Clickbank University vs Wealthy Affiliate: Beginners Must Read!
Hey there and thanks for coming in the read this Clickbank University vs Wealthy Affiliate comparison. Being an affiliate marketer, I have personally enrolled in both of these programs before and have seen the good and bad of each one, so I felt it would be useful to make a head to head comparison of these 2 industry leaders.
If you are searching for the best training for affiliate marketing, one of these 2 programs might be suitable for you. Clickbank is a huge network that thousands of affiliate marketers use, and have generated billions of sales over its two decades history.
Affiliates frequently turn to Clickbank to search for the next big thing to promote, and in recent years, they have finally launched their own training course, the Clickbank University (CBU), to add more value to its members.
Wealthy Affiliate (WA) on the other hand, also revolves around affiliate marketing and training, and has quite frankly been a standout in the sea of “gurus” who claim they are the best or they know some secrets that you should pay $5000 for. (read my Wealthy Affiliate review here)
So how does the 2 stack up? In this post, I will show you what I think are important factors in such training programs and tell you how well CBU or WA does.
Let’s dive in.
What is Affiliate Marketing and why should it matter to you?
Are you someone trying to make money online?
Are you a beginner at trying to earn a full time income through the web?
If you are, then you should definitely be looking at starting your affiliate marketing journey as it is one of the best and most reliable ways to do so.
You should also consider starting your own blog right now as it is easy to do and gives you lots of valuable training on creating your own online money making machines.
Earning a passive income through affiliate marketing is a tested and proven method that has helped many people, myself included, changed their lives and increased their incomes.
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is when an affiliate marketer promotes a product to an audience and gets paid when someone purchases the product through their unique links.
As you can notice on my site, there are several product reviews that my team or I have written. When a reader such as yourself purchases one of them, we get paid a commission, and the best thing is that the buyer is not forking out any extra money at all.
Win Win for all parties involved.
Sounds good? Yes it is, but the process of doing so has stumped many, and training programs such as the 2 we are examining today aims to solve that problem.
Who are the owners of the 2 programs?
So let’s have a look at the credentials of the people behind Clickbank University and Wealthy Affiliate.
The 2 main faces behind CBU is Justin Atlan and Adam Horwitz.
Justin Atlan is an entrepreneur and marketing consultant. He also runs a consulting business SJA Media where he provides advice to all kinds of companies across several different industries with some reaching 9 figures in revenue.
Adam Horwitz is a bit less well known, but he is also an experienced entrepreneur, owning a number of internet businesses. He has achieved a small amount of fame when he appeared in CNN, which talked about his business of helping small business owners with generating leads.
For Wealthy Affiliate, the owners are Kyle Loudon and Carson Lim.
Kyle Loudon is the main face of WA, as you can see prominently in posters and especially after joining the platform. He has started many online businesses, and you can actually see a few examples within the WA platform. He also serves as the lead trainer in the academy.
Carson Lim is the silent partner, and he is mainly in charge of backend and technical matters. He is the main architect behind the design of the WA platform.
Key Factors analysed
When it comes to affiliate marketing training, I have seen my fair share of it. I remember when I first started, I was simply soaking up information wherever I could find them, attending free training online as well as paid training.
During this time, I managed to wise up and figured out that there are only a few things that really mattered in such trainings, especially to a beginner still finding his feet.
Here are the key things you should look out for, and I give my comment on who has the advantage in each section.
Ease of use
Nobody likes to attend a training that is complicated and difficult to use. For newbies, it has to be dumbed down enough that can reach a wide enough audience and let them understand the training.
In CBU, the training is structured over a few weeks and mainly comes in the form of videos. Everyone has their preferred method of learning, so I won’t comment if videos or words are better.
The videos are pretty short, so you can easily sit through a few of them at one go, and Justin makes it pretty easy to understand. The problem though is that because they are quite short, there isn’t a lot of details which can hand hold beginners.
For WA, you get access to all their training modules which includes a mix of videos, webinars and articles. You can consume them at your own time, or join the Bootcamp to have a more structured approach.
Beyond the 50 or so core subjects, there are tons of other topics that covers the entire spectrum of affiliate marketing. The training is constantly updated so you are sure you are learning something fresh each time you attend one.
Winner: Wealthy Affiliate
Types of Training provided
For CBU, you are actually getting 2 types of training.
In the first part, you will go through an 8 week training course which you can access online on their platform. This goes through the basics of affiliate marketing and tells you how you can earn money.
You also learn about sales funnel and how you should create them to maximise your profits, plus a look at how you can write email swipes for your mailing list.
The other section is actually for vendors, which means you are someone who has a product you want to sell and wants to use the Clickbank network to promote it. This is a 12 week course that goes in depth about how to choose your niche and create digital products and of course, how to market them.
On the other side, Wealthy Affiliate is like a large library of content that revolves solely on helping an affiliate marketer. You should get yourself on the bootcamp as that is the best way to start using the platform.
It takes you through the A-Z of the affiliate marketing universe, even going in depth to teach you how to create your own websites. There is a helpful checklist to keep you on track and mark your own progress.
You are constantly reminded to take action, which is pretty useful considering that lots of beginners tend to give up pretty quickly.
Winner: Wealthy Affiliate if you are focused on being an affiliate marketer rather than a vendor
Community
Having a community to give you advice and support is extremely useful for a beginner to affiliate marketing. Imagine having a burning question that no article on Google can answer, or you need a fast response but don’t know who to turn to.
In Clickbank University, there are training sessions where question and answer sessions are involved. But beyond that, there really isn’t much resources to help you out. You got to depend on the recordings and figure out how to solve your problems should you encounter one. They do have a Facebook group, but it does not seem to be overly active.
For Wealthy Affiliates, the story is a stark contrast. The entire platform was designed to encourage interaction. You will know what I mean once you log in for the first time.
You are encouraged to introduce yourself to the private community (over 2 million members), which is really active. The owners personally reach out to welcome you and encourages you to be active and ask questions.
Although each of you are competitors, it never feels that way. Instead, it is like a bunch of like minded people coming together to share ideas and help each other out.
You might be surprised, but Kyle and Carson often answer questions in the platform. I think it is pretty rare that owners take such a hands on approach.
Winner: Wealthy Affiliate
Traffic generation method
Learning how to generate traffic to your website is the lifeblood of affiliate marketing. Simply put it, more traffic equals more sales equals more money for you. Even if you had the best designed and most informative website in the world, no one will know if you don’t have anyone reading it.
But mastering the art of sending traffic to your niche site is difficult.
Many courses out there simply tell you to use paid traffic, which is fine in my books, but it is equally if not more important to learn how to drive organic traffic from Google, which is more sustainable.
For CBU, their focus is really on using paid traffic, which means running Google ads or Facebook ads or Instagram ads. That can work well, but it also means adding another layer of complexity to a new marketer.
I remember the early days. There was just so much information overload that I could hardly do the right thing. You will have your hands tied by the website operations, juggling writers (if you hire), producing content, social media marketing, and the list goes on.
The last thing at the beginning is to learn another skill such as running ads.
For WA, they teach you to drive traffic both organically and using paid traffic. Learning SEO will be one of the most valuable lessons you will ever learn in your affiliate marketing career, and you should spend as much time as needed to improve your skills at that.
Winner: Wealthy Affiliate
Pricing
Look, I can totally understand if you want to learn everything under the sun for free. I used to think the same way too. But there is a reason why paid courses are still around in every niche you can possibly think of.
Why is that so? People need to have an organised and efficient way to learn.
Imagine spending hours trying to search for videos on YouTube, or sifting through different blogs to piece together the information you need. How much time would you waste in the process?
If you are serious about learning affiliate marketing, you may want to consider investing a small amount into your education.
For Clickbank University, the price is $47 per month, and you would need to continue paying it if you wish to use the Clickbank Builder feature. This is for you to build sales funnels, similar to other softwares such as ClickFunnels. There are also several upsells which are optional.
For Wealthy Affiliate, you can join for free and stay as a free member for life, but that means you have some restrictions in what you can access and use. They adopt a freemium model, which means you can pay to upgrade your membership. The premium membership is $19 for the first month, and is recurring at $49 per month thereafter.
Winner: Wealthy Affiliate
Support
And lastly, we look at the level of support that each vendor provides. This is important as you want your issues (if any) to be resolved as soon as possible. No want likes to wait on a support ticket.
With Clickbank University, the support is obviously outsourced. If you attempted to reach them, you would probably understand why as they seem to first reply with a templated answer. The quality of the replies are hit and miss, so I’m not entirely confident of that.
On the other hand, Wealthy Affiliate seems to know the secrets to keeping their members happy with a wide range of support options. You can send a ticket to the site support for technical enquiries about the free website you can build on WA, or you can ask questions in the active community.
A live chat function is also available for premium members which can help you to resolve issues immediately.
Winner: Wealthy Affiliate
Should You Buy Clickbank University Or Wealthy Affiliate?
Let me briefly list out the key points of each vendor in this Wealthy Affiliate vs Clickbank University comparison that you should know too.
Wealthy Affiliate key points:
- Training is comprehensive, and shows you ways to promote many kinds of suitable products whether it is digital or physical
- You get a free website even with a free membership
- Training teaches you how to set up website and perform keyword research using SEO best practices
- Includes a free keyword research tool Jaxxy (limited features for free account)
- Access to community even with free account
Clickbank University key points:
- Consists of 2 types of training, one for affiliate marketer, one for vendor who wants to sell digital products
- Focused on selling Clickbank products
- Lots of social media marketing tips included (paid ads)
- Not free, but has a 30 day money back guarantee
So the big question is, which course should you choose?
Based on my comparison of the key features above, it would seem obvious that you should go with Wealthy Affiliate since they have an edge in pretty much every category.
If you are a beginner to affiliate marketing, I highly encourage you to try out Wealthy Affiliate, as they have an impressive and comprehensive training curriculum for free. This is a great first step for you, and you can choose if you want to make use of the premium features at a later time.
You may be unsure right now, and may not be convinced to part with any money without a clear sight of the returns. If that is the case, a free WA membership will suit you best.
That said, I wouldn’t discount Clickbank University entirely, as it does have its merits. While the training for affiliate marketing is not as robust as I would have preferred, their course on becoming a vendor is really eye opening.
I do have thoughts of selling my own digital products one day, and this is probably one of the few courses that is good at doing that.
So while today you may not want to create and sell your own digital products yet, do keep CBU in the back of your mind as you embark on your affiliate marketing journey.
I can assure you will come across the Clickbank brand sooner than you think.
At this point, I would also advise you to consider reading more about how to start your own blog. Although you can get a free one from WA, I strongly advise you to create your own as it takes away any potential complexity down the road.
Clickbank University vs Wealthy Affiliate program: Conclusion
So my friend, Clickbank University or Wealthy Affiliate for you?
If you have been following along, you would know my choice.
If you are not convinced and still want to look around, I have reviewed a few other programs that teaches you how to make money online too.
Starting a Wealthy Affiliate free account? Join here.
Enrolling in the Clickbank University? Do it here.