The “make money online” industry is a funny one. Not haha funny. Just weird funny. There’s a whole culture surrounding it, and to a person who simply wants to figure out how to leverage the internet to earn money, jumping into MMO is often a trial by fire. If you’re trying to find out what the Wealthy Affiliate average earnings are, you can stop now. The numbers don’t exist. I don’t know them. They don’t know them.
With over a decade of data and tens of thousands of members, how is it that nobody knows how much Wealthy Affiliate members make?
What Are Wealthy Affiliate Members’ Average Earnings?
Wealthy Affiliate is one of the most popular, and most recommend training websites around. They’ve been around since 2005, so are working on 14 years of operation when the average lifespan of an MMO product is about 14 days (15 days if you count launch jacking).
No doubt, your first time hearing of them was reading a review about a garbage Warrior Forum or JVZoo product, or you read an article somehow related to making money online. There’s a lot of people promoting them, including myself.
I know that if you’re smart, you’re skeptical. There are a lot of scams online. Think back to Empower Network and Wake Up Now. What about Bitconnect? And yes, The FTC just took down MOBE, which was charging people twenty five grand for the pleasure of joining their ranks.
So, naturally, when you start hearing claims of how Wealthy Affiliate can teach you how to earn six figures online, you probably want to know some basic information to figure out whether it’s a scam or not. One of the common questions I get is people want to know what the average earnings of Wealthy Affiliate members are.
Why do they ask that? Two reasons.
The first ties back into the MMO industry stuff I was talking about above. It’s very common in this industry to give an exact estimate of how much money it’s possible to make. Haven’t you ever seen one of those ads?
Learn how to make $5,681.44 in three days!
Of course, the number is usually completely made up, or loosely “based on a true story”. Why do they have such a specific number? I’m guessing it’s because it sounds more real. It makes you think, “Wow, that was specific. I guess it’s straight off of the income report.” Something like that.
Another thing you’ll run into is with network marketing companies is that they disclose what the average earnings are for their members. I think this disclosure is required by the FTC because many direct sales companies make outlandish and misleading income claims.
Both of those examples are to say that it is very common to talk about average earnings and to set up buyer expectations.
Why Doesn’t Wealthy Affiliate Disclose Their Members Earnings?
This simple answer is that they don’t know the average earnings of their members, and that’s a good thing.
I’ll give you some examples straight from my own personal experiences below, but let’s look at this from a broad overview first.
Wealthy Affiliate is a training center. I liken it to a gym membership. You pay a monthly fee, get some facilities and services, and you are responsible for your own results.
My local gym doesn’t know my weight. They don’t know what exercises I do. They don’t know if I’ve reached my goals.
Wealthy Affiliate is training you to earn money online. Their setup is basically a 5-level course on different aspects of affiliate marketing. They start you out with the basics, like how affiliate marketing works. They then move through things like choosing a niche, building a website, setting up social media accounts, and writing content that ranks.
There’s a lot more going on inside the members area like weekly live webinars, but you get the gist of what’s going on — they teach you how to build profitable affiliate website.
Because every person builds a different niche website and affiliates with different companies, there’s no way to track what members earn. Even two people in the same niche will have different traffic sources, different keywords, and different companies they work with.
They only way that anyone could learn what you earn would be if they did a survey, and even me, a decade-long member would not fill that out (I’m just private like that)
Two More Benefits To Doing It This Way
Though there are plenty of complaints about Wealthy Affiliate that I understand, the earnings thing is not one of them. I think there are still two more benefits to doing it this way.
1. They Don’t Set Unrealistic Expectations For Income
Every person works in a different manner and has different abilities. Some people are ready to work long hours and have high income goals. Other people don’t have much time and just want to earn some side cash with a casual blog.
You can do either one with the Wealthy Affiliate training. It’s up to you.
By leaving income expectations open, they allow you to craft your own narrative. You get to decide what you want, and how hard you want to work for it. That’s why I’ve seen some members start earning six figures in less than a year, or even start a profitable business while homeless. Meanwhile, other members dilly-dally for years and don’t earn much at all (or they might just plain quit!).
Think about it. If you were looking to earn $25,000 per month from your website, would you join a company that said “Learn how to earn $500 extra per month with your blog!” Probably not.
If you just wanted a few hundred bucks to supplement a fixed income, would you sign up to a company that said, “Learn how to work 15-hour days and start earning $25,000 after 2 years of constant work.” I’m guessing no.
The truth is, both of these situations are possible with affiliate training. Affiliate marketer income is all over the map!
2. They Are Clearly Differentiated From Other Products
So many products out there make it sound easy to make money online, like there’s a big secret and all you have to do is learn the secret to start cashing in. Many of those scams use the concept average earnings, even when completely fabricated, to entice you to buy their product.
Isn’t it niche that a company doesn’t play that game? Aren’t you glad that they’ve decided to be a bit different?
True, they could probably concoct something like a world-wide guesstimate and say, “Oh, affiliate marketers produce an average income of $70,000 per year.” They could go the typical route and talk about how you can earn $30,000 in a week (I’ve done it before), or sell your website for six figures (also true).
But would that make them a better company? Would that make you trust them more?
Wealthy Affiliate marches to the beat of their own drum, and they keep it real while they do it.
My Own Personal Average Earnings
Lot’s of people ask me how much I earn with affiliate marketing. For years, I kept this number a secret. It’s private information. Where else in real life would you ask someone how much they earn?
Relatively recently I just started being clear that I earn six figures. Sometimes I’ll say that I earn over $10,000 per month. My thinking is that it helps people visualize what’s possible in this line fo business. I guess some folks just don’t have much of an imagination!
Still, I never say the actual number I earn. It creeps me out to tell people how much I make. It feels too braggadocios.That’s just how I feel, and I’m comfortable with this level of transparency at this point.
They Don’t Even Know How Much I Earn
Yes, I’m an affiliate of theirs, and yes, I earn money promoting them on this website. However, I also promote other companies and earn affiliate commissions from them. On top of that, I have display ads which earn a decent chunk of money.
Wealthy Affiliate earnings account for maybe 50% of the earnings of this website and less than 50% of earnings overall. All the other money is coming from companies. They’ve never asked me what I earn, and why would they?
Individual Wealthy Affiliate Success Stories (And Earnings Numbers)
If you were looking for an exact dollar amount for Wealthy Affiliate average earnings, you’re out of luck. However, I’ve got some great news for ya’ as well.
Some members do actually post about their exact earnings. The level of detail ranges from basics “So long and thanks for all the fish” style posts, to full out training guides outlining how exactly they earned what they earn.
One member posted about his $12,000 Christmas earnings (non MMO site). This guy John wrote about how he earned $6,582 in a single day. Shawn was happy just to bring his wife home so they could work together online.
Many people have posted publicly about their earnings, small or big, throughout the years. If you end up joining WA, log in daily and check out the Top 10 posts to keep up the community buzz, and you’ll see many similar income stories come though.
Final Thoughts
I think they’ve done a great job by going this route, but what do you think? Would WA advertising be better if they leveraged some kind of average earnings figure?
PS. You can learn how to do what I do, and I’ll even help you get there 1-on-1.
What’s up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!