Review on Wealthy Affiliate

Review on Wealthy Affiliate

 

The founders of wealthy affiliate are Kyle and Carson. Before I tried to join wealthy affiliate, I tried to find all kind of fault and bad review from that site. Online scam is very common, many affiliate products often sell people hype up dream and success story and only to find disappointment and their money being washed down the drain. Some Affiliate Gurus are only interested in teaching you how to promote their affiliate products.

However when I tried to do my research on Wealth Affiliate, I can barely find any bad review on them. Below are a bunch of review sites about Wealthy Affiliate.

http://blog.extra-paycheck.com/wealthy-affiliate-review/
http://bloggingthing.com/wealthy-affiliate-vs-affilorama
http://www.buzznitrous.com/wealthy-affiliate-review/#wealthy-affiliate-cons
http://internetscamstoavoid.com/is-wealthy-affiliate-worth-it-does-it-really-work-review-complaints
http://affiliate-101.com/wealthy-affiliate-review

Anyway, it is up to you to do your research before you make the final decision to join Wealthy Affiliate.

Pros

1. Free Starting Membership - You can be a starting member for as long as you want but of course, you will not have the benefit as compared to being a premium.

2. Step-by-step training and teaching material - you can access many of that even if you are a free members.

3. Online community - During your first 7 days of being a free member, you will have access to online community that will answer everyone of your questions for 24 hrs.

4. Active host - Kyle and Carson are the creator of Wealthy Affiliate and they are very active and will never fail to answer any of your questions.

5. Strictly spam free environment.



  Cons

1. Information can be very overwhelming for total newbies and it is highly recommended that you take it slow and easy and follow the training and teaching material step-by-step and not to take a big giant leap.

2. Free membership is great and let you sample Wealthy Affiliate but it is better that you go upgrade to premium membership to access the advance material and serious about making money online. I will not recommend you to go premium right off the bat if you are very new to Affiliate marketing.

Turn away now if ........

If you start thinking that you can get rich overnight through wealthy affiliate which I claim no such ridiculous promises. I assure you that you will be disappointed. If you think you can run your online business and auto-pilot and let it sit around and collect dust, you should turn away now. You need to put in time and effort to learn from Wealthy Affiliate.

Who is this program for ?

1. For someone who would like to potentially fire their boss.

2. For someone who want to potentially work anywhere they want.

3. For college students who would like to earn a good part-time income.

4. For housewife who would like to supplement their household income.

5. Retired folks who would like to keep getting more working income and have a lot of time to learn,

6. If you are already a business owner, it benefit you greatly because it teaches you how to get more traffic.

Free membership vs Premium membership

 

In premium membership, you get to have unlimited 24/7 live help from the Affiliate community. Like I said they are very active. I know you guys like the money making part, if you are a premium member, you get 2x more payout for each member that you referred and sign up with. If they become a premium member, you earn a passive income of $22.50 per month for the rest of your life as long as they remain a paying premium WA member !

Other benefit include able to host unlimited website, more advance training material, unlimited website support etc. Many people who first started as a free member, end up becoming a premium member along the way.

Anyway you don't have to believe what I said, there are many successful members on wealthy affiliate who have earn themselves a full-time income enough to replace their day job and spend a lot of time with their family. So what are you waiting for and what is there to lose when joining as a free member ? If you do not like the program, you are not obligated to join and pay as a premium member. So feel free to try out WA.

Click here if you are interested to check out Wealthy Affiliate.

How do I get started with Affiliate marketing ?

HOW do I get started ?

Like I said, all you need is a laptop and a good wifi connection. Additionally, you need to invest in knowledge and time. No one is going to do the learning for you, not even if you get a good mentor. You need to apply what you learn through trial and error and that is the learning the computer. Learn finance, you lose money. Learn healthcare, you run the risk of endangering someone else's life. 

Let me explain to you with a diagram below:

You are very lucky to live in this century because of the internet age, almost every information is accessible by internet. We as a consumer love to buy things on our own whenever we have the cash. Before you go jump on the online money making bandwagon, you need to build website and blog.

If you have no idea how to start building a website, you can start by going to

www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com.

You can totally sign up and create a blog or website for free.

Generally speaking, if you can get an increase in traffic to your website, it will result in higher percentages of visitors purchasing the products from you. These are the following ways to do so:

1. build a well-optimized pages with good content which will rank well search engine, 
2. Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns to target specific keywords. 
3. Having a website that is easy to navigate.

You can also put up facebook ads on certain interest group or your own page. Obviously, you can also introduce your website on various social media.

Do remember to put up your affiliate link from your affiliate program, so that you can direct people to the website that you wanted them to go. This way you can get your commission. 

About MLM -

Alright, now I would like to discuss about Multi-Level Marketing (MLM). If you read my other blog regarding MLM vs Affiliate Marketing, I may sound a bit bias base on my experience. However, there are many people out there who find success (monetary anyway) in MLM.

Well, not many people heard of MLM outside of North America I believe because that is where most of the big international companies originated from such as Amway, Nuskin and Herbalife. I got my first encounter with MLM when I was still struggling college student trying to find a paid part-time job (I done many different jobs in the past, Food and Beverage, Construction, Health care and Agriculture).  I chanced upon a ads (base on how I remember) written "Health and Wellness job, need multilingual" on a gumtree ads.

Thought that it might be a suitable job for me (ya, I speak 4 languages), I decided to make a phone call to the company. Back then, I have no idea what is Herbalife and MLM (being an ignorant 24 years old). I received an answer and was told to come down the next day in a very friendly and welcoming tone.

I came down the next day, got greeted by Herbalife staff and it has a very welcoming atsmosphere (job interview always make me very nervous). We have a seminar to discuss Herbalife products and how great was it. We had a shake party to try out Herbalife nutritional drinks (well, I do admit that it taste really good for a protein supplement, I always have to pinch my nose drinking GNC stuff). We had a lot of chat, teaching us about Herbalife success story by being a Herbalife distributor and "successful" people were showing off their nice clothing, cars and real estate. Many people were hooked to the get rich quick story, I was kinda in Wonderland (hahaha!)

However, here come the bad part, turn out that I have to pay a fee (50 AUD i think) to become a Herbalife distributor ! I was a struggling student back then and there is no way I can come up with that money (Every cents count to me as I have to pay rents, travel etc). So I told them, I have to decline temporarily until I can find a real job to support that "business" dream (ya, right). They do allow me to come to the seminar anyway, I was kinda confuse about the whole money making scheme by hosting a shake party with friends (impossible, I just came to Sydney, there is no way I have friends in such a short period of time), inviting friends into the membership etc. 

From my traditional business sense, customers love to shop and buy but do not like to be sold to. Anyway, I just thought if I was to invite other people into my business, wouldn't I be creating my own competitor. Anyway, I have to sadly decline and I know that I could not afford certain luxury such as protein shake and gym membership. So I have to walk away on this one.

Now I will explain the whole MLM scheme, there are a few terms called "upline" and "downline". Many MLM distributors do not really sell their products to other customers and even if they do, their customers are often their own social circle of friends and family members. So what most actually do is that they recruited people into their MLM programme and use them as downline.

So whenever a downline purchased a product, the commission will go to the upline who recruited them. The downline was expected to sell the product but many could never be able to and could only sell the product to only their own circle of friends and family. These friends and family are expected to become a member of the MLM company (if they are introduced to Amway or Herbalife product, they are expected to be the respective member of those company). They will gain all sort of benefit such as purchasing products at a distributor rather than at consumer's price.

Once they joined the company as a "distributor", many people have pitched various direct sales products to their friends, family, neighbor, employees, employers, colleague and teachers (much to their annoyance!). I remember a story regarding a psychologist trying to pitch his sale and try to recruit his patients to his MLM scheme while at work ! He got his license suspended from practice for a period of 3 months.

Even though I am a member of Amway and have a few downlines (Well, I did not really actively seek them out and pitch my sale to them, I just asked if they want to be a member of Amway and asked them if they want to use those products at their own convenience. The other downlines were recruited by my friend in Sydney.) and have used Amway products a few times, I will never go around and pitch them to friends and family at the expense of souring my relationship with them. I can find very few flaws and never doubt the quality of the Amway products but I do question the inflated cost of certain Amway products.

Successful entrepreneurship is never easy and it doesn’t need to rely on the giving nature of your friends to succeed. Remember your friends are not a cash cow to be exploited to your own get rich scheme benefit. 

Overall, the business model of MLM seems to prey on human's sense of guilt, pity and obligation. I believe many of you get very annoyed by chuggers (charity muggers or fundraiser), if you are doing MLM, please do not do the same thing to your friends.

What do you need to get started in Affiliate Marketing ?

Alright, Let me try to break it down  to you today. What is Affiliate Marketing or make it even more simple, what do you do as an online marketer ?

First of all, it is about promoting and recommend potential online shoppers to purchase the product they are really interested in. 

What do you need to get started ?


1. Laptop

2. Internet Connection (Duh !)

That is it for the physical material part. Here are the other things that you need.

1. Go to library, there are plenty of books out there that cover online marketing, social media marketing etc.

2. Your time and I cannot tell you how much time, you can spend 1 hr or 24 hrs of your time to learn more about affiliate marketing each day but learning is not a race to the finish line, it should a lifetime marathon.

Before you go out there and make any money.......

I am not going to give you all kind of false hope about affiliate marketing. Of course, you need a good mentor but you need to help yourself to invest in time and knowledge to learn and apply ! 

Of course, there will be many online marketing guru out there who are just do it for the sake of suck money out of you and not providing you a very detailed way on how to succeed in Affiliate marketing.

Initially, some people may take 6 months to maybe a year to really learn how to make money online. Like I said, it is not a sprint to the finish line, it is a marathon. You are going to meet some learning curve along the way and that is fine.

You need to grow your audience by learning how to create your own facebook page, blogs and websites.

One of the few good place to learn how to make a blog is to go to Blogger.com to sign up.

Then you can sign up for certain webpage and online market to become an affiliate. Make sure the product that you sign up for have quite a good review, you do not want to go promoting product that have bad review as it will affect your reputation down the line. Remember ! it took a second to destroy a reputation and took a lifetime to build it.

That is all I have to say today. Anything that kinda cross my mind, I will put it up on this blog.

Multi-level marketing vs Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing vs MLM

Since you found this site, I’m going to take a good guess and say that you’ve either just heard about affiliate marketing and want to know how it compares to multi-level marketing.Well I’m going to tell you about both in a minute and help you decide which one is right for you. I’ve been involved in both types of marketing so I know how they work. 

What is Multi-Level Marketing?

Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is also called network marketing because it involves getting other people to build a team in order to promote a product. The more levels you build (downlines) helps you sell more products and you’re awarded higher bonuses as your team grows.

In this set up, there is usually someone at the top (where it’s much more rewarding) and if you haven’t personally signed anyone up, then you’re at the bottom where the rewards would be very little. People often refer to MLM as pyramid schemes although that really refers to companies that don’t have a legitimate product but rather use their revenue (from registrations) to reward top tier members.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing involves three parties – the merchant or store, the affiliate and a customer. Affiliate marketing is where the affiliate sends the customer to the merchant and is awarded an agreed percentage of the sale (commission) when the customer makes a purchase.

This can happen infinite amount of times and there are a number of different ways you can set up the process. One common way is to create a website and offer value in the form of reviews or content the visitor may be interested in.There is no team building and you can do this from anywhere in the world.

Affiliate Marketing vs. Multi-Level Marketing

With affiliate marketing you can decide what you want to sell while with MLM you can only sell whatever the product(s) from the company you’re involved with. Of course, you can always join more than one MLM companies but it would just dilute your efforts of recruiting prospects.

In affiliate marketing, you’re in control of every aspect of your business and your income does not depend on how many people you recruit but rather the volume of your sales.

I started my first MLM experience with herbalife and then Amway when I was studying in Australia. I was kinda desperate back then, as I needed the money to pay my cost of living and school fees. I first got involve with Herbalife though a Gumtree ads and the gumtree ads wrote:

"Looking for people who can speak multiple languages to sell health products"

I kinda got interested in it and I was directed to one of the herbalife's office at Sydney Olympic Park. They kinda tell me all about how many successful people they have and how great their weight loss product was. After that, I was told to go and sign up for a fee to become a member and sell their products. 

I do admit that their protein supplement do indeed taste great but I was still find their whole business model kinda sketchy and barely make much sense. 

Here are the following examples:

1) Pitching your products to your friends and family

Conclusion: This is one thing I know I will fail to do in Australia as I do not have anyone close nor do I have any real friends. Another thing, I am very skeptical was what happen when you ran out of friends, neighbour and family to pitch your product to ? You are going to run out of business.

2) Signing people up to earn commission:

Conclusion: I find it very weird and fishy about this. The purpose of starting a business is to sell your product as a niche and to a wide population. However, I am starting to sense something similar to a pyramid scheme. Over time, I find out that MLM is just nothing but a glorified pyramid scheme with you starting at the bottom earning barely anything while the uplines earn their commission off you by signing you up. I discovered Amway after an unknown person from Malaysia tried to friend me and ask me if I want a job working in a office in Sydney. I was kinda delighted at first but I realised that once again, it is another MLM when I met his friend, a single woman in her 40s who was 'kind' enough to buy me a latte while trying to present me how great Amway toothpaste is and honestly, I can barely figure out the differences. She brought her nephew along and show me another product which is a vegetable washing liquids. He could not convince me. So if you cannot convince someone, you confuse them ;).

They kinda just ask me to come to some of the seminar and most of the time, I don't find them making much sense. It makes me wonder how can you do business by signing up new members who can become your competitor ? 

I kinda fall into the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"I believe there are some out there who find success in MLM but I am definitely not one of them.

Then I read up about Affiliate MArketing in the library. When I found affiliate marketing, I was very excited at how easy it was to get going (no registration fees) and start profiting. However, if you are not a IT savvy person, you might find many of the things you learn to be kinda technical. I can assure you that the first 6 months can be a big learning curve as you need to build traffic, blogs, websites, find a niche and various website that you can be an affiliate with. So I realise that I do need a mentor to guide me. I tried to attend Imran Md Ali's seminar and review classes, Winston Yap and Adam Khoo webinar to accelerate my learning.

I do admit that many aspect of affiliate marketing kinda make sense. In Affiliate marketing the whole entire world is your audience and you are not just restricted to just selling stuff to family, friends, relatives and neighbours. Honestly, I hate using my family and friends as cash cows and I believe the real proper business model should be selling your stuff outside your circle and a good niche product attract customers, not the other way round. 

Many people are more comfortable buying things off the INTERNET with  a click of a button. If people are interested in whatever products, they will be more than happy to be directed to the online store to purchase the products from. In Affiliate marketing, the customers come to you. 

Of course, it depends on what kind of product you are promoting. Physical product tend to bring in less commission due to the labour cost, resources and shipment cost poured into the product. Electronic products such as E-books and online courses tend to give out very generous amount of commssion with some as high as 80% on Clickbank.com !!

Anyway, I will show you some real simple newbie guide on how to profit from Affiliate Marketing.

About me

About Me -

Hi, my name is Arthur and I am 28 years old this year. I just graduated from Charles Sturt University with a Degree in Health science. However, due to financial and family problem, I have to return to Singapore after many years backpacking and studying in Australia.

Hobby:
I love cooking, eating, contact sports, raggae, learning new langauges and digital marketing.

Currently, I am 3 weeks into learning Affiliate marketing and it is a big learning curve !

There are plenty of Affiliate site you can learn Affiliate marketing from such as WealthyAffiliate.com.

You can also be an affiliate for Amazon, Ebay and Aliexpress.

Anyway, feel free to post and comment on my blog. Vulgarities, inappropriate and rude comments will be immediately removed. You are welcome to agree to disagree as I love diverse opinion and active meaningful conversation.