A Wealthy Affiliate Scam Review

By | November 18, 2016

What is the Wealthy Affiliate Scam About
The Real Scoop On Wealthy Affiliate

 

Scams are happening everyday, everywhere, online as well as offline. I will show my proof of a wealthy affiliate scam review and what it is all about. My proof will be backed up by facts and not from bogus claims or irresponsible reporting.

 

Over the years I have grown accustom to dismissing anyone claiming “they have found the secrets to making money”. I have learned to put up my shield to guard against anyone talking about making easy money, or getting rich. I don’t know about you but this cliché is beginning to get old. Right?

 

 

 

When I first heard about Wealthy Affiliate I was of course, skeptic. Anyone that has lost money to a get rich quick scheme are always on the guard. But somehow this was different. I wanted to know more.

 

FYI, to learn more about what the wealthy affiliate is all about you will want to read my Review of Wealthy Affiliate.

 

 

Let me show you what I found!

 

 

I will show what the Wealthy Affiliate is as a business and their original intentions in providing online services. I will show a brief history, their inception date, owners and what they provide, all according to the BBB business file data.

 

 

Then I will show the complaints filed with the BBB and the actions and/or the results of any pending investigations.

 

Then lastly I will give my rebuttal and conclusions to these complaints so as you can decide on whether you believe it is legit or a scam.

 

The complaints listed at the BBB are real. They were filed with the Better Business Bureau. For the complete list of these complaints follow this link: http://www.bbb.org/vancouver-island/business-reviews/internet-marketing-services/niche-marketing-in-victoria-bc-30334507 .

 

 

Is It Legit or a Scam?

 

 

The perception of online marketers has always been that these marketers are all con artists, thieves, or online used car salesman. Or at least a lot of them.

 

If you wanted to start a business online to make money you had to pay somebody. Someone always had the “secrets” to online success, or the “keys to riches”, but these secrets were never free.

 

Today there are still many work from home opportunities that are fee based, which means you must still “pay to play.” However, this fad is waning and more legit opportunities are being born everyday.

 

Yes there are still many online “thieves”, “bogus programs”, and “fictional gurus” to be aware of. And as the old saying goes, “you can’t get something, for nothing”, still holds true. Or at least most of the time.

 

But then there is Wealthy Affiliate. So what is a wealthy affiliate? Is it a scam?

 

According to some, like maybe seven people out of the over six-hundred thousand current and/or former wealthy affiliate members will tell you, yes. These people feel that they were ripped off, lied to, or taken advantage of.

 

It is time to put these accusations to the test. Put up or shut up and tell it like it is!

 

 

  • According to the BBB the Wealthy Affiliate is given an “A-” rating.
  • In the last three years there have been a total of eight complaints filed with the BBB with five of them being resolved.
  • The BBB knows of no government actions involving the marketplace conduct of Wealthy Affiliate.

 

So who is Niche Marketing, Inc – alias Wealthy Affiliate?

 

 

Niche Marketing, Inc was started in July, 2005 in British Columbia, Canada. It was incorporated the same year by Carson Lim (president) and Kyle Loudoun (vice president).

Their business category is in Internet Marketing Services.

Business name: Wealthy Affiliate, Wealthy Affiliate University.

The original service that Wealthy Affiliate provided was selling “Lists of Keywords” to members or subscribers. This helped the subscribers to achieve high search engine rankings, which equated to more traffic. More traffic equals more money, lots of it.

 

 

The Wealthy Affiliate has expanded their services and now provides entrepreneurs assistance in:

  • building websites
  • hosting websites, marketing
  • getting search engine rankings
  • generating online revenue

 

Wealthy affiliate offers training from their wealthy affiliate university, support and coaching along with the essential tools needed for running an online business.

 

There are Pros and Cons to any organization and wealthy affiliate has their own. First I want to show the bad, the skeletons in the closet, so to speak, of what some people have to say about wealthy affiliate.

 

 

The BBB Consumer Complaints

Wealthy Affiliate Customer Complaints Summary
Complaint type Total Closed Complaints
Advertising/ Sales Issues                   1
Billing/ collection Issues                    1
Problems with Product/ Service      6
Delivery Issues                                     0
Guarantee/ Warranty Issues            0
Total Closed Complaints                   8

 

Of these eight complaints, five of them have been satisfactory resolved between the business, Wealthy Affiliate and the consumer. The other three complaints have been terminated and the BBB has been unsuccessful in attempts to contact complainants.

 

 

The major complaints were mainly about Wealthy Affiliate drafting the monthly membership fee from the members Paypal accounts. Whether the members didn’t understand the terms of service or exactly when their monthly fees were due is beyond the scope of the report.

 

Customers Review Rating plus BBB Rating Summary
Niche Marketing Inc has received 4.2 of of 5 stars based on customer reviews and with the BBB ratings of A-

 

 

The customer reviews that the BBB used to decide on the 4.2 star results are as follows:

Customer Experience / Total Customer Reviews
Positive Experience                3
Neutral Experience                0
Negative Experience               1

These customer reviews are listed below:

by Willafay M. on Sep. 20, 2015
“I have been a WA member for almost four months. All of the lessons, training and tutorials are up-to-date, complete and well presented. All of the resources one needs to apply what has been learned on the site. In addition, the membership community is awesome; members are friendly, empathetic, encouraging and helpful. The communication between them and with the owners is respectful, open and friendly. The cost is modest and there are no hidden or unanticipated costs. It is truly like a University for learning how to create a web presence that will lead to earnings. I have recommended WA to a number of people and will continue to do so. Before WA, I tried some other sites which ended up trying to sell special services for many thousands of dollars. WA is not like that at all. Being a member of WA has been a positive experience for me in all respects.”

Was this review helpful to you?
4 people found this review helpful.

_________________________________________________________

by beata M. on Aug. 22, 2015
“Wealthy Affiliate is the most incredible learning platform for people who want to build their own business online. University offers free hosting, keyword research tools and great learning courses. I wish I could join Wealthy Affiliate earlier.”

Was this review helpful to you?
1 person found this review helpful.

_________________________________________________________

by Rey T. on May. 28, 2015
“Member for over six months: Positive experience. Clear contract/commitment, no upselling and great content and training as advertised.”

Was this review helpful to you?
1 person found this helpful.

_______________________________________________________

The only bad review is as follows:

by Nate H. on Jun. 16, 2015
“This company has the worst customer service of any company I have dealt with. No phone number to contact anybody. I received an email that my yearly membership would renew in seven days. Since I was dissatisfied, I got to work removing my websites from their hosting. That same day they took the $*** out of my account before I could cancel. Now after several attempts I get no replies to why it was taken early. In addition to taking the yearly fees, they then canceled my account so I could no longer contact them for my refund, since they only private message through their own website.”

Was this review helpful to you?
2 people found this review helpful.

 

____________________________________________________________

 

The second report I want to show you is what you will find if you go to “RipoffReport.com and search for Wealthy Affiliate. This website allows people that have been wronged by a business submit their grievance online so everyone can see. It is a “by consumers, for consumers” website.
ripoff report website

 

 

 

Anyone is allowed to submit their claims to how a business scammed them or ripped them off and hopefully be able to provide proof to their claims. I don’t know of any investigation that this website defers to the judicial system.

 

 

One of these claims, is pictured below. I am sure there is actually a scam artist trying to capitalize on the use of the name “Wealthy Affiliate”, even though there is no true affiliation to the business, wealthy affiliate.
wealthy affiliate scam report

 

 

 

If you actually read the report it reads like a report written by a third or fourth grader making bold accusations of the  two con artist, Evelyn Baz and Tasos Tzortzis, that are representing Wealthy Affiliate.

 

 

ANY WEALTHY AFFILIATE WHO IS DOING THIS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW! THE FTC AND FBI ARE INVESTIGATING THIS – PLEASE GO BACK AND REVIEW ANY PAST INFO!
Wealthy Affiliate is the number one scam out there and the owners will be go to jail for this.
When you create a fake review for stealing SEO traffic for the sole purpose of making money through your affiliate link, then you have committed a series of crimes:
SEO FRAUD
INTERNET FRAUD
EMBEZZLEMENT
MONEY LAUNDERING
These all fall into the category of what wealthy affiliate is doing…

 

 

 

The actual report is not about the business Wealthy Affiliate at all but an impersonation of a wealthy affiliate member writing bogus reviews to get people to click on their website links. Once a victim clicks on this bogus review, the scam is started.

 

 

Is it a real scam report, or just a sample of what extremes people will say for attention? As we use to say when I was growing up, “never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see…”

 

The real Wealthy Affiliate does not teach, train, or offer any material to anyone that is contrary to law, nor do they support, harbor, or condone any of these practices. I know for a fact because I AM a Wealthy Affiliate Member.

______________________________________________________________________

 

Now I would like to present the Pros about Wealthy Affiliate and why I say they are legit. I would like to set the story straight, once and for all, about exactly what the Wealthy Affiliate is all about.

 

 

I am a premium member of Wealthy Affiliate and I want to tell you my story.

 

 

Since I am a member in good standing I feel that I can give you an honest and fair assessment about this organization without prejudice or preconceived ideas.
I will give you a detailed look inside the wealthy affiliate explaining the benefits of being a member and the consequences of this membership. There are far more good points I will show you than there are bad.

 

 

Seven day Trial Period

 

 

Everyone that is invited to join wealthy affiliate does so by way of their “Free Membership”. Upon joining the free membership you are given full access to everything the website offers for seven full days. This is how I first learned of wealthy affiliate too.

 

 

This seven day window provides the new member a time period to get familiar with all the many features and benefits that are standard to a premium member.

 

 

The new member gets their own blog page with full communication access to all the members within the wealthy affiliate community. Full access means:

  • unlimited private messaging between members
  • unlimited use of the keyword tool
  • unlimited access to all the training videos
  • two free websites
  • recurring monthly referral income

 

 

In this seven day free trial the member will get an offer, a “bonus”, that if they upgrade their membership to “Premium” they will get their first month at a discount of only $19.00. The normal monthly membership fee is $49.

 

 

This bonus is only available for the first seven days, though. After that, the price to be a premium member returns to the normal $49 per month.

 

 

My original quest in joining wealthy affiliate was for selfish reasons. I joined in August of 2014. I wanted to get as much knowledge from their training materials in the one month trial period that I could learn. After that I was going to terminate my membership and subscription.

 

 

You see, I already had two websites hosted elsewhere. All I wanted was some of their free training and marketing strategies.

 

 

But after the first month was over, I had discovered something…

 

 

I liked it there. Plus I had only scratched the surface to all the training material that is available to premium members, and more was being added everyday! In my quest in seeking knowledge to make myself a better person and successful marketer I learned that there was a lot more to know.

 

I didn’t want a limit to what was available to me from their site, so I joined the upgrade level of Premium and I have been so thankful ever since that I did.
Just look at some of the training lessons pictured below that you will find at Wealthy Affiliate.
certification lessons

 

WA Bootcamp

 

 

10 free lessons

 

The image pictured above are the ten free lessons that all “free membership” are given to learn to earn an income from the Internet.

 

 

The great thing about wealthy affiliate is that anyone can still remain a free member forever, if they so wish. Many marketers are earning a good monthly income without ever becoming a premium member.

 

 

If you remain a Free Member you get two websites and ten training videos on how to earn online income. The videos teach you how to select a niche, build a WordPress niche website, and get limited use of the wealthy affiliate keyword tool.

 

 

No other affiliate or website builder program on the Internet furnishes a keyword tool!

 

 

NOTE: The keyword tool is as vital and necessary a tool as any for any website. This alone adds much value to the membership cost because without the search engines your website fails!

 

 

If you are wanting to get an edge on the competition and give your website the needed boost to rank high in the search engines, a Keyword Tool is one of the most important tools a website can have.

 

 

Another big asset a member has besides the keyword tool is the wealthy affiliate community. I call the community “the secret sauce” to WA. The community is over six hundred thousand entrepreneurs that all share one common goal: to be successful.

 

 

The size of the community alone ought to tell you something about the authenticity of their organization.

 

 

The community provides help and support to all the members. There is a “live chat” twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week where any member can get immediate help from another member, sometimes even from the owners themselves! We answer questions about anything.

 

 

WA Activity Dashboard

Activity Dashboard

 

 

Any member has twenty-four-hour access to the owners, Carson and Kyle, by way of private message.

 

 

The websites are hosted at wealthy affiliate with twenty-four-hour support. They actually have two servers, one as a back-up, just in case the other server goes down for any reason. This means your website is live on the Internet around the clock and never offline for any reason.

 

 

As a free member, you get two WordPress websites on the siterubix platform. You also get to share in the referral revenues of people you refer to Wealthy Affiliate. Other benefits are:

  • two free websites
  • unlimited access to “live chat”
  • unlimited access to the owners
  • Twenty-four-hour website support
  • ten training videos from the certification program and ten training videos from the WA Affiliate Program
  • WordPress Express – three click website building program
  • Low Competition, cherry-picked keyword list
  • Your very own blog page
  • An exclusive “Rapid Writer” for the copywrite enthusiast
  • Plus many more…

 

 

There are two levels of membership. The beginner or starter membership is free. The second membership level is Premium that gives the member full access to everything on the wealthy affiliate website. It costs $49 per month on a monthly recurring basis, or the yearly program which cost $359.

 

 

Or, as my guest you can join for an even bigger yearly discount by clicking the “Black Friday Special” below!

 

 

 

Some of the many benefits of this premium membership are:

  • unlimited access to all members through “private messaging.”
  • unlimited access to “live chat”
  • unlimited access to the WA keyword and competition research tool
  • 25 websites on the siterubix platform plus 25 websites on your own domain
  • state of the art, unlimited cloud hosting
  • interactive discussions live free training videos every Friday evening
  • share in the recurring referral revenue
  • Plus many more benefits

 

Everything is included! It is truly an “all inclusive” online business training and operating platform.

 

 

Oh Wow, I almost forgot the best part! Whether a free member or premium, for everyone you invite (refer) to join wealthy affiliate, you get to share in the monthly recurring income! See below what I mean!
wealthy affiliate referral income

 

 

 

Conclusion:

To answer the question whether or not the Wealthy Affiliate is legit I believe I have given proof that this online training and servicing site is for real, and not a scam. I have been a member since August 2014 and will probably remain a member in the years ahead.

 

The online world is getting more advanced every day and more people are getting access to the Internet which become potential customers to you. Already there is 3.2 billion people with Internet access.

 

 

In my opinion, the benefits far outweigh any disadvantages you will find in joining this entrepreneurial paradise. It offers the best program to learn how to earn passive income, then gives you the power to stay ahead of the competition, and keeps you abreast of all the new marketing techniques.

 

 

I give this review a “Thumbs Up” and rate Wealthy Affiliate a 97 out of 100. I have compared their websites and hosting to the other website builder programs, affiliate programs like Affilaroma or Bill Farley. Wealthy Affiliate is the best of the best.

Don’t take my word for it, prove it to yourself. Go see if Wealthy Affiliate is not everything that I say it is.

6 thoughts on “A Wealthy Affiliate Scam Review

  1. Kenny Lee

    I’ve been a member of Wealthy Affiliate for a year and here is what I can say about it. No it doesn’t promise you getting rich quick methods. So don’t join and expect to do that.They do show you proof that if you follow the training, step by step, you will earn online income.

    In building a business, knowledge is king and there are an abundance of training and resources here. To the extent that some feel overwhelmed. It’s a good thing for me.To be successful the more you know the better.

    Reply
    1. Kenneth Merrick Post author

      You hit the nail on the head Kenny when you mentioned knowledge is king because frankly knowledge without application is useless. You learn both from Wealthy Affiliate

      Reply
  2. Janelle

    How refreshing!

    It is good to see A WA review that does not rehash the same old pap that has been touted for the last five years or so.

    I’ve got a feeling that 5 complaints over a 12 year period and over 800,000 members is a good record, no a fantastic record they can be proud of!

    I doubt very much that McDonalds, or Walmart, or GoDaddy or any large business you care to name, can claim such customer satisfaction.

    From what I have read, most WA members are besotted with the program and the owners.

    Thanks for this interesting report.

    Janelle

    Reply
    1. Kenneth Merrick Post author

      Thank you, Janelle, for a great comparison to some of the giant corporations that don’t have the same business values as does Wealthy Affiliate.

      Reply
  3. Anuoluwapo

    Hi Kenneth,

    I can without a doubt tell you that this is one of the best programs I have seen out there. I have been into internet marketing for a couple of years now, but at wealthy affiliate i see leverage and mutual help between members for you to grow and succeed.

    The training is fantastic, the owners, Kyle and Carson are willing to help and available to help. This alone is never available with other online training subscription programs.

    Having been mentored a couple of years by one of the best, i still have a 100% love for this community compared with others. So, I am not surprised that WA has such a large amount of members runing into a million. I hope to continue here amidst people with so much love and support for my online business.

    Thanks for this review and i hope others will come and enjoy what we are enjoying at WA.

    Anuoluwapo

    Reply
    1. Kenneth Merrick Post author

      Thank you Anuoluwapo for your kind words. I agree with you that the training alone is worth the membership fee as well as the “secret sauce” that the community provides. There is absolutely nothing online that compares to the Wealthy Affiliate as far as training, support and services.

      Reply

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