Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate – PROOF Why WA is #1
What is the best affiliate marketing training for beginners? With Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate, Google and others rate WA #1 over SBI for high value, low cost, ease of use, and rates of success. Below I will provide proof as to why WA is a better option to SBI.
Let me set the record straight
Back in May 2017, Dr. Ken Evoy the owner of Solo Build It (SBI) falsely attacked the reputation of Wealthy Affiliate (WA), and his motives were obvious. He was defending the reputation of SBI from a few misguided WA member reviews, but he used a broad brush response and went too far.
Matter of fact, much of what he claimed in his oh-so-long three part response was untrue. Ken did an elaborate study using Alexa, SimilarWeb and SEMrush to get his results. It would have been an awesome study if he had used actual data from Wealthy Affiliate.
Unfortunately for Dr. Evoy the success stories of Wealthy Affiliate members and their domains, are only directly visible to members of the community. He claims that the majority of WA members experience failure, and I know that some do, but the majority? No, they do not!
It is not my intention to bash Solo Build It because if I did I would be doing what Ken claims everyone at WA are doing. I will admit that there are some who will create fake reviews, but most of us do not. Personally I only review products I have direct knowledge in. Since I do not with SBI, I will let former members speak instead.
I will not explain why you should join Wealthy Affiliate for Free instead of Solo Build It for $29.99 per month with a 90-day money back guarantee. I am going to show you actual data from both Alexa and Google, as well as comment content from former SBI members (like in above image), as to why WA is #1.
You want proof that WA is better than SBI?
In Dr. Ken Evoy’s extremely long 3-part review / study, which I needed an extra large cup of coffee just to get through it all, he says that a website is not successful if it is not getting traffic. He is correct. You do need traffic to make money, if making money is your intention.
However being successful does not have to mean earning money. Success means different things to different people, even the amount of money one has earned will differ from person to person. For example… I had earned more than $3,000.00 in one month thanks to WA, but this may not be a success to others.
Ken is correct that traffic is important to the overall success of a website. Seeing how his study uses Alexa rankings as a great indicator of such success, as of March 2019 take a look at the rankings of SiteSell, which is the domain name for the SBI brand.
That is a really good ranking for SiteSell. They have a Global ranking of 55,825 (down 15,505 positions versus the previous 3 months) and a United States rank of 26,244. These are not set in stone rankings. They do fluctuate up and down with each passing day.
NOTE:
With Alexa the closer you rank to 1, the more successful you are among all websites in the world. Google has a Global and United States rank of 1 and Amazon of 10 and 4 respectively. You can try Alexa here. Now take a look at the March 2019 rankings of Wealthy Affiliate.
In comparison to SiteSell the Wealthy Affiliate Alexa rankings are impressive. Wealthy Affiliate has a Global ranking of 16,714 (down 963 positions versus the previous 3 months) and a United States rank of 8,653. Again, these numbers will fluctuate up and down everyday.
Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate – Which one is successful?
THEY BOTH ARE!
It is obvious that SBI and many of its members are successful, and the same is true for WA and its members. The Alexa images and rankings above prove this. Dr. Evoy stresses in his study review the importance of Alexa rankings and those I have provided above (and more below) are the proof.
I am a very happy and successful member of WA. The bulk of the money I make comes from three different affiliate marketing programs and freelancing my knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content writing that I learned from the awesome WA training. Wealthy Affiliate offers you multiple ways to make money.
Unlike what Ken did in his study review, I am not going to falsely claim that SBI coaches its members to write fake reviews or forces its members to enter into a niche they know nothing about. I know Wealthy Affiliate does NOT do this, despite what is claimed.
What I have learned about Solo Build It I have gleaned from the reviews and blogs of current WA members who used to be members of SBI. There are many former SBI members who switched over, just as I am sure there are some former WA members that went to SBI.
Both successful training platforms have similar characteristics with many of its members experiencing success. But from what I could gather from former SBI members, WA is more user friendly, the training is up to date, a more helpful community, and much easier for the newbie online solopreneur.
Which brand is better? Google can help you with that
The owner of SBI says over and over again that proof of success can be measured through the Alexa rankings. I have shown you above the proof through those same rankings that Wealthy Affiliate is more successful. But how can Google provide proof to which brand is better?
One of the many free Google tools an online marketer can use is Google Trends. This will give you timely results into which brand is better than another competing product. Below is a Live look at the comparison between Wealthy Affiliate, Solo Build It and Affilorama.
What you are seeing above is the Worldwide popularity of three successful affiliate marketing training programs. This is not a static screen shot. This is a Live Update embedded into this page from Google Trends. Look at it in another month and it will look slightly different.
As you can see in the above comparison graph. Wealthy Affiliate absolutely dwarfs the other two platforms. When WA claims to be the best, these are not empty claims. Both Alexa rankings and Google Trends are proof of the success and popularity of WA.
Still not convinced? I will provide you with more proof that Wealthy Affiliate is rated above SiteSell. In addition to Alexa, results from SimilarWeb were also used in the negative review against WA. Below is a screenshot from a comparison rank search I did in March 2019 (do not know why search results say February 2019).
The rankings in SimilarWeb are very much like Alexa. The closer to #1 your rank is, the more successful you are. As you can see the Wealthy Affiliate website has a much better ranking in all three categories than the Site Sell website (the domain name for SBI).
What I like about the SBI website that WA does not do
In the negative review that Ken Evoy did in response to reviews claiming WA is better than SBI, he constantly repeats the need for “Verifiable” proof. I totally agree with him on this. In fact I wish the WA website would do what his SBI website does.
On his website he includes the domain names of those success stories that are chosen to be showcased to provide proof of success. I did exactly what he suggests and I did an Alexa search of the domains posted in the Real Life Success Lessons blog.
As the above image from the SBI website describes, having an Alexa rank within the top 1,000,000 is considered “elite-level, high-traffic sites.” Of the last 16 real life success blogs from March 21, 2018 to March 14, 2019, about 50% fall into this “elite-level”.
Of the 16 blogs with domain names that I checked in Alexa, nine of the 16 did reach this “high-traffic” level and seven of the 16 were well over a rank of 1,000,000. Does this mean that those seven websites are not successful? Absolutely Not!
As stated in the above image from the SBI website, rankings that are greater than 30,000,000 are failures because they have “undetectable traffic levels.” Well that’s a relief because this website of mine is in the 4,310,000 range on Alexa and I make money with it, see below.
How about some monetary proof?
All of this talk that Ken does about proof of success is solely relying on traffic to a website. He does not provide any proof of monetary gain. The below image is my first 12 months of affiliate earnings from one program. It is assumed that if you are getting high traffic to your website you are making a lot of money.
For the most part this is true, you do need traffic to make money, but not all traffic will convert into sales. Most people look at success in terms of money earned and not traffic. They want to read and see the amount of money a person is earning.
My first 12 months of Affiliate Marketing earnings with this website
Nowhere does the SBI website show earnings. Maybe it does somewhere but after spending a couple of hours sifting through the extremely wordy rambling of content, I couldn’t find any. Wealthy Affiliate does not provide this monetary proof either but many of its members do.
I recently wrote a blog “showing” the reader how much money I have invested in WA since August 2013. I also show how much money I earned in 2015 alone from the WA affiliate program. In my first 12 months I earned $3,169.00 MORE than I invested in over 63 months.
See And Read About My Monetary Success Here!
I can fully understand why people do not want to show how much they make because that is a private subject. But sometimes newbie members to an online training platform that preaches success for its members, need to see some kind of income for proof of legitimacy.
That is why I created the blog at the link above. This is monetary proof that not only the training but the entire learning and online business building experience at Wealthy Affiliate works! There is no high-rate of failure here as claimed by Dr. Evoy.
More proof that WA member sites are successful
As I stated earlier in this article, the SBI review study would have been less fake if Ken used actual data from Wealthy Affiliate. In the above image he claims that “SBI Sites are 33 times (33X) more likely to achieve Outstanding – Excellent levels of traffic than Wealthy Affiliate.”
He also goes on to claim that “SBI Sites are 10 times (10X) more likely to achieve Medium levels of traffic than Wealthy Affiliate.” Logically think about his claims. Dozens of times he states that WA does not provide domains. So how can he make any comparisons?
I realize that Ken says SBI pulled websites from whois.domaintools which provides all sites hosted under the name server for WA. But the majority of WA members have multiple websites, some being used for test purposes and others that are in the process of being built, Neither of these would show any traffic metrics.
Unless SBI was able to determine which of the websites they gathered were actual active niche related websites, and only used those specific domains, then the results of the study are flawed and incorrect. Where is SBI’s proof that the domains used were legit marketing websites?
The numbers in his results are not truthful because he clearly says that WA offers no domains as proof of success. If he has no website domains to do an accurate study, then how is his data correct? It is not. The above and below images are of successful WA member websites.
I will admit that it is difficult to find every WA member’s websites on the platform because many of us do not share our links. This is for a couple of reasons. To prevent others from copying our content ideas and to not self-promote which contributes to the No-Spam environment of WA.
With all of this visual PROOF I have shared with you, there can be no doubt that when it comes to Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate, WA is far more successful than Dr Ken Evoy claims. The same tracking websites he says he used have shown more success for WA.
If you are still not sure after all of this proof from Alexa, Google Trends and SimilarWeb, become a FREE Member of WA Today and read ALL of the collected Success Stories by one of our WA members on his blog post called 2018 – Another Year of Success Growth at Wealthy Affiliate.
My reason for writing this rebuttal of SBI’s study
When this erroneous comparison study between SBI and WA came out in May of 2017, many of us members didn’t bother to reply to his false claims. Why? Because most of us knew Ken was just venting and defending the reputation of SBI. You cannot blame him for that.
Another reason for not replying into a war of words was so that we could take the high road. We know how great WA is in comparison to other similar platforms. This is not because WA teaches us it is, WHICH THEY DON’T, but because of the proof in the pudding.
A small sampling of 2018 WA Success Stories available at ABOVE link
Read the Post of a WA & SBI Member. Read the Comments Too!
No other platform allows you to start and take 10 full lessons, build a WordPress website, learn how to find various niche ideas not related to MMO, gain access to the owners and other community members, learn the basics of Keyword Research and SEO all for FREE!
In order to get access to most of these same things on Site Sell’s Solo Build It platform you would have to pay upfront. There is no Free Trial Period like there is at WA. I don’t know about you, but if it is free to kick the tires of something I am about to invest in, I am all for that!
So when I recently went to blog about how Wealthy Affiliate is a good return on investment, I searched Google for the keyword “Is Wealthy Affiliate a Good Site to Make Money Online.” What appeared was a featured snippet from Quora referencing the SBI vs WA review.
I felt it was time for me to share the real proof and get this out there so people who want true success are not misled into thinking that WA members are not successful. I provided the proof that is claimed doesn’t exist. Now it is your turn to make an informed decision. Which training platform do you want to join?
If you are a member of SBI and are successful at making money, may you continue to be blessed in your endeavors. If you are a beginner looking to learn the proper way, a former SBI or WA member and would like to share your thoughts, questions or opinions, please leave them below.
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Hi Robert,
I think you have tried really hard here to offer a completely impartial yet open and honest review on the two platforms.
As a member of WA, I can say without question the growth in my understanding of website development and general online acumen has increased dramatically. I’m also pretty confident that although I haven’t been immersed in the solo build it program I would probably be saying the same if I had joined their platform.
The key that people need to understand is that every offering is unique in its own right and as a responsible would-be business owner we need to apply a level of due diligence before committing to anything, and if we fail in that then don’t complain if it’s not as desired.
I do believe having said that and based on the facts that have been presented here that WA is the platform with the most potential, and although it is not perfect, show me something that is. This was an interesting and factual review that in my opinion has shown some character flaws in the ownership of solo build it, reinforcing my own belief I made the right choice with WA.
Best wishes
Thank you Justin for your comment and observation of the facts regarding Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate. I can understand the frustration of Dr. Ken Evoy, the owner of SBI, with how successful WA has become and how his training program has slipped to the bottom. But to attack the credibility of the over all Wealthy Affiliate training and internet business building platform the way he did was petty.
I understand that there were some WA members that wrongfully claimed SBI is a scam. Not every platform is perfect and neither are a small percentage of its members. But to have Ken Evoy attack the entire WA community and successful training platform with bogus made up fake facts because of a few bad apples in the bunch is a very immature thing to do in my opinion.
So I provided the real facts with solid proof to back up my claims, a process that Mr. Evoy says is necessary when producing accurate statistical results. The real facts refute all of his false misleading claims. Plus my inclusion of a Live Updated Google Trends Graph showing the current popularity of Wealthy Affiliate vs Solo Build It and Affilorama, is the icing on the cake of true stats.
As they say, there is no such thing as a bad review. Whilst others read bad reviews they are now hearing about where they may not have done before. I would always advise people to not take things at face value and to do their own due diligence before making up their minds. However, this was a really good impartial post. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Ida. I always try to give an even impartial review, even when someone wrongfully attacks their competition without any solid facts.
I am a member of wealthyaffiliate and I don’t really know much about SBI but the truth is that most people would want to justify their program as I am sire some members of wealthyaffiliate must have written reviews indicating that SBI is a scam.
The owner of SBI might just be trying to defend his own program but is going about it the wrong way. Like was said in this post I think both platforms are kinda similar as they have members that succeeded and those that failed but as data shows from google and Alexa proves that one is more superior than the other.
I think members from both platforms should just appreciate what they have and not try to bring down the other just because they want to make more money.
Well said Jay. When it comes to Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate there really isn’t much difference to the approach in teaching people how to start an online affiliate marketing business. The difference comes in the quality of the training and the cost.
Seeing how Wealthy Affiliate’s training is more up to date and its cost for starting is free, it makes sense why Google and Alexa Rankings are showing that WA is better than SBI. I understand why the owner Ken Evoy of SBI fought back, but you are correct, he went about it the wrong way.
I am not defending those WA members that may have claimed that Solo Build It is a scam. They were flat out wrong! SBI is not a scam and neither is WA. But for Ken to spread lies about WA being a failure, he should have just taken the high road and corrected the false scam reports. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Hello, Robert and thanks, as you’ve said, for setting the record straight.
I can’t imagine how much time you must have spent putting all this together and yet, it had to be done. There is so much bad information out there about WA. Well, actually it’s not really a huge amount but it’s enough to put a bad light on something that does not deserve it.
I haven’t had any dealings with SBI and after reading your post I don’t think I want to. He’s only done this to make himself look good and has probably done the same to others as well.
I mean, really, if WA is so bad why do they keep trying to improve it. That alone is a sign to me that they are legit. I’m not making any money yet but I know that it will happen at some point because I see others finding that success by following the plan, taking the action.
When I was looking for ways to make money on the internet I found many, many positive reviews about WA and Nathanial’s was one of them, Tony Hamilton was another and then there is Vitaliy and many others.
There were also a couple of negative reviews as well. I never saw the one from Ken (SBI) but the others were enough to put me off WA for about a year. But I found myself drawn to look for more about WA and kept finding these positive reviews and finally decided to check out the free membership.
Well, I’m still here three years later and I know it’s real. It is what the positive reviews say it is, the best Affiliate Marketing Training Platform on the Internet. You have added a ton more to that “PROOF” and I thank you.
My inspiration and confidence in this platform are Increased,
Wayne
Thank you Wayne for your comment. When I was looking for a different way to make money online I found Wealthy Affiliate (WA) by accident sort of. I was already making a lot of money online but wanted to have my own website so that I could diversify and make even more.
I wanted to find a way to not only build my own website without having to learn programming, but to also learn how to manage and update it. This is how I found WA and I was totally blown away at how simple it was for me to achieve my goals. Other than the easy to understand training, being able to join for free sold me.
There are so many great aspects to WA and the success of myself and countless other members here is proof that WA is number 1. However with Solo Build It (SBI), though they too have good training, their entire platform has not kept up to the changes that occur in the internet marketing world.
For some reason their owner Ken Evoy did not want to embrace the change that WA has and continues to do. Soon many SBI members were joining WA and loving the entire WA experience. Had Ken updated SBI and improved on its faults, maybe SBI would be in a better position than they are now.
But instead of looking in the mirror and asking, what can I do to make SBI a better platform, he attacks WA and provides false data to scare people away from WA and to join SBI. That is pretty pathetic in my opinion. Solo Build It can be much better if Ken would stop attacking the competition and make SBI more modern.
After reading the extremely long negative review about WA from Ken, he only made a couple of accurate negative claims about WA. I will be the first to admit that WA is not perfect, which is why the owners continue to upgrade it. But most of what Ken claimed about WA was flat out false and I had to set the record straight.
Hi Robert! Thank you for educating me in such detail, I did something I rarely do. I had to bookmark your article. It was nice to read that WA took the high road after hearing Dr. Evoy’s attaching report. You are right I can always see through those negative attack method
It’s much too early for me to start using those websites you provided that check and rate websites. You are also right about success is measured differently, and it is not always monetary. For me, it is about creating something special, something I can be proud of that no one can take from ever.
Thanks again Robert,
Cheers and Take Care
John
You are welcome John. The hallmark of a great affiliate marketing training platform like Wealthy Affiliate is the freshness of its lessons and guidelines that keep pace with the constant changes in online marketing.
Everything that WA offers to its members is cutting edge and always updated, this is not the case with what SBI gives its members. Taking the high road and offering quality is why I feel that WA is better than SBI.
I remember someone, from a competing affiliate marketing training company, going through a lot of work trying to make Wealthy Affiliate look bad back in 2017. That was a few months after I first joined. Now that I’ve been around longer, I recognize the company’s name. Back then, I had never heard of it.
To this day, I still laugh when I think about how he pulled pulled websites from whois.domaintools for all of the websites hosted under the name server for WA. He was hoping that if he looked at the results of those websites, he could prove how successful WA members are.
He forgot or did not take into account that many of us have websites that are hosted else where. To date, my best performing website is over at Hostgator. I have not had time to move it over to WA but I will be doing so when my current plan expires.
Plus, he did not take into account that we are allowed to have 25? websites on domains that we own hosted on the WA server as part of our membership. Then another 25 or so on the freebie siterubix domain name. Obviously most of us do not have time to manage and grow anywhere close to that number of websites.
In my case, I tend to buy a domain name and start a website whenever I come super inspired. (That is why I try to avoid your blog posts with niche ideas. I don’t need any more ideas.) Anyway, I have and continue to have more websites than I have time to work on.
Starting websites is an addiction for me. lol I think I am down to less than ten right now. My desire to collect websites has nothing to do with how good or bad the training at Wealthy Affiliate is.
I think that Wealthy Affiliate’s program is great.
I still do not know anything about the other company because I am a satisfied Wealthy Affiliate member.
Oops, sorry this comment got so long.
Thanks for your long comment Sondra. 😉 All of what you have said is true and it makes me laugh at how the owner of SBI made so many mistakes in trying to paint WA as a failure. In fact what he did made his own company look as if Solo Build It is a failure.
He (Ken Evoy) was upset that many WA members were claiming that Wealthy Affiliate is better than Solo Build It. So he then creates this extremely long negative review of WA based off of mostly false data and fake facts. I have provided true facts here and he just harmed SBI more than it was before.
Great job you did Rob in a comparison of SBI versus Wealthy Affiliate. I think Ken had an agenda he started out with that attorney and finished with that same agenda. In other words it was all one-sided for some reason. I’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate since April 2019 and I can say it is the best experience that I’ve had thus far in building and monetizing a website. WA is hands-down the best in the industry, in fact I think you proved that based on the statistics that you showed from Alexa.
Thank you for providing a fair and balanced review. I think the work that you did should be part of anybody’s revival fitness subject when it comes up again.
You are welcome Tim. I am happy you liked my review. Though Ken Evoy was defending SBI he didn’t have to use a one-sided attack on WA that was not even based on facts. He should have just not attacked and upgrade his program to be more in-tune with the industry standards of today. This is yet another reason why WA is number 1, because their training and resources are up to date.
I haven’t heard much about Solo Build It so I appreciate your comparison to Wealthy Affiliate, and what a thorough post it is! Dr. Ken Evoy’s comments are definitely out of line, but to be honest they seem to show a bit of insecurity. Wealthy Affiliate owners have too much integrity to do what Evoy did, and I have a feeling they let the product do the talking. These Alexa rankings show some really valuable data. I like the Google trends chart as well. WA is a tried and true product and readers who don’t know should definitely check it out here, well done!
Thank you and I definitely agree with what you say about the owners of Wealthy Affiliate. Their response to the bashing of their company shows far more integrity than that of the owner of SBI. The Wealthy Affiliate training and website building resources are in a class of their own and do speak for itself. Even the Alexa and Google Trends stats show this.
Hello Robert,
I have been really looking in to WA the pros and cons. It was really nice to see all the statistics that you posted in your article.
I am sorry to say that there are many people out there that just love to find a reason to bash a great company like WA.
As you said some people succeed and some do not. But I do not feel that it is by way of the WA company, that it is by people looking for a quick buck and no work.
Thank you for setting things straight.
You are welcome LeeAnn. It was time for me to set the record straight, especially since what Ken Evoy said against WA was mostly untrue. I will be the first to say that WA is not perfect but to claim that those who join will fail is totally ludicrous.
Hello Robert,
I came across Ken’s post about a month ago, and as a Wealthy Affiliate member myself, I had to read the post entirely. It was very surprising to see, some of the supposedly accurate data and claims, that he was offering to the world.
Having inside knowledge of Wealthy Affiliate, I knew immediately that the information was false. I just didn’t completely understand how he thought it would be beneficial, in any way, to provide false data like that.
If you want your argument to be capable of holding its own in the ring, it better be planted on a firm footing.
Talk about a good way to ruin your reputation.
Wealthy Affiliate is the best affiliate marketing training for beginners online. Even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t risk my reputation by offering false data. I’m glad that you chose to provide the actual data from the source. Maybe Mr. Ken still has a thing or two to learn about the moral high ground, and he could start his notes with this post.
You were honest, accurate, and fair. Good Job Robert
To Your Success,
Darren
Thank you Darren. It was my intention to set the record straight because the owner of SBI, Ken Evoy, was spreading inaccurate and false stats about Wealthy Affiliate all because a few people made claims that WA was better.
He could have taken the high road and not spread fake news, but rather update his program to make it more competitive with WA. I know that a lot of the training he has is really good, though some of it is outdated. So just do what WA does. Update the training.
But to attack the competition doesn’t make his program any better. It sets a bad example for someone who is supposed to be a teacher of sorts. There have been many who have left SBI and come to WA. Solo Build It can be great again if Ken would update and stop complaining about the competition.
Hi Robert, what a very comprehensive review, I have never heard of solo build it up until now but I have heard of affilorama. There is nothing like hard statistics to prove your point these graphs really display the truth, good old wealthy affiliate wins again and again.
Its a great pity that other platforms feel the need to attack all the time, it does them no good what so ever.
They would be better spending their time adding value to their customers rather than attacking other platforms.#
The main reason I stay at Wealthy Affiliate is that the owners keep improving the platform, like the recent affiliate program search function but they don’t ever put my membership fee up. They keep on adding value but I never get sold to. This is so rare today.
Thanks for this great read, its also given me some ideas for researching products on my own site as well, it is evident that your research is very thorough and based on verifiable facts and statistics
Will bookmark your blog as it looks really great.
Regards
Barry
Thank you Barry. I am happy you enjoyed reading my review on Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate. Before I joined WA in 2013 I had heard of Affilorama and a smattering of smaller affiliate marketing training programs. But I too had never heard of SBI until their owner dissed WA with fake facts because a few members claimed that Wealthy Affiliate was better.
At first I felt the same as you say above, that the owner of SBI would be better spending his time adding value to his training program than attacking his competitors. I feel that by doing what he did was the same thing he was claiming was done to him. I understand he was upset and was defending his company, but he went too far and put false facts out on the internet.
So my purpose of this rebuttal review is not to falsely claim that SBI members will always fail, like Ken Evoy owner of SBI said would happen to those who join WA. My purpose was to prove him wrong by presenting the real facts about WA based on the same stats that he claimed said something different. I am not saying that SBI is bad, I am saying that WA is not either bad either.
Hi Robert,
You have made a really logical point about WA and SBI. I read about SBI last time when I was making comparisons with WA and I still chose WA. Why? If felt like there was more support in the forums and with the teachers that it made sense. Your evidence and comparisons just proves the point that it works.
Sure like all programs it is infallible. Though, I am glad you made a rebuttal in defense of WA.
Now, I really enjoy using Wealthy Affiliate and with a bit of persistence it went a long way.
Keep it up!
Thank you Roy for your comment. I agree with you 100%. I have never experienced so much help and support from any other online, or offline, community of worldwide members as I do with the Wealthy Affiliate community. From what I have heard, this help and support was lacking a bit at SBI.
I love how you can post a question to the WA community and get at least one answer within 15 minutes anytime during the day or night. Or go up on Live Chat and get even quicker answers. I have been told by former SBI members that Solo Build It is not user friendly to beginners, but Wealthy Affiliate sure is.
In his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey says to seek for win-win opportunities. Many business owners feel they need to portray competitors badly in order to look good themselves.
I wasn’t aware of the post done by the owner of SiteSell, but it sounds like the case of Ken misusing data to make WA look bad so SiteBuildit can look good. Based on your review, it sounds like both programs are legitimate programs.
Personally, I’m a member of Wealthy Affiliate and I’m one of the people who you talk about that has gotten monetary results from the program. I’ve never cared about any other metric than traffic and income. Hahaha. As I was reading your post and thinking about what you were saying about Ken’s argument, it seems like using Alexa data to call a website a success wouldn’t have appealed to me at all.
Interesting read.
Thank you Tiffany. I am pleased you liked my review. As I state in my review above both WA and SBI are legit websites for learning about affiliate marketing, But when you have the owner of SBI lashing out and making false claims about WA, that seems petty. Why not be more professional and respond accurately?
I have learned so much from former SBI members about how Solo Build It is outdated or how the owner Ken Evoy didn’t like adapting to the changes this industry goes through like Google SEO and WordPress updates. One sure fire way to lose membership is to have a platform not in tune with current standards. I am very happy that Wealthy Affiliate is always updating their program.
I joined SBI back in the day. I was new to the whole affiliate thing back then, but I knew I wanted to build a business around affiliate marketing.
I personally feel from my OWN experience that SBI kind of complicated things as a beginner. I would never call SBI a scam or say people wouldn’t experience success with SBI or Ken’s services.
I also get that there is nothing wrong with protecting what you’ve built. It’s just that Ken’s reaction online I feel is kind of unprofessional being that his business is in the training field.
What I’m getting at here is that in the field that he is in, his reaction to me is kind of childish. He is a teacher or a leader and to me, he is not setting a good example of how business owners should represent themselves.
After I left SBI, I read how he blamed Google because of his website platform and I believe WordPress was making headway at the time.
As you know Robert, Google likes WordPress because WordPress takes care of a lot of SEO issues and Google likes that.
Instead of just improving upon what Ken built! It seems like Ken does a lot of the blame games. If he stands behind his service, why is he on this rampage about Wealthy Affiliate or whatever is getting to him that day!
Most business owners who are out there trying to help people spend their time and energy making what they own better.
Google is No. 1 for a reason! What Google does is improve their user experience. They have a business to run and that is why they change their algorithms with the times instead of going on a rampage about why people are not using Google.
Also, FaceBook is going through some tough times right now. However, you gotta give Mark credit for working on making FaceBook better. Will Mark go through trial and errors of course, but he’s not giving up or on some type of childish rampage.
Businesses go through ups and downs, but you can’t regain a thrown by acting like a child. You gotta take the good with the bad and start reformulating.
Thank you Evelyn for your comment. I hope other former and active members of SBI will comment and give their opinions. I read a comment from a former SBI member on another blog about how Ken Evoy would refuse to update the Site Sell website to keep up with changes in the industry.
This inaction on his part has hurt the effectiveness of SBI and many have left. If you want your training program to be among the best, you have to update it regularly to keep up with the constant changes happening every year in this industry. Wealthy Affiliate does this.
But you are right in pointing out that Ken seems to do a lot of the blame games when other factors go against his product, like Google SEO, the popularity of using WordPress, and even the success of Wealthy Affiliate. I agree, that is kind of childish.
That is a bad example to set for someone who is putting his name and brand out there to attract and teach people a skill. We Americans get enough of that from our president. If people ask is Donald Trump a good president, the answer is no. His childish behavior sets a bad example.
Ken should have taken the higher road and made SBI into a more beginner friendly and updated training platform. Don’t be like Trump and place blame on others when the fault is all yours. Learn to adapt and set a good example by offering a quality product to benefit others.
I was new to affiliate marketing until last year and I am still learning about many other training platforms, many of which I haven’t heard of before and SBI is one of them
I did happen to join WA after reading a review very similar to this but instead, it was about WA vs GAZ (global affiliate zone). However, I could see the value in the WA training straight away and you have just reconfirmed this in your post.
Even though I now read many reviews like this about the competition, I still feel that I’ve made the right choice in joining WA. I have zero regrets. I also haven’t joined SBI before so I can’t pass any judgement.
As I sit here writing this comment I’m trying to think of 1 negative thing to say about the WA training and I honestly can’t think of anything.
If you are a newbie reading this (like me) I would have to say that you will find everything you need at WA and if you get involved with the community it will soon start to feel like home. I have honestly never found a community like it online.
Thanks for writing a very eye-opening post, the result of which has made me feel even more confident that I have made the right choice.
You are welcome Helen. It is sometimes said that when you are the king of the hill there will always be someone trying to knock you down. It seems SBI, though being around longer than WA, didn’t like how WA had grown and stayed ahead of the curve better than they did.
Whenever I see a company change their name just to give their brand a fresh restart tells me that they have no confidence in their approach or that they are trying to hide something. SBI now stands for Solo Build It where before it was Site Build It.
Now I understand if the owner of SBI wanted to put more focus on the “Solopreneur” aspect of the company but why change the name? Changing the name in my opinion causes confusion. So now in regards to Site Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate the results are the same. WA is still #1.
This becomes even more evident from the remarks by members such as yourself. People of all backgrounds and education levels LOVE IT here at Wealthy Affiliate because we are one big family of over 1 million members and the training is the BEST in the industry.
If this were not true the company would not have experienced growth for 13+ years and continue to grow its membership. Whereas SBI has had the opposite happen to them with many former SBI members now enjoying themselves here at WA.
I have heard from many former SBI members that Site Build It (now Solo Build It) did start out as a great place to learn how to build an online business as the training had great value. But things change in the online world and it seems that SBI was slow to adapt.
Does this make people ask, is Solo Build It a place to avoid? No, I would not say that. No single company is perfect and if someone wants to join SBI, go for it, try them out. But if you join WA you will not automatically become a failure as stated by Ken Evoy the owner of SBI.
His WA review is flat out false, based on no proof. He was making these false claims based on his anger from what a couple of WA members had said about SBI. He should have taken the high road instead of spreading fake news, doing what he claimed was done to SBI. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Robert,
I was once a mouse click away from signing up with SBI. That was in 2016. Guess I will never know if I would have been happier with them or looking for a greener pasture if I had signed up with them. After going through your review I am thinking the latter.
Way before I became involved with W.A. I was a regular on Quora. I have seen reviews by SBI members bagging W.A. and I have seen W.A reviews bagging SBI. One SBI post about W.A. degenerated into attacking the writer and not the subject, so I thought you have no argument.
At that time I had no interest in affiliate marketing. I was into Bees, Boats and Building (Beer was only for drinking not blogging). But, I must have clicked their link to see what they were about.
That one post is what I most remembered about SBI, and no matter how good the stories I looked at in their promos were, that post was what stopped me from pushing down on the mouse.
I can’t pass judgement on all of SBI or Affilorama or any others, because I have never tried them. Anything I know about being an affiliate ( it ain’t much), I have learnt at W.A., which has opened a whole new career path for me.
Any issues I have with wealthy affiliate are mine, some of the lessons may appear daunting because it is all new to me. But, you just bite the bullet and give it a go.
I know it is a worthwhile organisation to belong to. It has the facts to back the story.
Unlike some.
Michael.
Thank you for your reply Michael and I agree with you that you cannot pass judgement on any particular platform unless you have tried it. Like I have said many times before in my reviews, like this one regarding SBIs negative attack on WA, I do not say something is a scam or not worth it unless I have tried it myself. This is something Dr Ken Evoy did not do in his bashing of WA.
The purpose of this rebuttal review of the Solo Build It vs Wealthy Affiliate debate is to prove that the stats Dr. Evoy used in his determination were flawed and incorrect because he did not actually try the product and he did not use actual WA data. He was basically assuming in the midst of his anger that SBI was being attacked by a few at WA.
As I have said above, I am sure SBI members are just as successful as WA members. I would never say that joining another program will make people fail. How would I or anyone know that unless that program is actually tried? So for Ken to say those who join WA are not successful when he never even tried the program, he is doing EXACTLY what he is claiming that people said about SBI.
The use of human proof designs as an example is skewered as that site is by a member of WA that is not using the training method that is taught inside wealthy affiliate and I do have screenshots of Dom Well, the owner of Human proof designs say he only got successful after ditching WA method and claiming it is “basic at best” and recommending other training.
Your own study is not actually comparing apples with apples in terms of success achieved by WA members and Success by SBI members. Comparing WA to SBI, which you have done is completely irrelevant and really only means that WA has more traffic and better branding and bears zero reflection on how successful members of each platform can be.
I did have a good laugh a Dr claiming and I paraphrase here “elite sites are in the 1m of alexa!”
I can throw up a site in 3 weeks and get inside the top 1M in alex and have a couple of hundred sessions in that period!.
What a pile of tosh!
Besides, even the very best of SEO tools accuracy is questionable. SEMRush is horrible at predicting traffic a site gets, same with Ahrefs. For one of my sites wildly inaccurate by a factor of 10.
A reasonable good metric is Ahrefs rank. These to measure link popularity, the quality of backlinks, referring domains and subnets.
I started a new site 3 month ago have literally .. and excuse my language here “eff all” traffic and I hover around the Alexa 1m mark.
Very nice rebuttal Boomer, but you have failed to show which of the two sites helps the end user to achieve their goals of financial freedom better than the other.
You just really compared WA to SBI and showed that WA has better marketing and “brandvertising” that SBI. which is irrelevant to the success of the end user.
Thank you for your comment Derek but it was not my intention to show which site, WA or SBI, better helps its members achieve goals of financial freedom. In my opinion both training platforms have helped their members to become successful.
This rebuttal is in response to Ken Evoy’s claim that if you join WA you will fail and that the majority of member websites get no traffic.I know Dom too as well as the owners of the other two websites I showcased, and I know that Dom doesn’t use the training method of WA.
But he is an active WA member just like the others and myself. In fact, more than half of the money I make each month does not come directly from the WA training method, meaning affiliate marketing. Most of the money I make is from SEO content writing I do for small businesses.
Dom got his start here at WA and remains an active member. There are a lot of WA members that do not follow the WA training method and like them I could not make the money I do without first starting with the WA training on keyword research and SEO.
It was my intention to correct the false claims made by Ken Evoy, show that WA members can be just as successful as SBI members despite what traffic Alexa shows, show what people like about WA over SBI, and have the reader make an informed decision as to which platform to try.
Thank you kindly for the Clarification Robert. I have actually read that full on 3 part article by Dr Ken Envoy, despite his best intentions of attempting to be independent he did pay for proper research to be done, and I pretty sure as long as I am paying I can buy the data and results that I seek.
As they say 90% of stats can be made up, same can be said for data, it can be manipulated.
I personally think that all systems and methods work (unless it is an obvious scam) and the success depends on a number of factors including the ability to apply what is learned and the “inner game” of mental attitude.
One downside to WA is the info overload and can be a bit overwhelming and the 25 sites that can be hosted there has a distracting effect of members, who unlike yourself do not have a tech background get over excited with their new found skill of site building and run off and make a ton of sites without first focusing on making one truly successful.
SBI on that area has the benefit of less is more (less sites hosted, less distraction).
I have seen Dr Ken Envoy Brag of the included autoresponder included in SBI but I would love to see the deliverability rates as such free tools tend to use cheaper less reliable servers.
I do know the free broken link checker in SBI is a simple WP plugin that comes for free anyway!
You are welcome Derek. In regards to the research done by Dr. Ken Evoy, you are correct, stats and data can be manipulated. This is why in my rebuttal review, unlike Ken, I used the actual images from both Alexa and SimilarWeb, two of the tracking websites that he said he used in his research.
But when he showed graphs to back up his claim they were NOT from the websites themselves. Someone else created those graphs, which means they could have been manipulated. His review was so long he had plenty of space to offer the real stats and data from the same two tracking websites like I did.
I agree that both platforms, SBI and WA, do produce successful members and that success relies solely on how each person takes the knowledge they gain from the training and puts it into action. However if the training is not up to date and it is difficult to get timely help, as many ex-SBI members claim, this will have a negative impact on a member’s success.
Yes, the information overload at WA can be a problem at first to newbie members. I know it was for me, even with my tech background. But after a couple of days I just focused on the core training and ignored all of the other supplemental training. It comes down to personal restraint in doing too much too soon.
This helps in being disciplined to not go and build too many websites before one has fully started earning income. Kyle stresses this in the training, as I do to members when I see them asking if they should build two websites. Focus on ONLY ONE website and get it going because it will take time and effort, then start another one later if you wish.
No training platform is perfect but to come out and say that people who join Wealthy Affiliate will fail more so than Solo Build It is total fabrication on Ken Evoy’s part. The REAL stats prove otherwise and his attempts at trying to paint WA in a bad light have failed, as shown by the actual stats in this post.
To me, it seems like Ken just had a bias and was looking for sources to back his claim of WA rather than writing a true review of the system. You proved this with the Alexa rankings, something he completely ignored from the get-go.
By refusing to use WA-based evidence it shows that Ken was going out of his way to bash WA, which for any site or business owner, the first rule of honesty and integrity is to never bash another company, especially a competitor. Ken clearly broke this rule and it won’t surprise me if he loses business from his Solo Build platform.
The problem with what Ken Evoy did, other than bashing Wealthy Affiliate, is that he used website data that was not a true reflection of websites that were matured. Had he used actual WA data he would have gotten different results.
Every member of WA has at least two websites hosted on the WA servers and at any given time both could be in development which would rightfully show no traffic. There is no possible way for Ken to know this. Even members of WA do not know how many domains we each have.
Ken says because WA doesn’t provide domain names with success stories he had to pull the domain names from those he found being hosted on the WA name servers. Well DUH! There are tons of domains on the WA name servers showing no traffic because many are still in development.
And in my case I have 12 websites hosted on the WA servers. Two are websites I did for someone else, four are my affiliate websites, two are information only sites, two are sites I started but haven’t finished, and two are for testing themes and plugins.
Only 4 of my 12 hosted websites get traffic and there are thousands of other WA members with multiple domains like myself. When Ken pulled domains hosted on the WA servers, he had no clue which domains were active and this is why his conclusions are totally FAKE.
This was extremely informative, and I can’t say enough about Wealthy Affiliate. I never would have known how to build a website, create interesting content, learn how to monetize what I’m doing, if it wasn’t for them.
All of the training is so in depth, and broken down to a level that anyone can understand. I’ve never been a big technology person, and while somewhat computer literate, this program has allowed me to do so much in regards to starting a successful online business.
I highly recommend Wealthy Affiliate to anyone who is just starting out with a dream to have their own online business!
Thank you Mallory for your comment and though I am someone who has been around computers for most of my adult life, Wealthy Affiliate is a breath of fresh air. Learning how to program a website was something I wasn’t too enthusiastic about, but thanks to the free WA website builder I have built close to a dozen different websites and all for the same low monthly cost.
I even make more money providing SEO content writing services to local small businesses, than I do from my websites every month. This would not have been possible without gaining this knowledge from the WA training. Like you and others who have posted comments so far, WA is a more helpful community with many achieving success in many different areas, not just on their websites.
Wow, you are so undisputable!
Yes, high traffic is not everything and cannot guarantee the profit.
Cause if only high traffic we need, we can buy from a website traffic generator, but we cannot earn money from them. Good luck to you and well done!
Thank you and you are so correct. If traffic was the only metric for determining success, then buying traffic would be the easy solution. But anyone who really knows what they are doing would agree that traffic is only a start and not all traffic will convert. There is a lot more that contributes to success and I am happy that WA provides these techniques to all of their members for no extra cost.
First of all, i commend you for writing this rebuttal to SBI`s study. I wasn`t even aware that there was such a false accusation against WA.
I am a WA member and very much happy and contented with where i am right now. I have gained most of my affiliate marketing knowledge from WA. I did come from another platform (not SBI), but i became more comfortable with the trainings and the community we have in WA. I think one of the reason why a WA member will be successful is because WA allows each one to learn and share their ideas without being intimidated.
Thank you for sharing this article.
All the best!
You are welcome Hanna and you are correct when saying that WA allows its members to learn and share ideas with other members of the community without being intimidated. The community atmosphere is one of the most helpful features of WA, other than the easy to understand and up-to-date training. No matter what time of the day or night every member can get an answer to their questions within minutes.
From the former members of Solo Build It who are now here at WA, I have heard them say that getting useful and timely help was a problem at SBI. Though I know from what they have said and what I have read, SBI does have some really good training. But if you cannot adapt by providing both timely help and up-to-date training techniques in things as important as SEO, it can hurt the one trying to succeed.