Wealthy Affiliate – Unbiased Review

I know what it’s like trying to do some independent research on a business opportunity or coaching program online.

You land on a blog like this, and then either right from the beginning or shortly thereafter, they decide to try and pitch you.

It’s the most biased review of any internet discussion because the truth is that they’re pitching the program that they’re reviewing – and they probably have some financial tie to the action you could take if you decide to get started from what you’ve read on that article.

Don’t you wish that, for once, in your online business venture investigation and effort to find something that you’re looking to get started with – and to find a reliable, credible coach that can further help streamline your effort to land some side hustle income – could just be an honest review about someone’s experience without any hype or extreme pitch to get you to buy…

I know how you feel since I was once in your shoes only a few short years ago and trying to find the trend or wave that I could ride in order to achieve my competency in generating a real, serious income online.

Let’s take a quick look at the Wealthy Affiliate program, initially.

I’ve been trying to find a good source of reviews all over the internet before I decided to write my own on this blog site (yes, the same one that you’re on).

See, if you were to do a quick search for Wealthy Affiliate and maybe an additional term like “review,” you’ll almost always land somewhere that the author is hoping you’ll buy after reading their notional “review” that somehow turns into a pitch to buy Wealthy Affiliate.

The bigger concern I had from reviewing other coaching programs online is whether or not the person who was doing the pitching (which should have been a simple review of the course) actually has had success with the coaching program that they’re trying to encourage you to make a purchase with.

All good questions, but not always clear-cut answers.

I understand; and I know how that feels.

We just want more information so we can make an educated decision for ourselves.

While I’m not here to pitch, I want to keep you informed that the Wealthy Affiliate permits members to profit on as much as 50 percent in commission if you were to buy through one of those “reviews.”

Can you honestly take what those people are saying to heart?

So, I’m changing the game and delivering something unusual here.

That’s right; an authentically unbiased review about Wealthy Affiliate.

That means I’m not promoting the program.

Then why am I writing about it?

Well, I really have become rather successful over the last few years with my local lead generation for small business – which is a side hustle I started only a few years ago and have developed it into a handsome $50k in monthly, passive income.

This gives me the change to have wealth, financial security, and an abundance of spare time –

Since I’m no longer working a 9 to 5 – that allows me to indulge in my curiosity and excitement of seeing what other methods can make a profit online are being pitched on the market.

Hence the founding of this blog.

If you take a moment to look around, you’ll notice that I’m reviewing a vast number of other coaching programs – not just the Wealthy Affiliate.

Each of the blog posts are not to pitch those coaching programs, either.

This way, future entrepreneurial-hearted folks that want to start a business online but aren’t sure where to turn can get all the information their heart desires in one place.

For those that might be reading this that are also successful already and have some spare change to kick, this can still be a great asset for you –

I may have done well for myself online, but I’m smart enough to know that it’s more about how much you retain from your profits and any edge you can acquire in expanding your portfolio of income streams can be a smart move.

So, to save everyone some time, confusion, and potential heartache from making a poor investment that can only be realized down the road, I’ve gone ahead and invested in this – and other programs like – Wealthy Affiliate and am delivering my experience from it here for all to read and enjoy.

What are you going to get in this blog?

Keep in mind that I have a unique perspective when it comes to evaluating businesses because I’m already on the other side and not struggling to turn a profit in order to try and make ends meet for my household.

I don’t have a wife and kids that could go hungry if I make the wrong investment – my electricity isn’t going to get turned off – and I’m not going to suffer through a long winter of a cold apartment if I choose to invest my money in a for-profit coaching program with the hope of a quick return on investment (ROI).

I was there once, and only a few short years ago, too.

I still decided to invest in a coaching program with a proven system despite:

a dead-end 9 to 5 that…
only hooked me up with $35k in annual income, yet…
worked me to the bone, and…
didn’t care that I was in a low-rent apartment, with…
a landlord that wouldn’t turn on the heat, in…
zero-degree weather in the downtown Detroit, Michigan region, for…
4 of the 6 months of winter.

I didn’t want to be there for the rest of my days and knew there had to be a better way to enjoy life.

So I did something about it and learned the high-income skill of local lead generation, got started and was able to leverage the wisdom of the lead gen business model to tell my boss to take a hike within a year of launching my internet-based business venture.

Now, IppeiLeads.com is gaining traction and having requests from all across North America for assistance by business owners that are catching on with the trend that customers really can be acquired through leveraging free organic traffic from search results online.

I choose to wake up early every day, not because of an alarm that tells me I have to be at work “or else,” but because I get to do what I love – like review companies and business venture options for your benefit.

What’s the joy in hearing about Wealthy Affiliate from someone like me (who you don’t even know)?

Long before the lead gen business online found me and helped me get started in local marketing, I was always hungry to find a way to generate profits online.

Not just any sort of profits though –

I wanted a way to generate commissions for marketing other peoples on a massive scale; an entrepreneurial approach all its own, that would leverage the internet to reach tons of people and literally pour cash into a bank account of my choosing both regularly and often.

That’s really what I wanted; I was young and unclear about how the internet industry worked, but I knew that I wanted more than what I had.

Now that I could afford to take the time to explore and review a program like Wealthy Affiliate, I indulged in more than just this.

Several programs are on the market today that attempt to claim that they are the elite coaches and mentoring programs about affiliate marketing.

In addition, 2 people that I’ve met along the way have made tons of revenue from marketing other people’s products through the internet – and I thought they knew what they were talking about, so I hired each of them.

I’m proof that mentorship works from the lead gen coaching program that guided me to a fantastic, monthly 5-figure income, so I believe in buying the time and attention of someone who has accomplished what I am seeking to achieve as well.

Perhaps $10k for a 6-to-12 month connection directly to these busy individuals and the opportunity to mastermind with them 1-on-1 for around half a year to an entire year (whatever time they wanted, and were willing, to spare to help me figure out the affiliate marketing thing here).

The results were a few successful months of profits, producing affiliate commissions numbering in the $30,000.00 range.

So yes, affiliate marketing is possible and a very real business model online in which to turn sales from (or with).

I can testify that I am confident in knowing the insider strategies, primary steps (from A to Z), and the 2019 requirements of how to…

Beat out the competition
Rise above the noise
Achieve more attention than the next person
Collect sales through the internet

…all with affiliate products that I’m associated with.

Guess what? It’s not all rainbows and sunshine!

Seriously; it’s not as easy as I had anticipated from the very beginning.

Bottom line:

In an effort to train people who come into the affiliate marketing space on how to generate sales online with other people’s products, the Wealthy Affiliate program was founded.

I’ll share with you…

What is affiliate marketing
Things you can get if you join the Wealthy Affiliate training program
Whether the sacrifices made for the sake of starting a business in this way is worth your investment(s) of cash, resources, time, etc.
Pros and Cons regarding the actual coaching course, Wealthy Affiliate
My opinion and whether joining WA is in your best interests

You’ll get the full story in this blog – so read on!

Affiliate Marketing – The Real Story

When you get a referring link that you can share with others to learn more about a product and/or simply click to make a purchase, directly from the owner of the product, you stand to turn a profit based on what the web traffic or individual visitor decides to do – especially if that action is to buy what is offered.

That’s the simple art of Affiliate Marketing; you promote someone else’s product and rake in cash when people that see the offer find enough value in what is going on to make a purchase through your link – because that’s really the only way that affiliate offers have to track and give credit to someone like you and me.

Remember – these offers are giving referral links out in mass quantities; as far as the owner of the product is concerned, most times, you’re just another number to them in the affiliate world where people could care less about the product they’re pedaling and just want to make a commission.

That’s not to say that you would or wouldn’t have personally used the product that you’re trying to promote; if you have a burning testimony and success story of having used a product and find such tremendous value that you feel a passionate need to share the story with others, then go ahead.

If anything, it could help improve your marketing strategies because now you’ve personally connected with the owner’s product and can help others to do the same – even vicariously through your story – to see what’s possible and help the prospective customer to buy the product too.

Since we’re in the affiliate world, however, maybe they could make that buying decision while visiting the website through your referral link so you can get a sliver of the action that’s happening in the transaction?

How Does Affiliate Marketing Actually Work?

Someone (like you or I) finds out about the opportunity to turn a profit from marketing other people’s products, seeks out the owner of the product and asks to promote it for a chunk of change in return.

At this point, it’s not exactly affiliate marketing but asking to become a marketing associate for someone else.

The way to establish yourself as an affiliate marketer is to…

Get your own, unique referral link for the product so people can buy from you
Get the referral link (and offer for the product) in front of enough people so that buying decisions can be made and you can – hopefully – turn a profit online

What are Affiliate Marketers actually promoting?

The typical items that someone in this industry would try and push in front of an ideal, potentially buying audience are things that the audience could relate to or find value in. Things like:

Physical products
Informational products
Example: reading material on a very specific topic of interest
Another Example: content that someone can use right away to achieve a goal, such as weight loss

If you’re looking to get started in this industry and actually want to find a product that you can start promoting right away, there’s an entire resource that automates the process so you can get a referral link without having to wait for the owner of the product to get back to you when you attempt to reach out.

Call it a digital form of a warehouse, I guess; it’s called ClickBank and can be found at clickbank.com.

You could be up and running with your referral link after registering for ClickBank in moments, provided you know exactly what you’re looking for and are able to navigate the site quickly.

For me, it took a few moments and patience to grow educated about what all the product metrics and fancy numbers meant, but you’ll get the hang of it – just stick with it.

You can find any combination of products to promote and you don’t even necessarily have to limit yourself to one product’s referral link; promote as many or as few as you’d like.

So how does this work?

Get your referral link
People visit your referral link and make a purchase
You rake in a portion of the sale
Amount of Revenue Generated: Amazon products = 5 to 7 percent in commissions and within Clickbank the opportunity to profit varies drastically from product to product and the various offers that they may have available

Don’t want to wait to find out?

Interested in doing more research to find these numbers and the possibilities that could come from marketing other products and turning a commission from it?

When you reach ClickBank’s website, go ahead and visit the Affiliate Marketplace (it’s easy to find, it’s right at the top)

Then you can start exploring through one of two ways.

Browse the various categories by clicking on the red boxes (with white letters and words) on the left-hand side of the page; it’ll look like an interactive menu that you can click on
Use the “Find Products” search box at the top

Things that are common in the affiliate marketing space to pedal:

Yoga
Spiritually (purposed products)
Games
Weight Loss
Yoga
Cooking
Oh yes, there are tons more to choose from!

The whole reason for listing these was just to further illustrate that you can find an affiliate program for just about any industry you can think of; most likely, someone has made a product on the topic and suited it for an ideal audience – and if you have the attention of such an audience, then you can pitch the product to them and hope they choose to buy from ya.

Stuck finding something on ClickBank?

Can’t find an offer that you’re happy with or that works for you on Amazon?

A simple Google search could help…

Just type in a product type and follow it up with the words affiliate program.

For example:

“Indoor Grill” + “Affiliate Program”

Maybe your search query will surprise you with what turns up.

The Positive Aspects of Affiliate Marketing

Things aren’t all bad and scary about employing tactics with the internet to make a buck (or several).

No Hassle: Forget about needing to deal with customers after they’ve placed an order through your referral link; the company has that covered. All they ask is that you continue to promote their offer and they’ll continue to give you a cut of the sales that you bring in. Some might claim that hassles still exist in this industry, but there are some things you just don’t have to worry about – and that’s kind of special in its own way.
Automated Compensation and Receiving Credit for Sales You’ve Generated: Technology is awesome these days. How so? With your referral link, everything is tracked for you through the company. They use cookies to ensure that they’re very aware of who bought from your link.
Big Pay Day Potential: Know how to bring tons of targeted, ideal, prospective customers through the internet to an affiliate link you’ve got? Worry less about fulfilling orders – just keep getting more and more people to see what you have to share and you can get more opportunities to college more commissions – plain and simple.
Tons of Offers and Opportunities: If you have an interest, there’s bound to be something around that you can market which captivates not only you, but the product you find may also be of interest to the people that you’re normally around and could find value in your offer as well.

The Adverse Affiliate Marketing Aspects

Remember what I said earlier? Rainbows and sunshine aren’t everywhere, and things can get bad and scary when it comes to trying to pedal an affiliate link around the world wide web.

Side note: For anyone who is confused about why I just said it’s not all bad and scary, then followed that statement up in the next section of this blog post with things can get bad and scary – please understand that there are simply pros and cons to everything. Think of this in terms of a good, better, best blog post, instead of whether this is good or whether this is bad.

Enormous Competition

Without web traffic visitors seeing your offer, you don’t get paid.

This is where most affiliate marketers struggle – no doubt about it.

Every affiliate marketer wants the same thing; targeted buyers.

That means everyone who markets a product in this manner might also aim for the same attention that you’re trying to harness through the world wide web as well.

It makes sense that this type of marketing can be epic and appealing for anyone looking to launch a side hustle from home.

I mean, there’s hardly any investment to be in a position to profit — no inventory to buy, no postage concerns or a brick and mortar location to rent out, and tons of other great aspects about the low barrier in which to enter the field and get started.

Even signing up for your affiliate referral link and acquiring an offer that you can now be financially tied to is usually (if not, almost always) free to get.

However, your choice to be here now means that you have one of the hardest tasks in marketing staring you down; you need people to see what you’ve got.

Tons of competitors in the affiliate marketing industry will most likely be thinking about the same traffic generating tactics and make the attempt to do either what you’re thinking of doing or what you have yet to think about in getting your offer in front of potential buyers.

Without paid traffic options, your alternative will be to find high buyer-intent search terms on search engines that people might use to buy a product like what you’re trying to promote.

Then, it’s just a matter of establishing a web presence and getting your web property superglued to the top of Google search results.

This is the preferred method taught in Wealthy Affiliate – however, you have your referral link and review website competing with the globe (filled with other affiliates) for the same free organic web traffic and potential buyers from Google search results…

The competition is brutal; no 2 ways about saying that.

To make matters more interesting, there are only 10 organic ranking spots on the first page of Google, and the majority of buyers usually stay at the top of the page.

If you want more sales, you’ll simply have to get your tail to the top of the marketplace for each of those search terms.

Potentially low volume of buyers, or low pricing which could mean low commission rates

The simple truth is that some offers compensate at a higher percentage, and some affiliate programs bring a better return because the pricing is higher.

In contrast, the higher the price of a product, the lower volume there might be of potential buyers.

For example, not many people are going to buy a Ferrari because of the high price tag.

However, chocolate candy at the grocery store could very well be seriously considered by a larger volume of potential buyers simply because the pricing is significantly lower.

To dial this down a bit, there are simple reasons that you aren’t making money in an affiliate program and often times it has nothing to do with you –

Market conditions may not be right
The offer might not be enticing enough
Price variation
Follow-on upsells could be an irritant and inspire a refund instead of an additional purchase

If you’re looking for a great offer to leverage, keep these things in mind:

Look at what’s popular in the industry. Clickbank.com and organic search results are both listing what people are most likely buying in the marketplace at the very top of their results if you take a moment to explore this.
Figure out what your competition may be promoting
Assess the numbers that are posted in the ClickBank offer, like price point for buyers, your commission, whether it’s a monthly membership or a one-time purchase, etc.
Whether there are high volumes of customers who stick with the program and/or make repeat purchases through the same company or the same referral link

Typically, you can find an ideal offer that you can feel confident promoting in an industry that you are comfortable with.

When Affiliate Marketing Receives Too Much Hype

Affiliate marketing is not immune to prospective coaches or mentors pushing a sale on you to join their course with flashy signals, buyer psychology, juicy carrot-dangling (where they show you what they think you want out of a business venture in the background – like fancy and expensive cars, or a large home – then insinuate that you can have all of that if you just pay them a lot of money ever-so-suddenly) or other tactics.

The hard sell it real, and just because the computer is put between you and the salesperson doesn’t necessarily make the selling process any less easy to endure with they try to put the pressure on.

They attempt to pitch you with powerful, moving, emotionally captivating testimonials and other forms of success stories where only one or two people actually generated massive results in affiliate marketing.

Maybe they’ve introduced an uncommon story of someone landing almost 6 figures in commissions within their first 30 days of getting started with Wealth Affiliate (I’m not saying someone has pitched this exact story, but this was made up to illustrate a point).

What I don’t like is how these types of stories are used to try and build the façade in your mind that this could be a get-rich-quick business opportunity and the myth that one exists might actually be true.

I’m here to say that these type of over-hype videos marketing efforts are simply frustrating to me.

They just don’t tell the full story of the struggles and learning curves that some individual had to go through.

For those notional overnight success stories, what we don’t know is whether someone was an affiliate marketer and landed success already and long-term before joining another coaching program where they could turn a profit instantly because they only needed to make one or two adjustments to what they were already doing to “try the coaching program.”

I appreciate coaching and mentoring programs that resonate with buyers in catering to the honest side of the business model; there will be challenges and growing pains, but it will be worth the effort when you’re on the other side of the hump and enjoying passive income like I am.

The difference is that I’ve earned my stripes to enjoy my reward – and it wasn’t an overnight success story either.

If someone brand new to a program really had these kinds of results, it had to have come from spending money on a paid advertising strategy (like Facebook Ads, for example).

Various factors influencing a marketing campaign can facilitate your efforts taking root and just outperforming anything that anyone in the industry might have ever seen in the past.

I get it; you don’t get money if you don’t play the game and compete.

However, Facebook isn’t exactly a fan of promoting affiliate offers in general, so you’re welcome to give the Facebook Ad the old college try but don’t be surprised if you find your…

Facebook Ad account gets banned without notice
Burn through your audience quickly and not land a sale
The ad keeps spending your advertising dollars but still doesn’t get seen (for any reason, or no good explanation at all)

How do I know these things?

I’ve done it and experienced them first-hand.

It can be awesome to finally land a massive pay day online.

The next question is, can you repeat those massive paydays routinely, with consistently, and keep the high income consistently high?

I’ve been playing the game for a while – and I’ve invested in some of the best mentoring around, and I can testify that I really don’t believe there are ways to keep this kind of paid traffic approach sustainable.

You’re building someone else’s brand – not your own

As an affiliate, you’re hooking someone up with their product and brand awareness.

In other words, you’re taking all the risk of marketing their product for them while they exclusively compensate you only for results.

That compensation, by the way, may not always leave you in the green; you could be in debt just trying to get to making a sale and never have that volume of sales actually cover what you’ve invested in your project to acquire them in the first place.

Let’s add some salt to that would while we’re here; you get zero shares in the business that you’ve just helped to push into the marketplace.

So, if the brand becomes a household name and people start buying the product through actively seeking it out – they may not see your referral link, and the company isn’t going to send you a commission check for all the hard work you did in getting them known in the first place.

Dishonest Marketing

Have you tried the product that you’re looking to promote?

Chances are that most affiliate marketers haven’t even handled the product, let alone tried it or could speak confidently to how effective it really is in solving the problem in the marketplace that it was designed for.

Still, these self-proclaimed mentors or coaches think that they can push any product into the marketplace, turn a profit, and consistently teach others how to do the same.

The truth is that this is hard work.

Downright sweat equity and expensive marketing strategies are involved in affiliate marketing.

That’s the truth!

Not many people are going to tell you that when they’re trying to convince you to purchase their coaching and mentoring program for a whopping several thousand dollars because they are trying to imply that they have the valuable golden nuggets of wisdom that you can leverage to turn a profit online.

I hate to break it to you, but…

In local lead generation, I use similar strategies of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to turn a profit in less competitive industries, and I get paid high commissions for very little work.

After having invested in Wealthy Affiliate, I know what they’re teaching, and I know that it’s not going to work when it comes to trying to ask a brand new person – who has invested several thousand dollars in a coaching program (if it is that much – it’s been so long since I had bought in that I really don’t remember the price) – to continue to spend more to get their own business started.

I can appreciate that people are putting value on information – and it’s a long-standing principle that people pay a lot of money to collect valuable information.

If that information doesn’t get you to where you want to go, however, then how valuable was it really?

In all fairness, there are people that decide to buy into mentoring programs and learn the ropes all day, but they simply don’t take any action in order to realize the potential of the return on investment (ROI).

I’m not one of those people – remember, I hired 2 super affiliates with a lot of money out of my personal pockets just to learn the ropes of affiliate marketing.

Trust me; I’ve given this a try!

The Cost of Getting Started with Wealthy Affiliate

Convinced that Wealthy Affiliate is the coaching program for you?

Okay, let’s go and have a look at what it’ll take to get started as a brand new student in 2019.

So far, I notice only 2 options available for a newbie to enter into:

Free Membership Level: it’s here that you’re able to get some basic training in establishing an affiliate type of website then some fundamental principles on pushing web traffic to it. Additionally, you can rake in 15 percent of Wealthy Affiliate commissions when you promote the mentoring course and help others to decide to get started with the program as well. In addition, the Wealthy Affiliate program will see what they can do to hook you up with 2 WordPress website themes so you can build your first two affiliate sites right away.
Premium Membership Level: Your price tags that you have to meet start with $49 for monthly access, or you can pay up to a year in advance for $359. This enables your account to have access to all of the Wealthy Affiliate training course content. Your Wealthy Affiliate commission percentage (when a new person comes on-board) also elevates from 15% to 50%.

If you’re looking at considering the free membership level, then I guess you can gain some insight on what all is involved in the affiliate marketing industry – however, my personal and professional opinions on a newbie becoming a success story with only the free membership’s training modules is highly doubtful.

If you’re seriously wanting to jump in feet-first on the Wealthy Affiliate coaching course, and if you’re serious about attempting to land some sales online with their training modules, they’ll most likely incentivize you to get started with the $359 Premium Annual Membership.

Fun Fact: It’s a marketing tactic to tell you that you can save so many dollars when you buy something at a discount rate. The truth is that you didn’t save x amount of dollars for purchasing a membership like this at a certain level; you still paid some money out of pocket.

The psychology behind telling someone that, if they act now then they can save x dollars, goes back to the comfortable notion that society has been telling us where if we save our money then we’ll be rich.

The key to wealth is not to save your way to a million dollars; you need to establish and expand a method (or multiple methods) of income that can help you get to where you want to be in a reasonable amount of time.

In other words, you can’t save your way to wealth and enjoy the lifestyle that comes with it before retirement age; if you want it earlier than that, your wealth should come from the idea of expansion – expanding your opportunities for income generating streams – and that has to start today!

Ways to Generate Revenue in Wealthy Affiliate

The fun part – we get to talk about money and profit generation.

I personally see 2 ways to get that cash flow happening in Wealthy Affiliate:

Follow the training, build your affiliate websites online, and hope to compete well enough to bring traffic from the marketplace to your offer that are ideal buyers, ready to pay you for whatever it is you’re trying to push toward them.
As a premium member of Wealthy Affiliate, promote the mentoring course and rake in 50% of the membership fee if someone decides to get started (just like you did – if you join, that is).

I guess the irony of the situation is that you can be brand new in the program, never having used it before, and still promote the program as if you were successful with it so you can turn a hefty profit.

Here’s my thoughts on that…

Time to Complain About Wealthy Affiliate

Let’s say you were in charge of Wealthy Affiliate, or your own coaching and mentoring program.

You’re hoping to charge lots and lots of people a hefty fee so they can learn what you know.

Especially if that knowledge includes training these potentially new digital marketing and home-based entrepreneurs – people that have never invested in a business or tried anything like this before – but want to trust what you have to say and get started to see a return on their investment (ROI) as soon as possible.

If you want to have the best reputation around and be the #1 option for your industry – in this case, it’s affiliate marketing – who would you rather have singing praises from the rooftops about your program?

Either the most experienced, seasoned success stories around, or…
The newbie who really just bought the course and hasn’t seen an ounce of training, nor implemented the program to build their own belief about whether the training works or not

Who really thought it was a great idea to bring people into something like this, then invite everyone – from the top down – to promote Wealthy Affiliate…

What does that really accomplish?

I’ll tell ya what I think it means…

I think it means that people with…

Zero belief in what you’re offering
Have no experience whatsoever in the industry you’re attempting to train people in
And they’re basically lying to the marketplace because they have no basis by which to testify that this business model is the best or most intelligent fit for their audience –

It clearly wasn’t a good fit for them if they’re not doing anything with the product; it’s done them a disservice if they’re now lying about your company to the masses simply so they can get some cash.

Can we find someone with some street cred?

Seriously, c’mon, brah!

By this point, you’ll be lucky if your program isn’t overhyped by people who have no proof to show their audience about the claims they’re making with what they’re pitching.

Would you rather have people flock to you because they know you can help them revolutionize their livelihood by teaching them a new skill that essentially teaches them to fish so they can eat for the rest of their life?

Having anyone come in and start pitching the mentorship appears to be more of a network marketing style of multi-level marketing (MLM).

Let them publicly claim that Wealthy Affiliate is otherwise.

I see right through it.

When I get on a blog like this and promote something involving local lead generation – also referred to as local marketing – I’m sure to remind my audience that I have used this training to personally build a multiple 6 figures in my own side hustle.

In fact, I’ve got multiple employees working for my digital marketing agency as I’m typing this.

Who am I to this coaching group to get the privilege to be one of less than a handful of personally selected representatives by the founding mentor (his name is Dan – he’s a nice guy) to promote this program in this privileged way?

I’ll tell ya.

I’m one of the original, founding members that got started when this coaching program opened up a short few years ago.
I’m a successful student and proven that this stuff works – it took me over 4 years to get where I am today, but nearly a year to walk away from my 9 to 5 after starting this coaching course.
A full-time entrepreneur now, I rake in about $50k every month on AutoPilot using only the methods taught in this program.
Yes, I use this blog to pitch the coaching program sometimes, but if I never wrote blogs like this again and got a chunk of change from the people that I introduce to the mentorship, I would still be just fine with the rest of my life – I will continue to feed small businesses referrals and get a sliver for what I’m delivering for as long as they’re in business, as long as I keep giving them customers, and as long as the internet is around so that my lead gen sites can stay rubber cemented to the top of Google search results!

I hate to say it, but in my research on this program – long before buying into the coaching course so I could learn about it, try it, and review it here for you – I’ve actually found numerous review sites that were of a scuzzy and super-low quality; they all said this was the best thing to invest in.

Why is it so difficult to find negative press and adverse opinions about the Wealthy Affiliate then?

People have now started using phrases like wealthy affiliate negative reviews in their marketing strategies to get more attention and try and turn prospective buyers into fellow course members.

In other words, they’re trying to make money off of a very biased, profit-driven perspective with their program review content.

What’s different here is that most credible sources of online coaching and mentoring programs really don’t allow each and every student that comes in to pitch their program for as much as 50 percent of the sale price.

First and foremost, however, why can’t the program just be spoken of as the best affiliate training on the planet – with tons of success stories to prove that it’s as awesome as such claims make it out to be?

I sincerely question the tactic of asking students that are brand new to pitch the program to friends, families, neighbors, and now (thanks to the internet) strangers as well.

Where is the integrity, man?

Take a look at this from a contrast standpoint.

Here’s how I’m viewing this…

You offer to train people to promote information products, physical products or other forms of affiliate offers – that aren’t your own – for a measly 5 percent to 25 percent in commission, regardless of the costs associated with the effort required to get sales happening. Then…
Your new students are also offered a much higher level of commission – as much as 50 PERCENT – to promote Wealthy Affiliate.

Which is the better deal to try and go out to promote?

Would anyone seriously go through the training at that point and try for smaller profits when they can have the opportunity to land big scores all day long with some casual efforts in digital marketing as they promote Wealthy Affiliate in a brand-awareness fashion in 2019?

I find some ethical dissonance internally when it comes to a situation like this – especially for those that haven’t had experience in the affiliate marketing arena.

It’s not what I do, it’s not why I’m in business, and I’m not looking to build an empire in a method like that, ya feel me?

Is the Investment Worth the Training in Wealthy Affiliate?

I’m not going to lie to you – this is a very subjective thing to be asking.

I know, I asked it; but it’s a question that tends to always arise when someone is researching a high-cost training program.

Aren’t the real questions when considering a program like this going to be more direct?

Here’s what I was wondering when I got started in local lead generation for small business:

How much?
How fast?
Can I do this?
Will you help me?

Let’s see how Wealthy Affiliate measures up from a brief overview of what you’re getting as a new student that goes premium in their membership.

Your Certification Courses are as follows:

Level 1 – Getting Started: Online Entrepreneur Certification
Level 2 – Building Your Own Website to Produce Buyer Traffic
Level 3 – Rake-In That Money: Your First Certification in Entrepreneurship Online
Level 4 – Figuring Out How Social Engagement Can Work for You: Your Second Entrepreneurship Certification Online
Level 5 – Maximizing Your Success with Content Creation Strategies: How Content Can Lead to More Business

Let’s take a deeper look at the various levels of training and what kind of lessons are provided in each of them…

Level 1 – Getting Started in Wealthy Affiliate

First Lesson: Get Rolling!
Second Lesson: How Money is Made Online
Third Lesson: Selecting Your Industry That You Can Feel Confident to be Doing Business In
Fourth Lesson: Establishing Your Own Website for Your Affiliate Offer
Fifth Lesson: Getting Your Website Set Up
Sixth Lesson: Prepping Your Website for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Seventh Lesson: Keywords that Drive Content Ideas
Eighth Lesson: Understanding Website Pages and Building the Rest of Your Site
Ninth Lesson: Fabricating Awesome Content for Your Website that Can Work
Tenth Lesson: Congrats! You’ve Done It! Here Are Your Next Steps

Level 2 – Traffic Production: How to Build

First Lesson: Your Branding, Including Your Web Domain Name and Web Address
Second Lesson: Building a Theme for Your Website’s Content
Third Lesson: Identifying an Email Account that Caters with Your Web Domain Name
Fourth Lesson: Breaking Down What’s Up with Web Traffic
Fifth Lesson: Visual Content – How to Use It Effectively
Sixth Lesson: WordPress Editor Tutorial – and How to Get Good at Using It Wisely
Seventh Lesson: Finding Low Hanging Fruit – and Tapping into that Low Hanging Fruit for Maximum Profits
Eighth Lesson: Establishing Your Brand Online, Earning, Keeping, and Saving Face
Ninth Lesson: Using Google to Help Your Google Search Results (and Profits)
Tenth Lesson: Rank Boosting with Wealthy Affiliate

Level 3 – Money Making Strategies: Your First Certification with Digital Entrepreneurship Online

First Lesson: Making Sense of Online Business and How Money Works in the Industry
Second Lesson: Affiliate Networks and Affiliate Program Comprehension
Third Lesson: How to Find a Relevant Affiliate Marketing Opportunity Anywhere
Fourth Lesson: Connecting Your Website Pages to Your Free Affiliate Links
Fifth Lesson: Not Sure Which Product is for You? Select from a MILLION Affiliate Promotable Programs with This Lesson!
Sixth Lesson: Acquiring – and Using – Product Reviews to Your Advantage
Seventh Lesson: Another Revenue Stream Just for You: Placing Ads on your Website – and Getting Paid for Them
Eighth Lesson: Which is better in the affiliate marketing world: Profiting from Pennies or Looking Exclusively at Dollars
Ninth Lesson: The Ways We Track and Understand the Metrics of Our Marketing – Figure Out What’s Working, What You’re Doing Well, and What You Should Improve
Tenth Lesson: Financial Success Doesn’t Mean Going Alone in Business – When to ask for help, and what kind of help is appropriate to ask for (and how to get the help you’re asking for)

Who Started Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate was an entrepreneurial endeavor opened by two gentlemen that were having success in Affiliate Marketing strategies back in 2005: Mr. Carson Lim and Mr. Kyle Loudon.

Considering the Value of Wealthy Affiliate

It’s rather cool that these gentlemen are keeping up with the training that they’re inviting members to constantly remain active within. They add new things regularly, make themselves available for their members, and provide other things in the premium platform of their coaching program.

In all fairness, the content they provide seems to be outdated for the 2019 marketplace of digital advertising and search engine rankings.

Here’s the overview of Affiliate Marketing, very plainly stated:

Pick an Industry that you like
Find obscure, uncommon, low-hanging fruit of what you want to go after to make a profit with
Make your presence known online with awesome content on a website that talks about those “low-hanging fruit” search terms that might have low competition but are definitely being used by ideal customers and can bring you a few sales from the free traffic that it’s generating in search results

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it over and over if I need to…

You can be successful in affiliate marketing if and only if you have the uncanny ability to bring targeted buyers in swarms of web traffic to your affiliate website, where they’ll find your offer.

Ready for the major issue associated with this business model?

Back in 2012…

the competition was low-balled so much that you could post anything anywhere on the world wide web.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts weren’t flooding the marketplace like they are today and beating out non-competitive, not as trustworthy web properties for the targeted traffic and buyers in 2019

These are the reasons why I chose the #1 online business pick to be bringing referrals in for local businesses by ranking your own website in local service provider industries and in local markets of reasonably-sized cities.

Everyone in this industry – at one point or another – started.

When I got my start – and even to this day – it’s still ridiculously simple for a beginner…

And I don’t mean a seasoned pro that’s now trying a new coaching program (but this could work for them, too)…

The beginner in internet marketing can come into the lead generation coaching program, outperform the local plumbers in Troy, OH, and see a profit come shortly thereafter – as opposed to trying to beat the global heavy hitters for affiliate offers on the Google search engine.

Don’t get it twisted here; the principles are the same no matter where you try to place a website or get it climbing the search results…

You can still do this and you can rank any website anywhere online with enough time, love, and resources.

That’s a fact!

What’s also a fact is that in order to compete in the marketplace in the way that the Wealthy Affiliate training program has advised, with the strategies that they’re introducing to newbies, the digital marketing landscape of the 2019 industry is pretty much requiring you to be a Mike Tyson of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)…

I hate to say it, but that requires more training beyond what Wealthy Affiliate is giving you for that annual price that they pretend is going to save you some dough.

That, my friend, is NOT biased opinion when I’ve ranked websites online for over several years now and thoroughly comprehend the nature of the competition in search results.

I’ve lived it, and I’ve competed against the people who don’t play small-ball when it comes to this game.

I’ve won against some of them, too.

I have over 45 local service providers that are clients of mine who rely on my knowing how to not only get their website climbing to the top of Google search results but to place it strategically so it gets their phone ringing with more service and customer requests so they can make a profit.

The discussion here is coming from me; someone who has walked what is being talked about and gets how the Google search results work these days.

If you’re still convinced that you want to go after the Wealthy Affiliate program, then I’ll happily share with you what all it’s going to take in order for you to win at the game that they’re introducing to you when you seek their advice for starting a business online.

I’ve been through their program, I know what they’re offering, and I also know what they’re either not telling you or not giving you.

If you want to start up against the major league affiliate marketers on search results, you’ll need something called a network of blogs.

What they are composed of encompasses powerful, industry-relevant blogs that are hosted independently and under their own domain names which carry tons of authority, credibility, and trust, and all of that power can then be passed over to the affiliate site you’re trying to rank…

And it’s not very cheap to build your own.

Once you have those, however, you can send backlinks to your referral link site and help it to begin climbing the ranks of Google search so that you can be found by the people who are actively seeking to buy something related to your offer – and they might even pick yours if you’re the first result; chances are good.

How do I know this?

These are the tricks of the trade which I use to push my websites up the search results for local clients, and it’s exactly what I’ve used for my affiliate offer websites, too.

The people I network with on a regular basis are at the top of their game in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and even at a high-level, this is what they leverage to be the best at what they do.

If you want an easier time ranking in Google search results, you’ll have a much more affordable and enjoyable experience trying your hand (and winning fairly quickly) in the local search terms and industries than globally for affiliate websites that you’ll spend tons of time building.

FYI, among the top factors required to be the #1 search result in Google, they require – in fact, expect – you to have authoritative, high-quality, reputable, relevant backlinks pointing to what you want to rank from actual, real, authentic websites online.

That means you can’t just throw a website up and point a backlink from it; it has to have some juice that can be squeezed out of it or won’t do any good for what you’re trying to do.

What won’t work in this day and age includes…

Backlinks of low-quality
Forum acquisition
Commenting on blogs (like this one – sorry, SEO guy reading this!)
Signals coming from social media posts or comments
Poor content quality on a website

So how does one actually get to the top of Google search results?

It’s not really that difficult, but the investment of effort and resources is often what deters most away from trying at all.

When you get a powerful, credible website on the world wide web sending a link over to your web property, what happens is Google recognizes that as – very simply – a vote.

The website with the most votes wins the search results game.

If only it were that simple now; the rules have changed slightly here…

You have to get a certain kind of backlink, in large quantities, over a gradual amount of time, consistently, from topically relevant and high-quality websites in order for you to improve your Google ranking result.

Adding to that, you’ll also need what I like to refer to as “quality content.”

Content, for a website, is nothing more than words on a page that talk about a specific topic.

Typically, anyone building a website is going to have a topic to it and keep everything focused on that topic in the website – if they know what it takes to rank in Google and they’re good at what they do.

This quality content also has to be added, passively, over time, while being kept in the range of high-quality…

And each of these factors, combined, helps a website to rank over time.

In the old school days and methodologies of ranking websites on Google, quality content written for the website was sufficient.

The website with the most content, pre-2012, was considered a heavy hitter and authority in the marketplace.

That ancient, prior to 2012 SEO strategy is not going to fly in this day and age, darlin!’

It’s 2019 – times have changed and we’re getting more and more digitally calibrated – shifting from the analog era – rapidly!

In order to get on-board with your ranking game, you’ll need both the high-quality content (which isn’t always easy to write for most people) and the network of powerful backlinks to get you to a position of profitability in the affiliate marketing game.

It’s been said that a person can further assess the nature of someone’s net worth based on their network.

It may be a stretch for SEO purposes – at least initially – but that backlinking network we’ve been talking about is of such high-value that it can position your web properties to help you turn a profit online.

All of this can be done from a laptop in the affiliate marketing world – but it’s a lot of work, and takes an enormous amount of time, energy, and funds out of your pocket just to get in a position to do something like this.

If you’re a beginner, there’s no question that you will struggle in the affiliate marketing game.

The competition is seriously abundant!

If you haven’t read the rest of this blog yet, then let me save you the trouble and acknowledge that I’ve essentially tried (and reviewed) just about all the coaching, mentoring, online business opportunities that are available on the market.

Let me see if I can rearrange this into a better perspective.

When the Wealthy Affiliate program casually urges you to find what they like to refer to as low hanging fruit in the marketplace, then they know darn well that it’s not possible for a newbie to step into this game and go after what is a medium-sized search term – because the competition is overwhelming, even if you were to start there.

The Wealthy Affiliate training approach to posting what you want to in the affiliate marketing competitive arena of digital marketing dates back to 2012 and earlier, further facilitating students back then to generate approximately $50 dollars on the low and as high as $100.00 for newbies that built and aimed websites topically at these niches that were deemed to be some low hanging fruit options.

That’s just not an option in the 2019 market.

There are reasons why the fruit is so low-hanging and easily identifiable in their training program.

When the search volume for that keyword is beyond obnoxiously low in the search engine results – and tools that assess this online also prove it (depending on what you’re using, since not all tools are reliable to find this type of information), then mentors of the Wealthy Affiliate know what’s going on here.

They’re attempting to steer you in the space of tackling what no one else has a desire to do. There might still be some search volume and you might still be able to achieve some resemblance of “success,” but for the work that you’re going to put in, it’s not going to pay out to the level or volume that you or I would have hoped it to deliver for you.

It’s as if you really are fighting for the table scraps from those who’ve actually been playing this game for a lot longer.

Further, you also have the competition coming from the other students of the Wealthy Affiliate program – who just might be going after the same things you are.

This can be especially true if the coaches pointed you to something and said give this a try.

People hired experts to listen to what they had to say; and if they so go after this, then popular notions suggest that you’d be a fool not to listen to the people that you’ve paid to train you… right?

The point is that those low-hanging fruit industries are so low that no one in their right mind in the affiliate game would go through the trouble of trying to compete for those search terms and put the low-profit-margin affiliate products on the world wide web with so much work involved just to get a laughable couple of bucks (if that) in return.

It would actually cost more to keep the website up than what profits you would be receiving for your efforts.

When you work more and earn less, would you refer to that as a profitable skill?

Have you considered looking elsewhere for a better, more profitable, or dare I say – a high-income skill instead?

Imagine having the skill that brings you more money from less work –

I can attest to such a thing actually existing, by the way, in the local lead generation business model.

Since the 2016 Google Panda option for updating the search algorithm online, meaning redefining who gets regarded as the top option in their marketplace, low power, low authority websites can no longer send a backlink to a website to help improve its ranking position.

Pre-2016, the person with the most backlinks and high-quality content won the game – it was lights out on the competition.

We now live in an era where authority breeds trust; and Google appreciates the authority figures in the digital world telling others who they think are credible – in the form of backlinks, of course.

They’re only about the authoritative resemblance in websites online – much like the blog you’re reading.

Let’s keep things in perspective, though.

If you want an easier gig – you don’t have to make a website like mine here.

This blog is not for the local marketing focus – and you don’t have to write a thorough review regarding something in order to turn a profit with our coaching program.

With the volume of wannabe’s and hungry entrepreneurial-minded, committed individuals searching for an opportunity to bring in the cash quickly online, that emotion can often-times cloud the ability to discern – in a logical fashion – what the best fit in a business model on the internet might be for them.

This mistake occurs more often than we might be willing to believe, unfortunately.

As a result, there are tons of our friends, family, and neighbors who decide to try a business venture online and end up spitting back at the training company they had invested in and blaming others for their lack of success.

When you’re in business, everything is your fault and it’s important to take responsibility for your actions and where you’ve found yourself – not just financially, but everywhere and in every case.

As such, people who “try” a business venture out and it doesn’t work for them, then they end up spitting back the company and blaming the training program or the platform instead of owning up to their mistake…

Maybe that whole scenario could have been avoided if the future and hopeful entrepreneur reading blogs similar to this actually landed on THIS informational platform and got the full story on an option that really could deliver results.

Nothing can be guaranteed for results online, but good things come to those who put the work in.

The work begins long before paying a mentor to be a part of their coaching program and have that mentor in their corner.

It begins with making the decision to have something better.

Then that choice continues with action put into researching where the best place to get information which can help that person turn a profit online could be.

For me, I’d rather not make the tiny commissions that come from being an affiliate online.

My indulging in the local lead generation for local businesses is because…

Local businesses have a marketing budget – which is a budget I can tap into
Higher-priced services mean higher commissions and profit margins for me
If I can bring service providers like that even a smidgen more of market share, I can do very well for myself financially while also helping their business to grow

What kind of local businesses and service providers am I referring to?

Think about the expensive things in your marketplace that people roll their eyes at when thinking about how much it will cost to ask for their specialized help around the house, for their health, or for a unique problem that might have rapidly sprung upon them…

Roofers
Dentists
General Home Remodeling and Contractors
Masonry Specialists
Personal Injury or Divorce Attorneys
Plastic Surgeons

The list could go on and on with all the people in various cities, across multiple industries, that need help with local marketing of their business.

When the jobs that are asked of those service providers can rake in a direct revenue (either before, or including, upsells) of $1,000s or even tens of thousands – a few can reward the business with upwards of $100,000.00 or more…

Do you think you would enjoy taking a sliver of that kind of action?

Would those kinds of profits make more sense to compete with 10 to 20 local businesses online than to challenge an enormous amount of competitors globally for – hopefully – a couple hundred dollars a month in affiliate commissions?

Additional Resources within the Wealthy Affiliate Members Area

When you get started with the Wealthy Affiliate program, getting signed up, registered with the website, obtain your login credentials, and are prepared to take some good notes from the training you’ve just chosen to invest in…

Here are a few other gems and features you get as a member and affiliate:

Templates for your website; an enormous amount, actually – upwards of 3,000 (give or take)
Access to Siterubix (which is a website builder, intended to help you get started faster)
Hosting for upwards of 25 websites (something that could get expensive if you were to purchase each platform for each website separately)
Have the leadership and members critique your affiliate website and provide pointers for improvement (if necessary)
Website health assessment; remember, we live in the digital era – you need to make sure things are safe and in proper working order both regularly and often
Website commenting – they are under the impression that an audience interacting with your web content can deliver better credit and results in the search engine rankings
Wealthy Affiliate claims to offer easy access and/or discounts to domain name registrars who are advertised to students to be cheaper than one of the most affordable companies – namecheap.com (this is not a true claim – I’ve researched this extensively)
A software (intended to compete with Cloudflare) can increase your WordPress website speed with something as simple as a plugin (if you’re not clear on what a plugin for a website is, it’s not hard to research it with one of your free, unlimited Google searches; it’s a WordPress website thing)

Nearly each and every one of these mentioned features can be easily accessed through web hosting at a famous place like GoDaddy, NameCheap, or any one of several other companies that also deliver meaningful, reliable hosting for websites.

Each of those other brands of hosting also provide equal – and in some cases, better – website hosting security and outstanding support should any technical issues arise.

Unfortunately, the confusion can come when Wealthy Affiliate attempts to make things seem exclusive to their premium members when all they’ve really done is rename some of the very simple things that you can access at other hosting platforms for the same or – in some cases – a cheaper price.

My guess is that the founders of Wealthy Affiliate get a cut from anything that you buy that they advertise in the member’s area.

I’m under the impression that such is another way to monetize their following.

As for their critique and feedback on the website, as this is an advertised point for support with the Wealthy Affiliate coaching program, it appears to be limited to what the founders “believe” matters in 2019 with helping a website to rank on the world wide web:

Engagement of Content through Social Media
Page and website loading speed(s)
The quality, and intrigue, behind your written content (remember, words on a page) on your site

Since the game has pretty much completely changed from what these gentlemen “believe” they are doing to meaningfully serve their premium members at Wealthy Affiliate, I can attest that following this advice in 2019 will cause you to waste copious amounts of time and fail to see any improvement in your website’s rankings on Google.

As a result, you may not be a fan of the program if you actually follow what they’re training and don’t see a return on your investment (ROI).

Some people tend to claim that you just haven’t given the project enough time; well, if they offer a return and/or refund policy with their program, perhaps the encouragement to give your project enough time could be just to allow a notion like that to lapse.

I haven’t read their fine print and I don’t know if they do (or don’t) offer such a thing, but with the way I’ve seen things orchestrated in Wealthy Affiliate, I don’t wanna ask and I wouldn’t put the recommendation past these guys.

Conclusion and My Opinion on Wealthy Affiliate

The content, strategies, and ideas proposed in Wealthy Affiliate are outdated – and I think the whole idea of affiliate marketing is past its prime.

Even when the search terms have low volume and incredibly low search competition, we just don’t live in the days where you can toss a website together with some menial content and expect profits to roll in.

Let’s evaluate the industry to the gap of time from when Wealthy Affiliate had actually started their movement and impact in the world…

They started in 2005 with a company launch.

They garnered more competition by 2012 as the internet grew and more “experts” flocked toward making money on the internet – thereby, attempting to tackle affiliate promotions to position themselves for tons of money with free traffic on search.

As the years progressed, affiliate marketing became more complex as the volume of people that flocked to it grew exponentially, the expertise of the people in the marketplace expanded, and the changes to Google algorithm (via Google updates, like Panda) mandated more careful strategies to make money.

Today, the name of the game is to be the person that collects enough relevant, high-quality, industry-specific backlinks – then you can be considered for ranking in the top spot and turn a profit online with your affiliate offering website that you’ve spent so much time carefully crafting.

It would be a challenge for me to believe that I could find a Wealthy Affiliate member, even a new one, this year, making a reasonable income when they’re not a founding member of the coaching and mentoring team but actually a student.

Let’s also address why tons of people online are found advertising good things and singing praises to the Wealthy Affiliate coaching program and the business opportunity that they present to the marketplace.

Earlier, we had mentioned that 50 percent in affiliate commissions are given to the people who join Wealthy Affiliate; and even if they’re brand new, they are able to be an affiliate of Wealthy Affiliate (funny how that works) and rake in for helping various people to become premium members of the program –

Their commission percentage to promote Wealthy Affiliate is much higher than the affiliate industry average for other people’s products; and with such a handsome profit margin, why would anyone want to explore the training and try their hand at affiliate products marketing other than the coaching program anyway?

This began to foster an online climate where non-successful, premium members of Wealthy Affiliate – who have no business bragging about the program and have never seen it work for themselves – advocating that it is powerful and can work for you “too.”

If you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, it’s easy to spot the phonies that pitch things like this.

If you’re promoting Wealthy Affiliate, then my guess you’re probably among the select few who actually turn a profit from being associated with this training –

I really don’t see the training helping any students to market products in an effective way with free organic search results if they can’t even train on how to properly get a website moving up the ranks of Google search in simple directions of what the marketplace currently requires.

Let’s dig a little further for clarity and exactness.

I’ve explored a handful of Wealthy Affiliate student sites which promote the coaching and mentoring platform for their coveted 50 percent profits (when someone buys through their referral link).

I’ve noticed that there are approximately 8,100 Google searches for the phrase “Wealthy Affiliate Review”, on average, in a monthly cycle.

You get to see review sites like eliteaffiliatehacks.com in the top search results, or newonlineincome.com – both of which are Wealthy Affiliate students promoting the program to turn a commission from the advertising of the course: would you say these are really their “top” premium members?

They might be, but the thought makes reason stare.

Let’s consider using a tool to assess this further.

There’s a company called Moz that is polite enough to make available an authority checker tool for any domain that you would like to assess.

With this resource – the domain authority checker from Moz – you can figure out just how “authoritative” this website really is.

Take a look for yourself what I had found.

Eliteaffiliatehacks.com hasn’t impressed me with an authority rating on the domain of only 18 (out of 100).

Let’s compare this to one of my other coach, mentor, and product review websites called journalreview.org. It has a value of 30 for the Domain Authority.

With a DA of only 23 for newsonlineincome.com, I’m seriously not impressed with the power that these so-called top students have been able to capture for their website.

With a little elbow grease, intelligent SEO practices, and a little bit of a time investment, each of those websites can be beaten by an authoritative website like my blog.

I have one of my lead gen sites in Grand Rapids, MI that matches what these guys are doing with a domain authority of only 23 as well. (If you’re following along with your own Moz authority checker tool access, you can check it out for yourself at grandrapidstree.com).

FYI, this tree care website generates for me an extra $2,000.00 every single month.

Let’s assess the search results of the first page when we Google the phrase “Wealthy Affiliate Reviews.”

A quick overview helps to find out that these are weak sauce and extremely low competition to beat out.

If I really wanted to make a review site and outperform each of these assets, I very well could.

Let’s go into actual search terms that an affiliate marketer might use to promote a product.

For starters, let’s explore: “best indoor heaters”

This is where the game begins to heat up as the Domain Authority for each of these websites skyrockets to 40 and 80 – some might even go higher.

Is it beginning to make sense why local lead generation and ranking websites in the local markets first are a more intelligent newbie approach in online entrepreneurship?

To get something up to that kind of power, you’ll need some highly influential authority.

In the search engine game, that kind of authority is only going to come from the powerful backlinks of powerful websites.

Let’s peek at the number of referring domains (which is another term for backlinks) that eliteaffiliatehacks.com carries:

With this alone, we can easily assess how little — if anything – of search engine optimization (SEO) could be taught in the Wealthy Affiliate program.

I tell ya what, this could be a fluke, so let’s explore the quality of some of the backlinks coming to that website.

Let’s give this a fair shake, okay!?

Remember, tons of backlinks that are of low-quality will do more to hinder your website from getting to where you want it to go.

Let’s see what we find together here.

Have a look for yourself (see below):

Have you ever heard of Tony Omary?

I haven’t.

What I have heard of is that blog comments and other low-quality backlinks won’t do much to help your website get to where it needs to go – which, in a perfect world of affiliate marketing, that’s to the top of Google search for the search term you’re trying to rank for so you can get more buyers and more money from the company you’re marketing on behalf of for the measly commissions you are requesting…

What you see above are what, in the industry, we identify as no-follow backlinks.

When you have a no-follow backlink, you get zero authority passed over to your website.

That means the backlink might as well have never occurred.

It’s a waste of time in some cases.

I’m willing to go so far as to say that the 30 do-follow links – which are what actually give him some credit to rank up the search engines – are keeping this web property at the top of the search results; that, and, this amount of quality, good backlinks are more than I’ve seen on most of the Wealthy Affiliate review websites that I’ve come across.

They might not be the most powerful or the most high-quality of referring domains, but I can attest to the fact that whoever owns this website has worked sufficiently to do more than the competition and be found at the top of page 1 (for now).

A brief analysis around each of these Wealthy Affiliate review sites gives me a lot of answers about what skills they’ve acquired through the coaching program’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) training – and what they haven’t received.

Here’s a not-so-cheap shot to those that have bought into the Wealthy Affiliate – but it’s honesty and someone has to say it –

The nature of these backlinks prove to me that most premium members that have ever been exclusively trained through Wealthy Affiliate mentoring just might never generate a dime of profit online or in the affiliate marketing industry.

When I know what I’m doing and it takes me a long time to work my magic just to turn a couple hundred dollars a month in profit when competing on search results with an affiliate product review website, there’s no doubt that these students are at a disadvantage as their affiliate search terms will be extremely difficult for them to compete in and hopefully be found at the top for Wealthy Affiliate program-relevant keywords.

Hey, you can’t change facts.

The Good Things Wealthy Affiliate Contributes

If you’re reading this and you had already joined Wealthy Affiliate long before ever coming across this review, it is my hope that your time within their mentoring has allowed you to open your eyes to the vast array of business opportunities online, and what options you have to generate a side income through the internet.

To be able to think like an entrepreneur isn’t always something that can be acquired through sheer training – but there are, no doubt, exceptions.

While we discuss there being plenty of opportunities to make money from home with the use of the internet, let’s get real about what actually makes money…

Skills that you have and use to solve problems.

There’s no 2 ways about this…

If you don’t have the skills to pay the bills, then you don’t have a business model because you can’t make a sale when you have nothing to offer someone.

It took me several tries to get this right.

What do I mean?

I mean that I had invested – and wasted – tons of…

time,
resources, and
money…

…trying to find a good internet-based business opportunity that I could work at in my spare time which also had a mentor who could show me a legit-ass skill to make some money online.

By the way, thanks to those who’ve been reading this blog already – you know this very well already…

That high-level skill I’ve developed is called Local Marketing – and I use free organic web traffic from search results to make my magic income happen.

There’s really no magic to it, but to the business owners that I help, it’s amazing to them because they get to stay busy with all the business I flood their phone lines with.

I have to give props to the Wealthy Affiliate for at least pointing their premium students into this direction –

They know that free traffic is what it’s all about.

Even in the affiliate marketing realm, I’d still recommend that beginners tap into free traffic generating options to try and find buyers instead of paying for your web traffic through platforms like Facebook Ads.

How come?

When it comes to free web traffic, it’s organically found and carries high buyer-intent.

In other words, there’s very little chance that an everyday citizen like you are I would be searching into Google a keyword similar to what our product is showing up for if they didn’t want to make a purchase.

That means you don’t have to try and buy your buyers through paid traffic strategies.

That also means you don’t have to pay ad spend – which can dip into your already marginalized profits should anyone from the traffic that you purchase actually make a decision to buy the product you’re affiliated with.

It’s through this method that you also know that you can begin putting more web properties out on the world wide web that generate similar buyer intent web traffic to your website, thereby allowing you to

expand your empire
generate more income without having a second job
move your future towards one of freedom from financial woes and time constraints

You can start making money on AutoPilot, every month, with the more websites that you…

Build on the fly
Superglue to the first position on Google search results for search terms buyers are looking for
Send to small businesses and reap the rewards

Think about the things that you can do and the life that you could have if you worked hard to fabricate multiple streams of income for yourself in this manner online…

Could you retire early?

Would your bills be taken care off with the passive income you’ve got flowing your way online?

I walked away from my 9 to 5 by the age of 25, all because of the local lead generation sites that I posted up online over the course of my first year in business.

Thanks to no longer having to spend my day slaving over a desk job that paid me a whopping $35,000 a year…

I can evaluate other business ventures and coaching programs online and keep you better informed about what’s on the market these days.

I can indulge in multiple streams of income…

I can travel if I want…

And I can enjoy exploring more about what is in the online entrepreneurial world through a blog like the one you’re reading right now.

This website –

This Authority website – is credible because it is now being found in multiple first position search results on Google for various key terms.

This take a lot of work, tons of resources, and you really have to have something to talk about.

I’m not saying new entrepreneurs don’t have important thoughts to share with the world.

However, I am willing to say that doing what I’m doing requires more of your time and money to make happen.

It’s just not something that I’d recommend for someone to start online and make their first $10,000 per month in passive income with.

By all means, you can do this.

I didn’t know anything about search engine optimization (SEO) or how to move a web property in Google until a short few years prior when I stumbled upon this local lead generation coaching program only a short few years ago.

Thanks are in order for their helping me to get…

my big start
awesome testimonial
control of my life
real freedom

I can do what I want with my time and money now that all of my bills are paid for and I’m comfortable with where I’m at…

The passive income of $50,000 on a monthly basis doesn’t hurt, either.

When you’re new to the internet and just making your first decisions on where to invest and get started making a quick few dollars online, you’ll want some training to guide you on how to not only make the cash upfront…

You want something that you can make a sustainable, long-term cash flow out of while also getting that upfront money.

Why Local Lead Generation Can Position You for Massive Profits in 2019

When you’re looking for a business opportunity online, especially if you’re browsing for one while the laptop is on your lap in the living room of a cold, low-rent apartment in the dead of winter in Detroit –

At zero below and you’re wishing you were warm, fed, comfortable, and rich…

It’s really hard to separate that emotional sting of wanting something better away from your ability to assess a business opportunity.

I can tell you all of the successful things that I’ve achieved with local lead generation for small businesses.

Until you’re ready to learn more about the tactics and techniques of what can deliver you incredible results as it has for me and tons of others in our coaching program, no amount of mentorship or recommendations can help you get out of your slump – you’ve gotta take some initiative and do that on your own.

When you’re ready to make a change, though, that’s what we’re here for.

Dan – the founder of our lead generation mentoring course – worked the local lead generation industry on his own for several years before he even considered putting together a coaching program.

What else is cool is that he’s still working this business model while coaching and actively putting into place more cash flow assets for himself.

That’s exactly what this business model is about.

Take a look at my limo lead gen site that produces enough results for a business owner to pay me a recurring, passive income of $750 every single month –

I haven’t touched that site for more than 4 years (at the time of this blog post being written) and it continues to pay me year after year…

How?

It’s producing results for the business owner that is taking more of the market share from his competition with it.

I’m making them money – they’re making me money – and all I have to do is keep my lead gen site at the top of the marketplace, just like this…

I’m not the only success story, but I’m happy to share my story with anyone who wants to know about it.

Local lead generation has been good to me, so naturally, I’ll brag to others about the course and how good it could be for them if they’re actively willing to take action on the lessons taught within.

However, I have…

engaged in tons of coaching programs
bought into a lot of mentoring courses
tried several different business models which others have claimed would work (and a lot of them, well, yeah)

I’ve done this for your betterment – so I can speak from experience when reviewing programs that you might be considering looking into and/or investing with.

When it comes to local lead generation, here’s what else you’ll get if you stick with the process…

A mentor who gives a darn about your success
A team of people in a private Facebook group is rather active and interested in getting your questions answered so there are no hang-ups between your getting started and receiving your first paying client
Top of the line training
Current updates about how the market changes and shifts, and how that might influence your business model (Hint: Google likes to shake things up, but we’ve been doing the same things through several years of updates, and our plan is solid with what Google likes)
Recurring coaching sessions
Assets and options to outsource your work if you ever want to step away from the daily operation of your business model and be more of a manager of sorts

By the way, I never had the option to outsource when I first got started; it’s easier today for you to get a check in your hands with this business model now than it was when I got started in 2014.

While you always have the option of…

Hiring virtual assistants (on places like UpWork or Fiverr)
Establish your business, getting an EIN and hiring employees (which can come with a lot of headache and overhead that I personally am not a fan of but it keeps the costs of doing business rather low)
Outsourcing the work to a third-party agency that handles a lot of what we do in the coaching program anyway

You can also keep it in the coaching program group if you’d like.

Who better to handle the work that you either don’t have the time to do, or simply don’t want to do, that you don’t have to train because they already know what it takes to have a successful business like what you’re building.

Mind you, all of that is completely optional and there are no hard-selling pressures in the coaching program.

We want to keep things welcoming and duplicable so you can have the highest chances for success in your online entrepreneurial endeavors.

When the marketplace is more ready for you to profit several years after the coaching program was launched, that’s when you know you’re in a good place!

I like the lead generation business overall because…

You can expand your business any time you want by throwing up more lead gen sites
There’s close to no competition, so you can tap into any industry in any city and get to work on building your fortune for your future
If you’re hungry to find an opportunity that will let you quit your job, or at least be more comfortable while you work at the job that you enjoy, both can be a great privilege to have, and you can make either of them possible with this business model
Big Profit Margins: no more answering to companies you affiliate with who expect you to take all the risk and pay you a laughable, tiny profit any time you make a sale for them (without reimbursement for any expenses you’ve incurred to land that sale for them, by the way)
Acquire your next client in your city, in a city near you, or reach out and acquire a local service provider in a city across the world – make your business officially operate internationally, if you’d like
Pick your own hours and places to work: no dress code requirements, no grooming standards; you get to make the rules because it’s your business
Secure your future and financial freedom with the reassurance that you have a skill that can make you more money any time you please
Use the same business model as Lyft or Airbnb: send leads, get paid, repeat!

This has to be done right, ethically, effectively, and efficiently for it to work in the way that I remember I wanted it to less than a handful of years ago.

We’re here to present a coaching program that can get you to where you want to go – which could be the very reasons you were motivated to scroll all the way through this article and get to here.

The small or quick wins of profitable income, upfront, in this business can keep you positive and excited to keep grinding on this process…

Which can keep your passion and fire alive with this business model all the way to the land of success which you are looking to reach!

The marketplace holds a massive opportunity for someone in this business model.

Unlike affiliate marketing, you can dominate your marketplace with ranking local lead generation websites.

Click Here to see about our coaching program so you can get started building your own lead generation business as I have.

Click thru so we can talk already!