I?m super passionate about freelance copywriting. But let?s face it, constantly hunting for clients can be exhausting. It’s not uncommon to spend hours going back-and-forth with a potential client through email or over the phone, only for the project to fall through. Even when you achieve a steady flow of clients, you?re still trading time for money.
That?s when I discovered the beauty of affiliate marketing, which allows you to generate passive income by writing about products you love. You get to cut out the middle man and only focus on the writing, saving yourself lots of time and energy!
But what is the best affiliate program?
After cobbling together information from articles and webinars which mostly left me confused, I thankfully discovered Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate do not just provide you with products to sell. They also teach you the ropes of affiliate marketing and sales in general.
They have tons of lessons that break everything down into simple steps and a super helpful, active community that answers all your questions. At first their confusing website interface was almost a deal-breaker for me. Thankfully, they upgraded to a beautiful new design that?s much more user-friendly!
I started with their?free trial?and eventually upgraded to?premium?because of all their cool features. But you can totally still get value with the free version.
If you?re like me and working on millions of projects simultaneously, you can always cancel your premium membership so you?re not wasting money. Then you can rejoin when you?re ready to focus on affiliate marketing again.
Here are the following benefits you’ll gain from joining Wealthy Affiliate:
1) Personalized Help
I don’t know about you, but for me, a book or online course does little good if you can’t actually ask the instructor questions. Starting a blog is extremely overwhelming. Am I right?
It’s not a linear progression AT ALL. Even something as seemingly straightforward as, say, writing an article, leads me on a million different tangents.
Like I have to go find an image for the article, but wait a minute, first I have to find an appropriate focus keyword. Then I want to do something interesting with my font and now it looks all wonky so I have to go in and mess around with the CSS which takes hours since I’m not technical by ANY stretch of the imagination…
I say all this to say that you need a support system because the minute you hit a roadblock, if you don’t have someone to turn to for help, you’re gonna give up. And believe me, there’s a million things that’ll go wrong that aren’t covered in any course.
That’s why it’s so crucial to have a team. With the premium membership, you can get support directly from the founders. Any time I’ve had a question, I’ve always been able to email one of them and get a thorough, helpful response in less than 24 hours!
Even with the free membership, you can still receive instant help through the live chat feature. The people in the forum are very active and helpful. Unlike many other forums I’ve been in, they actually know what they’re talking about!
2) State of the Art Keyword Research Tool
Previously, SEO was something I knew I needed to master, but learning it was a huge headache. I pieced together all the free information I could find from articles and YouTube videos, most of it contradictory.
For a while I used the Google Adwords Keyword Planner, but the results they gave me (i.e. “1K-10K”) were incredibly vague and unhelpful.
Luckily, Wealthy Affiliate comes with a Jaaxy account. This keyword research tool makes things super simple.
Type in any keyword, and you immediately get a list of related keywords with their average monthly searches, number of competing websites, and an SEO score based on traffic and competition.
You can also research niche ideas, brainstorm related keywords, and investigate trends across your industry.
If analyzing keywords isn?t really your thing, you can always just look at the SEO score! If you want to go more in-depth, though, Jaaxy also provides great support videos.
The training videos were actually my favorite part because for me, there’s nothing more frustrating than a tool that doesn’t explain how to use it in simple, non-technical lingo.
Are you interested in Jaaxy but not a Wealthy Affiliate membership? You can sign up for Jaaxy here and get 30 free searches.
3) A Wealth of Detailed Lessons and Trainings
As a premium member, you have access to a 50-lesson affiliate training course that will help you to succeed in any niche, not to mention over 300 hours of live trainings!
What I like about the lessons and trainings is that they are extremely detailed, leaving no stone uncovered. At the same time, the information is simple and actionable.
I also appreciate the combination of text and visuals in each lesson. For the most part, I prefer text over video as I find skimming text more efficient than rewinding and fast-forwarding through video.
However, there are moments when a visual is needed to clearly illustrate a point, and on that note the lessons deliver, providing pictures and short videos where appropriate.
Additionally, the live trainings are extremely helpful, as are the Q&As afterwards. Recently I watched a training on keyword research, which cleared up some confusion I’d had about whether to prioritize traffic or competition.
I learned that for new bloggers like me, it’s better to go for low-traffic keywords (even if the keyword only gets, like, 10 searches a month) than high-search-volume, competitive keywords if the trade-off is getting a front-page slot on Google.
4) Simple Yet Sophisticated Website Platform
I think one of the biggest perks of a premium membership is getting your very own website platform complete with hundreds of templates to choose from,?thousands of add-ons, and (my personal favorite) 24/7 support. Even with the free version, you still get two websites with privacy protection and 12 website designs.
Now, I had recently finished setting up this website before joining Wealthy Affiliate. However, I am in the process of creating a new website specifically dedicated to alternative health, followed by a website geared toward professional writers.
And if you think I’m going to go through the process of building a whole new website, getting registered through BlueHost, etc. all over again, you’ve got to be kidding!
5) Self-Hosted Blog
Unlike posting a blog on my own website, posting on the WA-hosted platform is a breeze. No time wasted on fonts and formatting.
The main purpose of the WA blog is to write about your own blogging journey. Why?
Because it creates accountability and allows you to track your progress. After stalling for weeks, reading others’ blogs and telling myself I *should* write one myself, I finally went for it!
I decided to write a post about getting started on Pinterest, which you can read here. I had fun writing it, got to reflect on what I’d learned in the process, and hopefully helped others as well!
6) Warm, Welcoming Community
As mentioned, blogging can be super overwhelming, especially when you’re first getting started. There’s so many days I’ve been ready to tear my hair out after going through yet another unhelpful YouTube tutorial or WordPress forum.
Thankfully, the WA community is always there for advice and moral support. Sometimes, it’s just nice to know that someone else is experiencing the same struggles that you are.
For instance, a couple of months after I first started pursuing affiliate marketing, I read a blog post by a woman who was stressed that she had followed all the steps, put in hours and hours of work, invested hundreds of dollars, and still had yet to earn a dollar to her name.
It’s like she was reading my mind! It’s always nice to know you’re not alone.
What’s more, though, is that people reading her blog took the time to provide her with specific feedback, looking over her website and then offering her tips on areas for improvement. Again, it’s so great to be part of such a helpful and supportive community!
Final Thoughts
Of course, no program is perfect. Personally, I find the continuous live chat window on the dashboard a little overstimulating, especially for someone?like myself who’s easily distracted.
Also, I do wish the community weren’t quite so big. I prefer smaller, more tight-knit communities.
Nevertheless, the large size has not prevented the founders from responding to my messages very quickly. And as with any community, you’ll get to know the regulars as they are the most active, ambitious members.
Plus, the advantage of the large size is that at pretty much any time of the day, I can enter a question into the live chat and expect a response within a few minutes!
Don’t take my word for it, though. It’s free to get started, so try it out and see for yourself! Just click the banner below.
