I recently joined Wealthy Affiliate University and although I’d heard a lot of good things about it, I was always pretty skeptical about it. I’ve joined numerous membership websites that promised big and delivered little. Here’s my list of 10 things I love about it right off the bat.
1. Professional, functional, unique membership script. This ain’t no cookie-cutter website. I’ve never seen anything like the programming behind the website, which shows that a lot of time and money was invested into the design.
2. WA Spaces. I hate Myspace and I rarely look at Facebook. I’ve tried Yuwie and orkut and all that but you can’t seem to do business on those sites without “spamming”. WA spaces is the social interaction between internet business professionals that I’ve been looking for.
3. Free Web Hosting. It’s not just any old membership website that will give you free space to host a website, and it’s good hosting too. No Geocities or Angelfire type hosting. That adds a lot of value to the monthly package since you can expect to spend at least $10 a month for decent hosting.
4. The membership has a GOOD affiliate program. A lot of membership websites pay a tiny percentage and some only pay a one time acquisition. The WA affiliate program pays $14 per month per referral like clockwork. This is with the current price of $30 per month which is about to climb. That payout will likely climb with the price hike for membership that goes into effect on May 6th.
5. The WA Jobs Marketplace. There is a great community for trading money and services between affiliates and webmasters who know what they’re doing. A lot of good forums have poor marketplaces, but WA has both.
6. Top Notch Tools. The site rubix tool is state of the art and the keyword research is a fantastic resource. People are SELLING crummier tools for more money…
7. The WA My-Linker. The My-Linker is a tool that you put all of your links through to create new ones that call home to your WA account so you can track your campaigns. There are a lot of expensive scripts that do that but it’s included with WA membership.
8. The Panic Button. The panic button inside WA links to a page full of reminders that bring us back down to earth and calm us down. A lot of people feel overwhelmed in this business and need to be reminded of many things and they’re listed on the page the Panic button links to. A charming and creative aspect of the site.
9. The WA forum. The forum is crawling with ads like so many other webmaster forums I’ve seen. It’s not my favorite layout or anything, but there is a lot of high quality information shared by marketing experts that all internet affiliates should read.
10. 8 Week Action Plan. This is a good way to keep new people involved in the membership. There is a lot of information and good things to do, especially for beginners. An old horse like me doesn’t need an entire week to do what’s included, but I like it because it’s a way of maintaining your referrals excited and involved in the site - this is probably the secret to WA’s history of success.
There are many other things included that didn’t make my top ten list. To see what they are, try out Wealthy Affiliate University.