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Wealthy Affiliate's Biggest Problem: The ONE Thing I Don't Like
Hey everyone.
Been a while since I created a blog post but today I thought it was time I addressed an issue that is probably the biggest reason a lot of people dislike Wealthy Affiliate.
I came across these complaints when I was looking for products to review from scam.com and happened to run a search for 'Wealthy Affiliate'
These were the kind of 'interesting' threads I came across:
https://www.scam.com/showthread.php?116422-The-Wealthy-Affil...
https://www.scam.com/showthread.php?115627-Are-all-Affiliate...
The takeaway seems to be that a lot of people have issues with this:
Inexperienced marketers creating highly negative reviews of programs they haven't tried in order to promote Wealthy Affiliate.
When a new member joins Wealthy Affiliate they may decide to start with the Bootcamp training.
The chances are that the content they use for their site will be 80% product reviews. Of these reviews, 80% will probably be products that they haven't tried.
This isn't neccesarily a bad thing in itself. The problem is that of these reviews, a large chunk of them will be labeled 'scams' and the reviewer will go on to promote Wealthy Affiliate as a better alternative.
Now what if one of these products WASN'T a scam?
Do you think it is unethical to be taking away someone's income by writing negative reviews about their product WITHOUT even trying it, all in order to increase your own income?
Unfortunately, I can't see a clear cut solution. Obviously I'm not suggesting you buy into every product before you review it because most of them probably will be scams, and there's no point wasting your money.
One thing that might help, and something that I advocate, is for new members to always go through the entrepenuer certification BEFORE bootcamp.
That way, they aren't creating an 'empty' WA review and have genuine experience to pull from and back up what they are saying.
Any thoughts?
PS. If I've got anything majorly wrong, don't be afraid to correct me!
Reply
When that is said, I personally think it is better to learn affiliate marketing first before promoting WA.
Also, Kyle is probably one of the most authentic online marketers I have seen. His and all the training focus on quality and on helping people.
I agree that you should not just call something a scam just to make a sale yourself, and when you are new, it can be very difficult to see what are scams and not: When that is said - there are A LOT of scams out there that just get upset for being called out and having review that reveals this outranking them.
I think people should be careful about calling something a scam, and I agree that some people that are members here might do that too fats just to make a sale. But a lot of the poor and dishonest promotion people do has nothing to do with WA. There are more than 1 million members here and the WA members overall use a lot more ethical and truthful methods than most other online marketers.
Just look at how many positive reviews you can find online from unethical marketers promoting crappy scam products to make money themselves. At least many WA members goes against these and give more truthful info.
But overall I agree with you that it is a relevant discussion and that we should not be so focused on making money ourselves that we say and do whatever to make it happen - and actually the ethical and honest approach from Kyle is one of the reasons I love the training here.
Mikael
Good point- I hadn't realized how old those links are. But the problem is definitely still ongoing today!
I agree; I wish it was mandatory to AT LEAST finish a couple levels of certification before Bootcamp.
You're right. It's a tricky area; obviously you don't want to buy into a scam just to prove it's a scam, that's just a total waste of money. But there is a chance that you might get it wrong from time to time, which could be very harmful to your brand in the long run.
That's also true; a lot of the time it's them promoting their own products too.
Thanks for your input!
I wrote a very compelling post about this last week. Are Most Product Reviews Truly Authentic? I'm surprised you haven't seen it already, it practically went viral.
Still not seeing a viable solution though, other than dramatically scaling back the amount of product reviews we write.
Do you think a site could still generate huge income with a MINORITY focus on product reviews?
Because I don't think buying every scam just to tell people..it's a scam, will help.
But it is a fine balance indeed.
Good product reviews by ethical writers is a great thing. Read my article for more detail.
The problem is that not everyone is as skilled at you! That might sound like a joke but it’s the truth. Some people lack the subtlety and instead think they need to hammer home that THIS IS A SCAM; they underestimate people’s ability to work thinfbs our forbidden themselves.
The problem is that many of these companies (one in particular) that cried "foul" and exclaimed "fake reivews" ended up being taken out by the FTC for defrauding people out of 100's of millions of dollars.
So those people writing these reviews, actually were saving people's lifelong savings in many cases. That should not be undermined by someone yelling fake news, without and adequate or any refute.
I'm familiar with these 'fake reviews' claims by a few certain competitors and I'm glad you were able to resolve this.
The problem is that the bigger WA becomes, the harder competitors have to try to dissuade people from joining. And with WA growing hugely, this is a big problem.
From my 20+ years of doing this internet marketing thingy, the problem seems to be that many default to promoting a Make Money Online based website instead of focusing on a different niche. The MMO niche if full of scams plus many experienced marketers who eat newbies for lunch.
Chasing the money instead of focusing on a personal passion lessens a member's chances of success.
