Wealthy Affiliate 2021 - A Review from Outside

How can I write a review of a company from outside? I am an affiliate of Wealthy Affiliate (accidentally). I was lured into their "Free Membership", searching for a decent program or community to learn all the new tricks and capabilities an internet affiliate marketer needs today. I was absent from business for about ten years. Somehow, it is really like starting out from scratch. But, apart fom also having been a coach at an Internet training school back then, I know how important it is to be in a  community for online marketers. - Well, this community is not free.

(the Company advertises, but in real provides only higly restricted acces to the services for so called free starter members. Plese check my previous review below

Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam ? for "What is in it for Free") 

But of course, at every second click, the offer to upgrade to do what I wanted is put in front of my nose to show me in detail what I'm missing out on. Thus I do know what is going on inside.

What Wealthy Affiliate Offers for Purchase

1. Coaching for Affiliate Marketers of all Levels to Build an Online Home Business

Looking at all the advertising hype within the reviews by exclusively paid members with qualification, I must admit it probably really is the best affiliate marketing platform and training to help you make money online.

They offer an all-in-one solution for a success with Affiliate Marketing. Of course, as a so called free member I can see everything they offer, including most articles, dicussions, the questions and helpful answers. I can say: Yes, it is true: Profound High Class Training by Professionals for Professionals. 

A bit overwhelming for impatient Newbies, but they admit inside that it takes some time before you see profits. (I think, they should first teach them how to promote seriously and credibly, when during the first lessons they teach how to promote writing a review of Wealthy Affiliate...)

2. Managed Wordpress Hosting Included

Wealthy Affiliate offers their own managed WP hosting. 10 Websites, good speed (I must admit, I don't know if 10 Domains are included, nor have I tested the (limited) speed of my own free website on the Siterubix Subdomain yet.) But at least 2 Domains seem to be included. 

WA Managed WP Hosting includes:  

• SSL Certificates
• Instant DNS Setup
• Hosting Speed: "Amazon c3.large (faster)"
• 30GB Web Space
• Bandwidth: 500K Visitors Month
• Unlimted Email Accounts
• Site Builder - Generate Press
• Staging Environment (In older reports I read none, but I trust, this has been added)
• Enterprise Security (whatever this means, but they"have several layers of security that shield your websites and keep them secure so you can sleep easy."
• Bot net Security
• 24/7 Access to Server Admins
• Community Access with Website Feedback, 1on1 Mentoring and - 
• SiteComments (??? lol - but considering that on my 78% restricted free Website also the comment section is not included, they must feel compelled to mention this bfore I get off the hook)

This hosting seems solid and comparatively inexpensive at 49$ a month, specially with the SSL included. From what I can see now, I can of course not judge on the manged hosting, nor if an experienced webmaster wouldn't find it too restrictive with no easy access to the background construction and difficulties to imply 3rd-party-plug-ins, probably no automatic updates either without constant contact to the server admin. 

But as a beginner-friendly turn-key solution it will serve its purpose perfectly. As much as I loved building websites, I know how it can distract one from building their home business as an Affiliate Marketer. 

So far, beside all the (unnecessary and questionable) hype, 

I can fully recommend Wealthy Affiliate as a Beginner-Friendly Turn-Key Solution for Affiliate Marketers who want to Build or Improve their Online Home Business. 

For experienced affiliate marketers, if you face any obstacles with the progress of your business - when can you ever stop learning? Don't underestimate the value of a community! You get Feedback and analyses on demand, comments, maybe even backlinks, shares, followers, and so on.

I forgot to mention the new SEO and the dedicated Keyword-Research Tool, the Cookie-Free Plugin for Google Analytics, and hopefully Adsense as well (which might not be so necessary for non EU webmasters, but here in Germany, tied-up with totally exaggerated cookie-opt-in and privacy regulations, I don't see how I'll be able to use Adsense, even Adwords/ Google Ads on my domains here again.)  

So, now that you know what it costs: 

Seven days free  - first month 19$ - regular 49$ per month   

and what you get for your money: Hosted (WP) Website(s) including Personal Custom Domain(s) - Extensive Feedback - Extensive Coaching, including Videos (the basic free parts could use a bit refreshing though) - Live online Coaching - Personal Mentoring by Experts  

Are you ready to Click the Banner and Purchase The Services of Wealthy Affiliate? 🤩

But Wait! 

Let me tell you how to get the most out of it right from the beginning without all the frustration I had to experience with my "free" membership. (And let me join with the hype - maybe they are right and advertising needs this again nowadays.)  This might be the most important review of Wealthy Affiliate you ever read. (and you will hopefully thank me later by bookmarking my blog, and returning later to sign up from my affiliate link.) 

Before the Checklist, a look at the Wealthy Affiliate Hype and the Questions it is bound to raise.

Want to Build an Online Home Business for Free? -

Forget it! Those Times Are Gone.

A headline like this (the first part, I mean), I found over and over on the net concerning Wealthy Affiliate. And below such a scammy statement, you find the form to sign up for free. So the reader of such an "unbiased review" or advertisement might think: So what, it's free, let's have a look. And Snap! - They sit in the Trap. (Yes, I for instance). 

I was in the wrong place at the wrong time for Wealthy Affiliate. And whoever just signs up to have a look, is probably too! 

So, Don't Sign up for Wealthy Affiliate before you read my Warnings and Hints on How To Be Ready Before Signing Up! Otherwise, you might be frustrated, leave, and miss a really good opportunity.

The old proven Marketing System of  Membership Sites is Dead

It was: Join free, look around, find out how it works for you, what an upgrade has to offer,(ignore the constant upgrade-promts), all in your own time.

That's what I expected when I joined Wealthy Affiliate. 

Wealthy Affiliate advertises (omitting the exaggeragerations) free Membership in a Community, Step-by-Step Affiliate Marketing Training, Live, 24/7 Coaching, a blog inside the Community, ask the instructors questions anytime, two free profit Ready Websites. - and more I did not regard for my decision to join. 

I was so disappointed and angry when I returned some days later, that I wrote this first review of  Wealthy Affiliate. Please check this post below: 

Is Wealthy Affiliate a Scam ?

Short (better ordered) recap : 

Wealthy Affiliate is NOT a Scam.

I don't feel I should apologize for this assumption though, because of of their overhyped advertising, which "at my times" was strict a no-go and sure Scam-Warning.

All the "unbiased" flamingly positive Reviews I found anywhere are written by Pro Members of Wealthy Affiliate and mostly asking for free signups on a sideline. (In spite of all this referral-hunting... .)

Wealthy Affiliate is No MLM

It is a perfectly legit Company which uses Affiliate Marketing. Meaning the Affiliate is striving to sell the Company's Product or Service to third party Customers. And the Affiliate is paid Commissions by the Company. 

The Services offered by Wealthy Affiliate are: Webhosting and Affiliate Training.

Wealthy Affiliate is A Paid Internet Platform for Affiliate Marketers

(offers no Money-back Guaranty, no idea why).

In my eyes, the free offer is nothing more than a hoax to hook up subscribers, and the free testing phase is only a ridiculous Seven Days. But this is legit advertising, because the sign-up, a website, and basic but good coaching and use of a keyword tool are indeed free forever, and nobody is forced to purchase, knowing that no money-back guaranty offered. 

Price: 7 days 0$ -- 1st Month: 19$ -- Regular: 49$/Month 

Prices are clearly visible revealed only after one joins free, and the 30$ off are not a time-limited special offer, but permanent (so far, I have seen no opposite statements) 

"Free" Starter Membership Without Access to the Community

after the 7 day test phase: 

Yes, you get 2 Blocks of Training Lessons - Affiliate Boot Camp, with more for purchase, and starter training to find your niche, branding, and goals - better stuff and live training paid.

Not live, No Possibility to "freely ask any questions you might have" 

No access to the Community - means No access to "your" blog, Not allowed to comment, answer, even like, to take part in the communication.

How about the Two Free Profit-Ready Websites?

Neither free, nor paid. - Logically - No new Website is ever profit ready! So here we have another hoax for newbies to fall for! 

Yes free website (promised are 2, but I did not get far enough in the Niche Marketing training to verify my second one - more about this later). You must create your Site (write the articles) yourself. Apart from the instant install and ready to use, not much is done for you.

You get a Generate Press WP Blog, Personalized Subdomain, Sitebuilder, but all very restricted, no customization (CSS etc.), even Comments are Disabled, and some of the basic free functions of Generate Press. But fast loading, and some useful Plugins (SEO, Statistics) are included. If the download function is unlocked, I don't know, so if you consider dumping it, better copy and paste your content, includig the default legals. 

Another frequently asked question:

Can I Make Money with Wealthy Affiliate ?

Counter Question:  Are there any affiliate programs you cannot make money with? Members earn higher commissions than the Affilates who are no members of course, afiliates even get residual income, because what they promote is a monthly membership, often held for years. 

But be aware: Just because of the name and all hype aound Wealthy Affiliate you cannot make money with this program faster than with others.

Wealthy Affiliate is No Get - Rich - Quick Scheme, but A legit Online Platform

where you can learn serious Online Affiliate Marketing.

Checklist for a Qick Start with Wealthy Affiliate:

To get noticed, even when you are kicked of the community after seven days, be well prepared to join a new community. (Means: have a profile picture ready, and a bit of text for your profile. Also, you need a cover for your blog at hand, 550x200px) 

First Question you will be asked in the Training, starting right after setting up your profile: your earning goals. And later, when you maybe don't have the chance to use your blog anymore, you will be asked howmany new mebers you plan to bring in (when you find 300 you will be invited to a conference in Las Vegas.) (Now you know, why everyone is advertising like crazy with as hype as hype can. Don't pay attention, no chance this year anyway.)

Next step is more serious: Who do you want to be on the Internet? Your Niche, Your Branding, Your Representative new Domain Name. There is more behind Branding than a Keyword Domain and a target Audiance. It is your whole Internet Persona - they don't teach that in the basic training. (And I won't in this article.) Basically, give it a thought, brand yourself as yourself, an Expert in Your Niche. If you are already known as an Expert in your Niche: Keep your Persona, make some changes about your niche, or think of an additional hobby you can make money with. Do not distract any traffic from your main website to the new one. 

If you don't know much about Niches, or can't decide how to split yours over 2 different sites, there is the easier option: Settle for Internet Affiliate Marketing as subject of your free Website until you've learned more, and promote mainly Wealthy Affiliate. -- Even when you plan to upgrade: the free subdomain does not hurt. You can Move your free WP blog to your own Domain in wealthy Affiliate, that is, they will do it for you. 

Any Questions? Comment here please! (no comments possible on my fre😭e Site)

And Here's The Link to Sign Up on for Wealthy Affiliate  again: 😏  ⇒⇒⇑

Online Business Action Plan

Establishing an Internet Presence

Whatever you want to do to make money online – don’t believe there are any shortcuts. The majority of all those “dead sure five step action plans” that are around only work on the basis of solid Internet Presence.
This is real hard work, and it will take some time until it is done. Some more time until it gets known. But is has to be done only once.

1. Building a primary homepage and blog 
     with personal domain and hosting

– absolutely NOthing free - for introducing Yourself and your business(es) likewise.

2. Set up business- and advertising- sites and pages.

          Have them ready before you start advertsing and step 5

3. Set up a blog for your offer or your niche at the same time.

          Network Marketers: Set up two separate blogs. Treat your niche /
          offer and your business opportunity as two different things.

4. Advertise and start building your list.

         Advertise your own sites / pages which carry your offers of
         affiliate products, so visitors can return to you and you can build
         your own list, not the vendor’s. Keep the traffic you create for 
         yourself as far as possible.

5. Unify your appearance on the Web 2.0,

        so that people always know it is you.
        The “link to your homepage” should really be to one of your 
        homepages even if affiliate-links are allowed. It gives a better
        impression, traffic, maybe back links, even page rank for you.

You're done - half ways

Now you can relax a bit, but there is still much work to do:

• Permanent advertising for traffic.
• Email Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Tracking visitors for referring sites and keywords
• Tracking ads for effectiveness
• Blogging regularily
• Refreshing websites
• Optimizing websites
• Linkbuilding
• …

This list is actually almost endless, but when getting into the routine, you can do it without getting exhausted. Autopilot traffic, for instance, does exist.
Warning to newbies, who believe “you don’t need a website”:
At least half of the work is in vain, when there is no concentration of traffic and visitors to one or few unique centers which you own and control. Even a “personalized website”, which in most cases differs just in some appended affiliate id from the thousand others is not enough. A simple redirect or sub domain from your own domain can do magic.

The Thirty Day Challenge - Week 4 to start soon

What did I do all the time?

Most important: My Project is started: on Squidoo:

Get Fit and Stay In Shape at Your Computer

In planning still: a website with articles on this subject.

More about the intense training and my Web 2.O. experience in another Lens:

My Thirty Day Challenge

Now I also know that and how Community Sites can work - not only in this stupid way most of them do:
FaceBook is for networking, Twitter is also cool. A lot more about physical Fitness exercises at home and at the computer when my site is up. (Tomorrow, hopefully)

Oh, and about Self Improvement...
I must not forget to claim the Gifts from the

117 Self Improvement Gifts

If you read this, and want some too, hurry they close in 3 days, I think.

Finally: First Things - Brainstorming

After more than a year of looking around, yes, it is about time to get focussed. Question is, on what - so I better make a list now, and why not blog it, as blogging was the start of it all for me anyways, and I really must post more often.

So... What do I want to do online?
Hmm - what I really want is of secondary importance unfortunately. Therefore let's say here:
I want to earn a living from what I do online. - Why else did I become an Internet Marketer....

Now I learned so far, that the basis is advertising, in any possible way.
But there are just too many ways to actually work in them all. That does not mean to drop all the others and use just one way, but I must pick one after the other and intensify it.

I know by now, what I must do and have about one million guides by about one million gurus which contain about five million diffent advises. - Impossible to sort out this information overload.

So what I am doing now is, scaning my harddrives with closed eyes and picking up long forgotten useful programs, like the one mentioned below. But I must not forget to keep my eyes open and see what is going on at this moment as well.

First, there is a new PLR-Giveaway opening ... Again without me, again no chance for me to build my own list, but I know too, the next JV is coming soon and it is better to be really prepared - not to find something to give away; that is easy - no, one must be prepared to have and maintain the list.

(mental note: discuss this in my Squidoo Lens, as well as the fact, that I am indeed astonished, how few of the many many newcomers to jvs have indeed not been prepared for that, as I see from just too many newsletters I get the content of which shows me this.)

(mental note 2 absolutely unsubscribe from everything for the time being - how can I read these 36+thousand unread mails? I cannot even delete them sorted in time before my bottomless yahoo box is filled!)

(mental note 3 do make some special notes about what content could be fed into your autoresponder, and ask the support what happens, when the last prewritten message is sent to everyone - But really do that later!)

My next steps now - unordered yet:

• Try to make a business plan
• Blog all about this stuff, and sort WHERE
  when ordered, I should officially open the Internet Marketing Blog at sabinering.de.
• Make a Site, on everything concened with advertising first, like the one about the List Builders. Why concerned with advertising? - I need downlines everywhere of course.
  These sites (accompanied by my lenses will be on:
• - Traffic Exchanges
• - Blogging and marketing with content (perhaps a second lense on that)
• - Communities
• - Safelists (will come first, directly after reading the Ultimate Safelist Survival Guide by my fellow-safelister Soren Jordanson, who knows how to do this more effectively then I so far)
• Set up and maintain all my Adsense Sites - that is, for heaven's sake not all of them!
  Only those to be combined with I what I have up already, Internet Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing (must urgently be updated), and my niches in waiting: Anything concerned with --> Health, Wellness, Beauty, Weight Control, --> Love and Relationships, Dating etc. Online mainly.
• Everything with matching affiliate products
• Write some eBooks - why else do I collect PLR like mad? - almost evry item can be improved, updated.
• Most important and hardest to accomplish: Apply everything to German circumstances and start through selling Herbalife here - with the help of internet marketing...
  I just hope, I do not have to become a 'Guru' here first, cause upto now I can see no practicable schemes here :((
  So for I saw, we 'imported' Empowerism and Yorgoo - and I what think about such programs that are nothing but expensive downline builders, I will state more explicitely in a planned lense on newbie traps ...
  Otherwise we have about two traffic exchanges and some paidmailers - but perhaps I can make my son get a good traffic site going on one of the cool domains he recently registered...
  

Ok, now I'll look this over, find the links I might put here - grin, no post without advertisment - and the next post will follow very soon. After the Real Life Work of accounting -

My daily work organization is now: -->Accounting, Taxes, 5 hours; -->doing the house, 2 hours; -->working up neglected household, 2 hours; --> special housework and other things to prepare a short trip in two weeks, 2 hours; -->writing and mailing out adcopy, 2 or 3 hours; -->cleaning mailboxes, downloading, sorting stuff, 6 hours, +-> chat interruptions, 3 hours more, +->random TE-surfing, 1 hour

Oops, I forgot some breaks for eating and preparing food - well, sometimes my son does that, but we cannot live of pizzas and baguettes, lol. Howmany hours of sleep did I plan in?... Let's sum the above up...

About my New Home Biz Blog

March 2006... This is the new improved Internet Affiliate Marketing Blog of the (Space)-Biz-Lady Neila~Sabine. I'M STILL GIVING AWAY THINGS LIKE CRAZY. But I need a Blog without all that advertising and more  CONTENT. I don't just tell You JOIN and GRAB IT, I explain why I did, and why You should.

Neila's Crazy Giveaways

will still run in Traffic Exchanges, but only with one or two newest featured posts. Then the content is sorted and put up here, with all the important links and smaller banners.

I still don't have a sales page but am an Affiliate Marketer, and my Blogs are still private, not commercial (although I sure hope it will help me making $$$$$ ) 

Why Not Blog Feeds Instead Of eMail Marketing?

Would You like to receive a Newsletter from me? - Guess, rather not 😁 No need to subscribe, always fearing, I might fill Your box with daily mailings (that would be superfluous work for both of us).

Better idea: BOOKMARK my Page and look in whenever You have time. Just don't miss to really do that! 

Best alternative: adopt the RSS feed to Your Yahoo, MSN, Google or whatever RSS reader You use.  Here it is:

http://neilas-biz-tips.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Hmm... Must check that... Feel free to Email my Posts to Yourself or friends that might be interested - do not spam of course!

Email function off, Feed Readers and Social Bookmarking dead... The new owner of Del.ici.ous (or so) Posted on the HP he had a paid service like that and won't was not going to be so stupid re-open Del.ici.ous for free. 

I found a nice service, which now seems to be on the rise: Pocket (link following, as soon as I find it again). MyBlogLog still exists, but don't find it very lifely. 

If you have the Opera Browser, you can read Feeds. There is the "News" page with a section "My Feeds". You need to open this, right-click on the feed you want to adopt, copy and paste it there.

The same you can do with the eMail program "Thunderbird". "Feedreader" is closed at the moment, but Google said they'll be back. 

And what happened to the giant authority Sites like Digg and Technorati? I heared, that Reddit still exists. But my account is gone 😢 

Well, I must do Neila's Biz Tips and reuse some old posts, when I got my  tags ordered and found out how to delete the delete those I don't want anymore.

Keep in Touch :) 

- Comments and Questions are always welcome. Let's read each other soon 

~Neila~