Wealthy Affiliate University Rip-off Gives Internet Marketing Black Eye

Is Wealthy Affiliate unethical? Is it an outright scam or rip-off? You be the judge. The FTC should pay attention to what Wealthy Affiliate is doing too.

This is a true story that has just happened to me and which may happen to you as well if you don’t read on.

I want to warn everybody so that Wealthy Affiliate University doesn’t take advantage of you as the company will certainly do this to everybody who is not aware of their greed and their disregard for their customers which they aren’t ashamed to rob.

If you purchase their subscription for a year like I have and have no desire to renew it the following year they will without any notice charge you for another year.

That wouldn’t be so bad if you could get a refund.

But Wealthy Affiliate will refuse to give you any refund even if you ask for it the same day they charged you for yet another year.

They bill in advance and will laugh at you if you tell them that you aren’t using their service and have no desire to do so in the future.

They will keep your money and will blame you for not reading their disclaimer which they point out to as saying that they don’t give any refunds.

This is how the Wealthy Affiliate contradicts itself in their disclaimer which I quote excerpts of:

..”If for any reason you are dissatisfied with the services of COMPANY after receipt of any services or electronic digital goods, COMPANY will work with you to try and resolve the issue.” …

“Under no circumstance does COMPANY provide refunds to dissatisfied customers”… “refund requests shall be ignored”…

You can read the full disclaimer here.

I have not read the disclaimer when I singed up and I bet that most people don’t. This is where the company hides and what they rely on.

After reading this you can form your own opinion but I doubt that you will want to deal with a company that contradicts itself saying that it will work with you to try and resolve the issue in one paragraph and that refund requests shall be ignored in another.

If this was a physical product it would still be refunded by any ethical merchant.

But Wealthy Affiliate is a membership site.

If you don’t use it at the start of the new subscription year and never intend to use it, what are they charging for? To see that there have been other cases of this blatant rip-off by Wealthy Affiliate you can view the Rip Off Report site.

Where is the FTC? Perhaps they should intervene in cases like this instead of trying to protect people from obvious scams.

Is Wealthy Affiliate University a scam? If so it is a well hidden one so far. The judgment is up to you and what I think is my qualified opinion.

You can check the Scam dot com forum if you haven’t done so by clicking on the link above to see what people say about the company. It is not always a favorable assessment.

I could understand if they didn’t refund a monthly charge but they are charging me against my will for the whole year.

Wealthy Affiliate is raking in money that doesn’t belong to them.

(But you wouldn’t suspect that if you read what Kyle of Wealthy Affiliate says about ethical internet marketing. He certainly knows the theory. What his company practices is vastly different from it).

Your credit card company isn’t likely to help you get your money back either.

It didn’t help me because the payment went through paypal first. The credit card company told me to contact paypal.

Paypal has canceled the subscription but says it may not be able to get the money back. They promised to file a dispute claim and they have done so right away. What a great attitude as compared to Wealthy Affiliate disservice.

(UPDATE: May 23, 2010 Paypal has decided in my favor. I hope that the people at Wealthy Affiliate University will cough up the money that they took from me  without getting a heart attack. I detest their practices but wish no ill to them as long as they treat people without underhanded tactics to separate them from their hard earned money).

Wealthy Affiliate and their kind need to be listed in Better Business Bureau as offenders and people users. I have told them that I would make sure they are in hopes that they would return the ill gotten money. But they just laughed at me.

Apparently they don’t care so I will keep my promise to warn others about their rip-off tactics.

What do you think of Wealthy Affiliate and the way they treat people?

Have you had any terrible experience like this with them or any other company?

What have you done to defend yourself? What would you do in this case?

Please comment and bookmark and tweet this story to warn others. If you have a blog, link to this story and post about it. People must be warned and hopefully the regulators will notice too.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Whether you are just starting to blog or have been blogging for a while there is likely nothing more important to you than knowing how to get traffic to your blog.

One of the good ways you can get blog traffic is to comment on other blogs as I have covered in my post Get Blog Traffic With Comments. Another good way to increase blog traffic is to build links to sites that will help your blog to be found by others.

Link building is a part of SEO. I have mentioned some elements of SEO in my post called Blogging SEO Strategy.

There are hundreds of blog directories that you can list your blog in. I would start with the top ones first. I’m Vance Sova and I invite you to read on.

The following is a guest Post by James Adams:

Top 10 Directories That Will Help Get Your Blog Noticed

Once you’ve got your blog set up and have been blogging for a few days or weeks, you may have wondered why the readers and visitors aren’t flocking in.

The answer is: you’ve got to get the word out. If you don’t tell anyone about your blog, then no one will even know that it exists.

One of the best ways to get instant exposure for your blog is to submit to a blog directory. There are hundreds of these around the Internet, but some are much better than others. Here are the top 10.

1. DMOZ: This is one of the oldest and most respected directories on the Internet. DMOZ.org won’t accept your site until it has been reviewed by their editors to make sure that it’s not spam. Unfortunately, this process can take several months, so it’s a good idea to get started early. When your blog finally does get listed with DMOZ, Google will look upon your site with much more respect.
2. BOTW: Best of the Web is also an established and highly respected directory. It has been in business since 1994. A link from BOTW will instantly give your blog a boost in credibility and visibility.
3. Business.com: If your blog is commercial in nature, then this is an essential place to get it listed. For a listing fee of $299, you’ll be able to get targeted traffic all year.
4. Yahoo: Yahoo bills itself as the oldest directory on the Internet. Although Yahoo may not have the prominence that it once did, it still gets a ton of traffic every day. If you can get your site listed here, it can be well worth it. It’s free for non-commercial sites, but $299 for commercial sites or if you’d like your site reviewed within 7 days.
5. Bloggeries: Bloggeries is a great directory because of its organization. Visitors will be able to quickly find your blog by category, which will result in more targeted traffic for your blog.
6. Eaton Web: This is another highly respected blog directory. One of the strengths of this directory is that blogs can be rated and will be listed based on their overall strength and popularity momentum. This can get you a lot of exposure if people begin to find your blog valuable.
7. The Blog Frog: This is a directory that is quickly rising in popularity. The Blog Frog combines a blog directory with a social media platform. Not only can you list your blog, but you can interact with other bloggers directly on this site.
8. Blog Search Engine: Blogsearchengine.com is another highly selective blog directory that can give your site a nice boost. Many Internet users come here directly to search for blogs, so you want to make sure that your site is served in their search results.
9. MyBlogLog: MyBlogLog already had 45,000 members when it was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. Now, it has more than a quarter million members and 22 million visits per day. You can list your blog and encourage other members with similar blogs to form a community around you. This is one site you don’t want to skip.
10. Blogged: Blogged is similar to news aggregators like Google News. The only difference is that it pulls news stories from blogs rather than traditional news sites. If you write about topical subjects on your blog, then you definitely want to list your site at Blogged. You’ll be able to show up on the radar screen of web surfers looking for fresh content.

If you haven’t yet begun to promote your blog, or if you have been using other methods to get the word out about your blog; then your next course of action should be to begin submitting your blog to a few directories. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll begin to see the results you want.

This guest article was written by James Adams who is a full time blogger working with an online supplier of ink cartridges. Check out their blog for more of his posts about design and marketing.

Please go ahead and make a comment. Have you submitted your blog to any of the directories above or any other ones? Have you noticed an increase in traffic?

Bookmark and tweet the post for others to see.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Hi everybody, Vance invited me to guest post here on his blog. Some of you might know me either from my main blog or from a forum. I go mostly under the nick name of hospitalera on the internet. And some might not know me at all But enough of me, let me ask you a question:

Have you made a dollar on the internet today?

Yes? Great, you can proceed to one of the other great posts on this blog, for example to Getting Blog Traffic from Twitter But if you haven’t, you should keep reading.

Does the following description fit you?

You have bought a couple of ebooks, joined a few membership sites and paid forums, perhaps you even have bought one or more make money online – coaching courses. But you never earned a single dollar, despite all of your investments. Or you earn a few now and then, but still not enough to break even, not speaking of making any profit.

And do you know what else? I know exactly why you don’t make any money. You never made any money online, because you never started to implement what you have learned. You never started your first site (not even a free blogspot blog) nor did you ever write your first article on hubpages or elsewhere. You are still learning, you are still researching and you are still spending money on ebooks, courses and coaching programs instead of actually earning money on the internet? If this is correct, then this blog post is for you

Making money online, no matter if with blogging, article writing, affiliate marketing, building of niche websites or a combination thereof, is very much learning by doing. If you never actually implement what you are learning and reading about, you will never gather any experience and never know what works for you and what not. So, lets get finally started, shall we?

1. Step to making your first dollar

Take an empty sheet of paper or open a fresh document in your text editor program. Dot down what the things are you know a lot about. What are you an offline expert in, and in what field could you become an online expert? What are you passionate about? In short, what could become your niche market?

2. Step

Sign up for hubpages and start to write articles about things you are knowledgeable about. Write the best articles you can about a topic you are really knowledgeable in. Ask yourself the question: What would I want to find and read when I look for information about xyz? Again, write as best, as informative and as exhaustive as you can. Write the best possible answer to each query a reader might have.

(Please note a message from the author and editor: 3. Step is not missing, it was absorbed into the 2. Step).

4. Step

Look what works and why. NOW you can use all your knowledge and research you have done so far about internet marketing. Write articles and see what works and what doesn’t. Which hubs get traffic and which convert this traffic into dollars and which not. Which keywords = topics work best with which monetizing method. Repeat which methods work and don’t insist on doing what doesn’t work.

5. Step – Make Money

Will you make money with your first hub? Most certainly not. With your fifth? Perhaps. With your tenth? Most likely, if you continue to write great content and to learn from your own experience.

What about keyword research? Competition? Planning? Having a system?

If you are like most people on the internet, then you suffer from information overload regarding all these topics. The only way to actually see the bigger picture and to learn is to DO SOMETHING! Remember the first Harry Potter book? When Hermione gets attacked by the mountain troll? Harry tries to help, but gets himself in trouble and shouts at Ron for help. What does he shout? Do something, ANYTHING. The same is valid also here. You have to do something, anything, to make a start.

So, are you ready to start NOW to make money online, or will you wait just a little bit longer? Will you sign up for free to HubPages today AND publish your first article also today? Or will you wait until you know it all?

Leave a comment and tell us what you think and how it’s going.

You can even put in a link to your first hub in the website section of the comment form. That would mean you have not only published your first hub, you also have build the first back link to it.

Before you go tweet the post and bookmark it.

So, go ahead, make your first dollar – NOW.

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It has been said more than a few times that you can get blog traffic from twitter.
Whether you have tried it or are just wondering if it works you will want to read what I have found so far.

First of all, let me say that I am no expert on twitter and that I don’t use any automation or clever software to submit my tweets. I also don’t follow people and stop following them if they don’t follow me back. I think that there is a program for that too.

All I do with twitter is follow some people that I know and some that I think are worth following. Most of my followers decided to follow me first and I do follow them back sometimes but not automatically as some twitter user advisers seem to teach.

Since I follow about 600 people and have only about 600 twitter followers (to me that is more than enough to keep track of), I realize that I can’t expect to get much blog traffic from them.

To get a significant blog traffic from my own twitter followers I’d need tens of thousands of them.

But would I really get that much traffic from twitter to my blog even if that was the case?

It is my qualified opinion that I would not.

I say qualified opinion because I don’t have that many followers on twitter and therefore can’t be absolutely sure.

What I am sure of is that even with having some of my blog visitors who on occasion like what I have to say tweet or re-tweet some of my posts, the resulting blog traffic from that is more than pitiful.

Even if just 5 of those readers, who kindly want others to also read what I post about had each just 600 followers like me ( I know that some of them have thousands or even tens of thousands), tweeted my post then in theory 3,000 people would be notified and invited to my blog.

In such scenario, which is the worst case of what actually was taking place within the last 2 weeks, I should be justified in expecting at least 1% of the 3,000 twitter followers to show up on my blog and I should get blog traffic equaling 30 visitors from twitter.

According to Google Analytics, within the last month this is the blog traffic I got from twitter: full 3 visitors. (Update April 28, 2010: 4 more twitter visitors since this post was written – i.e. about one twitter visitor every 4 days).

Unless I’m doing something wrong, which anyone reading this is cordially invited to point out, (in fact I beg you to do that), the amount of blog traffic one can get from twitter is hardly worth the effort.

Anyone who blogs wants more traffic.

I have written several posts on this subject where as opposed to my twitter experience the methods I write about actually work very well.

You can read my Get Blog Traffic Increase with Comments which will give you a proven way to get traffic to your blog where previously there was none and that will also help you increase an already good existing traffic.

My blog so far has been getting most traffic this way.

There is even, arguably, a better free way to get blog traffic increase.

You can read about it in my post Earn Money Blogging, Get Traffic Without SEO?

The second best source of my blog traffic is the search engines and thus SEO.
It has brought me more than 17% of all traffic within the last 30 days according to Alexa and about 34% according to Google Analytics.

I choose to trust Google more because of the research that I’ve done on both.

But either way, SEO traffic plays a big and significant part in getting visitors to my blog. And I’m sure it will do that for your blog too.

I have heard a hugely successful blogger and online entrepreneur say “screw social media”.

I wouldn’t go that far but there is some truth in that saying for those of us that spend too much time trying to get blog traffic from twitter and other numerous social media platforms.

Again, I’m not here to knock down anything. If you get a lot of blog traffic from twitter I want to hear from you. Please voice your opinion and experience in the comments.

If, on the other hand, twitter underperforms for you as it has surely done for me then pay attention to what I wrote and for sure read my two posts mentioned here.

I want to hear from everybody.

So post your comment regarding your twitter and blog traffic experience.

Then bookmark and tweet it so others have the chance to contribute to the discussion as well.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Marketing with Alex 3.0 has been launched on April 08, 2010. It is to be the last course of Alex Jeffreys, possibly for ever or at least for a while. It was preceded by a free ebook report Gurus Nightmare also available here.

Marketing With Alex 3.0 sales video is ready for viewing. Watch it now.

After watching the video you will want to check out the free ebook report.

About Gurus Nightmare

In Gurus Nightmare Alex is revealing why the internet marketing gurus are losing their grip.

In my post Alex Jeffreys Nixes Gurus Game months ago I was just guessing what Alex was going to do.

He had been talking about ending the gurus game but it wasn’t clear to anybody what he exactly meant by it.

Alex made it quite clear as early as last January in front of a good number of his students and guest speakers at Marketing With Alex Las Vegas Workshop 2010.

I highly recommend that you get his new report Gurus Nightmare to which he has poured his soul, blood, sweat and tears, as he says.

The long awaited Gurus Nightmare is available here, just click on the link Gurus Nightmare .

Download your free copy of Gurus Nightmare.

About Marketing With Alex 3.0

As a student of Marketing With Alex 2.0 and the participant in his very valuable and fun Las Vegas Workshop, I know a thing or two about Alex and his devotion to help others be a success and make money online.

With each course he gives he learns more about what works for his students.

Thus Marketing With Alex 2.0 was an improvement on already very successful Marketing With Alex 1.0.

But according to what Alex and his right hand Garry Parkes are saying,

Marketing With Alex 3.0 will be very different and much more comprehensive.

Alex has studied his students and the reasons behind the obvious success of some and the struggle to succeed of others. He claims that he has discovered why some succeed and some don’t.

But he’s not saying it’s the struggling students fault. He’s looking at better ways to teach them, improving what he does to make everyone succeed. (I wrote a post about Alex Jeffreys style and substance which you can read any time by clicking on the following: Alex Jeffreys Coaching Style.

In his new course he will be teaching everything in much more detail and will be covering the whole scope of internet marketing business.

He keeps on changing and improving things from week to week and even if he did not improve on the plans that he revealed in Las Vegas, the course would already be amazing.

So why am I writing this post ?

I want to inform everybody who is interested in learning internet marketing and how to succeed in building an online business about this new learning opportunity.

I’m not asking you to buy anything. In fact I want you to forget about buying more internet marketing courses in hopes of finding a magic wand.

Please stop and think about what you’ve bought so far and whether you are using it to its fullest potential, if at all.

Alex Jeffreys and his Marketing With Alex 3.0 is not going anywhere. You will be able to get it if and when you decide you need it.

Don’t let anyone push you through the trick of creating scarcity. I find that at least nine times out of ten the scarcity pitch is a bluff.

There may be some marketers whose posts, emails or sniper sites will pressure you to make the decision now, before it’s too late. Resist the pressure and walk away.

A much better and wiser course of action is to get the free ebook Gurus Nightmare first and read it. That way you can discover what Alex has to say and if you resonate with him or not.

Marketing With Alex 3.0 may be the ultimate course.

It may be the last course that Alex will ever put out.

Only time will tell.

Gurus Nightmare is not just an ordinary ebook. It is very extraordinary and I look forward to your comments about it.

Download Gurus Nightmare and read the ebook report.

Then come back again to comment about your impressions and what you learned from it, what you liked and how it changed your view of the Gurus and the online business scene.

If you haven’t watched the Marketing With Alex 3.0 sales video take the opportunity to watch it here.

Remember to bookmark and tweet the post for the benefit of others.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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