Looking to earn some money on the side or replace your income? There is no shortage of websites looking to take your hard earned money in exchange for a promise to get rich quick. You may have heard of Wealthy Affiliate – a website that claims to help you make money in affiliate marketing through their step by step training system. And you may be wondering is the Wealthy Affiliate a Scam or what?

I personally looked into a few other sites online and was pretty skeptical. I even had a phone call with an organization called MOBE – advocated by John Chow. They wanted a lot of money – $1000’s – to start up. I was looking to make some income, not spend it.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Try It For Free – Without Entering Credit Card Information

I was pretty impressed you could try the Wealthy Affiliate site for a full 7 days, no credit card information required. What’s better than free – right? Usually they rope you in, have you enter your credit card information, banking you won’t remember to cancel by the 7th day and BAM you get automatically charged.

The Wealthy Affiliate Program let’s you take a look inside before you buy – something I did not see anywhere else. Other sites made many mysterious promises about what their program or system offered, but you had to take their word for it.

I love that Wealthy Affiliate tells you and shows you what’s inside. Try Before you Buy – that was a huge selling point for me.

A Peek Inside Wealthy Affiliate

As you can see there is so much information at your fingertips when you log in. The resources and information on Wealthy Affiliate are vast.

The Massive Amount of Training Keeps Growing

There are 10 Levels to walk you through step by step how to get started in affiliate marketing. With the 7 day membership you have access to the first level, which contains 10 lessons.

Here is what the first level looks like

There is a checklist at the end of each lesson to keep you on track. Once everything is checked as complete then it automatically bookmarks the place where you left off. Sounds simple, yet it is very effective at keeping you on track.

Most lessons contain a video to watch which are so helpful for visual people like me. I found the videos to be very valuable.

The video training keeps going, there are numerous other training videos that walk you through how to do so many things. It is a huge timesaver vs scouring the web for the answer.

If that’s not enough, they offer two bootcamps – one to build your website and the other to promote Wealthy Affiliate.

To top it off, Wealthy Affiliate offers a new live training each and every week – 52 weeks per year (you can watch a recording later if you prefer). In an ever changing industry – Wealthy Affiliate helps to keep you completely up to date.

The live training’s are valuable and highly relevant – and the trainer always keeps user feedback and questions in mind when presenting. The training’s (and past recorded training’s) are of course included with your membership.

Do They Get you with Add On’s and Upgrades?

Once you join Wealthy Affiliate – you pay a monthly fee and you’ve got it all. There is no secret backdoor information you have no access to. Many other systems, rope you in at a lower price, to find out that training modules are extra.

Wealthy Affiliate includes My-Linker – cloak your links and track where your clicks are coming from.

“By replacing your affiliate links on your website with My-Linker links you can track how much traffic you are sending to your merchant pages, which links are effective (and which aren’t), and which keywords users are coming to your page from. This tool will greatly benefit you in making informed optimization decisions for your site.”

Instead of feeling like I’m missing out on something that could make me more successful more quickly – I feel like I have it all.

Free Keyword Tool vs. Paid Version

Wealthy Affiliate prides themselves on being upgrade free – their program offers all that you need.  Wealthy Affiliate does offer a service that make life a little easier. Some might consider them an upgrade, personally I see it much like a first class airplane ticket vs. coach ticket. It’s always nice to fly first class, but coach still gets you where you need to go for much less.

They have a free keyword tool (the coach ticket) and it does a good job. They recommend you try Jaxxy (the first class ticket), the paid keyword tool, while going through your training, just to check it out. When someone has the income from their website, Wealthy Affiliate suggests Jaaxy.

I never felt pressured to join Jaxxy – in fact, I have heard several people suggest to wait until your income from affiliate marketing can support the cost. Jaxxy is not necessary to be successful, the free keyword tool gets the job done.

Web Hosting and Domain names

When I signed up – Wealthy Affiliate suggested namecheap.com for the purchase of my domain name. Recently Wealthy Affiliate has fully integrated the purchase of domain names – called “SiteDomains”. You can buy your domain name through Wealthy Affiliate AND it’s a lot cheaper than their competitors.

To someone is serious about affiliate marketing your own domain name is essential – I don’t view it as an add on but the cost of setting up a business.

Here is a peek at the pricing compared to others – I was happily impressed.

Your website hosting is included in the monthly fee. If someone is not ready for a paid site – Wealthy Affiliate offers free websites with the siterubix.com name at the end. Personally, at less than $15 a year – it is a no brainer to get your own domain with all the perks.

Impressive and Interactive Support Network

I can find about 90% of the answers to my questions by searching the training’s and searching the questions others have asked. I think that is fantastic.

The other 10% of the time I have a few people I can email or post a question.

There is a live chat area to ask questions and discuss ideas. I try to steer clear of this area as I get sucked in and lose track of time. It is a great way to get a quick answer though.

There is a tremendous amount of support from others within the community. Need feedback on your website? They’ve got “SiteFeedback” – an area to give and receive feedback.

Wealthy Affiliate is a vibrant community of people who support each other and want to help others succeed.

Pros

• Wealthy Affiliate is the real deal, they show you the steps you need to take to be successful. This is an ideal program for someone with no affiliate marketing experience (or website experience like me). Even a seasoned marketer would benefit greatly.
• Whether you are looking to supplement your income or replace your normal 9-5 job, wealthy affiliate can help you achieve those goals.
• Build a business at home around your schedule. I’m a stay at home Mom – this was a perfect fit for me.
• There is so much training, it is mind boggling. If you have a question, chances are someone else has already asked it. Very impressive quality training.
• Everything is included – no add ons or upsells!
• A free keyword tool without pressure to use their paid version

Cons

• This is not a get rich quick scheme, it will take time and work
• There is a lot of information to learn and so much information/training at Wealthy Affiliate. Those new to Wealthy Affiliate need to stay on task with their lessons otherwise they can get quite overwhelmed and lose momentum.
• It is easy to get distracted with all the training and information. It sounds silly, but they have the lessons structured in the best possible way.
• Sometimes its easy to ask a question in the forum and get it answered. Other times you get crickets. Live chat is a great way to get a question answered if other methods fail.  Sending a private message is also a great way to get an answer, you just need to know who to ask.
• I wish I found it sooner

Should You Take the Leap?

Are you ready to take the leap into affiliate marketing? You should make sure it is the right time in your life and you are willing to go the mile and do the work you need to do.

Wealthy Affiliate makes it clear – this is NOT a get rich quick scheme. You have to put a lot of hard work into it. The great thing is you get to pick what the topic of your work will be. For me, it is something I love so I have a fun time.

Wealthy Affiliate is the best way I know how to get started online with affiliate marketing.

Get started today! Click here to begin your new career as your own boss!