The Truth About Wealthy Affiliate Scam Review Sites
Today we are gonna be talking about the controversial “Wealthy Affiliate Reviews” which seem to look like honest impartial people trying to help you with a buying decision… but once we unmask what is going on… i think you will see something a lot more sinister going on here.
So Lets Dive Right In…
FIRST: if you were to do a search for “Wealthy Affiliate Reviews” you would see over 93,300 search results in quotes… that means that each of the 93K pages has the words “wealthy affiliate reviews” on it… why is this important… keep reading and ill show you more…
SECOND: if you search for “Wealthy Affiliate Review” same thing… about 10,300 reviews for that one…
Why Is This Important?
Lets have a look at a super popular brand “panasonic” who makes THOUSANDS of products… they only have 28,900 reviews… and they are a HUGE company.
So why would a Niche Site in the make money online affiliate marketing niche have WAY more reviews than a nationally recognized brand?
BECAUSE THEY FAKE REVIEWS.
You See The Wealthy Affiliate Scam Reviews have been a thorn in my side for quite some time.
Because they NOT ONLY tell people to write reviews about how great their product is (and it may be a good product… i’m not sure… i bought a year long membership a few years back and found it to be really confusing and all over the place and most of the content is user generated) this post is not a wealthy affiliate review… but rather to talk about their black hat review tactics.
So if you have a bunch of affiliates all writing great glowing and wonderful reviews JUST TO SELL THE PRODUCT AND MAKE COMMISSION.
well then that really isn’t a good review at all is it? at best its biased… at worst… its nothing more than a paid actor!
but of course they don’t tell you that part.
Most people just search the web and take the advice of the first person who looks legit and helpful… like those “hey i stop internet scams so come buy my wealthy affiliate program bullshit sites.”
I even had a student i taught back in 2009 who ACTUALLY made money with my program and the methods i taught him (i even bought the guy dinner and took him to the cirq de sole show FRONT ROW… on my dime… why is this important…
Because the guy later started a site with the wealthy affiliate method BAD talking my program and products so he could STEAL my traffic unethically.
And this is what i have found to be the case with wealthy affiliate reviews… they are not reviews at all and their students DON’T EVEN BUY THE PRODUCTS THEY REVIEW!
This was a “grey hat” method popularized by the rich jerk back in 2004-05 where he said to get a list of your biggest competitors and write reviews on their product negatively to get people to buy your product… or even run an ad saying “product one is a scam” and point them to your product.
This is a highly unethical practice and from what i understand wealthy affiliate used to even have a LIST of products to write reviews on… mine was included on that list and now i am here with dozens (maybe even hundreds) of websites that have FAKE reviews leading people to buy the wealthy affiliate program instead.
Now i do not know the makers of the program but i do know this is something i would never teach any of my students because at best its a bit shady.
What is happening is a HUGE mistrust… where someone is searching the web for honest reviews of a product and then being led to misinformation by someone who has never even purchased the product (yes i went thru most of the negative reviews on my product) and one person purchased (he didn’t even rank well) and the rest did not purchase at all.
This makes them fake reviews soley made for the purpose of getting people to rank for keywords.
Now this is important… so if you have a fake review site like this or engage in these practices… A friend of mine actually sued someone for writing a fake review for a product she did not buy and won $90,000 for that lawsuit… for ONE review. That is how serious this is.
But hey… the owners of wealthy affiliate “TECHNICALLY” have nothing to worry about because they sick their little army of affiliates on the products to do their dirty work… and boy is it dirty… and each one of those affiliates could be subject to a lawsuit… YES every one.
So if you are a business owner with FAKE negative wealthy affiliate reviews being made on your product… you could actually sue them.
To take this even further wealthy affiliate even gives you a little chart to use on your website for your fake reviews:
Funny thing is… 9/10 reviews i found on my product were all ranked 3/10 or 5/10… so these guys are just making up the numbers which is insanely unethical.
Its like if you had a restaurant and i had a restaurant…. and we were both on yelp getting reviews.
And all the sudden i told everyone who visits my restaurant to make a review of the other restaurant and say the food was cold, service terrible, and they should come to my place instead of yours.
That is pretty low down and dirty right?
But this goes even further… this is like if they took the food and put cockroaches on it and took a picture and put it on yelp!
And said… oh my god cockroaches… better eat at marcus’ place i never get roaches there.
Slimey as hell isn’t it?
So when you search the web to find reviews on products and you see bad reviews that promote the wealthy affiliate program… be SURE you run away fast because chances are AT BEST the person never bought the product… at WORST its a total fake review.
And if a company is teaching this as a method to “Make Money Online” well lets look at that as well.
When you buy a program or course about how to make money online and one of the top methods is to promote that money making program for commission… well that is not a good course at all… that is a scheme. A scheme designed to make the owners very rich at the cost of the affiliates who PAID TO PROMOTE THE PRODUCT!
See where i am getting here… this is a round robin circle jerk thanks for buying my product now the secret is to go sell the product.
This reminds me of a buddy my dad had back in the 80s… this dude was a millionaire and shady as FUCK!
Among ripping people off and kicking them out of the homes they owned… (more on that later) this guy also ran ads in magazines that said “Make $3,000 Weekly… send $10 for details” and when you sent $10 he sent you a copy of the ad and said go run the ad to make $3,000 weekly.
This is not a business! Fake Reviews Are Not A Business.
This Practice Is Unethical And Shady As Hell… So Next Time You See Wealthy Affiliate Honest Reviews… think twice!
So now that you know what we are dealing with here… lets talk about what it really takes to succeed in affiliate marketing:
First of all… most affiliate courses out there are going to tell you…
- find something you are passionate about
- start a blog about it
- get some affiliate links
- get traffic and sit back while you get rich
THIS IS NOT THE CASE… the first step one is flawed at best… why… because if someone goes out there and says i like finance… they will choose the finance niche without any clue how competitive it is or how hard that market is to break into.
So from the get go… you are already doomed! You picked the wrong market… and most people unknowingly continue in this market trying to get traffic… never get much… never make anything and then give up. Wealthy affiliate teaches this model as well which is why 90%+ never make anything.
think about it… if they have over 1,000,000 happy customers… are you telling me 1,000,000 people are now making a full time living because of the wealthy affiliate program.
Success Tip: what wealthy affiliate stumbled apon and what i would venture to say many of thier students are doing… is in fact tackling the right niche in the wrong way.
they are going for reviews… namely reviews of internet marketing products.
now this is a really cool way to make money… reviewing products… but please be ethical and review the product, give honest feedback, and have an affiliate link for people to buy thru.
its actually quite simple… review sites are a big part of the internet economy and will be here to stay.
HERE is the way to really start your affiliate marketing business:
- find a niche market and research the hell out of it to find out what keywords people are using to find answers to problems the product solves
- select your traffic method based on research about what is ALREADY SHOWING UP for those terms… be it paid traffic, free, youtube, reviews, ect.
- go after that traffic DELIBERATELY knowing what you can get.
Here is why the “wealthy affiliate review” model works…
Below is a list of keywords ranked for by a wealthy affiliate scam review site… each review takes the viewer to believe that product X is a scam and they should try wealthy affiliate instead…
Pay close attention to the “KD” highlighted column… this shows how hard it is to rank for a given keyword. you can also see the monthly search volume and all kinds of other data.
What is going on here is these review terms (because the products are not as popular as honda or panasonic) they are easy to rank for… in these instances we call them “low hanging fruit” because they are easy to rank for.
And wealthy affiliate knows that if thousands of their minions write thousands of fake reviews they can sell millions in products.
Take a look at a competition report for the term affiliate marketing:
With the exception of affiliate marketing jobs, affiliate marketing reddit, affiliate marketing for dummies, and a few other super long tail keywords… this entire list is super competetive… the KD is in the colored box… 0 = easy 100 = damn near impossible.
and if you have a new site… you can see how its easier to write reviews and rank for review products.
BUT LETS NOT throw the baby out with the bathwater… we can use this for some good here…
we can actually rank for review terms that we actually write honest reviews for and sell the products… like “drone reviews’ or cannon lens 500 reviews or whatever floats your boat… there are tons of ethical amazon product review sites, software review sites, and all kinds.
but dont do fake wealthy affiliate reviews to shit talk other products just to promote your own thing… you dont have too… there are plenty of keywords without having to stoop to black hat methods… and remember at the end of the day YOU are liable for YOUR marketing… not wealthy affiliate… they just keep the bulk of the cash while you make pennies and have to deal with lawsuits for fake reviews.
End of rant… check out some of my stuff below if you want to learn more about ethical affiliate marketing and how to earn a living online…
PS: after writing this i found several people on quora complaining about the same unethical wealthy affiliate reviews
To Give You An Idea Of How DEEP These Keywords Can Go… Searches Also Show Up For Wealthy Affiliate Scam, Wealthyaffiliate bbb, is wealthy affiliate worth it… and on and on we go.
Marcus I have to agree with you, I have went to Google to get a review on several programs and time the program reviewed had to many red flags or wasn’t recommended but the person doing the review always recommended Wealthy Affiliate as the program to go with.
I had already tried Wealthy Affiliate and I found it to be confusing and I didn’t know which direction I was going in so I just cancelled my membership with them