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Chris McDonald
Yes, the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program is good, and for reasons you’ll find out below.
While it isn’t the place for seasoned affiliate marketers to fully benefit from the Premium training, you don’t need full affiliate membership to benefit from the rewarding compensation.
What it does offer, though, is an all-encompassing journey from your site being set up, to running PPC campaigns to convert ads into affiliate sign-ups. There’s more to it than that, though, and the cool thing is that you can build your own affiliate business in any niche at the same time with the other training modules.
Grab yourself a warm cup of cocoa, and come and check out all there is to offer with Wealthy Affiliate. Who knows, you might even end up a wealthy affiliate! *Groan
Table of Contents
What is the Wealthy Affiliate Program?
The Wealthy Affiliate program is an online internet marketing training academy that holds your hand in getting your affiliate marketing sites set up. It starts you right at the beginning, goes through content creation, SEO, and more, by the way of step-by-step modules and video training.
You can do this by researching your own niche site and promoting Wealthy Affiliate’s affiliate program alongside your own content through banners and your affiliate links. Or, there’s an alternative…
Go deep into the affiliate marketing world and discover all there is to know. Sure, it’s competitive and it won’t make you rich overnight, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a slice of the pie and get paid yourself.
Here’s why…
What makes up the Wealthy Affiliate referral program?
The premise behind the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program is for you to make money by affiliates signing up to WA through your link.
That’s basic affiliate marketing 101, right? However, it’s not simply a case of having your referral link on your site.
No, no, no!
Wealthy Affiliate has some key areas of the premium program to help you on your way. These are:
- Affiliate Bootcamp training
- Keyword and SEO research via Jaaxy
- Rewarding commissions
- Referral tracking
- Banner creation
I’ll get into these areas shortly, but first, you need to know how much you can earn through Wealthy Affiliate…
How much can you earn through Wealthy Affiliate's affiliate program?
You earn a cut no matter if an affiliate signs up monthly or yearly. This is $23.50 per month if they’re on the monthly Premium program or $175 per year if they pay for a year up-front.
This is awesome! Imagine having a recurring payment hit your account each month or year… Cool, huh?
One thing I don’t like, though, is that you earn more if they join as a monthly member, but it costs them more in the long run. Do the right thing and encourage them to save money if they sign up for the annual membership. The advantage of them paying monthly, of course, is that they can cancel their membership and not lose a chunk of cash.
On top of this monthly commission, if you get 300 Premium referrals in 2020, you’re classed as a Super Affiliate and get to go on a paid trip to Vegas!
| Affiliate Sign-Up Method | Free Member Commission | Premium Commission |
|---|---|---|
|
Initial $19 offer |
$4 |
$8 |
|
$49/month |
$11.25/month |
$23.50/month |
|
$234/6-month |
$54 every 6 months |
$108 every 6 months |
|
$359/year |
$87.50 each year |
$175 each year |
If you really want to give affiliate marketing a go, I feel that the cost of membership is worth it even just for the higher commission rates. Remember that with a free membership account, you only get access to a tiny portion of the training. It won’t get you very far.
No matter what you choose, remember to stick at it — consistency is one of the keys to success.
Oh, and so is nut butter — mmm, food!
Anyway, onto the bells and whistles of what there is behind the scenes in the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program — bloody hell; that’s a mouthful.
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Wealthy Affiliate Bootcamp training
I really like that you’re steered toward the Affiliate Bootcamp as the first port of call. Unfortunately, there are programs out there that get you to sign up, empty your wallet, give you your referral ID and let you get on with it.
While some of these work, WA kicks behind in providing bucket loads of value through the training modules members have access to.
I’ve gone through these in detail in my Wealthy Affiliate Review, but because I’m kind, here’s a summary of what to expect from the 7 phases of training:
- Getting Your Business Rolling
- Content, Keywords and Conversions
- Giving Your Site Social Value
- Get Visual. Get Aesthetic. Get a Brand Through Media
- Knowing Your Audiences & Catapulting Your Referrals
- Bing, Yahoo & The Power of PPC
- How to Scale Successful PPC Campaigns
This may all sound intimidating at first, but the training is well-structured and includes a combination of text and video to help you.
Although each training module can be cluttered, it’s easy to locate where you finished off from last time, making the entire training a step-by-step process. You’ll also see a summary tracker on the main training screen to give you an incentive of how far you’ve come in your member journey.
As you can see, it appears to be a complete package from start to finish — setting up your site and getting it branded with visuals and social media through to running PPC campaigns for traffic and conversion.
I found some detailed information in there, but some of it is outdated, with dated pieces of training and some old-hat advice — for example, there’s no mention of a silo structure.
Wealthy Affiliate clearly wants people who join their membership system to do well with their business, though, and why shouldn’t they? By you promoting their business and getting paid for it, they earn more money and build a bigger community that promotes the brand.
That’s the other thing about the training, you’re encouraged to interact with the Wealthy Affiliate community, which I must say is really helpful.
Even if you aren’t ready to sign up for the Premium membership just yet, the free trial membership is worth checking out — this gives you access to the first affiliate program training module, “Getting Your Business Rolling.” You can also do the first level in the Online Entrepreneur Certification training.
No matter which path you take, don’t skip through modules because you think you know it all. There might be a tiny nugget of information in there that’ll set that light bulb off in your head.
And we know what happens when lightbulbs go off in our heads…
… (it hurts).
Keyword and SEO research through Jaaxy
- Site ranking analysis
- Keyword lists
- Competition analysis
- Alphabet soup research
- Brainstorm HQ
- Affiliate program finder
- Niche keyword lists
Jaaxy is a pretty good niche and keyword discovery tool with some competitor analysis thrown in. I mean, it’s free with your Premium membership so you might as well use it. However, note that you’re restricted with the standard Jaaxy Lite version to:
- 20 keyword results
- 25 saved keyword lists
- 100 site rank scans
- 10 / letter alphabet soup results
You do get unlimited keyword searches as well as no restriction on the QSR searches, though. The domain availability search is just a gimmick — you can do this for free anywhere, but it is nice to have under one roof.
Jaaxy upgrade options are available if you feel like the above isn’t enough for you at either $19 or $49 per month. These give you an increase in automation and more visibility in keyword and competition research but if you’re just in it for the tool then the 30% discount you get here makes Long Tail Pro a better option in my opinion.
WealthyAffiliate referral program tracking
Now as people go, I’m a pretty simple guy, and so like things laid out in a clear manner, which this affiliates referral dashboard doesn’t do.
I had to have a good old English cup of tea and give it another go.
It worked! The tea worked! I managed to work out the stats and referrals but couldn’t find out where the referrals were coming from. On top of this, the chart pop-up was really clunky in my browser and kept getting in the way. It does provide some useful info, though but needs some sort of training and or clarification.
Banner creation
Good grief!
I remember when I first started internet marketing and tried to create my own banners.
I took a selfie and then tried adding a splash of color. The result was as if someone had thrown multicolored paint all over me. Yes, it was that bad!
Outsourcing media and banner creation is highly advisable unless you already have training on Photoshop or GIMP. Even so, why not use the pre-designed one from WA? As I write this delicious piece of wordsmithery, there are 23 different banners that you can choose from.
That’s a decent amount to try and avoid looking like every other affiliate marketer trying to promote Wealthy Affiliate. These people are also clued up enough to promote the likes of Black Friday and other seasonal trends through the banner ads.
You get your direct link, HTML code and the option to download each banner, as you need:
Oh, and you can also promote Jaaxy if you like, since it does have an affiliate program, too — for which there’s only one banner.
Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program: key takeaways
There are no closed doors in Wealthy Affiliate’s program as a Premium member, which is something I’ve found with others that are similar. It doesn’t make sense to me why an affiliate program doesn’t provide its marketers with everything it needs to know and do.
This is where I feel the inclusion of Jaaxy shines. You have an immediate tool on your hands to help with keyword research, choosing a niche angle and analyzing the competition. It’s a decent tool to get you started, rather than just having to wade through mud and sifting through conflicting information.
It’s clever how WealthyAffiliate pushes Jaaxy through its affiliate link — if this isn’t training you how affiliate programs and the affiliate marketing world in general works, I don’t know what does. You feel like you’ve got something for free and then, WHAMMO… show me some Benjamins to make sure you have the best tools possible.
My advice is that you give it a go, especially if you’re a beginner at affiliate marketing. The amount of comments on some of the posts saying that they’ve just joined and don’t know what to do is crazy!
The first place to visit is the training. The training walks you through each step of the journey. Simply click on “Training” in the side menu and then “Affiliate Bootcamp” in the pop-up menu, and away you go!
No matter if you want to take advantage of the free trial or are ready to start the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program in full, start with the online training and don’t look back!
Enjoy the affiliates journey, now go and get paid. 🙂
Wealthy Affiliate program FAQs
What is Wealthy Affiliate and how does it work?
Does Wealthy Affiliate make you money?
Wealthy Affiliate makes you money if you follow the training and put the effort in. It’s you that makes the money, though. WA will only pay you if you promote its affiliate program, but you don’t have to do this. Instead, you can build your own internet marketing site through the training.
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