for transfer. How will this affect my website?

  87. Hi Craig,

    Hope this finds you well!

    As a beginning WA member, I’m happy to have read your article. It really made me reflect. I like how critical you are about WA.

    And I agree with you that it would be good for WA to do some initial vetting through a review program and at least scare some people away.

    I think you’re completely right when stating (and thanks for sharing):

    “90% of the people in the WA Community will make next to no money in affiliate marketing and will likely give up.”

    Reading that (and the rest), I can say I’m sure I (still) want to join WA and try it out for a while (and yes, go Premium for a while). I can always move my site(s) to another provider.

    For now however, WA does provide me with what I need. More so than any other platform out there.

    Thanks again for sharing and warning people!

    Best wishes.

  88. I have only been with WA for less than a month (after the trial week I reluctantly signed up for reduced first month as Premium hoping for an “a-ha!” moment) and paid for a domain already, but am greatly disillusioned. I see a lot of “rah-rah!” and “way to go!”, and a lot of alleged “success stories” but am seriously doubting the validity of them.

    Even as a complete website-building newbie, I find the trainings are slow and repetitive regarding basic things, but then rush over important elements, requiring me to pause and repeat over and over and still not comprehend them. I feel completely in the dark about what I’ve built so far, and yet am being rushed on to learn new topics. I am not feeling at all knowledgeable or confident in what I have done up to this point.

    To that end, I am now looking at moving my budding domain before my first month on WA expires (sunk cost, oh well) and am thinking WP will be my best choice, price-wise; not being rich but still better than $360/year just to be part of a “community” of cheerleaders. I have my niche, I want to do affiliate marketing as well as a blog, and potentially an unrelated blog. I will find my own training and education in due time for a lot less $$$…I know a lot of people.

    So I am seeking advice, please…am I making a good choice? Or what might you suggest? Thanks for reading all this (or hope you did, please?)

  89. So…as is my wont I didn’t wait for a reply but went ahead and started steps to cancel my WA membership/transfer my domain and content and strike out on my own. I am truly a “babe in the woods” (aka st0000pid!) but am determined to figure out how to slay this internet monster or at least subjugate and force it into submission for my own benefit. (Personally I prefer to kill
    …)

    To hell with it…what have I got to lose? (Other than $250/3 years w/Bluehost compared to $360/yr for WA’s empty promises.)

    Here I go…

    1. I’m so curious to know how everything turned out. I’m currently on the free trial and they’re offering Premium for $19 so I’m tempted but I was thinking I’d do the same. ^^^

      Help?

      1. Don’t be fooled by that. If you mention that you are thinking about going premium but need time to think, they will extend that offer indefinitely. However, I think if you have already read many of the comments here, you wold go for the sensible option and save your money. Hosting a website with your own domain name is very cheap these days. All other services you will get from WA is available totally free if you bother to look for it.

  90. So Craig, I was wondering if you ever got around to putting a list of recommended tools, services and resources together that you mentioned back on OCTOBER 26, 2017 AT 11:54 PM (search/copy/paste/WIN!) 🙂

    I found your review quite sobering, but oftentimes I tend to have more money than sense. I’ve been a premium member for quite a while now.

    I worked it for a couple months, got distracted by something shiny and lost interest for a while. After remembering that I’m still subscribed, I’ve been back at it for about a week now. The concepts are still new enough to me that I find some value in the expense.

    But after reading this article and some of the comments, I’m inclined to follow any advice you had to offer than to stick it out with K&C. I took a peek around your site and it looks like I could learn a thing or two or three here!

    Don’t laugh at my website (okay, go ahead) 🙂 if you take a look. As you mentioned in your article, it’s pretty damned awful (and empty). Well, at least the niche is a passion of mine!

    Joe

  91. Finally a honest review.

    I have joined WA last week (premium) but yes in a few days i can agree with you totally. The hosting is pointless as its so limited, can’t use many wordpress essential plugins as they claim it affects there hosting! Also i like to tinker and geek out, and when you have no access to your own CPanel or database etc it’s so restrictive. Also i dont trust WA with my sites, however much i put into them, they are not mine. They are sat on WA, so yes im still using my own hosting package.

    WA feels very like a “cult” to me, not an evil or dangerous one of course. But as soon as i joined ive had 100+ strangers leave me profile comments saying how i will love it there etc. All feels so wishy washy and fake. And over 100 people now following me, really complete strangers wanted to follow ME? I can only assume it’s down to ranking or something is is? It’s like getting 100 strangers rush up hug you and give you a kiss on the cheek, feels very weird..

    So ive paid for the 1st month ($19) and will view as much of the training as i can in that month and then cancel, the cost each month is not worth it for some training (hosting is pointless, chat is like any chat room).

    Lee

    1. I don’t know if they still do it, but when I was there they had an “Ambassador” title that they would give to the members with the highest ranks. There were two fundamental problems with this:

      1) Members could easily increase their WA rank merely by being active within the community, even just by using it like Facebook and posting about their personal lives or sharing light motivational memes.

      2) There was no actual benefit to being an Ambassador. No money, no prize. Nothing.

      If you combine that with their tendency to hide any overly negative comments, it gave the false impression of WA being filled with lots of happy active members.

  92. Two questions: 1). Can I make any money off the “starter kit”? Yes or no, please. I’ve seen others ask this question and the (non)answers are always the same. No one has ever come right out and said ‘Yes. You can absolutely make money once you get your website set up and start getting traffic!’ Or ‘No. The free stuff just gets you set up. You have to join and pay us 49 bucks faithfully every month before you can get any clickable links from us. Most answer this question by providing you with a link to sign up. In other words. I can dance around you and dazzle you with bullshit forever, but I will not give you an answer until you spent weeks—May, months—tooling around trying to figure it all out, just to realize that no, you don’t earn a single dime until you ante up, because hey, ya gotta spend money to make money, right?? And, besides, why would I train you to be my competitor, hand you the Keys To The Kingdom, give you a piece of MY pie, for nothing? That’s just not a good business model. For me, anyway.’

    My second question is this; who gets my 49 bucks every month? If this isn’t a form of MLM, what would YOU call it? If it quacks like a duck… I suspect my recruiter gets a piece, his/her recruiter gets a piece, and so on up the line, but you try billing ( bulling?) yourselves as affiliates, so you claim that, as an affiliate, WA is one of the niche markets you are promoting. Only your “commission” is really residual income, because you’re gonna get it from me month after month until I wise up and decide to join under you to get my own little spot in your pyramid. Sorry for the long rant. If you’d just answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to begin with, my fingers wouldn’t be so tired…and that is a half hour of my life that I will never get back!

    1. No, you are very unlikely to make money with a free account at Wealthy Affiliate. If the free account was really worth anything, it would mean that nobody really needs to pay for a Premium membership.

      The free lessons don’t teach you enough to make money. The only way you will make money with the free websites is if you already know how to make money from a website, in which case you don’t even need to be a member of WA at all because you can easily get a free website somewhere else and just make money with that instead.

      The free WA membership is there merely to lure you in. You get a taster of what the lessons are like and what the community is like, and then if you want to make a success of it you have to pay.

  93. Great review or anti-review ??? Wish I had read this article a few months ago . I parted ways with WA around a month ago . I have been out here still pursuing my interest and it’s pretty FREAKIN rough . Just this afternoon i found myself engaged in a three hour batitle royal with Jetpack , WordPress , and the God that is Google over one post . Wealthy Affiliate is like that way cool app you’ve been wanting and the download is freeee , it’s just that , We’ll …. you need $575.00 in memberships , plug-ins and add-ons to make the damn thing work . Plus , they stole my domain !!! I been out here on my own for a month . I’ve pulled in $11 bucks . So yeah , you could say I’m Ballin. UP YOURS KYLE & CARSON !!!!!!!!!

    1. There isn’t really an affiliate training program which I would recommend. Proper IM training requires due diligence. The best starting point I can recommend is Warrior Forum.

  94. I used to be a member of Wealthy Affiliate. Great fucken service. I made a mistake with theyre affiliate link. I put it in my first post about what happened after i lost my job. They probably thought i was self promoting. It was an honest mistake. Now, they have taken away my websites, my domains, i cant access theyre website. Ive sent them several emails asking W.T.,F. Do you call this professionalism? No explanation, no emails, nothing. They just abolished the work i put in, plus six months membership. The least they can do is offer me a fucken refund. Im beyond angry, as you have probably guessed by now .Im still waiting for Kyle to r espond, but im not holding my breath. The least they owe me is an explanation.I agree with you, its a lot of hard work. I didnt expect it to be this hard. If i was to do another W.A review, it would be a lot different to the million robotic reviews on Google. I now hate them with a huge passion. The only thing holding me back from unleashing , is a true passion for this industry, plus ive talked to some awesome and lovely people on W.A. The community are what keeps me going.

  95. Wealthy affiliate is a failed business model to get those to yes think the process is easy but in reality it takes failure, time and commitment to your website. If posting a website is so easy and the process was quick you also need to research profitable niches and this takes time to figure out.

    Also the new process is through video marketing and buying products you own to help others, whether you’re helping those lose weight, gain muscle and study legit true information that has helped you lose weight, get lean or get rid of acne. These niches are good to market on but it takes a long time to see results and often people go into wealthy affiliate thinking simply building a website is easy they will quickly be fooled and part of the scheme that I’ve seen as a member.

    A YouTube channel is a plus but to grow your audience and online presence takes a long my road of ups and downs, failures, learning from mistakes and growing. You also need to post your content to social media and even then most websites still get no traffic and barely any visitors due to the WordPress theme you’re using, your website goes beyond just the basics wealthy affiliate teaches you, you then have to expand on that and make your website look appealing and easy to access for your audience.

    The problem with that platform is they yes you’re correct, make it look so easy but it’s actually hard to rank and stay in the competition, are you creative, does your content have exciting captivating information or is it just education and knowledge? Speak to your audience like you’d have a one on one conversation with somebody else, that’s how content should be and truly picking real facts that help people with a problem they’re having, on average one article or post takes a few days to a week to publish.

    They do make many bold statements on there and this article spoke the truth.

  96. So glad i found this site,been with WA for a week so they are pushing for me to go premium
    Couple days ago i posted a question on there site,question is HOW MUCH IS MEMBERS MAKING
    all i got was vague responses without actual figures,or members wont discuss what they are earning,my alarm bells kicked in with the responses.

    So guess what i am not going premium,in fact not been back on there site since the posting,as for paying ££££££ per month for membership stroll on ,i can be a affiliate on amazon and get trained and earn money,much bigger company than WA,,, cheers guys

    1. Val, this is a huge issue. The name Wealthy Affiliate strongly implies that they will teach you how to get WEALTHY from AFFILIATE marketing. Surely, if many members were succeeding at becoming wealthy, they would all be shouting loudly about how wealthy they are. Usually, when people don’t want to reveal how much money they are making, it’s because they are embarrassed because they feel it’s too low. It’s like if you ask a married couple how often they have sex. They will be embarrassed to tell you because they feel it’s not often enough. If they were mating like rabbits several times a night they would probably be proudly bragging about it.

  97. Okay so where do we go to learn and be successful as an internet marketer? This is what we all need to find out is there a better company to go with that will teach you how to do this without having to spend so much money and so much time?

  98. Here is something that some of you may find rather amusing, and it concerns my wealthy affiliate account. I have officially finished with it about 5 months ago but my account is still active within the system. I have used a free member account since then just to keep an eye on events, especially my old premium account. I have discovered that the little icon that represents my length of time as a premium member is still ticking away and has now shown an extra year on my little flag. It still thinks that my account is still active although i have officially left. I just wonder how many other old accounts of ex members are still showing as active.

    1. It is active but you are unable to do any editing to your website or make any money with it unless you pay the premium membership fee. Do not quote me but I believe you have exactly one year after cancelling to renew or you can forget having the option of having your website back. Basically what I am saying is you are denied access until you pay your dues, isn’t that so kind of Kyle and Carson?!

  99. Hi guys, so realistically speaking is it possible for me to make money blogging or will I just be wasting my time?

    Say I follow the Wealthy Affiliate layout of 3 posts per week (>1000 words per post) targeting the “low hanging fruits” (>30 average searches, <100 QSR/completion and that my “long tail keywords” makes grammatical sense). My niche (passion) offers an average of <$50 per sale (non-recurring). Yay or nay?

    I have also noticed that most people on WA are not making money, yet those are the same people that would encourage others to have “faith in the process”. Also, what worries me is that my commissions would mostly be an once-off sale, is it worth it to give it a try?

  100. They have this way to earn credits where you can offer feedback on other people’s sites. I’ve been there many times to try to make some WA credits and guess what? There’s never a site that needs reviewing. Sure there’s something fishy there. Sure their program showed me the basics of affiliate marketing but not much I couldn’t find elsewhere online. BTW, how do Kyle and Carlson reply to all the newcomers? It is some kind of AI bot that knows how to reply differently each time?

    1. Hey Joey, I wonder about that too; it could be virtual assistants using templates to answer. Although, I feel that the real Kyle actually pop-up in the live chat every now and then but he would hurry off.

      I tried using SiteComments but I gave it up soon; the conversations were just too forced for my likings. During commenting, I came across many sites of “#1 Recommendations” — definitely unoriginal, with a lot of copying among members. You could easily see that the comments aren’t organic and would only display positivities.

  101. Hi Craig, I’m just a beginner in affiliate marketing and your post make me think again about the all the process. Yeah, for a beginner, you always tempted by the amount of money another people already made and really wish to achieve a successful after one night. Nowadays, we are all enticed by “instantly money” and forget about it’s only a tip of the iceberg. It’s really a painful process, only trial-and-error will help me.
    Thanks for your post!

  102. Hey Craig,

    I have stumbled on your blog looking at reviews on WA hosting and had my alarm bells ringing after registering for their premium membership on offer for $19 dollars for the month. I jumped in because I want to look at the full feature on what premium has to offer sadly it doesn’t satisfy my expectations.

    What got my developer sense tingling was the lack of access to my sites WordPress database in WA, function files and theme customisation.

    This is a very big turn off for me.

    I have been a web professional for many years and worked for a number of industries promoting their digital products in Australia I agree to your “you never want to have all of your eggs in one basket” as you never know when a server goes down, the hosting company goes defunct or it decides to shut your website down due to a dispute which can throw your online business into a black hole. Getting full control of your site at your fingertips to do as much as I want, add in customised features to please your visitors is the ideal setting for me.

    My conclusion is Wealthy Affiliate for exactly is for total beginners who want to have web exposure and blog for their business and not someone with advance/expert technical knowledge whom just want to get their affiliate marketing skills up.

    Since I am a web developer and have the skills to host a CMS to any ISP provider and build themes from scratch but a beginner on affiliate marketing you have any suggestions on how am I able to learn advanced SEO, content creation and use legitimate tactics to direct traffic to a new site and monetise it?

    1. Dear Craig,

      It is Now 6, 9, 2019 – I found out that If you make any comments – or post a blog on WA that they “The Administration” does not care for – or if the Comment or blog is one that “Us NEWBIES” will find a matter to need to “Jump ship” – They will revoke all of your Administration rights and have no other Cause but to Cancel Your Membership and Remove all of your information before your information is stolen by others who very much liked your niches.

      So This is MY story. I was “only 14 Days in – I am a newbie into the Internet Marketing and Online game” I have been a RN for 30 years and my health is failing and need to work from home more. I hoped that I could switch gears to making some extra funds from “online work” with 2 different Niches.

      I had finished my first 2 total blocks of training (20 in total) put together 3 websites that earned me – Goggle Status – with Key wood publishing, I had done very well. And learned a lot all on my own…Some from the WA – But mostly nit and grit and outside learning.

      WA – Drives you very hard and forces you to make as many referrals for their company as many as possible. They will even send you for free for a week to Vegas for a conference if you hit your target of 300 referrals in each year. Only if you are in the TOP 200 Challenge. The only way to get there is to produce training’s and Reply to Questions. The more reply’s you have & the more followers you have the Higher rank you have. It doesn’t matter what your reply’s say. Mostly they are programmed.

      My whole point of my blog was FULL Disclosure of answered questions by the TOP 200 – they just answer by a pre-programmed comments which states refer back to your training because you just started and you don’t know anything and you haven’t gotten a website up yet and there is no money making until you’ve earned your place in line..

      The top 200 will even tell NEWBIES that now – so I re-posted their answers in my Blog for the day and got cut off from administrative privileges. I can never go back to WA.

      SHAME on Them

      KYLE and CARSON you should be embarrassed

  103. Hello I wish I had saw this before starting a website on Wealthy Affiliate. I really want to keep the website. Do you know if there is any way I can move it off of their platform? Thanks in advance

    1. Hi Stephanie, You should be able to export the content but not the website as a whole, i.e., the template and any work you put into the layout and design. You’ll want to look for the ‘Export’ option under ‘Tools’ in the WP dashboard. If it’s there, select ‘all content’ to generate an xml file you can import to another site.

      Now it’s possible that option is not available as part of their lock-in. If so, you’ll want to do some copy/pasting if you spent a lot of time writing content that you don’t have saved locally.

      1. WordPress has plugins (such as WP Clone) available that make this possible. WA allows full site migration off their platform.

  104. yea, i just joined wealthy affiliate and have been having issues with structuring the SEO on the platform. Do you have any additional tips that will assist? I don’t want to let it up straight away. I’ve asked within the platform itself with no prevail.

  105. Hello Craig,

    I appreciate the straight forward article and review of WA. For full disclosure, I am a member of the community and like many other newbies, I very often question the process. For the most part I have been happy with WA and I know 1000% more about IM then I did when I first joined in October 2018.

    Of course, there are some things I think WA needs to improve, updating some of the training, and the conversion rate seems to be lower than they boast, but I still enjoy the program. I know that working toward a full time online income is a journey, but I am convinced that it is possible and will continue to claim my stake.

    Thanks again for the honest opinion, Glenn

  106. Hi Craig, I’ve recently signed up for wealthy affiliate and have upgraded my account to premium (I have been a premium member for 5 days now). I am now beginning to think that Wealthy Affiliate really isn’t what it is set out to be. It is very shady of them and unethical to gradually persuade people into promoting their own platform and having control over their domains and websites.

    But thing is, SFM (six figure mentors) does a really similar thing. They are almost identical to wealthy affiliate. They also have an option for their members (cough cough, elite members only) to become affiliates for their platform. Very shady if I may say so indeed. I am not saying that SFM is a scam, but it may highly likely be one in my opinion. I plan to cancel my membership with wealthy affiliate as soon as possible. Luckily I haven’t created a website yet.

    However Craig, I need your advice on something. Should I stay with wealthy affiliate for a few more days and try to absorb as much information they have on their website to help me in learning about affiliate marketing or should I quit straight away. Note that I have only been through their first free course.

  107. Hi,
     
    My name is Judy, a teacher and counselor and the sister of David, a “past Wealthy Affiliate.” Sometime in 2017 my brother joined WA and started work on an idea for a website immediately.  Then, as often happens in life, a series of things happened that took him off the Wealthy Affiliate course.  Last week my brother and I decided to join forces and partner to rejoin WA and put energy into this business.
     
    This is where I hope you are willing to lend support.  We have watched the videos, listened in on the live phone chats, selected a niche, started writing usable material, explored related affiliate programs, etc. However, even though we are willing to do the work, we know that we need a person willing to walk us through the website maze and, through their experiences, provide the step-by-step guide we need to get our website up and started within 8 weeks. We are both educators and will need to return to full time jobs in September. (Then we’ll have weekends and sometime during the week for maintenance and improvements.) Our hope is to work out a mutually agreeable win – win arrangement with an experienced past or present member of the WA community.

    Is there any chance that this is something you would be willing to consider? From your many contacts, does anyone come to mind who may be a good fit for us? If not, is it possible for you to broadcast our predicament? It seems to us that many of the people who have written on your blog may be the perfect individual to provide the expertise we need. Feel free to share my brother’s email, davidcostow@yahoo.com.

    Thanks for listening. Any help you can offer will be sincerely appreciated!

    Judy Dadds

  108. Ive been with Wealthy Affiliate for 2.5 years and only making $100 a month despite following their training to the tee as well as putting in 3-4 hours of writing everday.

    I asked the community so many times on why Im not doing well. All I get is “just keep writing, you’ll get there.” That was a year ago. And Im making fuck all. $100 a month minus the premium membership fees = about $70.

    What a waste of 2.5 years.

    One thing people also need to understand is that their support system is a complete JOKE.

    Ive private messaged Kyle and Carson looking for advice and answers on why my website isnt doing well. No response. Messaged them again, no response. These guys dont care.

    All you can do is ask questions in the classrooms where you’ll get answers from other members who are mostly newbies and havent got a clue and arent even making money themselves. Answers you typically get are like “just follow the training” and other generic and useless shit.

    I regret wasting 2.5 years of my life with them and I highly DO NOT recommend you pay them any money!!

    1. One more thing Id like to add to my message above is that Kyle LIES.

      Ive seen his comments on the platform where he tells members that he reads and replies to every private message but he actually doesnt.

      Ive private messaged him seversl times without any response whatsoever. Months later still no response. Ive talked to other WA members with similar experiences.

      I only see Kyle communicating with newbies and top affiliates who are making big bucks. If youre neither and youre just some poor bloke whos been around for awhile and trying hard but need help, he doesnt give a shit about you.

  109. One more thing Id like to add to my message above is that Kyle LIES.

    Ive seen his comments on the platform where he tells members that he reads and replies to every private message but he actually doesnt.

    Ive private messaged him seversl times without any response whatsoever. Months later still no response. Ive talked to other WA members with similar experiences.

    I only see Kyle communicating with newbies and top affiliates who are making big bucks. If youre neither and youre just some poor bloke whos been around for awhile and trying hard but need help, he doesnt give a shit about you.

    1. Hi Johnve
      I too was a premium member with W A and like you i had very little success, but i was only with them for about 6 months before i realised that i was wasting my time with them. If you are still looking for something in the field of I M that is very helpful check out INCOME SCHOOL on Utube, i think you will find them very helpful.
      Regards Andrew

    2. Or…. if THEIR charges screw up your banking because of THEIR bad reputation with fraud… trust me. You will NOT get a call OR conversation.

  110. what a load of croc.
    It just goes to show, particularly from the comments just how little people understand Wealthy Affiliate.
    1. you do loose your free website after 6 months, but you do remain a member. I have been an icognito member only for nearly 12 months so that I can regularly test things from a starter member point of view.

    You can start another website – which means if you have backed up your content, you can start again if you are not ready or cannot afford to continue with the hosting.

    You can still access the blogs on the main dashboard, the days top 10 training (if the member hasn’t made it exclusive to premium members) and older blogs and non-premium training in the search bar.

    Why do some people expect to drop out of paying for accessing all the training and expect to suddenly get back into premium features for free! If you attended university in the offline world and dropped out – would you expect them to allow access to lectures down the track without rejoining??? Be real.

    2. if you buy a domain name outside WA, as I recommend, then you can point it to any host. This is something I would recommend for any hosting. Never have the two together.

    3. Ever heard of backup? Surely if you even own a computer you back up data either to disc, usb or the cloud!!!

    4. The main point is always SEO and organic traffic. Affiliate Marketing is just a means to send traffic to your website no matter what the niche.

    5. Wealthy Affiliate is a training and hosting platform. It is not a coaching service. If you want someone to coach you expect to pay in excess of $1000 a month!!! Why would you even think about trying to get people to coach you for a small monthly fee. It is all about learning.

    6. There is more than just the two training sections, there are weekly training webinars on lots of different subjects and member training where people show what has worked for them. Premium members can see these and all the earlier ones as they are recorded.

    All this post has done is show me how little people actually ‘see’ when they look at something. Everything is in front of them but they can’t see the forest for the trees. Every time someone asked why haven’t I made money after 3, 6, 12 months they are told ‘it takes time – making money online is not get rich quick” so why are commenters knocking wealthy affiliate because they haven’t made money quickly???

    If you put 10 hours a day in to a business then expect to make money sooner that if you put in 10 hours a month. I am probably preaching something that most of these people will never learn because they will leave wealthy affiliate and go chase another shiny object, and another, and another until they finally realise it takes time to build any business.

    If you have skills and are a website developer, graphic designer, professional writer or something like that then you may not need basic instructions and need to learn as you go but for the rest of us, having a plan and working consistently and always learning is what wealthy affiliate can offer and my investment is worth every cent. I am saving $300 a year on hosting on just one website (for my offline business) I have moved from a local hosting company to wealthy affiliate… I make $300 a year without doing a darn thing…

  111. There is a lot of stuff on wealthy affiliate wear they are just trying to get you to buy more wealthy affiliate stuff. I don’t like how they have new members offer feedback on other members websites when the people offering feedback might not have made a single dollar themselves. I will say one thing, the owners of wealthy affiliate are running a very intelligent scheme. And they are so deceitful. They are constantly saying stuff like build trust, and anytime anyone talks about building trust the way they do, I can tell they are really doing it to conceal a profit motive. They are also always saying to focus on helping people instead of just selling to people but even when you go through their entire premium training course they are constantly including plugs for you to buy more wealthy affiliate crap. The website is full of pathological optimists and the only reason it all sounds so good is that no one is allowed to point out everything that’s so messed up about it.

  112. I agree.
    They sound good, provide a bunch of hosting space for cheap, but are NOT evolving.

    Further their international money machine causes EVERY MONTH of their charges to Create a FRAUD ALERT with your bank.

    This will LOCK your bank account wherein you A. Can’t pay them. B. Are prevented from accessing ANYONE to help as they REQUIRE YOU TO PAY TO USE CHAT AND REFUSE TO CONTACT YOU EVEN VUA EMAIL UNLESS YOU PAY C. Threaten then to delete you instead of helping you D. Cause your other charges and accounts to be threatened for non payment while u figure thus out / get a new card etc. So whatever you do, don’t think you can ever take a break from mainstream communication YOURSELF while dealing with them. You have to be on constant alert yourself so they don’t have to be.

    This problem WILL be ongoing because, according to my bank, they have so many fraud reports. Hmmm. Not good.

    I don’t care how hip you think your service is, hiding from the phone is super bad business.

    Go to YouTube for training and a basic hosting company. Your hard work will be much safer.

  113. hello!,I really like your writing very much! proportion we be
    in contact more approximately your post on
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  114. Craig, I have heard very good things about this program to make money creating a website of what I like or passionate about. But what about the Spanish language for people who don’t know how to speak English or other languages?

  115. What I have found with WA is that lots of the Reviews say the product or service is crap but they recommend WA, some of the posts are also direct copy and paste from other WA members so it’s not even original reviews, they also jump on the internet marketing trends and do fake reviews and offer WA.

    It’s not the best system to try and push on others, there are some really good ones out there, but WA this post made me do a bit more research and decide against it again.

  116. But the only way to success is hard work. Some people are still making good money from WA.Why do that have over one million members?

    1. I read that they have next to 2 million active members. Obviously, there must be something to the program. I think I’ll check it out!

      1. They definitely do not have over 2 million active members!

        I had my write access revoked in June when my rank was around the 50 mark, 5 months later doing absolutely nothing on the platform and is still around 800 and has stopped going down.

        I also know another member who was an ambassador and had their write access revoked in September 2018 and they are ranked around 850.

        I’d estimate they have around 200/300 active members.

        The two million figure refers to everyone who has every been a member (free or paid) in the 14 year history of WA, so is very misleading.

        1. What did you do to get your write access revoked? Did you say negative things about WA or question their methods? That’s what I did to get my access revoked. I was there for 2.5 years until Summer 2017, and then I started to really question everything there and started posting some negative stuff.

          This is the big problem with WA. They block out anything too negative. Even if you don’t get your write access revoked, they will hide your negative posts and comments without you even realising. This gives the false impression that most people at WA are delighted with WA, which just isn’t true.

          1. If you say negative things on any training platform there will be consequences.

            Take a look at other sites, social media sites as well. You will be banned etc.

            So just what do you expect?

            If you were on my training site all this would be written into the terms and conditions.

            Not sure about Wealthy Affiliate because I don’t feel the need to check.

            It’s hard enough for people to make money online who have doubts anyway, without idiots mouthing off.

            At the end of the day, Wealthy Affiliate gives everyone who is new to affiliate marketing the foundation to build on and it’s what you do with that knowledge, bearing in mind that a massive percentage of people are just too damn lazy and want everything on a plate.

          2. Mick, it’s not that black and white, though. I agree that if somebody joins a site and then all they do is just say “This is shit” all the time then that’s not good for anyone. But on WA, comments can get hidden even if they merely question WA’s methods in the slighted, so open discussion isn’t even possible. And when it became known that a rival training platform had written a very in-dept comparison to WA that contained valid criticisms (as WA members are encouraged to do for other sites), open discussion of it was suppressed.

            I totally understand why WA do that. They are protecting their business. Honestly, if it was my business I would probably do the same. All I’m saying is, you won’t get balanced, objective view of WA from within WA.

            WA does have some good things going for it. The step-by-step nature of the training, with clear actionable tasks, is the best way to start learning and doing. WA is good for beginners to get started with setting up a website and getting blogging about their interest. But it does have flaws.

  117. Their free level is a load of junk. The so called “free” membership is just a waste of time and does not cover any real strategies to build an online business. You’ll be forced to upgrade to $49 per month if you want to learn more “advance” stuff which I doubt has any real value.

  118. I’ve found with WA that it does give a good way to get people started in networking and building relationships. It’s a sound way of also learning the principles of affiliate marketing, where it’s done right and ethically. I do agree the platform itself is outdated and has been for some time. It’s ideal for those that are new, but doesn’t really serve a purpose for experienced marketers

  119. thank you for this article. I am a free member trying to attract traffic. my site is not indexing, and it seems I have to be a premium member to do the one thing or the major thing to get traffic (i’m completely new to this, so I guess indexing is the only way to get traffic/come up on a google search). I wish I had read your article sooner. I’ve written a whole article about my product. i’m passionate about healthy living and have been wanting the opportunity to share what I know and encourage others to use healthier products. now I’ve done all the work and can’t even get it to show up on a search engine!!!! what a waste!

  120. Some pretty fair points but I don’t agree with everything. I’m one of those few people who stuck with Wealthy Affiliate as a side hustle until digital marketing became my full-time gig. 4 years on and I’m still there, and it’s still working for me!

    It is true that most people won’t make a living after joining, but I think that’s true of any self-employment course, service, business model, etc. You do need to be a self-starter, tenacious and willing to eat dirt for a while, before you start reaping the rewards.

    There is also plenty more to learn after you complete their basic training, but I have found a lot of that info on their site too. You could also argue that you will need (at least) a few hundred dollars per year for additional marketing tools, like autoresponders etc.

    I’ve stayed with them even after learning everything I could because their hosting services and site support are excellent, so I keep my sites with them.

    Overall, I’m a big fan of Wealthy Affiliate. THanks to them I’ve been self-employed for the past 3 years.

    Sign up if: You are a self-starter, willing to work hard and learn fast and keep motivated when it gets tough.
    Don’t sign up if: You want some of that there “free internet money”

  121. Craig,
    I have a burning question or two for you.

    WA is offering a deal for $299/year. Since they offer keyword and SEO training (and you can get I think 25 websites as a premium member), doesn’t it make sense to use their platform for hosting? I’m a newbie, and planning to start writing content for affiliate marketing (I have no illusions) as well as start a website for a copy editing/proofreading biz. I work full time so I plan on spending the months needed to practice writing blog content and building a business website (yes, using their hosting, since the price is right). Why wouldn’t I host with them, given that they use WordPress? Thanks for your insight!
    Cheers,
    Meredith

  122. Now that you have stated that 90% of people who join Wealthy Affiliate fail, can you recommend an alternative training program where 90% will succeed and only 10% will fail? If you can please tell me about such a program. And it would have to cost no more than $49 a month.

    One more thing, How many hours a day would one need for a program where 90% will succeed? Or even 50%.

    Thanks much.

    Edwin

  123. Craig I really fill sorry for you. You sound tremendusly better . The way you express sound that you are a looser and you are getting it with people with success . $ 365.00 dollars a year. is no reson to stop you from
    a good night sleep . . Get over please Get something more profitabe for you do. Most of what you say they are exageration. But after all a looser is a looser nomatter what.

  124. I just joined today through their free membership thing and I will not be joined their premium membership thing for 19 first and 47 dollars after that so thank you for that comment

  125. I came across this blog while researching work at home businesses. I think this review is accurate because people need to know that doing any kind of business takes effort and commitment. Unfortuately people think that somehow the internet is (easier) than the real world, but in actuality it is harder because with a brick and mortar business the owner can find a location that has customers because they can lease an office in an area with lots of foot traffic, plus they know upfront how much money it is going to cost to invest in getting started, plus they have a proven blueprint such as in the case of running a franchise.

    On the internet it is a shot in the dark, there is no way to know how much competition a niche will have, there is no way to measure the kind of success that is possible when there are already thousands of other websites promoting the same offers, ads and product reviews.

    Google is on a rampage constantly trying to downgrade websites that are not owned by big brand corporations, which makes it even harder for a newbie entrepreneur to break through to the search results no matter how many keywords they try to use on their websites.

    Wealthy affiliate is basically taking advantage of the opportunity to be an “online training center” for teaching people how to fail, because setting up a niche website on wordpress doesn’t work anymore. But people coming online for the first time looking for a way to make extra money or who are dreaming of starting a home based business are delusional.

    Also the cost of setting up a wordpress site is free, the only cost is a cheap hosting plan and a yearly domain name which will not make anyone rich. That is why most of the members of wealthy affiliate don’t tell the truth about “how they are really making money online” the secret is that they are building niche amazon review websites getting them ranked and then selling them on sites like Flippa to the highest bidder, also they are renting out local keyword based commercial service websites to plumbers and chiropractorsfor a monthly fee.

    Wealthy affiliate is building a huge email subscriber list of potential business opportunity seekers who they can sell hosting services, keyword tools and traffic generation services to. They are not concerned with the people who sign up success record only in the quick cash grab.

    You can read about people on who have joined the site who are making money but most of them said it took them 12 months before they started to see any decent traffic to qualify for an affiliate network and that the kind of sites they are building are basically scam review blogs with the intention of converting visitors to pay for training in marketing wealthy affiliates over $300 dollar yearly subscription.

    It is only after 2 years and 4 years of consistently writing scam reviews and recommending wealthy affiliate these affiliates can earn a trip to Las Vegas to meet the owners who will tell them to use sites like Youtube and social media sites such as Instagram and Tik Tok to get better traffic results. Along with using paid traffic to get premium upgraded members. Free members don’t make them money only those who upgrade.

    Most people just starting out don’t have $300 dollars to pay upfront or the money to pay for traffic. But if the person is retired and receives a pension or if the person is still working a full time job or can put the expense on a credit card then it will take them years to recover that money they just spent while not understanding how the whole affiliate marketing game actually works, by then they give up and move on to some other shiny object on the web.

    I just wish there was someone who could tell people about “legitimate work from home” businesses that get real results, I know that there has to be a program that will make money instead of just taking peoples money.

  126. I left WA last year and received an email to pay my domain because it was about to expire. They gave me instructions on how to pay but I found that every effort I made to access my domain was blocked, any effort to ask for help came with a join premium to have your questions answered. If there are any WA affiliates out there who read this can you please explain how the heck do I pay my domain without having to pay premium.

    1. Wait for the domain to expire and grab it outside WA. It is always advisable to move your assets out of WA platform during the 30 day grace period after the expiry of your domain. My advice for those who have not upgraded their membership yet, buy your domain from another registrar such as Namecheap. Point servers to WA and remain in control of your domain. All the best.

  127. In life there will be pessimists and those that are optimists. The writer of this article has his reasons for making his opinions known. But the truth is, no matter the platform you join, working hard, being patience and staying consistent will pave the way for success. So many of you have swallowed his criticisms and now look for what’s next? Look up Affiliorama, another great Affiliate marketing training platform and if you all can afford, all well and good. The fundamental thing to succeeding in any business is learn how to build relationship, be customer centric and create content filled with value. Pat Flynn was making $130 a month back in 2008 as an affiliate marketer, fast forward to 2015 and he went earning $57k a month.
    If there is one thing i have taken out from Wealthy Affiliate, it is knowing how to build a website. the money making aspect is on my 10th list. the money will come eventually but i have accepted the fact that i need to develop myself first, make mistakes and learn from it. Wealthy affiliate is not the only source i learn from, that is why the internet is there to spread your tentacles and win big. If there is one platform i recommend for beginners, i will say start with WA. You will make mistakes, you will doubt yourself but above, stick your ass in it and grind.

    Best of luck

  128. ***Disclaimer: opinionated rant based on personal experience.***

    I’ve been a Premium member of WA since 2015.

    Within 2 years, I was able to learn enough for me to earn a full-time income online.

    So I definitely got some value from WA.

    However, I feel that affiliate marketing is much different in 2020 in terms of Google favoring brands over bloggers, the massive increase in competition in the SERPS, plus the Amazon affiliate program is pretty much dead at 1% and 3% commissions, and the WA training hasn’t adapted to reflect this IMO.

    More specifically, EAT and YMYL are completely ignored and they continue to push the idea that you can be successful in ‘any’ niche – maybe in theory but the reality is much different I feel. Also, some of the training in the live classes is just wrong – I saw it mentioned that you can screenshot Amazon reviews and you can – but only if you want to risk getting kicked out of Amazon Associates since this is against the terms of their OA.

    Also, the community is a joke in my opinion.

    Yes, there are a very, very small handful of individuals that post good content, but the arguably pointless internal ranking system (other than to increase content creation to benefit WA without having to do anything in my view) encourages members to create useless content about the weather, personal issues, and baseless motivational posts – which drowns out the very small amount of useful user-generated content with mindless guff.

    One user called Jeffrey Brown posts content so pointless and devoid of any value that I become enraged to the extent where I have to log out because just seeing his stupid profile picture and mindless bullshit pisses me off so much.

    Plus, if you ask a question, you either won’t get a response because the place is full of complete beginners or you’ll just get told to ‘follow the training’.

    Oh and don’t get me started on the Bootcamp training – the whole thing is nowhere near as easy as they make it out to be.

    Because the conversion rate for the starter to premium is nowhere near the advertised 12.5% for most affiliates (I know this because I referred THOUSANDS of starters) and unless you’re smashing YouTube to build trust and marketing to an audience that likes to write and is willing to graft for months on end then you’ll probably see a dismal upgrade rate and horrible retention.

    Plus their hosting sucks based on the sites that I did have hosted there – and many people complain about their slow sites often. Someone once posted a really valid post about this inside WA and it got deleted quick time.

    In my view, the overall ethos of pumping out content (literally 100’s and 100’s of posts using keyword tools that are based on faulty data) without a deeper consideration of the competition in the SERPs is the hard way of going about it – most people will burn out and give up.

    So despite my initial success with WA – and I am grateful for the skills they have taught me – I honestly feel angry about the air of ‘false hope’ that I personally tend to get from the place.

    However, my frustrations led me to research other learning resources and I found that the free content put out by Income School on YT is actually better than much of the paid content in WA (in my opinion). And I was amazed to hear that some of their premium members were generating full-time incomes with less than 60 – 80 posts in some cases!

    Anyway, I signed up to their premium course and I personally think that it’s a million times better than WA – they go beyond keyword tools and show you how to actually gauge the competition properly so that you’re only writing posts that have a real chance of ranking with a new site. Plus there’s a good TY course and they are real about why using FB and most social media platforms is a total waste of time in most cases.

    The outcome is that much more of their members seem to be getting results and actually making money, and the community is much more focused and you get real answers in there.

    I’m not an affiliate for Income School but if you feel angry at WA and still want to succeed with blogging then I’d recommend checking out Income School on YT and going premium if you like what you see.

    /Rant.

    1. Don’t get me started on Jeffrey Brown, I’ve seen the stuff he posts and it is of zero value! He is so obviously just doing it to stay as a WA Ambassador, which shows how ridiculous the system is! Someone who doesn’t make money and has not done the training and doesn’t know what he is talking about is a WA ambassador just because he posts random drivel about his house and the weather and his dogs!

    2. Hello Phil,

      Your views seem understandable. I’ve been trying to find an alternative since many have been complaining about WA but none have actually offered alternatives. Do you think I’d be able to make even a few bucks before I go premium? I’m the type of guy who likes to see a result before going all in. It probably sounds naive, but that’s just who I am. I’m willing to put in work over a long span of time, just not 24/7. I have school and all that.

      Regardless, you’re one of few that mention an alternative so I’ll check it out. If you’re willing to reply, then here’s an email you can reply to: pikachu.durp@gmail.com

    3. Fuck yes. Spot on Phil! There’s so many people in there trying to “up their rank” which achieves NOTHING. There’s no monetary value in it. It’s the same people over and over again writing useless posts in there. If you have something positive to say it’s always the same reply “great work. Here’s to your success…blah blah blah”

      So needless to say I’m out too.

  129. #1 – This review is simply written by a person who has personal grudges with the owners of Wealthy Affiliate, Kyle and Carson.

    or

    #2 – this review is written by a person who was looking for fast money scheme and was frustrated by the effort you initially had to put in at WA.

    For all you fast money scheme seekers online, I must say WA is not the place for you. Try go do network marketing and cone some people and get rich overnight.

    WA is about building a lasting and strong foundation for internet business.

    With that said…….PEACE!!

    1. Kemos you have been with WA since 19 February 2020 – just over 3 months. The OP here, if you look at the comments and his post, was with them for at least 18 months and much longer I suspect. I was with them for four years.

      Why don’t you believe that someone could write something negative about WA because they genuinely don’t think it is a good program?

      Don’t get sucked into the WA cult – learn to thing for yourself and be accepting of other views.

  130. I like the style of the person who wrote this post: he says it like he thinks. I can tell he did it with honesty.
    He’s kind of giving to Cesar what belongs to Cesar but not fully.
    I was reading with passion so I can get to the great stuff…..I’m the kind who reads line by line until I reach the conclusion.
    So I kept waiting and hoping for alternatives been proposed at the end. I reached the end —Nada! (I read somewhere in the comments where he highlighted briefly couple activities he is doing). I was deceived a little bit.
    This reminds me of what I learned early in life: not to voice my opinion criticizing too loud unless I have something better to offer.
    Writing in this post implicitly means that we are mature and have been living on earth for many years. Consequently we understand that negatives spread like fire. This can be proven here by the number of posts supporting the bashing of WA.

    It’s funny that in some comments people who applaud the censuring of a 15 years legit company are seeking advice from an unknown person who merely post a comment to a post. Isn’t it an ironic move in lieu of really deepening their knowledge in the WA training platform.
    Moreover if you don’t know nothing …at what capacity do you evaluate a system that has been out there for these many years?
    Let’s really be honest with ourselves.
    By all means I’m not defending WA because all man-made things are prone to flaws. But I’m for fairness.

    I believe review posts like this target mostly Beginners and Newbies because the gurus don’t really need people to tell them what works, right? They’re using or have already created the money making machine!
    Posts like this will naturally touch Beginners or Newbie like me. I started couple months ago with WA after losing a lot of money in worthless IM programs. After you get them from the gurus and experts you realize they’re just garbage.

    Beginners, Newbie who are really looking are after genuine information to help them get unstuck in their route whether it’s a 9 to 5, a shady PT or FT or a crumbling business.

    Beware that some people are new to IM but are successful in the corporate world, brick-and-mortars and other endeavors.
    They are looking for diversification and other income streams, meaning they are after solid and robust system not get rich quick crap.

    When I got to WA from a review of a product I just bought I then realized that WA alternative was far better than the ones I’ve bought or were considering buying. Why?
    As indicated by the post writer WA offers an IM Road Map.
    The founders of WA have done a great job laying down an A to Z path for the ones who need it.

    Beginners and/or Newbies need a Start and a Potential Target (which everyone needs in any endeavor – a Plan). From point A to point Z hard word is required in anything serious and ethical in life.

    They are a lot of experts, gurus who claim that they know and have better. It may be true. What I’ve noticed however is that the true ones don’t waste their time putting down the competition. They show or prove they are better than the competition.

    Of course like I always say in my circles: If anyone is great at what they do they should go out there, shine and be useful to the world.

    Schools opens their doors to everyone “in a way”.
    Some students attend and drop.
    Some graduate and never work in their field.
    Some will revolutionize their field with their expertise.

    … It’s all up to you, to me and to us!

  131. Wealthy Affiliate didn’t make up the concept of affiliate marketing. It has been around for two or three decades, even before the internet.

    If you’ve been following some authority sources when it comes down to affiliate marketing, you’d be able to understand that WA teaches training on affiliate marketing which is up to date and is relevant to the industry.

    Niche sites aren’t a new thing either. Wealthy Affiliate puts all of the information into a step-by-step video training that is combined with tools that help anyone make it.

    They don’t promise any get-rich-quick scheme and they themselves say that it’s a long process and that it can take years.

    I’ve followed their OEM training and I’ve made two successful sites which I’ve later on sold. But I definitely put a lot of time and work into the sites.

    If you stay consistent, keep on learning, put time and work into your site – anyone can build a decent site, rank it, acquire traffic, and then monetize it in any way (whether you decide to use affiliate programs or not).

    So what is really your point? You are saying that WA misleads people, but do you have proof? I have proof of them stating that affiliate marketing and WA training isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme and they explain the average time it takes to see any results.

    I’m really sorry for you Craig as it clearly shows that you aren’t consistent with your work and this post is nothing but an excuse of why you aren’t seeing any success with affiliate marketing.

    1. Greetings (ノ^∇^) D,
      From what I can understand, Craig says that it’s not a straightforward 30-second money maker. That’s obviously true. Not everything in life is just a simple “you’re here” thing. How much time and effort do you think it would take and how committed would I need to be? I’d obviously be fine with making a single site over a long period of time. I’m just wondering how much 24/7 commitment I need. I’m a high school student that’s looking for a normal job and might be a bit preoccupied, but I’m still willing to put in some time every day into making a website.

      In addition, would it be possible to make even a couple of bucks before going premium? I sort of understand Craig and your point. It takes heart, sweat and tears. Trial and error and much more, but I’m the type of person who wants to see results and then pay even if it takes months. That probably sounds naive, but I guess that’s who I am. If you see this email, please reply to this email: pikachu.durp@gmail.com

  132. Hi Craig. You seem to have a lot of experience and knowledge and I am impressed in the number of comments that your site has generated.

    I do have a question for you. If Wealthy Affiliate is not the top dog in training people in affiliate marketing then who is?

  133. Wow, I am happy I’m not the only user on the internet that has recognised that this is not the best platform, and indeed it’s not a platform for everyone, as I found out myself. Not the hard way as I stayed a free member up until the point my website was deleted for NOT signing up to the full membership. I would say after watching there BLACK FRIDAY sale’s pitch and following the website clocking up new members is that 48-hour period. (I Time laps filmed over 100 users sign up to the Black Friday deals @ $500 a pop). So you can see here who make the money from WA… Its no wonder Kyle and partners are working from the comfort of there beach house’s

    I have also written a nice follow-up post on my website, however, there’s no need to plug it here as you have captured the essence of my blog post!!

    It’s good to share accurate and inform people.]

    2020

  134. I read your post with interest but wasn’t looking for it. It just appeared!

    You obviously had a bad experience with WA, but I guess you were just one of the many who just took the free membership to get your feet wet with no intention of pursuing.

    Training in affiliate marketing is basic because if it wasn’t nobody would join.

    But, where are you going to get training for less than $1 a day? You simply aren’t!

    Becoming a success in anything is going to take time and the idea of WA for me was to get a basic understanding and run with it. Nobody is going to hold your hand and guide you down the right path.

    For one, there isn’t one because there are so many.

    Many people are having success with WA, but it all depends on what sort of success you are looking for?

    In this day and age, we are all competing with the changes that come through Google but that is just something we have to put up with.

    I have tried my fair share of garbage online and WA is by far the best training platform I have come across.

    Even if the training is outdated, which I do agree you still get the basics and you have a community with all kinds of experiences. Just ask!

    You mention better alternatives such as Authority Hacker and Income School.

    6000 members on Authority Hacker, $1997 a year. WOW, That’s approximately 6 years full membership

    10 years = $20k as opposed to $3000

    Never heard of either one and the amount of traffic is minuscule. That tells me they are not worth looking into.

    Anyway, you did a good hatchet job on WA, but as far as I am concerned that is exactly what you set out to do.

    1. “You obviously had a bad experience with WA, but I guess you were just one of the many who just took the free membership to get your feet wet with no intention of pursuing.”

      You obviously didn’t read the article properly then Mick. I suggest you go through it again and you will see Craig was a member of WA for a number of years.

      Also Authority Hacker and Income School are two of the biggest affiliate marketing training websites in the world, so I am a little surprised you haven’t heard of them.

    2. Christ Mick, you truly are stupid.

      Authority Hacker’s membership is a ONE TIME FEE. There’s no annual renewal and they don’t force upsells on you. You’re clearly a victim of the WA cult, but maybe you’ll break free one day.

    3. ‘Never heard of either one and the amount of traffic is minuscule. That tells me they are not worth looking into.’

      I can’t speak for AH but having applied the strategies taught by Income School for just 4 months, the results are CRUSHING the posts written under the WA style. I’ve NEVER gotten results this fast from a website before.

      For example, my top 5 posts get 1,000+ PV per month and I did not use a KW tool – just Google autosuggest and the post recepie outlined in IS to win the snippet.

      If you go with the WA strategy, you’ll probably end up wring 100’s and 100’s of posts to get some traffic when you could have gotten there in a fraction of the time with the IS strategy.

      And that’s if you don’t make the mistake of choosing the wrong niche.

      Also the community in IS 10000s times better than WA’s – where you’ll just find people post crap and not being able to answer your questions.

      It seems like WA is only interested in keeping beginners enthusiastic with raa raa waffle and training that’s out of date.

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  136. This is a pretty old post but I’m hoping you’ll still get my little message. Just wondering if you know how to move your websites from WA to clickfunnels! I cannot figure it out. They don’t let you into the settings and I keep getting the stupid pop up to resign up for premium. I’ve sent emails and they don’t respond. WA allows people to build two websites on their free membership (which I did BEFORE i bought premium) and now I can’t do anything without reactivating my account. UGH. I’m hoping you know something about this. Thank you!

    1. So your membership has lapsed, which effectively means you have not been paying for hosting. How long ago did this happen?

      When I left WA I made sure I moved all my websites away before I cancelled my membership.

  137. This is a really comprehensive and in-depth review about wealthy affiliate. This is awesome. Thanks a bunch. However, I’ld like to know if it’s possible to make money just promoting their website without subscribing to their premium service or upgrading to premium Thanks.

  138. This is timely, here am I contemplating renewing my membership, having not seeing a better option out there largely because of trust factors.

    Being a member and being the novice that I was and still is I felt trust and as such, I think it was one of the best options out there. However, I was not so much fund of the SEO way of gaining traffic and the blogging process. Despite I know that blogging and SEO will come into play at some point I think personally there are other ways to enjoy the experience.

    But What do you recommend?

  139. It’s pretty obvious that Craig’s article review about Wealthy Affiliate is his own view and that he got burned by them. I could see a couple of reasons from his article why he failed and put the blame on WA. The glaring and obvious reason why Craig failed and is now crucifying WA is that –He thought WA will do all the hard work for him – (niche selections, content creations, website upkeep and moderations, promotions of his own content, affiliate network application and joining, affiliate link creation on own site, adsense account creation, etc..etc..) – YES- this is the work you have to put-in – to get what you want out of it — which is a steady, stream of income because this is YOUR business buddy! (Not WA’s). There is no magic bullet to creating your own income generating website- YOU ARE THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS YOURSELF BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR BUSINESS!! I hate to state the obvious, but I don’t think Craig put in the TIME, EFFORT and PATIENCE to get his business going. I’m a premium member of the WA community and I didn’t have any of the issues you were mentioning.

    1. You didn’t read the post ReyBan and you haven’t read any past articles on this blog for that matter. WA may employ a scammy business model but I didn’t get burned by them. I simply looked under the hood and didn’t like what I saw.

  140. Hi Graig, I enjoyed reading your insightful view of WA.
    When I was a free member, I saw 90% of success rate of WA member in Kyle’s review. I was given an impression that the affiliate marketing was much easier. Also Kyle said that they were cost efficient so their membership fee had much more value than others.
    By now, I have figured out that anyone who made any amount of money even $0.5 or $1 are considered successful. I heard that many people here make money only one or twice, and that’s it. I made $1.00 from my blog. So am I also successful???
    One of the ambassador told me, “I helped you a lot, but we are not paid and pay membership fee like everyone else.” Then, I told her, “That’s because they are cost efficient, but I would negotiate with Kyle.”
    I have learned that so many people are not making real money here but they are dreaming it. To me, this community is like a religious organization, worship Kyle and WA.
    Tomoko

    1. Hi Tomoko, You are correct in comparing WA to a religious group or a cult. New members are lured in by the promise of a better tomorrow if they pay the annual fee and follow the doctrine. Then they’re immediately encouraged to proselytize and advocate for WA (WA Bootcamp) as an income strategy. Speaking from first hand experience, none of the people active in the community are truly succeeding at affiliate marketing. What WA has done is create gamification around community engagement by awarding bullshit badges, promising prizes for the top contributors and what not, which in turn presents new users with this illusion that they’re joining an active community of “gurus”. The reality is quite different. It’s basically the blind leading the blind, while everyone tries to support one another and keep the dream alive. Kyle and Carson are false prophets, 100%.

      1. 100% spot on, Craig. And the thing is, it’s actually very easy to make some money by promoting WA. You simply create a website about the topic of making money online, write a glowing review of WA, then write loads of bad reviews of competiting MMO products. Rinse and repeat. And it actually works. I did that myself for a while. And I discovered that if you jump on new MMO products and write reviews of them early before most other people have, if they do become popular later then you are likely to rank top for that keyword already. It got to a point where I was churning out several such reviews every day, based on a review template I’d created. Although it didn’t make me rich (far from it), it’s the most money I’ve made online so far, and the easiest.

        Compare that to struggling to make money from a wesite about your interest or passion, it’s really no contest. The members that find success down that route are very few and far between. Most of the money made by WA members is made by promoting WA itself.

  141. So my most recent frustration with WA happened yesterday. I applied to EZOIC under a beta program they created for newbies where you submitted your site for approval, did their training and had to pass a test to qualify. Usually EZOIC only takes sites with a lot of traffic – mine is new and has virtually no traffic on WA. So I did the training, passed the exam and received an EZOIC acct which monetizes your site, among other things. I had to change the name servers and asked WA how to do that explaining why. Site Support advised me to back up my site first and supplied information on how to change name servers, so I went ahead. After all that I then received this message from WA:
    SiteSupportabout 22 hours ago
    “Our system does not currently support setting custom DNS records for primary domain or http://www.. These are reserved for hosting sites at WA.
    Please note once the nameservers for your domain are changed away from WA, the site will no longer be hosted with WA.” Why would they do this? EZOIC is simply a proxy. I will move my site as soon as I can as I lost confidence in WA awhile back. Most of the better nuanced training seems to come from the community…even though I would think it should come from the people who are selling the course. In the meantime, big inconvenience and I am a premium member

    1. Hi Judith. Although one of Wealthy Affiliate’s main selling points is that they claim to provide everything all in one place (web hosting, WordPress, training, keyword tool, online discussion between members), this is also one of the flaws in WA. Not only does it mean that members are not trained in how to use independent website tools and services so that they can survive and thrive out in the real world, there are also restrictions on what you can do with WA’s own tools, as you have discovered.

      WA started in 2005 as just a service that provided premium keywords for Google Adwords. Then over time they added a forum, training for lower cost methods such as blogging, then they provided their own website builder and hosting, and eventually a keyword tool as well. WA now tries to provide everything all in one place, and I don’t think this is a good thing. A jack of all trades is a master of none.

      Some of the top super affiliates at WA use other web hosting, either in addition or instead of WA’s own hosting. And yet, in their glowing WA reviews they will say that WA provides everthing you need to succeed online.

      1. Thank you for your insights. I won’t go into the many communications I had with them yesterday, other than to say I will be moving my site off to Bluehost once the site is restored.

      2. So I continue in this quest to move my site from WA to Bluehost where I am told they need the files and the .sql database. When people get into blogging they don’t necessarily understand all the technology and this is becoming a real handicap. Bluehost tells me there is nothing in the file and I need to get this information from WA. I emailed again and received a written commercial about the superiority of their site from Carson. I could post it here but what’s the point? I need to move the site because I want to incorporate EZOIC and their site won’t permit it. What can I do to get them to assist? Don’t they have some legal obligation to release that information?

        1. J Pearson, there are plugins available that enable you to migrate your website to another host. Migrate Guru is one that is highly rated, although I haven’t used it myself.

  142. I’m very bitter that they wasted so much of my time with misleading hopes and dreams. More fool me.

    But To everyone who is disillusioned with WA:

    *** Please go and check out Project 24/Income school on YouTube – these guys are 100% legit and have your back. (no Im not a shill or an affiliate for them) ***

    After years of failing with WA following their oversimplified training and woo woo motivation rubbish, I’m now earning a full-time income thanks to what I’ve learned with the P24 guys.

    Their free content alone is better than anything WA has to offer.

    Don’t give up on blogging/YouTube – the model still works but you need up to date methods.

    WA is stuck in the stone age.

  143. Well, I am a Member of Wealthy Affiliate, I have been there for 4 months. Is it only for Newbies? So then what program is there for the experienced?

    Well, I have started making cash. I am not afraid of hard work and I was not expecting a get rich quick scheme.
    I don’t only study with WA but I make sure that I do lots of research to see what the industry leaders have to say and the program looks fine to me.

    Do they have out dated training? Yes. There are some that need to be updated to reflect changes. However, there is training being added daily with the updated information, all you have to do is check the search.

    I love the fact that the training provide that easy road map. Personally, I think some people struggle over the support provided because they just want the problem to go away. The videos you are provided with to fix your own problem are to help you to learn.

    Imagine if someone fixes your problem all the time, you learn nothing. If you actually learn to fix the problem yourself then you are ahead in knowledge and that now becomes part of your acquired skills.

    At this point, I have 0 plans to leave. I joined to learn and I am learning. I never expected easy and yes I expect to succeed. I’m already on that road.

    I recently moved my site to a new domain. Not the best move but I did that because I am establishing my brand.

    Perseverance and determination are what I have brought to this business and I believe Wealthy Affiliate offers the right training which adds the icing.

    Affiliate Marketing is not a good fit for everyone and neither is Wealthy Affiliate.

    Candy Benn

    Candy Benn

    1. No offense, but why not back up your claims with proof. This “you didn’t work hard enough” is such a common refrain from MLM and Pyramid schemes that after awhile it gets tiresome.

      The material was near outdated years ago, that you’re saying this site has relevance in 2020 is laughable.
      The only thing you are doing by joining Wealthy Affiliate is keeping these guys alive. Their golden goose is dying.

      If I could make X dollars a day easily affiliate marketing, why would I share with anybody how to do it?

      I would also like to see the founders of Wealthy Affiliate defend themselves on a platform that they do not control.

      Such a fantastic hugbox their forum is, so long as you are agreeing and paying you are welcome.
      In such a forum they could be controlling dozens of puppet accounts all saying how great WA is, while dissent is silenced.

      Sorry, WA is not icing to anything. The info is out here for free. Personally, I believe you to be a shill.
      So sad that that WA POLLUTED google search results with WA SCAM etc etc.

      Blog Owner, thank you for your blog and congrats on the top search ranking. I have no doubt you have saved plenty of fools from parting with their hard earned cash.

  144. Affiliate Marketing is a long haul and there is a lot of hype and selling of various courses on the internet, each with its own promise. Shiny new objects are everywhere. From my experience Niche Pursuits offers a good course, as does Authority Hacker or Jon Dykstra’s Fat Stacks. I follow Niche Pursuits as a result of a college course I took on Affiliate Marketing where he was recommended…or Pat Flynn who I have not looked into… but there are credible courses out there and there are dedicated people making passive income…but once again it is not overnight and entails a long learning curve and much patience. Because of our current economies and the pandemic, massive unemployment and businesses suffering, people are desperate to create an income stream and unfortunately there are those out there who will take advantage of that desperation.

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  146. WA or Wealthy Affiliate is nothing but fraud/scam, cult sort of speaking “community” that will give you fake sense of “helpful community vibe” and at the end steal your hard earned money.
    Back in early 2018 I was, as most of people, trying to look for a way to get some extra earnings online from my home and I found WA. Sadly I didn’t do that much review checking as they had free registration and later some “promotional deal” for premium membership, which as per them will give you so much insight into best ways to make money, assistance from their owners etc.
    What I got to see was quite opposite, very few or NO answers or help from their “great business owners” as well as this cult sort of speak community that will trick you into continuing with your “premium membership”. When I realized this is 100% fraud I was like ok, I gave it a shoot and I failed lost some money but its fine it was just a trial.
    Of course they will not state clearly that their subscription will be extended automatically unless specified differently so I was charged with their FULL prices and lost a lot more money for nothing. I tried complaining but of course I didn’t got my money back. I learned my lesson in very hard way.
    During these past 3 years I was receiving their special WA membership offers via email (for black Friday new year and all other holidays, although I unsubscribed) and finally when I got another email for this past black Friday I decided to go on that cheating website and delete my account.
    Now to my big surprise when I logged in I had ZERO RIGHTS in doing anything on MY ACCOUNT. If I wanted to access my personal message history with their owners or any other WA member I first need to pay for another premium membership. Same thing for any other clickable option on their fraud website (from accessing your own account settings in order to delete my account or to even change my profile photo). I made huge mistake and I posted on profile photo myself and my son (why don’t ask me, stupid, dumb mistake). I wanted to delete that photo but I was not able. Now to my surprise as they recently changed their website I was able to go to public chat. And I started blasting them how they are cheating, taking money from people and not even let them delete the account without PAYING to do that. Moments later their “cult members” or money stealing members started how this is not possible, how WA is great for all their members, but what mostly interested them was why I am able to write in the chat and I’m not paying member. That it is a glitch, and must be fixed. They kept assuring me that if I write to Kyle owner I should be able to access my account settings and change my photo. Of course the only thing that happened is that I got the message that my chat privileges are revoked or terminated and now the only thing that I can see on WA when I log in is to PAY in order to do anything.
    I explained to their “customer support” that I want to access my account settings (all in order to delete account and profile photo with it) and “kyle” or leader of this cult contacted me via email saying this “You don’t have write access because your account is current NOT live. When you resubscribe, you will regain access to your account/settings/etc.”
    You cannot even delete your own photo, you cannot log in to your account settings, and you cannot delete account. All you can do is pay again for premium membership. This is disaster and one of worst fraud sites that I have ever seen, and trust me anyone that come and tell you different don’t mean well to you. They have multiple accounts that they are posting from, reassuring people that what people like me is “evil and not correct”, and if you want trust them and not the person that paid for their “services”.
    To summarize DO NOT pay for anything on this platform as this is 100% fraud.
    P.s they will have several “review platforms” created by themselves through which they will remove any realistic but negative reviews of their platform and keep convincing you that they are the next best thing that will happen to you

    1. Yes, it’s annoying that former members of WA are unable to delete their profiles. This dramatically inflates WA’s membership numbers. The sales page of WA claims that they have more than 1.4 million members, but how many of those are active? A small percentage. And how many of those are WEALTHY through AFFILIATE MARKETING? A further small percentage.

    2. Typical of a person who goes looking for negative things to justify their reason for leaving or not joining.

      Mind you by what I read you are typical of someone who wants everything on a plate and too lazy to go for it themselves.

      I guess I must be part of a cult where we all are eventually going to follow our leader and commit suicide and off to the afterlife.

      What a clown!

      1. Read back on what you said about Authority Hacker 11 months ago. I think that reveals who is the real clown here.

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  149. There are over 400 comments on this thread, with so many of you complaining about doing a little work. No one has lied to you. Every bit of the training tells you that it’s not a get rich quick scheme, which most of you expect. Many of you haven’t even completed the training, yet you have the nerve to comment on how bad the training is.

    I will tell you that I have been doing some form of online marketing for more than 20 years, and out of all the programs, Wealthy Affiliate has been the most honest and upfront program. It takes time to build a business, especially if you are brand new to this business type. I just completed my first month in WA. I upgraded to Premium after about a week because I saw its value, not because I was being pressured to do so.

    I have a niche website up and running with several of my posts already indexed in Google. I have people who are on my list from those posts. I am getting help not only from the training but from the community. I have never had so many people with ZERO vested interest in me want to help me with any questions I posed. I have also received quick support from their support desk for an issue that arose with my blog. I received a response within hours, not days or weeks. And they continued to respond quickly to each follow-up until the issue was resolved.

    So, all of the folks who are SPAMMING that WA is a fraud, you’re the FRAUD. You want a get rich quick program, WA is not for you. If you’d like to build a real business with an army of people cheering you on, then WA is where you want to be. I love it here and cannot see myself leaving anytime soon.

    1. Barry, if you’re still at WA in a year’s time, please come back and let us know how things have gone for you. If you’ve only been there a month, it’s too soon for you to know whether the methods they teach are effective, even if you’ve already had 20 years of other types of online marketing. My only advice to you at this point is that if you are going to stick with WA, do the bootcamp and start promoting WA. Churn out loads of negative reviews of competing Make Money Online products and earn money referring new people to WA. It’s a much easier way of making money than doing your own niche.

      1. Actually, that was not the response I was expecting. Instead of a long and drawn-out debate, you give me useful advice. Still, I am a bit stubborn. Even though I know that what you have suggested is probably the best course of action, I will continue working on my niche site. I just like being able to blog about the thing I love. It may not be as lucrative, but I feel it is right for me at this moment in my life. Thanks for the advice though, it may come in handy later ~ Be safe!

          1. Small world… I don’t remember what search terms brought me here, but it was probably similar to yours. It’s hard to believe this thread has been open for so long and that people still arrive here to press their support for or opposition against Wealthy Affiliates.

            I do not entirely agree with many people when they say that the program promises immediate success. I know for a fact that Kyle and Carson never said that in any of the training I have gone through.

            At the same time, I have later learned that some aspects of the program could stand an update. Specifically, the very first lesson of finding your niche, which you and I discussed recently. That part is crucial to your money-making success and must be done correctly the FIRST time.

            Other than that, it’s a great place to start and an even better place to network as there is a large community of people from different professions and different parts of the world.

          2. I looked up “Wealthy Affiliate negative review” because I wanted to see what some opposite opinions were. This thread did not disappoint, lol! I must admit, I’m pretty ambivalent about WA at this point, though for the most part, I don’t have many reasons to hate it.

            From an engineering level, which is how I look at things, my biggest ire with WA is things:

            1) They’ve engineered the site in a not so subtle way to put the community front and center as their main source of lower-level support. Though that’s genius in some respects, it’s not entirely laid out, and it’s a very broken system that ultimately serves to immensely devalue the information.

            2) They have no excuse not to have a solid and updated core training. Even if they launched an x,000 dollar contest to have the community do it… it seems to me that they are active, but doing the wrong things. That proves to me a very clear intent through action that contradicts what the program’s main buying point is.

            Aside from that, it’s the internet and there are multi-billion dollar companies screwing over people for a lot worse than just a rickety dream in a constantly fluctuating industry. I hope one day one of the two gets out of their multimillion-dollar lifestyles long enough to grow a conscience and at least sit down together and create a GOOD training program…

            But I don’t think that’s possible for them. Mostly because they don’t even know what to do to make money other than let their revolving door program pay them out.

            Aside from them, I like to do things my own way anyways. I know enough to research and develop my owh methods to make money. That’s what I set out to do.

          3. “1) They’ve engineered the site in a not so subtle way to put the community front and center as their main source of lower-level support. Though that’s genius in some respects, it’s not entirely laid out, and it’s a very broken system that ultimately serves to immensely devalue the information.”

            It’s a genius con trick. WA gets their own members to pay to provide support to other members, rather than WA actually training support staff and paying them a proper wage. And the way they do this is with the member rating system and the promise of becomming an “Ambassador” if you rise to the top of the ranks. But what happens when a member reaches Ambassador status? Nothing! And when I was there, it was possible to increase your WA member rank to become an Ambassador simply by having meaningless interactions with other members. The people with the highest WA scores were just the members who wasted the most time chatting on WA. The most successful WA members often had lower WA scores because they were too busy working on their businesses to waste much time chatting on WA.

          4. Yep 100% correct, Marcus!
            I’ve seen the same kind of behaviors on smaller forums and chatrooms, usually from the same kinds of people.
            They’ll award “mod” status to those most willing to suppress dissent on their behalf.
            The WA ranking system is just a gamified version of this concept.
            They still have ambassadors, btw. I was never concerned with rankings much, I saw it as a cool little metric, but nothing else.

            It was when I noticed that people who didn’t seem to be there much longer than me were gaining the status that I thought something was weird.
            I know someone who came in at the same time as me, and basically just sits on WA all day commenting nonsense so she doesn’t lose her ambassador status.
            Saw another guy who were there for FOUR YEARS and says he just made 300 dollars his first month a month or two ago,.. dude was an ambassador and EVERYONE congratulated him.

            Another dude posted today saying he was worried about “becoming another statistic”.
            He then reports, quite proudly, that he and his girlfriend have done 20 posts in 4 months, COMBINED…
            Everyone else told him he’s doing great, keep plodding along.

            I told him the truth: you’re fucking slacking off bro, you need at least 3x more content and you need to be working in direct marketing strategies by now, not struggling to crank out a blog a week between two people.
            Of course, the post is buried because it was too useful of advice to be public.
            God forbid, someone actually succeeds.

          5. Also, any user-generated conted within WA has the potential to show up in Google searches. So, WA are getting their paying members to flood their website with content that can bring in extra search engine traffic. Basically, WA are getting people to pay for the priviledge of doing their work for them.

      2. I read the article and going through the many comments, the main issue is:

        Yes, the WA does tell you success is through hard work and takes a lot of time and will probably not be making money for months or years, but meanwhile they are taking their $49 per month and seem to have sole access to your site; knowing you yourself were probably desperate for money and that’s why you joined WA in the first place.

        The only thing is, what are the other resources one could use to learn IM, which don’t cost as much and can provide some insights (whether one can make it profitable or not, at least one doesn’t lose money).

        Thanks.

  150. I get what you are saying. The question is what are the best affiliate networks you would recommend.
    Thank you in advance.

  151. I will probably write a similar post once I move my website to a new host and sell a few domains that are worth something. I joined Wealthy Affiliate in March and got suckered into the Black Friday deal in May for a year I will not be renewing. Not only is SEO the slowest and most unreliable way to generate traffic but the SEO training webinar by Jay was recorded in 2014. Does anybody think Google might have made a few changes to their algorithm since then?

    Particularly galling is the cult like atmosphere of the most fervent members who seem to have overdosed on Kyle’s Koolade. There are rules and then there are the unwritten rules that nobody knows what are. I just got off of a write ban after 51 days. I was in total solitary confinement as I couldn’t even contact support for the tech support I had paid for,

    I could go on and on but I’ll save it until I get my site up at the new host. I plan to break down the whole pyschology of the ways the more gullible members are given false hope and thus remain as members year after year even thought they aren’t making any money, I don’t really need a website or a blog anymore because I am building specialized funnels with clickfunnels but the way it’s going now that might be the only way to express my opinons what with the way that big tech is trampling all over the right to free speech these days

    1. Yes, the write bans are awful. But also, they do ghost banning. They routinely hide negative posts and comments from everyone except the person wrote them. This can lead members to believe that everything is fine, except they might notice that certain posts or comments of theirs are not getting any replies. This happened to me a number of times before I was eventually permanently write banned. This gives the false appearance that almost everyone at WA is really happy, when that’s not the case.

      And if you’re a well-known internet marketer and you write a negative review of WA, you might just get taken to court. That happened to Jeff Lenney, and as a result he was banned from ever mentioning Wealthy Affiliate publicly again.

  152. I concur with your assessment of WA. I joined in 2016 and even my referrer who was a man I did not intend joining under but their ”cookies” got me to join under him. He was extremely rude and even told me to bugger off from his radar because I accused him off taking too long to answer a question. I reported his abuse to Kyle and got nowhere. Obviously the man who abused me has hundreds of WA’s under him, he’s a great assett to Kyle so received no warning that it’s totally INAPPROPRIATE to speak to a newbie like that. So I left.
    However, during my time with WA the guy named ”Jay Neill” who produced WA video training was extremely good and I learnt a lot from him.
    I also seen many people leave a few months after joining. Those guys promoting WA as their niche lose many who they get to join, thus must continue to promote and replace those who drop out. It’s like refilling a bucket with holes in it.
    I remember one new comer started a site on how to assist people with Reflux (acid that arises from the stomach to the throat). She is not an expert in the field and her content was terrible. Since i”m a Naturopath and know exactly why and how Reflux occurs and how to treat it I gave her the information she needed. However, she couldn’t handle the science involved. She called her site something similar too ”Soothe-the-burn” and like so many others she suddenly disappeared and gave up.
    I’m particularly put off with Googles new algorithm on E-A-T and YMYL which directly affects my niche. Google is now going after unqualified people, particularly ”alternative medicine” and those providing financial advice without adequate training. There are constant hurdles to jump over as an affiliate, it’s no wonder only 1% ever really make a job replacement income from it. I refuse to be a slave to Google and thus want nothing further to do with blogging and struggling to be ”noticed” by ”Google”. Google has also threatened to pull it’s search engine from Australia, proving an abuse of their might and power: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-25/google-may-pull-search-engine-from-australia-what-happens-next/13086712

  153. I concur with your assessment Craig. I joined WA in 2016 and even my referrer who was a man I did not intend joining under but their ”cookies” got me to join under him. He was extremely rude and even told me to bugger off from his radar because I accused him off taking too long to answer a question. I reported his abuse to Kyle and got nowhere. Obviously the man who abused me has hundreds of WA’s under him, he’s a great assett to Kyle so received no warning that it’s totally INAPPROPRIATE to speak to a newbie like that. So I left.
    However, during my time with WA the guy named ”Jay Neill” who produced WA video training was extremely good and I learnt a lot from him.
    I also seen many people leave a few months after joining. Those guys promoting WA as their niche lose many who they get to join, thus must continue to promote and replace those who drop out. It’s like refilling a bucket with holes in it.
    I remember one new comer started a site on how to assist people with Reflux (acid that arises from the stomach to the throat). She is not an expert in the field and her content was terrible. Since i”m a Naturopath and know exactly why and how Reflux occurs and how to treat it I gave her the information she needed. However, she couldn’t handle the science involved. She called her site something similar too ”Soothe-the-burn” and like so many others she suddenly disappeared and gave up.
    I’m particularly put off with Googles new algorithm on E-A-T and YMYL which directly affects my niche. Google is now going after unqualified people, particularly ”alternative medicine” and those providing financial advice without adequate training. There are constant hurdles to jump over as an affiliate, it’s no wonder only 1% ever really make a job replacement income from it. I refuse to be a slave to Google and thus want nothing further to do with blogging and struggling to be ”noticed” by ”Google”. Google has also threatened to pull it’s search engine from Australia, proving an abuse of their might and power: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-25/google-may-pull-search-engine-from-australia-what-happens-next/13086712

  154. Telling people to pursue their ”passion” is the worst advice that anyone can give to newbies who are just getting started online. There are niches that are no-go areas such as gambling and finance. Besides the Covid 19 pandemic has demonstrated how silly this is. Pursuing a passion for traveling in the middle of lockdowns is certainly lame. In actual fact, WA’s front page says ”Turn Your Passion Into A Profitable Business”. Where did it say, create a website just to make money? DUH. You both quack like ducks…. you are ducts!

  155. Here I am, 3 years later. I was sceptical about this article when I was researching whether I should join WA or not. And , I think, I even left a caustic comment here. Thd author is right, WA sell fantasies. The training they offer, in my sole opinion, is a series of bits and pieces of valuable information and tactics , but never revealing the whole picture of how content, strategy and marketing works. All you will be doing is testing your assumptions of his things are done right, and the end lose hope and the drive to continue. It looks so easy— get the membership, take courses, build your site, sell, and reap rewards. They share success story fueling your imagination that you are so close to be like those heroes. The reality is different. As you all know, WA does not give you any guarantees for anything. The only guarantee they give you is the access to materials and sites as long as you pay them. If you want to go that path , I would advise you to take UX or digital marketing courses. At that level, you will not need WA because you will have your own website, business, and means to generate $$.
    BTW, do you think Kyke and Carson have time to talk to thousands of people? There is AI that does the job.
    Thanks Craig. Your article then planted a seed if doubt in my mind, and never joined WA premium membership.

    1. As always I am sorry to hear of yet another casualty to the WA swindle. It’s a shame (and also a testament to your resilience) that you stuck it out for 3 years. All the best to you in whatever it may be that you set your mind to in your next pursuit.

  156. Wealthy Affiliate is a complete scam guys. Initially they tell you that money wont deduct without your permission, but they take away money from credit card without intimations about renewal. After that there are no refunds. Once I spoke to them about refunds, they cancelled my subscription without any notice and now there is no channel to talk to them about refunds. So, $49 Money is gone, no subscription in hand. A big scam. Don’t go for it as you will not get any response once the money is gone. Purchase some other good tools and use Youtube or Udemy for learning.

    1. To be fair you are told in the terms and conditions it is an automatic payment each month, and there are no refunds.

  157. This is like a dumping ground for a bunch of moaners, just because you can’t cut it then you have to portion the blame on something else in this case Wealthy Affiliate.

    Laugh, I nearly peed my pants from the ridiculous review from the author through most of the comments.

    You won’t find a better training platform online period!

    1. Mick, I was like you once, when I first joined WA I believed everything everyone said and wouldn’t hear a bad word said against it. As time went on, I realized the program has its flaws and I left around two years ago. It did give me the grounding to launch an affiliate marketing website that does ok for, but beyond the initial training and learning, there was no value.

      I am interested in how long you have been with WA and what other platforms you have seriously tried?

  158. I’m surprised that this thread is still going on but I’m not at all surprised at the gullibility of so many people signing up for an obvious scam. This last 15 months or so has confirmed how stupid many people are and will believe anything that they are told. The members at WA really are like a cult. (Not sure if that is the correct spelling ????) and easily offended if told they are being cheated.

  159. “bearing in mind that a massive percentage of people are just too damn lazy and want everything on a plate.” I don’t think that’s actually true of most people who pay for a premium WA membership. Most people are aware at that point that it requires work on their part.

    The reason why people fail at WA is not due to lack of effort or work. It’s because the niche advice is shit. Telling people to just create websites about whatever they are most interested in. Occasonally somebody will be lucky that their main interest is also a profitable niche. But for many people, they will just end up with hobby blogs that earn a small amount of spare change at most.

    But of course, if you’re in any doubt about your niche, you can always just do the bootcamp and promote WA instead. Write a glowing review saying that WA is the best, and write reviews of loads of competing products saying that WA is better. It’s actually quite easy. You will suck in enough people doing that to get some fairly decent commissions. And if you do it well enough, you will get taken to the casinos is Las Vegas to throw all your money away.

    1. John, your comment has nothing to do with the subject on this post, seems more like a bit of free advertisement for your website. You haven’t even said anything about the situation that this post is about, just something for your own gain.

  160. Haha At least you are getting bettet rankings with Google after you learnt what to do at WA. Lol. And you get email addresses so you can spam them…

  161. I left WA ages ago so no idea what their training is like now… but honestly, following their advice kept me stuck for years- once I looked outside their general, oversimplified, and often misleading advice, I actually managed to go full time.

    I now run my own web content publishing business and make more than $10,000 per month most months and employ 10 staff.

    If you are still stuck in the WA cult- wake up and look for other training materials to help you see the full picture.

    The SEO game is changing all the time and you need to be on point – find a platform that is up to date and will do a lot of the strategic research for you.

    Also, don’t think that nothing will work – you most certainly CAN turn this into a full-time income/a real business but you need the right guidance and have to work hard.

    Once you get to a certain point then you can navigate your own way much better.

    Good luck all!

  162. So every couple of years, I come back to read the comments – and updates (if any) – that this article provides.

    Well, I’ve got to say that I both agree with and disagree with many comments here; one thing is for sure, for anyone wanting to start off in the IM field, WA is pretty much one of the “least costliest” courses out there.

    Having said that, I was a member for 10 years…. now hold on to your “wow” ‘s here because although they gave me that time, I was only a member from 2012 to 2014 and then paid a yearly membership during Black Friday for 2018, 2019 and 2020 – I’ve deciding to cancel my membership this coming November.

    As many have stated, the information and courses included are good – all depending on what you’re looking for. What I truly didn’t like is the fact that comments are provided by many who – like me at the time – didn’t know an SEO from an SMO.

    I truly believe that WA does bring value to someone who wants to learn about Affiliate Marketing but at one point, you need to find something that is more up to date and definitely more one-on-one based; something WA won’t and can’t provide.

    On the other side, one thing I mentioned to WA – and had my comment deleted – was how they got other users; many without any experience – to answer questions I had…. not cool….

    With that said, was WA worth it? Yes; I believe I got my money’s worth. BUT, at this point, I need something that they can’t offer so I’m thankful but I’m out!

    Here’s to everyone’s success!

  163. Man I’m so glad I came across this page before jumping into the premium membership on WA! The only reason I searched Google for reviews on the program was because my brief questions via email were not answered. I guess that’s what you get for sending a reply to our auto responder series! 🙂

    1. This page is a great reference for anyone thinking of signing up for WA. Joining is free and you get what they tell you. However, you must be prepared to accept the constant promotion of “The Business” not only from the originators of the program, but also other members who are desperate for others to sign up so they can get their commision from their victims. It seems that they will stop at no length to make the company look viable, just for their own benefit. Not for me, I can think for myself and there are many sources of info out there. You just have to look.

  164. If I cancel my subscription with Wealth Affiliates, does that mean I lose my the domain that I paid for myself on top of the subscription? (I paid for it through the WA website). I paid $15 for a year to make my own domain name and not have that “siterubix” attachment on the end so it would seem more credible. If I don’t lose it, will I lose the power to edit and manage my website through WordPress?

  165. Who did you get the domain from? Godaddy or something like that would give you an account to manage. How do you manage your domain?

    1. Hi Sam,
      I use a hosting company called FloatHosting. I know the owners (not personally) but professionally, they have a “100% always online” history.
      If you want to take a look, here’s a link: https://my.floathosting.com/aff.php?aff=295
      Just to be on the clear side, it is an affiliate link which I would be paid should you go ahead with them.
      Good luck!

  166. Don’t trust them they are fake company, with fake promises, they will convince you to invest your hard earned money with them, don’t be fooled by all these scam investment brokers and account managers, i was scammed $70,000 worth bitcoin of my investment capital ,they kept on requesting for extra funds before withdrawal request can be accepted and processed ,at the end i lost all my money,. All efforts to reach out to their customer support desk was declined ,i found it very hard to move on . Luckily I came across a comment on a recovery website that recommended a funds recovery expert on binary/forex and bitcoin investment recovery expect, in the person of Mr. Williams Thompson, and i contacted him immediately through his email address and explained my issues with my investment broker to him, God so kind, him and his team worked relentlessly to recover my funds, and was able to build a case on the scam broker with the information I provided about my trading experience and my funds refunded back to me within a week interval, i was able to get access to my funds back with his help, I still can’t believe how possible it is to get my invested capital back, including my bonus with the company. I know some people must have been a victim of any scam investment broker. I feel obligated to recommend him and his great funds recovery strategy, feel free to reach out to him if you having issues withdrawing your funds, via his email address:williamsthompson439@gmail.com, and he will guide you on steps to take and get your invested capital including your bonus refunded back to you. Good luck

      1. So true! Funny that the guy could get the funds back “in a week” and yet, still uses a gmail account…wow…can help you find all these “lost” funds but for some reason, can’t pay for his own website/email address…

  167. I have been a premium member of WA for months now. Obviously this article is way older than my membership. But still, I am tempted to believe that this thread is not about the WA that I know of. All I see here is hate and mischief. I think these comments are largely fueled by envy, mischief or laziness. This is really sad.

  168. Pingback: The Real Scoop on Wealthy Affiliate: Behind the Scenes - Brand Beat Magazine

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