I count myself lucky to have stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate when I was scouring the internet for ways to start a blog and build an online empire. Because when you’re searching for that kind of how-to, Wealthy Affiliate shows you exactly how to turn your passion into a thriving online business. Step-by-Step.
How to…? Wealthy Affiliate Provides Online Entrepreneur Training
- How to find a niche?
- How to set up your website?
- How to set up your domain?
- How to get traffic to your website?
- How to make money from your website?
- How to become an Affiliate Marketer?
- How to create an online business?
- How to become a Digital Entrepreneur?
How to…? Wealthy Affiliate answers these questions and so many more…
Please note: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn affiliate commission should you choose to purchase any product or service I recommend in this post.
Wealthy Affiliate is primarily an Online University offering you Training on how to build a website, master social engagement, how to monetize your site and more.
If you’ve just decided to become a blogger or build your own website for your existing business, you are most likely looking for the answers to these questions…
1. How to Find Your Niche?
Actually, I was quite surprised to find that this was usually the first question new bloggers ask because I had a niche and a goal in mind for my first website.
I had started writing an e-book on the benefits of breastfeeding and wanted to create a website to launch and market the book. That’s why I set up my free site, Toddler Teacher which later became Happy Human Pacifier.
These were the first two websites I built at Wealthy Affiliate while following their Online Certification Training (which is free, by the way).
Once the blogging bug had bitten, I realised that you can blog about anything you’re passionate about. I moved onto this site, Inspiring Mompreneurs and have since created Fempreneurs Unite and Mompreneur Conference as well.
Wealthy Affiliate’s Answer
This is exactly what Wealthy Affiliate teaches. Kyle, one of the owners of WA, puts it this way:
“When choosing a niche that fits you, you should be choosing something that is ideally an interest, a passion, a hobby, a problem, a need or a want. Almost anything you can think of is a niche and that is why we are going to get you to choose YOUR niche based on things that you are interested in… ”
“In the simplest form, a niche is really a group of people looking for stuff. “
If that last sentence sounds a little confusing to you, I invite you to either read the module or watch the video in WA’s Online Certification Training. Did I mention it was free?
Click here to start turning your passion into a thriving online business
One important thing to mention here, and Kyle mentions it often in his training – is this:
You are in the business of helping, not selling.
Find what it is you know, or do that can be most useful to others, find what problem you solve and you will find your pot of gold at the end of the blogging rainbow.
2. How to Set up Your Website?
This section has two parts. Setting up a Domain and setting up Hosting. Wealthy Affiliate is my answer to both. Let me explain…
How to Set up a Domain?
To set up a blog (that you’re planning to monetize) you’ll need to choose and purchase a Domain Name. This is the website name you get to keep forever (unless of course, you sell it for millions somewhere down the line).
I have built 3 Domains, all are .com’s (recommended). All are registered with Wealthy Affiliate (recommended).
- This site’s domain name is Inspiring Mompreneurs
- My breastfeeding site is Happy Human Pacifier.
- I also have just started building a website in my own personal name (highly recommended), Lauren Kinghorn.
I shopped around A LOT before I chose WA as my Domain Service provider and realised that other service providers appeared to be offering the same for less, but once you made a decision to purchase, they had some upsells which in fact made them more expensive.
Wealthy Affiliate’s Answer
It can take a little while to find your niche and come up with the ideal Domain Name, so WA offers their Starter Members the option to build a FREE Website first on the SiteRubix platform.
Most service providers charge you an ANNUAL Domain Registration fee, Wealthy Affiliate is no different.
Domains at Wealthy Affiliate generally cost around $13.99 to $15.99 a year. If you’ve been shopping around and that seems a little steep to you, let me put things in perspective.
Both Privacy and Business Protection are INCLUDED in your annual domain reg fee at WA.
This means WA is actually coming in at almost half the price of most other providers when you take into account all the upsells other providers have.
All of my Domains at Wealthy Affiliate cost me $13.99 a year, straight-up. No upsells, no price increases.
Bonus: If you go YEARLY at Wealthy Affiliate, you get 1 Free Domain Registration a year (more about that later).
How to Host Your Website?
When you set up a blog, you’ll also need Web Hosting which is charged out monthly by most service providers. Many service providers also charge extra for email addresses linked to your hosted domain.
Wealthy Affiliate’s Answer
Wealthy Affiliate Premium Membership offers managed WordPress hosting of 10 Websites.
Let’s compare Wealthy Affiliate to similar service providers.
- Pagely hosts 5 Websites for $199 per month
- WPEngine hosts 10 Websites for $115 per month
- Kinsta hosts 10 Websites for $200 per month
- Wealthy Affiliate hosts 10 websites for only $49 per month!
Wealthy Affiliate’s hosting is included with your Premium membership and is all-inclusive.
You can also set up 5 free email addresses linked to each domain name you’ve registered, e.g. moms@inspiringmompreneurs.com, articles@inspiringmompreneurs.com, lauren@inspiringmompreneurs.com etc.
With Wealthy Affiliate’s hosting there are no upsells, no costs for additional caching plugins, email, SSL, or any of the other add-on’s that other hosting provider’s charge. This makes them the most cost-efficient option (by a mile). AND they are the fastest in the WordPress industry.
It’s well-worth joining Wealthy Affiliate, just for the hosting benefits alone.
And we haven’t even started discussing the training yet… that’s up next…
3. How to Build Your Website?
Wealthy Affiliate offers so much more than just Domain Registration and Web Hosting.
If you’re new to blogging you’ll be looking for some guidance and training too.
Wealthy Affiliate’s Answer
Wealthy Affiliate is primarily an Online University offering you Training on how to build a website, master social engagement, how to monetize your site and more.
In WA’s Online Certification Training they answer all of the following questions and many more:
- How to Choose Your Niche
- How to Get Your Site Ready for SEO
- How to Find Content Ideas from Keywords
- How to do Keyword Research
- How to Add and Activate Plugins
- How to Create Your First About Me Page
- How to Create Your Privacy Page
- How to Set up a Domain Specific Email Account
What’s wonderful is that Wealthy Affiliate answers almost all these questions in their very first Online Certification Course which is offered FREE to Starter Members.
Training is in modules with written content, video and tasks to be completed so that you can take it step-by-step building your website as you learn.
Wealthy Affiliate also tackles all the nitty-gritty details that can totally flummox new bloggers like…
- How to set up and verify Google Webmaster Tools
- How to set up Google Authorship in WordPress
- How to Create a Sitemap and Submit it to the Search Engines
Struggling to find good free images for your blog posts?
Both Premium and Starter Members in Wealthy Affiliate have access to over a MILLION FREE, CC0 Images within their Site Content Tool.
4. How to Drive Traffic to Your Site?
Because Wealthy Affiliate focuses at first on teaching you how to get FREE traffic to your site, also known as organic traffic, they also offer you a tool to help you with keyword research and SEO.
When you join Wealthy Affiliate, even as a FREE Starter Member, you have access to Jaaxy, one of the best keyword tools in the market. Read More Here.
In their Online Certification Training, Wealthy Affiliate also answers the following questions, and more…
- How to Create Content that Converts
- How to Create Keyword-Rich Posts
- How to Create Engagement on Your Website (WA has a brilliant Site Comments Tool)
- How to Master Social Engagement
- How to Use Facebook the right way
- How to Get Started with Pinterest
- How to Get Started with Twitter
- How to do Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
5. How to Make Money with your Website?
Of course, having a website is one, thing, monetizing it is quite another.
In their Online Certification Training and Affiliate Bootcamp, Wealthy Affiliate answers the following questions, and more…
- How to find and join Affiliate Programs in your niche
- How to find Affiliate Networks
- How to add Affiliate Links to your pages and posts
- How to gain instant access to over a MILLION products
- How to leverage Product Reviews
- How to get paid for Ads on your site
- How to grow your audience
- How to catapult your referrals
- How to set up your first PPC Campaign
- How to scale successful PPC Campaigns
Oh… and my favourite one…
6. How to Make Money within Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate even offers a few brilliant ways for you to make some money while you’re learning the ropes.
Introducing…
The Open Education Project
Once you’ve been a member of WA for 3 months you’re entitled to start sharing your own knowledge in the form of Training Tutorials or Videos.
You earn according to how popular your training is, (essentially, how many people complete, like and comment on your training). So the emphasis is on providing training of value.
This benefits you as the trainer and the community as a whole because we’re constantly enjoying the benefit of up-to-date training from all the active, thriving members at Wealthy Affiliate.
I’ve been a bit slack about adding Training Tutorials, I’ve only published 4 in 4 years. Oops!
Here’s my most popular tutorial (by far) on Wealthy Affiliate:
How to Earn Money from Blogs Before You Have Significant Traffic
The WA Affiliate Program
Wealthy Affiliate also has its own Affiliate Program with very lucrative earnings.
Even Starter Members can earn from WA’s Affiliate Program, although they earn half what Premium Members earn.
Before we can discuss the Affiliate Program, let’s discuss the membership options.
What Does it Cost To Join Wealthy Affiliate?
There are 3 levels of membership at Wealthy Affiliate.
1. Starter Membership
As mentioned a few times, Starter Membership is Free, so you get to try before you buy (no credit card required).
As a Starter member, you can do Level 1 Training, try out Jaaxy Lite and create a free website.
2. Premium Membership
If you get hooked, as I did, you can upgrade to Premium membership and access:
- The rest of the Online Certification Course, as well as
- Affiliate Bootcamp where you learn Affiliate Marketing
- Plenty more classes on many different topics related to building an online business
- Permanent access to Jaaxy Lite
- And you get to blog on the WA platform and interact with the community
For Premium membership, you’ll only pay
- $ 49 monthly, or
- $ 495 yearly (works out to $41.25 a month or nearly 2 months free)
3. Premium Plus Membership
Once you’re making money online, you can upgrade to Premium Plus membership, like I did when Premium + was introduced in November 2020.
As a Premium Plus member, you’ll get access to
- Advanced training by experts who are successful Affiliate Marketers
- Full access to Jaaxy Enterprise
- And a number of other benefits which you can find here
You get all Premium Plus benefits for only
- $ 99 monthly, or
- $ 995 yearly (works out to $82.92 a month, nearly 2 months free per year)
I’ve had a chance to use Jaaxy Enterprise and start doing some of the Premium Plus training, and I can see how my online business is about to take off. Because I’m learning from Affiliate Marketers who have poured hours of their time and spent fortunes on advanced training methods and built successful businesses.
I’ve also had a chance to compare Wealthy Affiliate to other programs on the market and I don’t know any other program that’s offering more bang for your buck. I can see that my return on investment will be well worth it.
Watch this space.
The Benefit of Going Yearly at Wealthy Affiliate
There are a number of perks for going yearly but of course, the main one is the discounted pricing.
- You get a FREE .com Domain
- $50 in Community Credits. which you can use to get Site Comments or Site Feedback
- $93 Discount for Premium Yearly (nearly 2 months free per year)
- $193 Discount for Premium Plus Yearly (nearly 2 months free per year)
- Kyle’s Video Bonus
What do You Earn as an Affiliate Promoting Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate is one of the few training programs I’ve found online where you can earn affiliate income with no money down.
And WA’s affiliate commissions are generous, almost half of the monthly or yearly commitment.
Starter members earn half of what Premium members earn, which I think is pretty amazing because it means you can earn affiliate commissions whether you’re paying the monthly or yearly fees or not.
And these are recurring commissions, which means you earn them every month or year that your referral remains a member.
What’s more, Starter Members and Premium Members are entitled to earn commissions from Premium Plus referrals.
Starter Members Earn
- $11.25 for monthly Premium referrals, recurring each month
- $ 117.50 for yearly Premium referrals, recurring each year
- $23.25 for monthly Premium Plus referrals, recurring each month
- $232.50 for yearly Premium Plus referrals, recurring each year
Nothing to sneeze at.
Premium Members Earn
The WA Affiliate Program is also one of the few programs that pay their Premium members for referring free members to their online education platform (this is called pay-per-action or pay-per-referral).
Although $1 per referral doesn’t sound like much, it adds up over time.
- $ 1 credit for all referrals (even Starter Members) who set up their profile image and description
- $ 1 credit for all domains their referrals purchase
- $ 23.50 for monthly Premium referrals, recurring each month
- $ 235 for yearly Premium referrals, recurring each year
- $ 46.50 for monthly Premium Plus referrals, recurring each month
- $ 465 for yearly Premium Plus referrals, recurring each year
I’m sure you’ll agree, these are very handsome commissions. Especially when you take into account that you don’t have to be a Premium Plus member yourself, in order to earn Premium Plus commissions.
Though to be honest, I’m not sure how a Premium member would really know how brilliant the Premium + training really is without working through it themselves. I’m only just understanding what I have in my hands now because I’ve taken the time to attend some of the classes.
Currently (Feb 2021), I’m following a brilliant series on YouTube by popular YouTuber Benji’s Dad (Chris Myles) and he’s giving away closely guarded secrets I haven’t seen him share on YouTube.
And I’m also doing the equally exceptional training series on getting to Vegas in a year by Super Affiliate, Tim McKinlay (aka Affiliate UnGuru).
What? Who mentioned Vegas? Oh, did I forget to mention that every year, Wealthy Affiliate treats their Super Affiliates to an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas? It’s all based on the WA Affiliate Program. To earn this prestigious incentive, you need to get 300 Affiliate sales in a year. Tim has been to Vegas for a few years in a row and says he can teach us how to do it in a year.
Having completed most of his course, I believe him. The penny has dropped.
I’m off to start my new affiliate site so I can follow Tim’s training to the letter.
7. How to Build an Online Business Empire?
One thing I have to mention is that it’s virtually impossible to get through all the training at Wealthy Affiliate because there is so much.
You’ll find hours and hours of video as well as pages and pages of text on the WA platform. And if you follow the training as directed, implementing as you go, it’s going to take years to master everything.
However, that’s the beauty of it. Once you’ve completed the basic training, you can pick and choose your classes and find your favourite teachers on the platform.
There are so many directions you can take with your online business.
How to… ? Wealthy Affiliate has got you covered.
(You fill in the blanks).
Wealthy Affiliate Overview
- Name: Wealthy Affiliate
- Owners: Kyle and Carson
- Website: wealthyaffiliate.com
- Membership Options:
- Free – Starter Member
- $ 49 monthly – Premium Member
- $ 495 – Premium Yearly
- $ 99 Monthly – Premium Plus Member
- $ 995 Yearly – Premium Plus Yearly
Wealthy Affiliate Rankings
- Training: 10/10
- Support: 10/10
- Website Builder: 10 /10
- Research Tools: 9/10
- Site Comments Tool: 10/10
- Site Feedback Tool: 9/10
- Site Content Editor: 10/10
- WordPress Hosting: 10/10
- Site Support: 10/10
- Success Stories: 10/10
My Overall Ranking of Wealthy Affiliate: 98%
What I LOVE LOVE LOVE about Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate is always innovating. That’s because Kyle and Carson are constantly dreaming up new ways of helping their members simplify their lives. Our lives. YOUR life as a new blogger. They live by their code:
We are in the business of helping, not selling.
Personally, I cannot live create content for my websites without WA’s brilliant Keyword Tool (Jaaxy) Site Comments Tool and Site Content Tool.
I also love blogging within Wealthy Affiliate itself, another wonderful feature and benefit at WA.
This turns what could be a lonely pursuit into a fun way to make friends online. It’s also a way of getting amazing feedback, encouragement, ideas and help from fellow bloggers.
We all have the shared goal of moving our blogs forward, and Kyle and Carson’s friendly leadership and ethos have fostered a people-helping-people community.
There’s so much more to say, but truly, it’s best that you EXPERIENCE what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer YOU.
Why not give Wealthy Affiliate a test-run today? Remember, it’s FREE to join as a Starter Member.
Find out How to Turn Your Passion into a Thriving Online Business.
You can take it from there. Looking forward to seeing you in the community.
What are you grappling with as an entrepreneur? Do you have a passion you’d like to turn into a thriving online business?
Please feel free to leave a question in the comments below and I’ll let you know if WA provides the answer you’re looking for.
PS. If you’re already a WA Member and want to join in the discussion, please let us know what LOVE LOVE LOVE about Wealthy Affiliate.
This is such an informative content about wealthy affiliate platform. I don’t like the fact it’s for beginners only, because after you grow there is a lack of lessons there…
Aah, Shelly, Thanks for your comment. Interesting you should say that because Wealthy Affiliate recently introduced Premium Plus membership with advanced training now available. I’ve upgraded to Premium + and have been meaning to update this post. Thanks for the nudge.
What a great review. It is thanks to you that I joined Wealthy Affiliate, Lauren, and it has been an awesome journey of learning.
Thank you for giving me the kick that I needed to learn something so alien to me.
You are a star.
Thanks so much! I’m so pleased it’s been such an awesome journey for you. Your website is fabulous!
I have been with WA in the past. Well the core concept is good which is to create content that help people to make a wiser purchasing decision. Helping is the best form of selling and I totally agree with that! =)
Since it rely heavily on content to convert, here are some extra insights on how to create content that converts: https://crimsonpack.com/13-simple-ways-to-create-content-that-converts/
It is going to be beneficial for people who are joining WA under you as they need to create quality content like you do
Thanks for your valuable comment and providing the link to your post. Much appreciated. I’ll check it out as soon as I get a gap.
Lauren, you are a star!!
Thanks Dipuo!
I’m so happy I came a cross your review. I joined the program and it’s absolutely wonderful!! I have never seen so many video trainings and such a huge bloggers community that is always there to help with any question you may have.
I really love that it’s free to join, and then I can see by myself if the program fits my needs… It’s perfect.
Thank you for sharing 🙂
Thanks a million and Congrats for joining Wealthy Affiliate! See you in the Members Forum. 🙂
Interesting read, many so called guru’s will claim they can teach you how to be successful online without have ever experiencing the success they’re teaching. Kyle and Carson from Wealthy Affiliate have had success in the online space and have both made money online. If anyone is looking to be successful online Wealthy Affiliate is a great resource because you’re learning from people who have proven success online.
Hi Aaron, So true. Thanks for a great comment.
Hi, Lauren! I must commend you for creating such a unique title in your review of Wealthy Affiliate. Indeed this magnificent company provides clear answers to so many “How To” questions that every individual seeking to learn how to run an online business would want the correct answers to.
From learning “how to” benefit from receiving instructions on niche selection, keyword research, (and SEO), choosing the right template for a website, creating the website, (something that most laymen would not have been able to do back in 2000 as instead having a background on computer coding/programing and website design would have been necessary), hosting the website, finding and then choosing the right domain name for the website, creating highly relevant content articles, driving traffic to the website and then the nitty-gritty on making money – ALL are answered quite well by Wealthy Affiliate.
Best of all joining Wealthy Affiliate at the premium membership level which would allow an individual to take advantage of ALL that this superlative program has to offer is I would say as almost being a steal! $49/month and much less if a person chooses to go at the yearly rate, (about 60% off of that figure paying all at once for 12 months) is something that no other similar program to WA comes close to offering.
You created such a great review of Wealthy Affiliate and all that it has to offer, Lauren!
Jeff
Thanks so much Jeff!
This is a great post outlining the difference between Wealthy Affiliate and other domains hosting. When you break down the cost, I realize it is true that WA offers much more than the others! Thank you for your lovely post that also confirmed my decision to join Wealthy Affiliate. I wish you all the best in your journey!
Cheers, Susan
Thanks Susan. So happy to hear you found my post helpful, even as a WA member.