I’ve been contemplating on this for some time : to move my website from Wealthy Affiliate (WA) to another hosting company OR continue with WA (where I get Internet marketing training and the hosting).

At $47 per month for the Premium membership, WA offers training, keyword tool and hosting of up to 25 websites (among others).

For those just starting out and looking to learn the fundamentals about an online business (specifically affiliate marketing), WA offers reasonable training and a conducive community to learn from.

You get everything under one roof and are able to run your website(s) just by being in one platform – WA.

So as you log into your WA account, you would be able to do your keyword research, gain access of your website(s), work on your blog/website content. While you undergo the training, you can possibly make money by promoting the WA affiliate program.

The ride to getting your online business on track is not always smooth. But the consolation is that you will always have the support of the community who are mostly willing to lend a hand should you bump into any obstacles along the way.

However, in April 2017, I decided to leave WA after much contemplation. As my websites were hosted in WA, I had to find another place to host them and eventually settled on Siteground.

Why did I choose Siteground? I share my reasons below.

NOTE : While this post traces my website transfer from WA to Siteground, the process applies if you were to transfer from other web hosting to Siteground as well. 

My main intention in writing this post is to trace my experience in transferring my websites from WA to another hosting. But as I wrote, I thought it would be incomplete if I didn’t share the main reasons why I decided to leave WA and transfer my websites in the first place.

WA has amassed thousands of members over the years. So I thought there are likely to be people out there who are in the same position as I am and probably contemplating to leave (for whatever reason) and now thinking of where and how to transfer their websites. Who knows, right?

Why I Left Wealthy Affiliate?

Reason 1:

I decide to leave WA in April 2017 after more than a year as a Premium member.

I’ve written a couple of posts on Wealthy Affiliate previously and the views that I have about WA’s free membership still hasn’t changed.

Don’t get me wrong, I have benefited from being a Premium member with the training that is not made available in the free membership.

However, as I promote WA and get referrals, I realize that there are those who choose to remain free members simply because they don’t want to fork out the monthly $49 fee to be in Premium.

As I got to know the reasons behind their choice to remain free members, I begin to empahize with them.

Some of these referrals are college students, studying abroad with crucial expenses to think about, yet want to learn to make money online to ease their financial crunch.

Most are full-time employees who want to make that extra income online but are not quite sure if WA could provide them the relevant tools/training.

If you were to factor in currency exchange rates, members in Asia, for instance, would be paying quite an exorbitant amount!

I see this as a loss on both ends – mine and theirs. With the free membership, they are only entitled to the basic training. On my part, there’s nothing much to be gained in affiliate commissions as long as they don’t upgrade.

Reason 2 :

Actually, reason number two is still related to cost.

I have created three websites so far. But I thought having to pay almost $50 monthly for hosting 2-3 websites is a little too pricey, particularly that I don’t refer much to the training in WA anymore. (It happens as you progress) In fact, I had raised this issue on cost in WA and the support replied they would get back to me. But I haven’t received any satisfactory answer to date.

Part of how one can benefit from WA is to promote its affiliate program but I find it difficult to justify the cost of its Premium membership.

Sure you can build up to 25 websites as a Premium member. But most don’t build that many, unless of course you are using WA hosting to create websites for clients.

As I weigh in the reasons behind why others hesitate to go for the Premium membership, I thought it’ll be good if I could find ways in reducing ‘operating’ costs (in running an online business) and then share it with others.

For a start, I looked at hosting because I still want to maintain my WordPress websites. As I stated above, I settled on Siteground because :

1. Competitive pricing
2. Fast loading time
3. Free ONE website transfer (transfer of subsequent websites are charged at $30 each – as of May 2017)
4. Professional, reliable customer support – I spoke to the support staff via chatbox even before I engaged in Siteground. (Although I wasn’t a customer yet, their responses were always speedy, succinct and helpful)

How to Transfer a Website to a New Host

Before You Leave WA – Important Things to Do

Should you ever decide to move your website(s) from WA to another hosting, don’t start by cancelling your Premium WA membership.

Cancelling the membership would immediately block you from gaining access to your websites that subsequently prevents you from getting important info – domain, admin and FTP details.

You would also need your website backup and database, before cancelling.

Upon cancellation, you have up to 30 days to move the website from WA to another hosting.

You need the following before transferring a website to a new host :

1. Domain, admin, FTP details
2. Backup of your website and database – If you wish to do this yourself, you can do so using WordPress plugins like WP Clone or Duplicator.
   While you can do the backup yourself, sometimes the problem surfaces when you try to install it back under the new hosting environment.To avoid the hassle of having to do the transfer yourself, you can request WA support for your website backup and database. You will then be directed to the link where this information can be found. You then hand them over to Siteground for the staff to complete the process of your website transfer.

The last thing to do after ensuring the transfer is successful is to change your DNS setting which I did in GoDaddy where I bought my domain.

If you want to DIY, this video using WP Clone might help :

 

I made use of the free ONE website transfer to Siteground and the move was completed in a day.
(As stated above, the service cost $30 each for subsequent websites)

You might have your website(s) hosted in WA or elsewhere and for some reason, you want to find a better host (in terms of cost, speed, etc). I hope this post has given you a general guide on how you can do it easily and most importantly, successfully – for the smooth running of your website!

Contemplating to transfer your website?
Check out Siteground below :