Have you heard of affiliate marketing? A way of making an passive income through product reviews online …. Yes, it sounds complicated but with support its a breeze… So what is the best affiliate marketing training course out there? There are many aspects to affiliate marketing that can be mind boggling, but I will show you 7 affiliate marketing training courses that will support you in learning the ropes and becoming a successful online affiliate marketer. This is not a get rich quick business but more the longer game, solid and secure….
In a nutshell… affiliate marketing is offering reviews on products from your chosen niche, showing your audience why this particular product would be ideal for them. They like what you have written, click on your link to purchase the product, and in doing so, guarantee you will receive a commission from the selling merchant for sending them that customer. So this is what these course will help you achieve.
A few questions to ask yourself before you read on..
How Much Do You Need To Know?
If you are proficient with building a website, search engine optimising, Google search console, Bing ads.. the list goes on… but what Im getting at, is if you are already able to build your own website with theme and write content, you may decide to choose a course that doesn’t start at the very beginning, whereas, like me, I knew nothing, not even how to start a website. So I really needed ‘spoon-feeding’ at the start of my business. Its no problem starting from scratch but there are some courses that suit the beginner better.
What You Need At the Get-Go?
If you are up and running with a website, you may not need to start a new one, or because you have done it before, you can get that sorted yourself. If however, like me, I needed to know where to go to get a domain name, somewhere to host the website, help in downloading a theme, support in getting plugins working, you need to choose a course that will incorporate these skills.
What Support Do You Need Going Forward?
Are you self motivated in keeping up your knowledge on affiliate marketing? The latest strategies? Do you have a good writing routine? With templates to keep you on track? or do you think you would need support going forward? Someone to call upon when things aren’t working, or tutorials to help you work out your SEO or captivating those elusive keywords? Again there will be a course that will do this for you, whether you are someone who goes it alone or wants to be part of a community of likeminded entrepreneurs.
What Is Your Budget?
What are you prepared to pay for the knowledge you need? Ultimately whatever you spend has got to come back in affiliate sales, balance the books… So what can you afford? what is it worth to you?
Affiliate Marketing Training Courses
I have reviewed 7 of the best affiliate marketing reviews on the market right now, some offer free trials, which is worth taking up, to decide which one is the best fit for you. They are in no particular order, as each has its own merits. For complete transparency, the affiliate training course I used was Wealthy Affiliate but my review of the other courses available will be unbiased.
1. Wealthy Affiliate
Who Are They?
Wealthy Affiliate is the whole package for any affiliate marketer. They offer everything you could possibly need if you are starting from scratch or know a thing or two about online marketing.
It offers endless training, platforms to get feedback and comments on your posts and blogs. They have a site content platform to support you whilst you are writing your posts, a community of over 800,000 likeminded people from every corner of the world and endless resources that are available 24 hours a day along with site support that is one ticket away!
How Does It Work?
Wealthy Affiliate offers a certification course that takes you through the whole process from choosing a niche, buying a domain name, building your website into a full thriving business and every single step along the way. Each lesson is in the form of a tutorial from Kyle, one of the co-owners of WA. He not only writes what you do but has full video tutorials, showing every single step of the process in setting up SEO or adding code to your website so you can track your traffic. Sounds scary but it really isn’t !
What Will You Learn?
As a starter you will be directed to the entrepreneur certification course. If you are not a beginner, there are so many different ways of learning how to be a successful affiliate marketer – tutorials on thousands of different topics, webinars, training by members within WA.
Each level has a theme. You build up your website, following the course, adding posts in your niche, step by step. Everything explained.
As you can see from these titles, the steps to start with are introducing you to affiliate marketing, getting your website set up and building your niche. If you would like to try a trial tutorial, click on the link below.
Wealthy Affiliate – Getting Rolling – Level 1 Certification Course
The lessons build up through to level 5 when you will be several weeks in with robust website, having learned how to start attracting an audience. You can dip in and out if you are a veteran at online marketing. At the top of the website there is a question bar that will bring up every blog, article within WA that has been written on whatever topic you are interested in.. from keyword tools to converting audiences…
What Support Do You Get?
Wealthy Affiliate has a live chat where there is always someone around to offer immediate help. As Wealthy Affiliate is a global community, there is always someone awake !
If you need more technical support, there is support 24/7 and with the sending of a support ticket, they will be back to you within a few minutes, either suggesting how to solve your issue, or going into your site and sorting out the problem for you. This support is all part of the service offered through Wealthy Affiliate.
Any Extras?
Unlimited Access To Tutorials/Classes/Webinars
Tutorials are constantly being added to the already vast library of information, all there to help you succeed with your business. There are thousands of tutorials, classes and webinars so you will always find the training you need.
Free Website Hosting and Domain Name Puschase
Wealthy Affiliate offers free website hosting to premium members for 25 websites along with a very simple facility to purchase your domain names through WA which then makes the process of hosting and setting up wordpress on your site very easy for them to facilitate for you.
Site Content
Wealthy Affiliate offers a content creator platform with templates, word count – all important for SEO of your articles. It also checks grammar and spellings. You can also search for copyright free images right from the same platform to add straight into your articles.
Affiliate Program Search
Wealthy Affiliate has a platform within the website to search for affiliate merchants within your niche that you can join. It is so much easier having a search facility that will bring up many appropriate affiliate program for you to join.
Keyword Search Platform
Jaaxy is a keyword tool that allows you to search for low competition keywords to use in your blogs, articles, posts etc It allows you to see how many other articles are using the same keyword, and if you get onto the first page of google, how many people are likely to visit your website. You can also use other tools within the platform, check your site ranking, alphabet soup, brainstorming…..
Site Feedback and Site Comments
Site feedback allows you to get comments regarding your website, from other community members of Wealthy Affiliate.
Site Comments gives you the opportunity to get your articles, posts, blogs critiqued and comments left on you website that helps your articles to rank well.
How Much ? – Wealthy Affiliate allows you complete access for a week to try everything before you have to even give them your payment details. After a week it costs you $19 the first month (if you take advantage of the 59% discount during the first 7 days after joining) and $47 the following months.
Conclusion
Wealthy Affiliate offer an all encompassing platform for both beginners and experts, with everything you need in one place. Not forgetting the community of almost 1 million likeminded people who will be sure to step up and offer support in your business of online marketing.
2. Skillshare
Skillshare works totally differently to Wealthy Affiliate in that it does not have the same community feel and essentially it is a collection of videos to teach rather than the written word. The videos aren’t accredited but they offer a huge range of topics so there is sure to be one that will appeal to you from hundreds of different tutors. The website appears easily accessible and intuitive to use. There is a customer service if you run into problems.
Skillshare as the title suggests, offers courses to share skills in video form and you can learn anything from anyone, with well known and useful topics such as technology, art, business, affiliate marketing, motion graphics, photography, entrepreneurship.
Courses
Courses may be anything from 10 minutes to 8 hours long, divided into chapters or modules. You can save courses by particular tutors, so you can follow them specifically if you find that one approach suits you best.
The first 5 minutes of any course is free without an account. If you make an account, there are over 1000 courses that are free, but to gain access to over 15,000 courses, you need a paid premium account.
Skillshare offers workshops, however these appear to be mainly for the creative arts which is great if thats what you’re after !
Skillshare works algorithms on its platform to suggest courses to you based on those that you save and watch, with new classes added every week.
How Much ? – Skillshare allows the first 5 minutes of a course to be watched, to see if its of interest. If you want to watch the whole course, you need to register and around 1000 courses open up to you, but to get the whole 15,000 you have to pay $9.95/month with a 27% discount if you pay yearly. They give you a 30 day trial period to try out all premium features. After the free trial, if you don’t cancel before its up, or change to a monthly payment, you be charged the annual fee.
Conclusion –
Skillshare is a much more relaxed and casual approach to online learning, and if you don’t need support in the business you are in, but need the knowledge and information, then this is the right place. Cheaper than some but much less interaction with your fellow learners. Some learners have commented that they have had issues with buffering of the videos and some are of poorer quality than others as there doesn’t seem to be a quality assurance.
3. Gain Higher Ground (Through Clickbank)
Gain High Ground is a learning platform to build a robust online marketing business working from home. Owned and run by Rob Cornish from the UK, it supports the beginner or expert in navigating the rigours of online marketing. He shows you a proven roadmap on how to start making a profitable online business.
Getting Started – Rob offers a welcome video introduction, showing you the members area and goes through the blueprint for making money online. You are guided step by step so you know exactly where to go and what to do.
15 Steps To Success – This is the core training and the daily course shows you with video tutorials what you need to do and where to go to do it to create your own website. These involve the fundamental techniques that online marketers use to build their online businesses, building routines and learning about SEO etc. Rob shows that this is not a quick money fix, but solid, consistent work that achieves the results..
Many online marketing sites tell you how quickly you will earn big bucks, they’re the ones to avoid, they are misleading you, so ones that do not say that are to be trusted.
Basecamp – Basecamp contains updates, expert mastermind sessions, strategy sessions, quick tips, replays of the Q&A, live question and answer area, shortcuts and ways to automate processes to have your website running smoothly and offering all the usual expectations of your audience.
Product Creation Central – This section of the platform shows the reader exactly how to build a niche, recommend products in affiliate marketing and create their own product which is ultimately the best way to make profits.
Any Extras? – There are extras that are offered on Gain Higher Ground but these are not free. You need to purchase each one individually to use them on your website…
Spybar –
- Shows you what features or gadgets are being used on a website – ones that you might want to use on your own website.
- Tells you what site design a particular website is using that you might want to use yourself.
- Tells you what backlinks a website might be using that could be useful to you.
- Do you like the autoresponder on a particular website? this tool will tell you what they are using.
- Can tell you WhoIs information about a website, if you for example wanted to contact them directly for an affiliation code.
Interrupt2Profit –
This is a package, bought separately that introduces you to a technique to grab the attention of your audience and create engagement leading to more sales of your products and affiliate commissions.
Conclusion
Gain Higher Ground offers what most other good online marketing platforms offer. They have the tutorial training, webinars with Q&A, 1-to-1 opportunities, an active forum – although not a huge community. They also offer a 60 day money back guarantee – but not sure what the guarantee is based on, because as we all know, it can take significantly longer than 60 days to start earning online. They don’t offer a free trial, but $5 for a week trial is not bad, they don’t offer web hosting either and no website builder.
My other slight concern regarding Gain Higher Ground is that there is some rhetoric, which I found rather pushy.
4. Udemy
Udemy is not an online marketing platform per se but very similar to Skillshare in that it is a online learning platform for professional adults and students. Over 40 million students, with 50,000 instructors and over 130k courses in 60+ languages. It is classed as MOOC – massively open online courses. They are not accredited but do offer certificates of completion and are recommended by 80% of Fortune 100 companies for employee upskilling.
This platform would not be suitable for a beginner wanting to start online marketing like the other platforms here, because there are too many facets to be intertwined when starting from scratch for a beginner, but this platform would offer some excellent studies to compliment……
‘The Complete Shopify Aliexpress Dropship Course‘ – 6 hours of video, 6 articles, 1 downloadable resource, full lifetime access, certificate of completion. This would be very useful as an online entrepreneur, already set up with a shopify website but not so great to a beginner who needs the support to start that website.
‘How To Come Up With Killer Business Ideas : Complete Workshop‘ – 7 hours video, 13 articles, 65 downloadable resources, certificate of completion.
There are courses that would assist the near beginner – ‘ Build WordPress Sites That Attract Unlimited Free Traffic‘ – This course would certainly be helpful !
Udemy doesn’t offer web hosting, or a support structure should you be struggling with some aspect of web building. They are also quite expensive. When I was researching them, they had a 48 hour sale on where all courses were $12.95 but the regular price ranged from $65 – $199.
They offer the latest skills on the most important topics, keeping material up to date, however anyone is free to create and promote courses, without any sort of quality assurance. This would concern me as at full price, I would expect a robust course.
Conclusion
Whilst Udemy appears to be a great resource for classes to further your online marketing business, the large cost for the courses when not reduced and the fact that the courses are not quality tested is a concern.
5. Affilioblueprint
Affilioblueprint is the flagship affiliate marketing course from Affiliorama enabling you to build a business from scratch and earn a passive income. With everything explained, step-by-step video tutorials, easy for the beginner to follow. Suits starters and more proficient online marketers.
What Does Affilioblueprint Help You Do?
- Find a ‘goldmine niche’ – one that will be most profitable.
- What are the best products to promote? – how to find them, which will make the most money, using specific criteria to find the most profitable products.
- Start a website – An easy way to build a website, set it up, fill it with content and Affilioblueprint give you a wordpress theme specifically designed for building affiliate websites (this usually costs $97)
- Create content that sells – content that will encourage your audience to buy the products you are promoting. They show you how to create great content.
- Get traffic to your website – use proven tactics to get customers to your site, through SEO, social media, get faster results using solo ads, media buys and pay per click. Show you how to step and snipe people ready to buy with 25 videos and 3 hours training on traffic generation alone.
And for the Seasoned Online Marketer?
- Increase earnings with simple tweaks.
- Find the weak spots in your website.
- Track visitors and sales
- How to get returning visitors
- Scaling an affiliate marketing business
How Much Does It Cost?
Affilioblueprint will allow you to try the platform for $1 for 14 days but you have to sign up to then pay $66 in 3 payments (total of $197). You then get a lifetime of access with no monthly charges. You have a 60 day money back guarantee. Great if you are on a budget.
Conclusion
Affilorama and Affilioblueprint are a great platform, well supported and offer a full education in the important principles of online marketing. They offer 90 videos with all aspects of affiliate marketing. I felt that some of the comments made about how quickly you can start earning were a little enlarged – ‘Snowball earnings’ – ‘ How To Build ‘money making machines’ but the education is solid, with well known strategies.
They don’t offer web hosting and domain name purchasing, they also have no community so for the complete beginner needing support and wanting that social aspect of online marketing, this may not be the ideal fit for you.
6. Worth Mentioning……
Lynda.com – great platform for online courses in 101 different topics but has a huge section on online marketing. Great for those that know what they’re doing and don’t need web building support or hosting. Ideal for the online marketer wanting more information and details about other marketing strategies. Offer a free month to try things out.
Hubspot Academy – Again this platform has no structure that a beginner would be able to follow, but once up and running with a website and starting to create content, Hubspot Academy has many valid courses for furthering your experience and so enabling you to engage your audience better.
Summing Up
Each program has its own merits. Some are perfect for the beginner to online marketing, those that need a little hand holding through the trickier aspects of setting up a website. We have all been there and so great the there are platforms like Wealthy Affiliate that can get the beginner off the ground. If it wasn’t for WA , I wouldn’t be creating this website and content now. I have used some Lynda.com courses which again were video tutorials, so easy to follow and implement. But thats not to say that Udemy or Affilioblueprint would not be a great fit for you. I would recommend checking out each one and getting a balance for what you need for your online marketing training.
