Why I upgraded to Premium membership here at Wealthy Affiliate

byllc67

100 followers

8 years ago

I am feeling very good about my decision to upgrade to the Premium package with the $19.00 first month special. This is my first Blog within this community, and the very first blog I have ever made. How exciting!

I wish I would have known about this community sooner. Ten years ago, even 15 years ago, I kicked around the idea of becoming an affiliate, when yahoo had those free webpages. I hosted a yahoo discussion group back then; I also had a few webpages I used as a personal way to keep my family and friends informed of all the vacations I was enjoying.
And if I remember right, I did have an Amazon link on one of my free pages for a while, along with about five other banners that I haphazardly cut and paste their uplinks. I thought it was that easy to make money, by slapping a few banners around. My page looked like a junk yard of sales banners. It was atrocious.
Yes, it was when the internet was young and companies like ebay, were not yet the empires they are today. But, I was not eBusiness savvy and none of my friends were either, so, with that being said, the dream of internet riches lasted about a New York minute.
I did not believe I could drive traffic to my web presence. It seemed impossible. I heard of auto-responders, but that was like a foreign language to me. So, like everyone else, I simply gave up and did not give it a real try. I did try again in 2006, to activate a premium Host Gator account. I had three websites, I even learned some HTML, I purchased Dreamweaver CS3 and tried to learn it, but after a few short months, I gave up on the idea, because I did not know anything about doing business online, I had no business plan, and no direction. I wanted to do something, but I did not know what to do with the tools in my hands. So, once again, I walked away from something I knew had potential for the guru type people, but not the regular average Joe and Josie, like me.
I just did not have the knowledge to see the possibilities, to have the vision, to turn a good idea into reality. And like most people, I did not go seek that knowledge because I did not know where else to turn.

Then last week everything changed. My life took another profound direction. I had one of those rare "Ah Ha" moments. First, I am a new member, having only been with the WA community for two days, I could immediately see all the value being offered to the starter members, for free!
I was so impressed with that content, of course I wanted access to all the premium content, the classroom instruction, live training videos, the website/domain upgrades, and take advantage of the first month 59% off promotion.
This was exactly what I knew I needed all these years. These are the tools with the instructions on how to use them. And, it was not going to cost me a fortune to gain access to this collection of knowledge.
The free training and support being offered to the starter members is generous and shows that each person here is very valued in this community. I have already received personal communication from both founders, and encouragement.

Now contrast this with my brief experience with another program called Empower Network. Everyone is an instant millionaire with Empower Network. The red flag went up but I was told it would be 100% free.
They lied, but I took advantage of their trial period, because it cost me only two dollars for a 14 day peek around, and after two days with them, all I experienced was constant emails, text messages to my phone, messages to my facebook, all begging me to upgrade now.
Oh it gets worse. I was first, "Funneled" from one web page to the next, to watch motivational videos and eventually, I had to make a small purchase on some fast cash freebies for verification purposes.
They gave me a sponsor, which seemed cool at first. He at first seemed helpful and nice, but his videos increasingly took a nasty tone telling prospects that they would stay poor forever if they did not upgrade today and take charge of their life.
The merry go ride went on with them trying to constantly upsell me something.
So, after my first small purchase at Go Daddy, they were still being nice to me at this point, so I was enrolled into a "Total Funnel System" which basically is free, so they did not totally lie, they were deceptive however with how they suck you into Empower Network through their evil vortex.
So, this is how it works basically, stage 1 is free, free, free and stage 2 in this total funnel system is where you make your small purchase, and then you enter stage 3 where they try to get you to buy Pure Leverage, which I did not purchase it because they wanted lots of money for the product.
As the mystery maze then funneled me into the iPas system which too is part of Empower Network. And, in iPas, my sponsor was yelling in a video to upgrade now to "Elite" so, I skipped out of iPas and I landed inside the back office of Empower Network to watch Fast Start Videos. They bomb you with tons of videos to watch and it get confusing. Every video is a new sales pitch.
They then wanted you to sign and fax back to them a commitment form saying you would purchase the inner circle for $100 a month and make a year long commitment to listen to audio daily, along with the other 8 core commitments. If you did not do this, then you would receive no support from your sponsor. This was made clear to not bother the sponsor until you did all of the other upsells first.
By this point, I knew it was a scam to suck you out of money and they were not promoting anything of real value. I was in the Empower Network less than two days and it was a total nightmare. Want to know how bad it really is, just read their policy in fine print like I read.
When I went to check my account status, to cancel my trial membership - I discovered they automatically enrolled me into three products that would have cost me $125 per month, and I was unaware of this deception and fraudulent tactic.
I am so lucky I took time to look at all of my account details or I would have had a surprise next week when my bank account would have got suckered.
So, I cancelled everything and sent email to their support team making sure I was indeed cancelled, and I even asked for my two dollars to be refunded on their 14 day money back guarantee. I will update this blog if I ever do get that money back from them.
Talk about a shady company.
If that was not bad enough, the so called products they were trying to sell were of little value as they were more interested in getting you to immediately spend $5,000 bucks and "Go All In" for their training and motivational hype, like jumping head first off the Hoover Dam if you ask me.
They were basically trying to promote their get rich quick scheme, and not what tools, services, benefits their program even had to offer, as I could not figure out what more than a glorified blog were they even promoting?
Personally, I think, the creator of Empower Network should be ashamed of himself, because he was involved in AMWAY at the Diamond level, and at AMWAY we are taught to always be ethical. His MLM business model at Empower Network is of low quality, at best.

So, how did I find the WA community you ask?
Well, see I am a firm believer that God leads my path, and the muddy road to EN eventually led me to look at reviews of scams, which led me to a scam report by one of the WA members, she told her story of being involved with the Empower Network, and then she directed me to the WA community through her website. I am so appreciative that many WA members post their reviews and experiences with these other providers, because it saved me from wasting anymore money than my two dollars.

Please, take my two cents advice and my two dollar experience and come give the Wealthy Affiliate Community a FREE try, like I did.
I know you will be more than impressed with the quality and quantity of training, support, fellowship, and the opportunity to earn a solid income online and build your own quality ebusiness.