How Does Wealthy Affiliate Work? 7 Things You Need To Know

Starting an online business can be a bit daunting in the beginning. Usually, this results in hours and hours of searching online for help and information. While searching for information regarding my own online business, one website that keeps constantly kept appearing, again and again, is Wealthy Affiliate (see my Wealthy Affiliate review here)

The frequency of this company popping up in my searches made me realize that this was something that needed more research. After extensive research, I have taken the time to put together a list of the pros and cons of Wealthy Affiliate, an affiliate marketing company aimed at teaching you how to run your own affiliate marketing business.

How does Wealthy Affiliate work? Wealthy Affiliate is a website designed to provide tools and training to affiliate marketers. They provide up-to-date training programs that are aimed at optimizing your business’ website and generate internet traffic to your website. Wealthy Affiliate allows you to make money from this traffic that you have generated, by marketing and promoting all of the leading brands in the world on your website.

Affiliate marketing is known for its get-rich-quick schemes, however, there are no claims on Wealthy Affiliate’s website about a fast track to internet wealth. Instead, they outline the ways that they help their customers to achieve their personal business goals. Below we will take a look into the ways in which Wealthy Affiliate aims to help you maximize your online business potential.

Right from the start, it becomes apparent by browsing through the Wealthy Affiliate website that they are specifically catering to the training and development of online business owners or potential online business owners. The website explains their key offerings, and they try to clearly state what may separate them from their competition.

Depending on which competitor, there may be only one or two extra features that Wealthy Affiliate provides, or it may be several. However, Wealthy Affiliate wants their potential customers to clearly understand that they are professionals at training online businesses, and these are some of the ways in which they do so:

1. There are no tricks or get-rich-quick claims by Wealthy Affiliate. They are truly committed to providing the tools and training that a new, or relatively new, online business owner may need. Some intermediate-to-advanced affiliate marketers may become frustrated over time due to the “beginner” nature of these training programs. Nonetheless, most business owners at every level can find knowledge, help, and training at their fingertips through the Wealthy Affiliate website.
2. There are two packages provided when joining Wealthy Affiliate. They offer a free membership account, called the “Starter” package, which offers up a teaser of their $49 per month “Premium” package to customers.
3. It is completely possible to utilize free membership when starting up and creating a new online business. However, most customers will find it helpful to upgrade to the Premium membership in order to really nail down the professional nature of their website, and provide the best experience for their online customers.
4. Some of the key features in the Starter model include:
   • Live Help for the first 7 days
   • One-on-One Coaching for the first 7 days
   • 2 Websites
   • Website Backup
   • Beginner Training Course
   • Personal Affiliate Blog
   • Affiliate Bootcamp Training – Phase 1 (out of 7)
   • Video Walk-Throughs
   • Keyword Research Tool – 30 Searches
   • Training Classrooms – 2
   • Affiliate Program
   • Earn While You Learn
5. While not 100% necessary, a blossoming entrepreneur may find the Premium package to be well worth the $49 per month. The Premium features include:
   • Unlimited Live Help
   • Private Messaging
   • Website Security Package
   • Website Backup
   • Beginner Training Course
   • Personal Affiliate Blog
   • Affiliate Bootcamp Training – All 7 Phases
   • Live Video Classes
   • Video Walk-Throughs
   • Keyword Research Tool – Unlimited Searches
   • Training Classrooms – 12
   • Affiliate Program – 2x Higher Payout
   • Earn While You Learn
   • One-on-One Coaching – Unlimited
   • Private Access to Owners
   • 24/7/365 Web Support
   • Website Feedback Platform
   • Website Comment Platform
   • Website Analysis

Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson, co-founders of ClickFunnels, created it with the intention of simplifying the process and time required to get your message out to the world.

It has a drag-and-drop feature making it so simple and quick to build a funnel that even a kid could do it. In fact, some kids have started their own businesses and use ClickFunnels as their platform of choice.

And ClickFunnels is the funnel platform of choice for many business owners. ClickFunnels currently has almost 99,000 users.

#6 – Unfortunately, the internet can be seen as a place of endless opportunity which does not exist in the outside world. This is where the get-rich-quick, work-from-home, and make-money-off-others infamous lines come from. The idea of making money online is intriguing to almost anyone.

There is a mystery about it that tickles at the human imagination. “Many people make money online, so why can’t I”? The question usually is “How can I”? And Wealthy Affiliate replies back with a “Why wouldn’t you?”.

#7 – Wealthy Affiliate is a legitimate business, that offers a legitimate product, so how could they be considered a scam? Well, the answer is a little tricky. Wealthy Affiliate is a controversial product.

Any product that is designed as a “make money online” how-to kit, which Wealthy Affiliate promotes itself as, will have a certain amount of people who have taken the course and have failed.

Wealthy Affiliate has a pretty vocal number of former users that did not make any money, and wrongly proclaim the whole system to be a scam. However, calling Wealthy Affiliate a scam because it didn’t work for you isn’t fair because the system has worked for numerous people.

Wealthy Affiliate is not a pyramid scheme. There is no recruiter “above” you, and you are not required to find people to work “below” you. Wealthy Affiliate does not require you to promote the Wealthy Affiliate product, but you can choose to do to so if you want. Wealthy Affiliate is an online learning community that is aimed at teaching online business owners how to start and maintain a successful online presence.

1. Decide on a business model. There are 2 types of business models, called Resource Sites and Review Sites. Resource Sites embed a merchant partner’s link or advertisement inside of how-to or informational posts from a 3rd party website. Review Sites are websites that are designed to review and inform, the public about a product that was tried and tested by the site’s author. Review sites will also include a link or banner to the merchant’s website.
2. Create your own website where you can advertise and link your chosen products or services.
3. Select a niche. This will be something that you are generally interested in, or passionate about. You do not need to be an expert, but you must be willing to put in the work to find out as much about this niche as possible in order to set yourself apart.
4. Choose products and services. Choose something that is specific to your niche. Whether it is more common products or something more specific such as e-readers or Pay-Per-Click marketing models. Find something that is interesting to your audience and will attract their attention.
5. Find fellow affiliate marketers. The most common way to engage with fellow affiliate marketers is to gain a substantial following of your own. Through a combined effort with a fellow affiliate marketer, both you and your partner(s) can generate much more website traffic than marketing each individual website alone. Most affiliate marketers are open to collaboration, so the best thing you can do is reach out to other’s and develop your own website’s base of followers.
6. Generate traffic to your affiliate program. One of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your website is by blogging or posting a web article. This is something that people are excited to read and are willing to share with other people. These blog posts might include an email subscription list to invite users to an affiliate program of your choice.