Wealthy Affiliate Vs. The Affiliate Lab – Which Is Better – My Experience

Which is better Wealthy Affiliate Vs. The Affiliate Lab?  I think this is a question that a few people may be asking who are interested in blogging and digital marketing.  For me personally, as a member of both platforms, I am writing this review today based on my own experience of what I have learned from this training.

At least for the past few months, this has been something I’ve thought about writing an article on.

I’ve not been a member of the Affiliate Lab for long really  (I must admit) but since joining in February (2023) for me the training, I’ve felt, has been a real eye-opener.  Without dissing Wealthy Affiliate I really feel that the Affiliate Lab has given me so much information that they haven’t.  

Their training in my opinion really does go above and beyond but as someone who is still a member of Wealthy Affiliate, and who will be renewing their membership come Black Friday STILL I am not saying it is the loser here.

Definitely, there is plenty of good I can say about WA too.  In fact, I would probably say that for others looking to learn about how to make money blogging starting with WA and following up with the training with the Affiliate Lab is not a bad shout.  This is something I’ve done myself.

Although, before looking to invest in both together, if it is a one-or-the-other argument – 

Let’s take a look at this…

Wealthy Affiliate Vs. The Affiliate Lab – Which Is Better – My Experience As a Member of Both…

Both platforms have different pros and cons.  Some people like WA and some do not.  Same with the AL –

Although for me I like the idea of only paying once to get the full Affiliate Lab course plus all of its extras.  I like Wealthy Affiliate but I do think that paying $50 a month for new members can be a bit much.  Especially since you can pay a fraction of this to get a website set up with Blue or Siteground.  I mean there are added benefits such as the training but anyway…  

Blogging is hard work and many struggle in their first year.  Ideally, you really want to hit the ground running with starting a website.  In your first few months making your first $50 is a HUGE deal.  

Really I think in this respect The Affiliate Lab could be the better course.  It is a bit more intense than WA and some of the tools and services it recommends to use whilst in, what they call, the sandbox are all added costs – whilst WA only recommends that you pay the $50 a month and doesn’t recommend any tools or services on top, but how about this?  

I would say WA’s main course The Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) covers a lot of important things.  It is a great guide for setting up a website but there are a couple of things it doesn’t mention that I think are important.

I will get to this in another part of this blog post but before we do let’s address the elephant in the room here…

How To Make Money Blogging $

Now, ultimately, what you will want to learn as a blogger/website owner is how you can create blog posts that are your very own functional entity that can help generate passive income on autopilot.  SEO is the key word here – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION although really this is only one moving piece.  The real key here is TRAFFIC and CONTENT CREATION.

Your main goal as a blogger (or any kind of content creator) is to drive traffic to your website and monetize your content in a way that some of your audience will respond.  You want a percentage % of these people to make purchases from your affiliate links, buy your products or click on your adverts.  This is how really you make money blogging.

Getting found on search engines is the best traffic source because it is free and in theory, this is how blogging can be so lucrative.  Any old blog post can consistently make you money without you even doing anything else to it and you can create more potential income streams with every piece of content you create.  

It is not really as straightforward as this to actually make it happen but these are things that both the Affiliate Lab and Wealthy Affiliate aim to teach you with their training.   

As a member of either platform, you can learn plenty to help make this possible, and many people have done this.  So getting to the point…

What You Will Learn with Wealthy Affiliate?

If you are interested in starting your own website with the intention of making money online Wealthy Affiliate is a good place to start.  You can use this platform to set up all the fundamental things you need as a beginner to become successful at making money online.  

Their basic free course will guide you on how to choose a niche and (most of) the basics you need to know.

Essentially you can take the free 5-step WA LEVEL 1 course and this will teach you how to set up a WordPress website.

This is of course THE MAIN THING you need to do to get started but there is more.  

If you choose to upgrade then you have another 4 LEVELS of training that is ideal for your first 1-2 months as a blogger.   

The Online Entrepreneur Certification includes lots of very helpful guidance including;

• How To Set Up Google Analytics and Search Console
• How To Find Potential Low-Competition Keywords
• How To Set Up Legal Pages and Menus
• How To Write Your Blog Posts and Product Reviews
• How To Find Affiliate Programs and Offers To Promote.
• How To Set Up Social Media Channels and Engagement.

I will share a screenshot below – just to give you an idea of the training on offer for $50 (every month);

It is a nice basic course that you can learn a lot from.  I would recommend it for beginners.  There is a lot of good information here although STILL there are some important things it does neglect to tell people I think.  Setting categories and tags to NOINDEX is the main one for me but as for the rest, I will get to this in the next section…

What I Don’t Like About the WA Platform



So I will admit I owe WA a lot for what it has given me over the past few years.  I’ve definitely made commissions because of this platform but I think one thing that really hit home for me was reading the Wealthy Affiliate Review on EBIZFACTS.com.  

This review points out lots of problems with Wealthy Affiliate and its training.  I am really not sure whether to think about these points as the harsh truth or just harsh but the main point here is that WA is outdated and gives people bad advice.  

Really I wonder if Niall the website owner has really taken his time to go through all the training including the classrooms but this is someone that is absolutely smashing it with his blog and affiliate marketing so he is credible.

And I do kind of agree.  There are a lot of members of WA who aren’t seeing results with WA.  A lot of websites that are struggling and it does seem that the Affiliate Lab approach may be better although there is more support with WA.

Just What I Think

The Training HQ is where all the other training can be found and there is lots of it – you can bet there is tons of valuable training here but really if you are looking to find your next lesson it really is all over the place.  In the Affiliate Lab, on the other hand, it is simple – there are 15 boxes to choose from and you know exactly what you’re getting.  WA is not like this.

The classrooms are organized into sections but even here they kind of lack the structure of the Affiliate Lab.  They are essentially groups of tagged pages, whilst each section of the Affiliate Lab is much more like a course.

I really need to go through the lessons in the classrooms myself.  The email marketing classroom looks very appealing to me at the moment but actually, the Affiliate Lab has a few courses such as the AI. playbook and 301 directories that I’m sure are topics that aren’t covered on WA.  Also flipping websites too is a big part of what the AL. is all about.

Like I think both platforms offer different things.   Although I think the Affiliate Lab is the winner here.

Value For Money



This is definitely a very big deciding factor I think.  It really depends on your finances and your preferences.  If you have a $1K you can use this to pay for the Affiliate Lab and 2 Years of Hosting with enough left over to pay for your domain.

*Note:  To Join the Affiliate Lab is $1000 but you can get 20% off using mine or any other members affiliate link<<

Besides this everything else is optional and you don’t have to pay anymore although the AL. does not beat around the bush concerning other tools and services such as Thrive Theme Builder, social signals, PBNs, SEO tools, and AI. software.  This is kind of expensive whereas WA does not recommend any tools except Jaaxy which is included with your WA membership.

Although, you do get the feeling that if you are experienced enough and you follow the ALs. training to the letter you probably can hit the ground running.  Plus, it is only the first year you need to find $800 and that is it whilst WA is $50 a month or $400 every year.  I know many WA members will argue with me about this but if you are not making money this can be too much.

I never pay this, every Black Friday WA does a year for $299, a fantastic deal, but I think I would hate paying $50/pm to be completely honest.  I think unless you are making more than this every month it is not really sustainable.  

So, the Affiliate Lab I think is great here because all you need to really cover is your domain and hosting after your one-time payment of $800 (if you use a member’s affiliate link).  

Same price as your first 2 years at WA with domain and hosting covered but it’s better training and really as you don’t lose access once you pay this is a huge advantage although with training from other members, WA has more lessons than The AL.   

Quality Over Quantity

I know there are other members of Wealthy Affiliate that will disagree here.  One of them refused to post my comment on their Affiliate Lab review because I wrote that I thought the training was more fleshed out and that you could get cheaper than $1000. 

I think what they wrote was the AL. was $1K with Upsells which is not true.

They will not be getting any more comments from me in the future but besides the point – YES you do get more training with Wealthy Affiliate.  Besides the OEC and Bootcamp, there are the Classrooms, Training HQ, and Jay Neils (MagiStudios) weekly webinars.

You definitely get your money’s worth.  It is enough to learn how to become a success online, and it is a smaller investment in the beginning.  Lots of WA members are proof of this.   Roope Kittu, Little Mama, and Partha B are a few examples but the Affiliate Lab at least in terms of not having to dig through hundreds of random videos is much more direct.     

Also, you can reach out to members for support through WA and you can do the same on the Affiliate Lab Facebook group.  Here I think there is a big difference.  

The members of the AL. seem to be mostly more advanced with better answers.

There is one member of WA that if I ask a question they just send whatever link they can find that is related.  More than once they have sent links to my own blogs and previous questions like some kind of robot (actually wonder if this is the case).

So this Facebook group for the Affiliate Lab I think is great but actually, one thing that is unparalleled with WA is its actual support from its team. They have helped me out of many jams over the years.

And What Else

One big factor about the Wealthy Affiliate platform that they use to justify their $ 50-a-month price is their hosting.  I don’t fully understand this.  I will share a screenshot below;





So with Siteground, their premium hosting (which is $7.49 a month) is not as good as WA hosting.  A2 hosting is another good company – they offer a package for £28.99 and that is not as good as WA hosting really either in some ways – so this is a good point.

WA hosting walks all over both of them.  Although, Siteground is what the Affiliate Lab recommends.  You could say this is a con but really and truly – do you even need all the bells and whistles for a new website?   

$50 a month for someone just starting out is a lot of money without no immediate ROI.  To make your first $50 this could be 3 months or longer. 

And I would suggest if you are only following WA’s training then this will be in most cases.  

The first affiliate commissions I made when I got started came after 6-7 days – from publishing a product review on Blogger.  I think this happened because of a group on Facebook where I shared my link.  This was nothing to do with WA but this is what is possible.

But my point here is for $50 a month it can be disheartening to pay this when your website is not making money and really $7.50 a month for more basic hosting is a lot more manageable.  Although I would say the WA ecosystem does help to have there for support and training.

I really can’t actually knock it but if you can afford to pay $800 for the Affiliate Lab instead DO IT! 

Especially if you have some experience already.  In fact, I would say it can add an extra dimension to what you learn with WA.  If you already know about making websites this is how you can start looking at making 6 figures or more!

>>>Check Out Matt Diggity’s Youtube Channel – This Should Give You a Good Incentive To Join The AL.<< 

My Own Experience

I started blogging properly after years away on New Year’s Eve 2019.  I had this idea stewing in my head from just before Xmas when I was searching Google for ideas to make money online.  So I got set up on Blogger, I brainstormed a list of 100 ideas for posts and I got writing. 

Clickbank was really my first port of call to find affiliate links and I wrote this post. 

*Note link is from my latest updated version. This product has now been discontinued but anyhow I moved this blog post to my website. This was a lot shorter but in its original incarnation it made me 11 sales in 6 days after only a week of blogging<<

I joined Wealthy Affiliate because of this.  I had the money to pay for it and I wanted to go all in with WordPress. 

So, my first website/blog was called Dynamic Ideas and Opportunities Blogspot I kind of wish I could have stuck with it in a way.  Someone from WA told me it was too broad as I was blogging about health, mindfulness, and making money.  I mean I think now this probably could have worked and I would only be running one website instead of five but I guess it is what it is.

To be truthful may be where I am now is better.  Experience goes a long way but I do firmly believe where you start training and the help you get in the beginning is pivotal to where you’ll end up down the road. 

Blogging can be very lucrative.  After a disaster of a holiday recently I was so happy to come back to a $50 commission from 3 sales.  I’ve had so many times like this now and as someone that has traded on eBay for 10+ years, there is no better feeling than not having to worry about making money and not having to do anything else (as is the case with affiliate marketing).

I Will Leave The Rest Up To You

The Affiliate Lab and Matt Diggity are if you can afford it a good option.  Maybe if you have 2-3 years experience this is a good intermediate training course.  For members of Wealthy Affiliate, this may be good training to take to help expand your horizons.   Although, for beginners, Wealthy Affiliate is a great starting point with lots of helpful people in its community.

Also, if you sign up with my link to join WA I will coach you personally.   In fact, if you sign up here you will also receive my 30-Day Email Course and EBook.  You should find this very helpful.  The Affiliate Lab you can sign up and save $200 here too but either way both are great courses and platforms that you should definitely find very helpful. 

And I hope you can be. Any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me.

Best regards and to your future success 🥂

From

Alex B. Chivers
iBusinessToday.com

Contact us at chivs86@ibusinesst.siterubix.com