Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam? Or Is It a Legitimate Platform?

Last Updated on: March 9, 2023 by Mike Bahno Mudesi

Some people succeed in the online world and then some keep failing.

Do you know what the difference between these two is?

Besides the right mindset, these days one needs to have proper information on how to do things; one needs to have proper tools to work effectively.

All people have weaknesses and make mistakes from time to time, so it is also great to have someone who can help and be supportive when needed. That means a proper mastermind or a helpful community.

Now does Wealthy Affiliate have all these aspects above?
Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam?

Let’s go over this platform to find out how it works;
Here is an overview of what you are going to find out:

Wealthy Affiliate Overview
Does This Look Like a Scam?
Affiliate Marketing Training Course
What Are The Issues With the Wealthy Affiliate?
Website Builder – Free SSL
Become The Online Entrepreneur
Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam?

I do mention also some drawbacks or complaints about the WA so I try my best to make this Wealthy Affiliate Review as unbiased as possible.

Wealthy Affiliate Overview

I will be honest with you about WA and I don’t want to make this review just another sales pitch.
My intention is not to hide anything from you since that would not be beneficial.

Quite the opposite – I want to help you to determine whether this platform is going to be the right spot for you so you can start with your online business.

There is no such thing as a perfect platform, so I am sure there might be some aspects you may not like but overall I think you will be impressed.

You have the benefit to try the platform for free for 7 days.
There is no credit card required.

Within this Starter account, you have 5 lessons that you can go through, including how to choose a niche, how to set up your website, how to create content, understand the keywords, and so on.
After the week, you have 3 choices:

Upgrade to Premium – Take full advantage of this platform for $49 a month (if paid yearly the price is $495 per year)
Upgrade to Premium+ – Full access to the training, but instead of 52 Live classes, there are 200+ Expert Classes Per Year, and a lot more
Keep your Starter account – The training will get locked, but you still have access to WA and you can work on your WordPress website

Please, take your time, read it through and let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below.

We are going to cover in detail what is wealthy affiliate about, so you will learn how to create a website and what it takes to rank well in search engines.

You can become an SEO expert and it will be up to you to run your own online business or you will offer an SEO service for other companies that need that.

Does This Look Like a Scam?

Building Business Online Can Be Fun With Proper Support.

Wealthy Affiliate has been around since 2005. Over time the community of WA has reached more than a million members.
The platform was created as an initiative to help other people to succeed online.

One of the greatest things about Wealthy Affiliate is the community.

There are people from all over the world which means that there are people online 24/7.
I must admit I was truly surprised by the approach of most of the members. They are very helpful and supportive.

The platform is partially made as a social platform.
People write their blogs or ask questions.

They talk inside the online chat area, about various topics (not always related to online marketing). This is also a great source for finding relevant information for your particular problem.

You choose who to follow and when this person posts a blog or asks a question you get a notification. You can also write a private message to a certain person.

I find the community very helpful.
I remember when I wanted to create my website, I had to seek help somewhere else. In many cases, I spent hours until I found the exact answer.

Within the Wealthy Affiliate platform, you also have the search bar where you type your request.

You see that relevant blogs and answers pop down, so you don’t have to raise the question again.

There are members inside the community with many years of experience in the digital marketing field, and many of them have also experience before they joined the Wealthy Affiliate.

As I said there are people from all over the world.
For many members, English is not their first language. Yet they have been able to achieve great accomplishments.
The important is that your English is on a communicative level.

When you write a blog or you do a product review, it is as if you are talking to your friend.
If you still feel like you need feedback, you can ask other members.

You can request feedback and there will be 2 or 3 randomly selected guys who will give you an opinion about your blog.
In my experience, they all have been very objective.

What is a better school than constructive feedback, right? That way you can keep improving. That is the power of the community.

If you would like to take a look inside the Wealthy Affiliate platform, you are welcome to do it:

Find Out More

How Does a Real Scam Look Like?

Just as a side note;
the scammy website does not have a free trial as Wealthy Affiliate has.

Scammy websites usually do not last longer than a few years. Most of the time you are not able to find out who is behind the scam and they definitely do not offer a lot of value (if any).

With that being said let’s find out what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer.

Affiliate Marketing Training Course

The training is the most comprehensive I have found on the entire internet.

Everything that you need to know about affiliate marketing is right there.
Of course, you can check also other sources.

It is perfectly normal and people within Wealthy Affiliate do that as well. Usually, they share their knowledge in their blogs, so it is available for everyone.

There are 2 main training inside the Wealthy Affiliate.

On top of that, you have 52 Live classes per year (every Friday there is Jay ready with his webinar). All webinars are recorded, so you can watch them as many times as you wish.

1) Core training is called Online Entrepreneur Certification

It has 5 levels. Each level contains on average 10 lessons. It is a series of courses walking you through the process of creating a business within any niche you want or are interested in.

I don’t want to overwhelm you here with the training structure. You can learn about it in my guideline. I just want to mention some key objectives:

Choose Niche
Setting Up Your Website
Understanding Keywords
Creating Keyword-Rich Content
The Traffic Breakdown
Low Hanging Fruit
Understanding the Money in Online Business
Affiliate Programs, Links
Earning Pennies or Dollars
Social Media
People need to read your content
Bing and Yahoo – still 33%
Articulating a plan for months and years…

2) The second type of training is called Affiliate Bootcamp

This training has 7 Levels, again each level contains 10 lessons.

Affiliate Bootcamp is a series of courses walking you through the process of creating a business in a niche related to the promotion of Wealthy Affiliate.

Here are the key objectives of Affiliate Bootcamp:

Building Your Website (Website Look Around, Plugins)
Getting Your Website Ready for SEO
Creating Readable Content that Converts and Using Targeted Keywords
Understanding Affiliate Programs & Networks
Making Your Social Profiles Brand friendly
Social Waste vs. Productivity
Creating Your Own Videos
A Lesson about Customer Perspective
Incorporating Your Custom Sign-up Forms
Helping Folks is Critical
PPC on Bing Ads (Paying Traffic on Bing & Yahoo)
Understanding the Google Adwords Opportunity
Creating a Long Term, Scalable PPC Campaign

As I mentioned earlier, the Live Events inside Wealthy Affiliate are awesome.
You watch over Jay’s shoulder, how he does things.
Jay is a training chief at Wealthy Affiliate. He offers spectacular live training.

Talking about Jay as a Live Video Training Coach – let’s take a look at how you can create a website in a minute following Jay’s short tutorial video:

You can do that as well:

Now back to the training.
Each Webinar is more than 1 hour long, even if it is scheduled for 60 minutes only. It always lasts 10-15 minutes longer.
At the end of each webinar, there is a FAQ section so people get the answers right away.

I just want to mention some topics that are covered:

SEO Strategies to Explode your rankings
Changing WordPress Themes
Email Marketing (4 hours stretched over 4 webinars)
YouTube (Ranking, Producing Video, Streaming, Advertising on YouTube)
Google Analytics (Introduction, Tracking)
The 2019 SEO Checklist
Researching of Competition

My absolutely favorite webinars are the Case study series.

You can start your own business just by watching these 4 webinars (if you are a little bit familiar with WordPress and what is going on in the online world).

I was also talking about feedback when it comes to creating your website.

Four times a year there is a “Hot Seat” session webinar where Jay is checking your website and gives you honest feedback.

If your website is not selected, you can still leverage the feedback Jay is giving to another person’s website.

Usually, mistakes we do are in principle very similar. That is why it is worthy to watch how a professional audits a website.

So regarding the training, I can go on and on. If you would like to find out more about training, you can take a look inside the platform.

Just use your email address and you are all set. I will be there as well 🙂

Please note that you have access only for 7 days.
After the week, you can keep your account (it is called the Starter membership), but you won’t be able to take full advantage of the platform.

Above the starter membership, there is only 1 level, which is the Premium.

In case you decide to continue, you would need to sign up for the Premium membership (or Premium+).

And when you sign up, as a bonus I can offer your 1st-month special offer for $19 only.
You can then decide to pay the membership monthly, yearly, or for 6 months.

As a Premium member, you are allowed to create your training and share it with other folks.

Depending on the complexity of your training you get credit.
With this credit, you can either cash out or also pay for the membership or use it differently.

Find Out More About Wealthy Affiliate

There you find a link where you can sign up (for FREE) for WA. You will get a message from me and Kyle (the founder).

What Are The Issues With the Wealthy Affiliate?

Let me also share with you some of the drawbacks of Wealthy Affiliate.

You may have seen them at different sites, so we will go over them to check how objective they are.
I admit that some of the cons are justified;
But let’s be honest – nothing is perfect.

1) Free Account – Is There a Catch?

I saw a review where they say that there is a catch, regarding the free account.

There is no catch at all.
I always explain that the free option is for 7 days only and the training is limited.
For the 7 days, there is access only to the 1st phase of the training, which is 5 lessons.

I also include that after the 7 days are up, there is no mandatory upgrade to Premium, but the training will remain locked.

There is also no action required from the user since he or she uses only email to sign up.

2) Apparently, the Training is Disorganized

This can be very subjective.
But in my opinion, training is well organized.

Here is how to access the core training. It takes 3 clicks to start with training.

The same applies to other training (within the platform) as well.
I suggest taking a look at this post (Wealthy Affiliate Login) where I describe what the course looks like and how it is structured.

There is an Online Entrepreneur Certification training.
This is a core training with Wealthy Affiliate. This has 5 Levels (50 lessons). Each Level is nicely structured with a menu on your right to see where you are (what you have already accomplished, and what you have not done yet)
Affiliate Bootcamp. This is secondary training, which is independent of the Online Entrepreneur Certification.
This training has 7 Levels or phases (that equals 70 lessons). Again these are nicely structured.
Live Events.
You can find here more than 300 video courses, on different topics.
These tutorials take place every Friday at 5 pm Pacific Time (PT). All of them are recorded and you can watch them anytime.

These 3 sections are for me the most important ones.

I admit that this platform has a lot of training materials, and a newbie can easily get overwhelmed.

But at the end of the day, it is as easy to navigate throughout the platform as within Facebook.
Everyone can watch a walk-through video where it is explained how to navigate the platform.

3) Wealthy Affiliate Teaches Only Basic SEO Strategies

I am sure SEO can be difficult to comprehend entirely, especially from a technical point of view.

From the practical point of view, everything that I have learned about SEO, I have learned inside the Wealthy Affiliate.

Do they cover every single aspect of SEO?

Most likely not, but again. It is taught what practically works.
I have many posts ranking on the 1st page of Google.

I admit, most of my posts are not ranked within TOP10 – in many cases, I see that other WA member who has more experience than I have outranked me.

The bottom line is, that Google likes quality content.
You have to write for your reader or visitor, and you have to provide him with value.

WA teaches exactly this and they put a lot of emphases that every member should come up with quality content.

Let’s take a look at the Live Events or webinars that are recorded.
More than 400 live events covering different topics.
When we want to find a webinar regarding SEO, we just search for it.

Each webinar lasts more than 1 hour, including a Q&A where members ask questions (of course when the webinar is alive.

That takes place each Friday at 5 pm Pacific Time)

4) Too Many Affiliates – Crowded Space

Apparently, there are too many members within WA (more than 1.5 Million) and it is hard to make a living.
This statement is false.

First of all, there are thousands of niches out there and another thousand “sub-niches” where people can make 4 figures a month.

Take just one example – diet, or losing weight.
Yes, it is not easy to compete with big companies.

But there is always room for people to become an authority within smaller niches like

– How to lose weight after pregnancy.
– How to lose weight after 50.
– Lose weight after menopause.
– Lose weight without exercise and so on…

The thing is that there are more than 4.5 billion people online in 2020. All these people are connected and searching for help, advice, recommendations, and so on.

Another argument against the “crowded space” statement is that even within the same niche the competition is a good thing.

It is proof that there is money
Not all people like one kind of approach. What do I mean by that? -> Take a look at the Fast food industry. You have Burger King and McDonald’s at the same corner (or same street very close to each other)
Now does it mean that one of them is out of business? Of course not -> Different people prefer different things, even though these two are in the same industry.

And in the online world, the so-called competition matters even less than in the offline world.

In many cases, people decide what website they want to read based on the actual look of the website.

The design, the color, and the structure of the article.
If they like it, they read it.

Everyone has a different taste.

5) Lack of Control – You Can Be Easily Out of Business

It is said, that the best way how to earn money is to have your own product.

Well, that might be true.

But it takes tremendous work, time, and money to let people know about your new product.

If it is a tangible product – well good luck with that.
You need someone to manufacture it, you need customer service, you need people working for you, you need to pay distributors, and so on.

If you have a digital product – it is easier, but still, you need a lot of time (and often a team of people) to get this done.

Why would a beginner try to come up and sell a new product? It is extremely difficult to do.
Sell what is already selling.

Even better -> get into that game as an affiliate marketer and you will learn a lot, just by applying the knowledge and being part of the game.

There is a big chance that you will earn a lot and eventually with that knowledge and resources you can come up with a new product afterward.

Wealthy Affiliate is perfect for beginners and intermediate marketers.

They don’t teach, how to start a new Facebook, Twitter, or Airbnb.

They want to help a person who wants to learn new skills – how to create a website, how to get traffic, and how to monetize the traffic.

Oh, and that thing – If an affiliate program decides to change the rules or kick you out – Well, that is life. This happens in every industry.

Does it happen every week?
Of course not.

Learn the principle of affiliate marketing.
Apply it in one industry.

If they change the rules – so what?
You have your badge already.

I mean, once you learned how to monetize the website you can go to any industry and/or affiliate program you want.

6) Ranking Within the Wealthy Affiliate is Annoying

Depending on your activity within the WA you are assigned a ranking.

This could be for some members pretty annoying (I admit that).

Some do not care about the ranking and some try to get as high as possible.
Many folks like to compete – it is normal in other walks of life as well.

Do you remember the times in school?
There are classmates with great grades, but they might not be successful in real life.

What I mean by that, is that the ranking within WA does not reveal your financial success.
Many members have 3-digit rankings (even 4) and are more experienced marketers than those with 2-digit rankings.

Some people love to socialize, some do not.

Many members just went through the training, without engaging with the community, and they earn $5,000 a month just from affiliate marketing.

Others reached high ranks but their website has only a few visitors per day.

Again, we people are different.
Creators of WA do their best to show the majority of people what works. Or what works probably the best.

It is up to each member to apply the knowledge.

Regarding affiliate marketing or internet marketing, there is one thought I have in my mind.

I like what John Reese said:
Internet marketing is not science. It is an art.

I am not quite sure if he was the first one who said it but it is true.
With that being said, the perfect training course does not exist.

7) Too Many Affiliates of WA

The concern is about Wealthy Affiliate Reviews.
That there are too many of them and all are just positive ones.

Well, is it wrong? Is it right?

I don’t know.
But If I compare WA with any other similar training course within this industry, I must say that WA training suits me the best.

It does not have to be the one for you.
Therefore there is this 7-day free trial period to test it out.

You have nothing to lose. A week is enough time to figure out whether this is something you like or not.
It is like a probation period. You have a right to leave, without paying a dime.

I think it is fair.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
I am really curious about what you think.

8) Success within the WA

One particular review talks about one WA member who, apparently, in his 10 years career of being an affiliate marketer does not make a lot.

Here is the screenshot of that review:

Let me point out that the income in that video is for 8 months only, and it is an income from Mediavine Ads.

On top of that, he makes more than $5G’s a month with affiliate marketing only. (you can read his fresh post from January 23rd here)

And let me get one point straight.

Success is relative. Nobody goes to the internet, creates a website a week later makes $3,000 per week.
There is a procedure to get to that point, a learning curve if you will.

Do you know what makes a newbie happy?

When he finds that his post is indexed by Google. In other words, google ranks his post (on that new website).
When he sees that his first post is ranked on the 1st page of google
When he sees that the number of visitors goes up
When he makes the first sale online – that feeling is amazing
When he makes 3 figures a month, then 4…
When he gets to the level so he can delegate the work to others/he can outsource

These are important milestones in every business. It is also called progress. And progress makes people happy.
And I include some of the success stories at the end of this post, too.

In the next section, we are going to cover what WA has to offer, besides the training.

Keyword Research Tool – Included

We all know that to monetize the website, we need traffic.
Wealthy Affiliate’s focus is on organic traffic.

To simplify it:

We are building a website – creating content.
Now people go to Google or Bing and they ask questions or look for help.

At Wealthy Affiliate. we are taught how to get our website on the 1st page for search engines, so people naturally click on our website.

Being on the 1st page of any search engine means traffic.
Once we have the traffic we can monetize our website without being “salesy“.

One of the essential keys how to getting on the first page of either Google or Bing/Yahoo is proper Keyword Research.

If you have not heard about keyword research check the following article, explaining how to research keywords for SEO.

If you are at least a little bit familiar with the Keyword research principle, here you can check out the Jaaxy tool for free.

You have 30 free searches:

Website Builder – Free SSL

People usually tend to freak out when it comes to creating a website.

When I wanted to start my business back in 2014 I had to pay for building my website.
Too complicated I guessed, so I rather hire a company.

Today, with the knowledge I can do that within a few hours including the content and a few pictures.

But still, many folks prefer website builders like Wix, since it may seem easier.

The truth is that it is more expensive than the website platform inside Wealthy Affiliate.

Here is the overview of Wix including the pricing

Inside Wealthy Affiliate, you pay approximately $15 per year.
Try to build your website for free – you see how easy it is.

Create your website with the SiteRubix website platform. Wealthy Affiliate offers some of the most useful and integrated tools for website analysis, ranking, and security.

Have you tried it already?
It is really easy to use.

If you are looking for a great page builder based on WordPress, you can also check the Elementor.
It is Free to use and you can customize any theme.

But I digress.

Become The Online Entrepreneur

Being a member of Wealthy Affiliate is not just a member of some educational platform.

You are part of the community.
You can become a friend with some of the members, or you don’t have to.

It is perfect for introverts (like partially myself) but also for persons who love to create video training and feel good in front of the camera.

I have reviewed many online courses, high-ticket products, and low-quality digital systems, but Wealthy Affiliate is truly the best option for beginners and advanced marketers.

It is also due to the very reasonable price.

The founders, Kyle and Carson want to make this platform accessible for all people.

Wealthy Affiliate is one of the most comprehensive affiliate programs on the internet.

Let me shortly summarize for you what you get if you unlock the full unrestricted Premium access to Wealthy Affiliate:

Let me know what your thoughts about Wealthy Affiliate are.