What is Wealthy Affiliate?

If you have your heart and mind set on becoming an online entrepreneur, it's nice to know that you have somewhere to turn for guidance. That's the idea behind the Wealthy Affiliate product, which is essentially a combination of education, support, and tools for making money online with affiliate programs.

Interested? It's also an affiliate program itself, offering commission to members who sell Wealthy Affiliate subscriptions. More on that below, but first a bit about the company and the product.

The Company

Wealthy Affiliate is now in its 10th year, and operates under the corporate arm of Niche Marketing Inc. out of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Although not accredited by the BBB, Niche Marketing Inc does have passable rating with the company: a B+.

In ten years of operation, the Better Business Bureau reports only 6 complaints against the company, all of which has been closed at this point in time. That of course contributes partly to the less than perfect marks. However, Wealthy Affiliate responses to those complaints were deemed satisfactory, as were the resolutions.

The Founders

President Carson Lim and VP Kyle Loudoun haven't been exactly burning up the news outlets lately, as there's nothing that recent about either one of them buzzing right now. Carson Lim's twitter page hasn't seen nary a tweet since December of 2012.

Both founders are young and seem to have immaculately sprung into the business world with Wealthy Affiliate, ready to go.

I mention this because it's always nice to see online ventures criss-crossing with the brick and mortar business world, insofar as management and leadership go. After all, you can't really go wrong with an experienced, successful business person leading your company, can you?

But you're not exactly a shareholder, so you're not quite that vested…a good business idea is sometimes all we need to get excited about joining. Let's see if the “product” seems like Mr. Lim and Loudoun have a good business prospect…

The Product

Wealthy Affiliate is everything a newbie needs to get started making money online:

• an internet marketing network with forums, mentors, peers and overall a very active community of like-minded entrepreneurs
• connections for you in the internet world, plus networking opportunities
• internet chat sessions so you can pool your knowledge with others and learn faster
• a training course
• two websites + hosting
• 60 lessons on getting started and making money with your websites
• video training
• more training on everything from SEO to keyword research and social media marketing

The selling point is that much of what you just read on that list is free. In fact, it's free to start with Wealthy Affiliate, which leads us to a major benefit: no credit card required to start and try it out.

If you like it and decide to upgrade to Premium Level, you're looking at $19 the first month and $47 per month after that. With the Premium subscription, you get:

• access to all 60 of those training courses
• one-on-one mentoring from a WA professional
• backup of your website
• hosting for as many websites as you'd like
• need help? you got it, live and 24/7
• premium video training, courses, and bonus offers
• higher payout on the affiliate program (twice)

Plus, you can make money by selling the product, with no monthly purchases necessary other than your own product.

The Compensation Plan

Wealthy Affiliate wins the prize for simplest compensation plan…that's because it's really just an affiliate program, not a distributorship or anything involved like that.

All you do is sell subscriptions and get a commission. There are no “teams” or downlines. Financials are:

1. sell an annual subscription and make $175 ($87.50 for non-premium members)
2. sell a monthly subscription and get $22.50 per month ($11.25 for non-premium members)

That's it- we're done here!

The Verdict

Everyone likes something that's free, so we can't say a bad thing about trying Wealthy Affiliate since it's free to start. You'll get access to enough of their product to tell whether it's going to help you with your online ventures, and even if you go Premium, it's not that expensive.

While we'd love to see more of an emphasis on social media marketing in their course material, it seems that WA could be a valuable tool for any newcomer' toolkit, and possibly even some of those who've been around a little while.