How much can we earn ?

Introduction

This article is aimed at total newbies who decided to promote Wealthy Affiliate for starters, but maybe some of us "old hands" can also learn something from it.

I know that we always advise new members to rather concentrate on building their websites and to follow the training one step at a time, and not to focus on the earnings potential of it for now. This is good, sound advice, but let's be brutally honest here :

• Who among us can truthfully say we never really wondered how much we can really earn from all of this ?
• Have you never ever tried to use the earnings calculator just to have a look see ?

Earnings Calculator

I freely admit that the earnings calculator is quite a clever little tool, and a lot of thought must have gone into developing it for our benefit.

However, I do have the following concerns :

• It may possibly create a false hope with new members that it will be easy and quick to recruit referrals and start earning a substantial income from promoting Wealth Affiliate as a first website.
• It is not as straight forward as it seems at first, to fully understand how the earnings calculator really works.
• The earnings potential does not seem to follow a clear, specific mathematical progression.
• It does not make provision for recruiting referrals at a rate of less than one per day.

Discussion

I specifically mentioned the possibility of creating a false hope, because lets be honest here :

• It is not so easy and straight forward to recruit one new referral per day.
• We are basically forced into accepting that one referral per day is an acceptable norm, because the calculator does not make provision for anything less than that.
• What if we are totally honest about matters and think we have a chance to recruit at least say 5 to 10 new members per month ? Would that not maybe be more realistic than to accept one referral per day as being normal ?

Facts and Figures

Now, let's use the earnings calculator to do a few calculations. We will use one referral per day, with an average upgrade to premium of 12%, and a retention period of 4 months as suggested. This is what comes out the wash :

• 1 Per Day = $226 / month (Makes provision for upgrade to yearly by some members)
• 2 Per Day = $703 / month (211% Increase in potential earnings)
• 3 Per Day = $930 / month (32% Increase in potential earnings)
• 4 Per Day = $1156 / month (24% Increase in potential earnings)
• 5 Per Day = $1458 / month (26% Increase in potential earnings)
• 6 Per Day = $1860 / month (27% Increase in potential earnings)
• 7 Per Day = $2086 / month (12% Increase in potential earnings)
• 8 Per Day = $2388 / month (14% Increase in potential earnings)

What I find significant is the tremendous jump from 1 to 2 referrals per day, which may be true, but then why the seemingly fluctuating increase in earnings between all the others further down ?

Conclusion

Maybe I am just too old to fully understand all the intricacies of the earnings calculator, but my concern is that some new members might also interpret things in the wrong way like me, which may lead to confusion and disappointment later on.

I really feel it would be a good thing to make provision for entering numbers less than 1 in the referrals per day column. I personally would like to see it changed to referrals per month, OR for the ability to enter a number like 0,5 or 0,2 or something similar per day.

Final Word

I invite all the mathematicians out there or anyone remotely interested to comment on this. Let's hear your thoughts on the matter please.

Thanks for reading this, and have a great day.

-Theuns