Open Source Affiliate

Review: Second look: Why you should join the Wealthy Affiliate program

Second look: Why you should join the Wealthy Affiliate program

After my previous post on the Wealthy Affiliate, I felt it was only fair to give them some credit and take another look at them from a different perspective.

The Wealthy Affiliate: a market for marketers?

If you have had success with affiliate marketing, you may want to join the Wealthy Affiliate. Let me put it even stronger. If your niche is internet marketing, you would be crazy not to join the Wealthy Affiliate! If you are even a moderately successful affiliate marketer, you know that $40 a month (a recent price hike from $30) is chump change. What do you get for $40 a month? You get nearly unrestricted ADVERTISEMENT for a CUSTOMER BASE with a HISTORY OF SPENDING MONEY in your niche. Any competent marketer would kill for such an opportunity.

Think about it. Every forum member is a niche-targeted potential customer. Since everyone at the Wealthy Affiliate had to pay to join, you know that these are the types of people who are willing to pay for electronic products or memberships. As an internet marketing affiliate, this forum is your best friend.

Joining the Wealthy Affiliate allows you to participate in the forums, where the majority of members spend their time. If you are not already familiar with forum marketing, you should probably spend more time learning about the basics of internet marketing, rather than joining the Wealthy Affiliate. For those of you that do understand forum marketing, you realize that this large audience of people desperate to part with their cash are a literal goldmine for advertising.

The forum moderators have a section for promoting or selling your own products. You are also allowed to advertise in your forum signature. However, if you really want to milk the forum, there are a more effective ways. You should do your best to answer newbie posts with long, detailed posts. People will be grateful and this also builds up trust. Then, later when you recommend a product or ask them to sign up for an email list, lots of people will sign-up and join you.

It is important that forum members recognize you, and that you develop your forum brand-name. In addition to helping out other members, you should create one or two threads as “forumbait”, analogous to linkbait. For example, create a thread like “I made $5000 this week” or “I made $1000 in my first month at WA!”. Many people will click on your thread, and if there is active participation, your thread will stay at the top of the list of topics. Post screen shots of your earning and show them tanatalizing details. Realize that most members are not successful marketers, so if you are an average, competent marketer making a couple of affiliate sales a day for $40-100, they will still be very impressed by those numbers.

Want to get newbies begging to send you cash even if you’re not a affiliate wizard? There’s no need to photoshop Clickbank accounts. Just use your creativity. For example, if you know how to run a successful PPC campaing, you know that you can generate large sales if you invest a large amount in Adwords. Of course, the return on investment may only be 10%. However, if you just post your Clickbank account and fail to mention that you used Adwords, which eats up most of your profits, you will generate sale numbers that have newbies impressed. Say that you are using a secret method that you can’t reveal. People will send you private messages asking for your secret. Realize that the moderators read your private messages, so don’t respond with anything stupid. Just put a link in your signature to your a free email course, etc. where you can make an explicit offer. It doesn’t matter if you sell them a rehashed ebook. Once the buzz gets going, many people will buy it. You can always put in a few old methods and explain to unhappy uncustomers that unfortuntately, these techniques no longer work because too many people are trying it.

I hope I convinced you that all good internet marketers should join the Wealthy Affiliate. I am not, however, reversing my position of being against scamming beginners. You will see no affiliate link for the Wealthy Affiliate here, because I am no longer a member. In fact, I am not actually promoting the Wealthy Affiliate. If my effort here succeeds, the Wealthy Affiliate will be overrun by internet marketing pros trying to out-sell and out-scam each. Instead of a few pro wolves preying on a flock of newbie sheep, there will be a pack of pro wolves trying to eat each other, kind of like the Warrior Forum and their WSOs. And you thought you I was being nice.

P.S. Dear Kyle and Carson

Dear Kyle and Carson, if you read this, don’t get mad at me. Realize that I am helping your program. There are too many newbies with questions, and not enough people to give advice at WA. If your forum gets more “pros”, members will feel like they are receiving more quality content, i.e. their money’s worth, and are more likely to stick around and give good reviews.