Last updated on January 10th, 2024
Welcome to my latest post, Affiliate Marketing through Wealthy Affiliate: A Members Approach! I will discuss the power and benefits of a pay-it-forward community that teaches everything related to affiliate and digital marketing. Wealthy Affiliate provides step-by-step affiliate and digital marketing training for every facet of starting your online business.
Affiliate Marketing Disclaimer: I am an affiliate marketer with links to online retailers on my website. When people read what I have written about a particular product, click on those links, and buy something from those links, I earn a small commission from the retailer at no extra cost to the buyer.
Uncovering the Secrets to Making Money Online
I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliates in November of 2022. When I arrived, I was extremely hesitant and skeptical about the program, but I later found it to be a place to learn and build an online business at my own pace.
I discovered I could succeed in affiliate marketing if I chose a niche I know a great deal about. If I am willing to help promote and connect people with proven products and services. Exert a great deal of effort and dedication to learning my craft.
Here is an excellent post from one of the co-owners of Wealthy Affiliate, Kyle, about whether making $96,000.00 a month in affiliate marketing is possible.
Initially, and still, I have not experienced any high-pressure sales tactics from the members of the Wealthy Affiliate community. Instead, I found that I was my worst cynic. I experienced nothing but thousands of like-minded entrepreneurs and helpful people with interests that coincided with mine. They welcome me and help me succeed in my endeavors.
As you will see, you too can have this type of experience. You will have to work extremely hard, keep an open mind, and dismiss preconceived notions that it will happen overnight. Becoming a successful businessperson takes months and years of consistent learning and constant effort. Actual business owners are constantly learning and improving their craft.
My Start in Business
I started a lawn care and landscaping service business in 2001. It was something I enjoyed, but I did not love. The premise behind that business was to supplement my family’s income while I attended college full-time for my computer science degree. During the four years I ran my business, I saw little profitability, but it gave me many transferrable skills, insights, and knowledge to succeed.
The lawn care and landscaping business provided me with many key business concepts. I learned about marketing my business, profits & losses, and attaining a clientele. It taught me to work hard for what I want and always be mindful, helpful, and respectful of my peers and customers.
That’s enough about me for now. If you want to read more about who I am and where I came from, you can read it here at About Me and Affiliate Marketing.
Getting Started with Wealthy Affiliate
Online affiliate marketing or digital marketing are potential goldmines for creating a business. The number of people purchasing products or services online daily is unknown. However, it is estimated to be hundreds of millions annually. According to Oberlo, Statista, and Insider Intelligence, 33% of the world’s population made at least one online purchase in 2023. That equates to 2.64 billion global online shoppers. That number is expected to grow year-over-year to 2.77 billion through 2025.
With the holidays approaching, we are quickly reaching the perfect time to start an online business. Especially with all of the online shopping centered around Black Friday and Christmas. You can participate by creating a website, writing reviews, and directing people’s shopping decisions. All this, not to mention that Wealthy Affiliate will be hosting their annual Black Friday weekend of savings on memberships.
Wealthy Affiliate Memberships
Wealthy Affiliate has a few different levels of memberships for training to start your online affiliate marketing businesses. The memberships are discussed in more detail later, but for now, know there are Starter, Premium, and Premium Plus memberships.
Below is a link to a chart that can be found at Wealthy Affiliate, where you can compare the benefits of each membership.
I started last November and signed up for a Starter membership. This provided many things in the community so I could understand the kinds of learning, help, and support I would receive. It also let me know if it was right for me.
I had questions like how difficult it was to start an online business, especially in an area where I had little or no experience. Another question that resonated with me was if it was an online scam. This question was quickly answered. Wealthy Affiliate is a helpful, social, and pay-it-forward community for learning how to become a successful business owner.
Wealthy Affiliate’s Starter Membership
As I stated, I began the Wealthy Affiliate training on a Starter or Beginner Membership. The membership included one website (it would be a sub-domain), seven days of limited support, no extra training classes, Level 1 Core Training, and the Jaaxy Starter keyword tool.
Again, remember that the starter membership is not intended for starting an online affiliate marketing business. However, it is a great way to learn whether Wealthy Affiliate, affiliate marketing, and an online business suit your situation. The starter membership gives you a peek into what you could expect from the Wealthy Affiliate program and community.
Choosing Your Niche
While finding a learning program before diving into affiliate marketing is essential, you should start thinking about what you want to write. This is called niche research. A niche can be anything you are passionate and knowledgable about, so you remain committed for the long term.
I got into the automobile detailing service niche when I started, which interested me. Also, I started writing blog posts on my website about automobile detailing. You can visit my website at Detail Your Rides and see some of my work.
This was a multi-faceted decision because I started a service business for detailing vehicles. I love to restore a car from top to bottom and inside out. I enjoy trying new detail products from various vendors on my vehicles. It is vital to maintain your cars both mechanically and in appearance.
Ranking Your Website with Google, Bing, & Yahoo
Two of the most important concepts about choosing a niche are selecting something you can write a large amount of content about and becoming an authority for your chosen niche.
Evolving as an authority is essential for driving traffic to your niche website. It is equally important to write high-quality content that is found by the three big search engines. They are Google, Bing, and Yahoo. You want these search engines to find your information, showing that it is relevant and helpful. Then, they will competitively rank your blog posts based on customer search intent.
Wealthy Affiliate introduced a tool this past year that helps with the niche-finding process. It is called the Niche Finder AI. AI is the acronym for artificial intelligence and has become one of the hottest topics on the internet this year.
In the next section, I list a few of the most profitable niches in affiliate marketing. Yet, the best niche for you depends on your interests, audience, and skills.
Choose Profitable and Rewarding Affiliate Marketing Niches
| 2023 Profitable Niches | Competition & Rewards |
|---|---|
| Technology: includes computers, smartphones, software, and gadgets. This is a significantly broad niche. | There is a lot of competition and potential for high rewards in the form of commissions. |
| Wealth building: includes products and services that help people looking for ways to make and manage money, such as investment courses, financial planning software, and credit card offers. | The average commission rates in this niche are high, which makes it an attractive option for affiliate marketers. However, it is also quite competitive. |
| Health and fitness: includes supplements, fitness equipment, and weight loss programs for people searching for ways to improve their health and well-being. | There is considerable competition, but again, the rewards can make it worth the effort. |
| Fashion and beauty: a popular niche with a wide range of products and services to promote. | The commissions in this niche can be high, especially for top-tier brands. Competition is also high. |
| Lifestyle: encompasses home décor, travel, food, dining, drinking, etc. | The lifestyle niche can be a great niche. It is broad and offers a lot of direction for your affiliate marketing business. Competition gets tough in the sub-niches. |
Building Your Website with Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate has many available tools in the three primary memberships. The tool I am going to discuss next is the website builder tool. You can use this tool to set up the framework of your website in minutes, even with no experience.
Once you have the framework of your website, you can start adding content and customizing it with themes, plugins, and design elements to make it unique and engaging. Earlier, I discussed the importance of content, which is the most important thing you can do for your online business.
You must create engaging, helpful, and insightful content to give your patrons reasons to visit your website. Without visitors coming to your website, you can have the most beautiful website on the internet, but you will not make any money.
Search Engine Optimized Content
This is an excellent time to discuss the concept of SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Your content must be SEO-friendly. This type of content is insightful and helpful, answers the reader’s search intent, ranks well in search engines, and attracts organic traffic to your website posts.
After you have had ample time to test Wealthy Affiliate, and if you decide it is the right place to start and grow your online business, you can sign up with one of their premium or premium plus memberships. The hosting benefits become relevant and necessary at this point in your online business.
Once you have this new upgraded membership from starter to premium, you have the opportunity to host your websites through Wealthy Affiliate on their servers through Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud with hundreds of fully featured services for data centers globally. The featured services include security, speed, and the best support for you and your business.
Wealthy Affiliate’s Training and Resources
A whole list of new opportunities is unlocked after becoming a premium or premium-plus member of Wealthy Affiliate. I mentioned that when you initially sign up as a starter member, you are introduced to level 1 certification for core training. It includes five lessons that will help you decide and get started. Starter training will show you how to go through checking off tasks (building the framework for your website) and an overview of what to expect in future training.
Once you have built your website in those first five lessons and after paying to upgrade your membership, Wealthy Affiliate provides tools for moving your website to a domain name of your choosing. You will not be left alone to fail if you ask for help and seek the guidance of the more than two million-member community.
Introducing the Co-Owners, Kyle and Carson
In the early days after signing up for a membership, the co-owners of Wealthy Affiliate, Kyle and Carson, will connect with you, welcome you, and ask if you have any questions or concerns. Kyle and Carson have been running their company for 18 years together. They started it by selling weekly keyword search lists out of college. They have been working together in affiliate marketing for 20 years each. Both of them make their presence known in the live chat daily. They are there fielding questions from other members, whether starter or premium and offering mentoring and support.
Below is a chart showing what is available to the Wealthy Affiliate premium members. The premium membership is the most popular package and is priced at $49.00 per/month or $497.00 per/year. However, if you want to maximize your savings, the annual premium plus membership is the best bang for your buck. It provides the most benefits and savings annually.
Online Scam and Shady Marketing Practices
Earlier, I brought up the topic of online scams and shady marketing practices. I almost fell victim to a couple. Before starting my business ventures in Wealthy Affiliate, I found a company online that uses deceptive marketing tactics to lure people into their online training programs. One such organization does business under the name of Fullstaq Marketers.
Keala Kanae is the owner/founder of Fullstaq Marketer. His business model is typical of many seen on the internet, which lures you into the program with a low entry fee of $100.00 to start a beginner’s track to make money online. Once you are in the program, the business works on a graduated pricing model with promises that it will cost thousands of dollars to make hundreds of thousands in return. These programs work on the premise that once you sign up, you have 14 days to evaluate or cancel for a refund, but they string you along promising riches.
Do not fall victim to these shady business practices. Perform lots of research, ask many questions, and thoroughly review any program that attempts to separate you from your hard-earned money.
When vetting businesses online, there are plenty of places where you can read legitimate reviews from actual members. One place is an organization called Trustpilot. I would recommend performing your due diligence in this regard.
By clicking on the pictures and links, you can sign up for a membership with a free starter account with absolutely no risk. There’s no credit card required when signing up. You can ask the many online community members questions while logged in under the starter account.
Conclusion:
I appreciate your patronage of my website, and I hope you enjoyed my latest post, Affiliate Marketing through Wealthy Affiliate: A Members Approach. Wealthy Affiliates was one of my better decisions for starting my online business in affiliate marketing. They have everything I need to start and run successful online businesses.
As mentioned, Wealthy Affiliates has three memberships: starter, premium, and premium plus. The starter membership is a no-risk assessment with no credit card required. It will allow anyone to ask questions of successful existing members within Wealthy Affiliate’s program live chat.
The premium membership makes Wealthy Affiliate the ideal platform for starting and growing an online affiliate marketing business. The membership levels will allow you to scale your business as necessary.
I mentioned earlier that the premium plus membership is the best bang for your buck regarding the annual rate of $697.00. This is the membership I pay for annually. It gives me over 200 expert lead classes annually and over 1,000 training modules.
I have not found anywhere online that I can get this kind of education for under $700.00 annually. To me, this is a bargain. Not to mention, In my state and I’m sure others, the $700.00 is considered a business expense when I prepare my taxes.
Disclaimer: I am not a tax advisor, and this is in no way to be construed as advice on preparing your taxes. Please check with your local tax authorities and seek the advice of professional tax preparation services.
I encourage you to sign up for the starter membership. Check Wealthy Affiliate for yourself if you ever want to be your boss or work without time or location constraints and from the comfort of your couch.
Please add comments, suggestions, feedback, and questions below in the comment section.