If you find yourself asking the question “Is Wealthy Affiliate worth the money?”, I guess you are probably in search of making money through affiliate marketing or want to start your online business to make passive income or something along these lines…?
If that’s the case, you need to read this before you decide on whether this is the right path for you.
As a Wealthy Affiliate premium member, I want to share with you an unbiased view on whether Wealthy Affiliate (WA) is worth the money.
Ok, you are probably rolling your eyes thinking – “yeah right, another promotional post to suck me in to buying”…
The truth is, while the commission is good, I would much rather help you to make your own decision by laying out all the facts and share my experience, rather than pushing you to a path that you will resent me forever.
In fact, I don’t think WA is suitable for EVERYONE.
In this post, I will cover:
- What is Wealthy Affiliate?
- How much does Wealthy Affiliate cost?
- How does it compare to other alternatives?
- Who is WA best for (to get the value for money)?
- Who should stay away from WA?
So if you are still with me here, then let’s get to it.
Disclosure: Some of the links in the article contains affiliate links, which means that if you make a purchase through one of the links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the blog and allows me to continue to make free content. I will only recommend products that I use and love. Thank you for your support!
What is Wealthy Affiliate?
In case you want a recap of what Wealthy Affiliate is, read on.
If not, feel free to skip to the next section.
Wealthy Affiliate (WA) is an all-in-one platform that combines WordPress websites hosting, training and software. It provides 24/7 technical support, a step-by-step guide to building your first website from the ground up within a couple of days. In addition, a sequence of training courses that will teach you how to make money through affiliate marketing.
If you ever get stuck? You can always live chat, post questions, or ask via private message to a community of over 1800 expert coaches (more on this later).
How Much Does Wealthy Affiliate Cost?
Since we are talking about if Wealthy Affiliate is worth the money, let’s have a look at the cost of their memberships.
WA has 2 types of membership:
- Startup – FREE (no credit card required, no time limit)
- Premium – $49/month (or $29.9/month if paid annually)
There is no hidden cost or upsells.
I know $49/month may sound like a lot of money at first, but this investment includes a step-by-step guide to get your site off the ground running, education on affiliate marketing, the cost of WordPress site hosting, an SEO tool, and so much more.
Do you know, an average person spends way more than that a month on COFFEE?
*First month premium for only $19
How Does WA Compare with Bluehost Cost?
Another way to look at whether Wealthy Affiliate is worth the money, is by comparing with one of the most popular WordPress web hosting site – Bluehost.
Bluehost advertises a very low entry fee at $2.95/month to start your new website. However, as far as the hosting site goes, this is a very bare-boned service. To actually get a secured online business off the ground running, you’ll find yourself throwing money at all the add-ons. The costs quickly add up.
The comparable membership from Bluehost is the “Managed WordPress Hosting – Grow” plan, which costs $29.95/month.
Here is how the essential features of WA compares with the Bluehost basic plan and Bluehost Managed Hosting – Grow plan:
The Most Valuable Features on Wealthy Affiliate
To me, here are the most valuable features I found being a WA premium member:
1. SEO keyword searching tool.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is an essential tool to help websites rank on the first page in Google (without paying for ads).
The popular SEO searching tool on the market ranges from $100-200/month. The fact that WA has a built-in SEO keyword searching tool – Jaxxy Lite, that alone is worth $49/month.
Although Jaxxy Lite is not the most sophisticated SEO tool out there, it’s good enough for beginners to intermediate users, especially for the price you pay.
2. A step-by-step starting guide, and on-going training
Here’s a quick personal story…
Before I joined WA, I built my own website with Bluehost. I spent 2 very long and frustrating months alone, watching countless YouTube videos, just to get the website off the ground running. By the time I launched my business, I had already run out of steam and was traumatised by just how HARD building a website was. Needless to say, that business never took off, but the valuable lesson was, when starting an online business, do NOT try to do it cheaply, because what you end up paying for is TIME…
After learning from my failure, to pay for a platform that walks me step-by-step on how to set up a website, and provides on-going training on how to make it profitable was extremely valuable for me.
With the step-by-step guide, my new site was up running in 2 days!
As for on-going training, it’s important (if not necessary) to invest in your on-going education as an online business owner. Entrepreneurs spend a minimum $30/month on average on their on-going education.
WA houses 2 starter training tracks:
- Online Entrepreneur Certification, which is the best of people who wants to learn online business in general
- Affiliate Bootcamp, which focuses on affiliate marketing.
In addition, it has hundreds of training courses, live video classes on various aspects of affiliate marketing & online business, all included in the premium membership.
3. Live help, 1-on-1 coaching and community help.
Be warned that you WILL run into issues while building your site. Troubleshooting without a support system was the most painful and time-consuming part of my first failure.
With WA, you can get an instant response through one of the 3 ways:
- live chat
- private message to one of the experts
- Post your question for the community to respond
4. Security Package
Wealthy Affiliate provides the security package to ensure you feel safe running your business. This should be, and is a table stake for me, so far I have had a positive experience with WA.
But Joann switched from an outside host to WA, and says now her site doesn’t have any hacking or server issues…
Additional Valuable Features on Wealthy Affiliate includes:
- Website feedback and comment platform
- Weekly live video classes
- Website backup
- Private access to owners
What Can be Improved from Wealthy Affiliate?
As much as Wealthy Affiliate is a one-stop-shop for someone who is brand new to start an online business/blog, it’s not perfect.
Here are a few areas where WA can make improvements:
- Some of the training courses are outdated, even though most of the concepts still apply. I was told that they will be updating the core training later in 2020.
- Lack of Pinterest strategy. Pinterest is one of my main sources of traffic, especially at the beginning of my blog journey, but I had to go outside to learn that skill. (This is the eCourse I took and recommend)
- Lack of email marketing strategy. WA touched on this briefly, but no in-depth discussion. I think this is a huge miss. Email marketing strategy courses are usually a high price tag item. I’ve recently invested in one of the best courses called “Love your List 2.0” (it only opens for enrollment certain time of the year). I know that’s not for everyone. An alternative entry course from the same mentor is “The Email Marketing Fairy“.
Take a Quick Look at Inside of Wealthy Affiliate…
Here is a tour of inside of Wealthy Affiliate from a successful WA mama.
Who is WA Suitable For?
Wealthy Affiliate is suitable for
- complete beginners who are not techy enough with website building
- People who want to get their website up and running as soon as possible
- Someone who wants to learn how to make money from affiliate marketing
- Learners who prefer to interact, ask questions and get coached
- Entrepreneurs who are willing to work hard and are patient enough before seeing results
- One who can afford the investment of $49/month
Who Should Stay Away from WA?
In contrast, Wealthy Affiliate is not suitable for you if
- you are already techy enough to build websites
- just want to create a hobby blog but don’t care about making money
- already an affiliate marketing expert
- Want to get rich fast
- Don’t have the financial means for the premium membership
Any Discount on Wealthy Affiliate Membership?
It’s not a discount per se, but you can save some money to lower the $49/month.
- Try the Free Startup membership first. Be sure you try before you know this is the right platform for you.
- If you upgrade to Premium within the first 7 days of your FREE start-up membership, you only pay $19 first month Premium instead of $49 ($30 saving).
First month premium for only $19
In Conclusion, is Wealthy Affiliate Worth the Money?
So is Wealthy Affiliate really worth the money?
I’d say yes, ONLY for those who are non-techy beginners, looking for a comprehensive platform to learn, prefer interaction over independence while building an online business. If that’s you, you will get the most value out of Wealthy Affiliate platform.
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There was a time when I used to ask this myself. I used to use Godaddy for my hosting but then when I wanted to host more than 2 sites it became I problem. Just to host more websites only that was almost 50 bucks and I meed the jaaxy platform and all, it was going to cost me more than 200 bucks per month to acquire all the tools I needed and yetvtuis was all for 49$ per month. I would never doubt with such a standard wealthy affiliate Is by far the best and cheapest plartfom you can find and worth more than the monthly fee.
Thanks for the sharing your experience on Wealthy Affiliate Donny.
Wealthy Affiliate is an amazing platform carefully designed to help people realise their financial dreams not within a short period of time but with hardwork and patience. I agreed with with you that it is not for everyone: not for the get rich fast and not for expert. Its lessons and instructions are second to none that even Newbie could get a niche and build a Website in less than 30mins. It really Worth the monthly premium. Thank for the publication.
Glad you found Wealthy Affiliate is worth the money for you. Thanks for stopping by.
No doubt, the website hosting alone makes it a worthwhile expense, especially considering the tools you are given. Throw in the complete spectrum of training (which you can spend FAR more than the Premium membership, alone), and it’s a no-brainer.
I started with the free account, myself, to get a look at the training and tools. Shortly after kicking the tires, it was an easy decision to upgrade to the Premium.
-Steve
Hi Steve, glad to hear another positive case with WA.
awesome review Chloe, and truly from an unbiased perspective I might add. Especially from someone who is a member of WA. I agree with you on most aspects. Except for one, however it is fairly new, and that is the new Pinterest live training that Jay put together. I have been using that method for a while now and have to say that I get a HUGE amount of traffic from this platform after putting the live WA training to use. I also looked outside of WA for this type of training, but recently Jay has been dominating the platform. This technique is quite unique. Thanks for the awesome and unbiased review.
Thanks for sharing your experience on WA.
Well, What a Super Great Website, with so many Interesting Articles!
I just recently joined WA, and am still learning my way around!
I was blown away on how much info is available!
Well Done You Chloe!
Welcome to Wealthy Affiliate! I hope you got a balanced view of WA and looking forward to embarking your online journey.
All the best Eric.