Affiliate Marketing Courses – Myths & Lies

Affiliate marketing courses madness!!!

That could also be the title of this post. You see, there are thousands of affiliate marketing training courses online. They are simply everywhere. There is no way to search for the term “affiliate marketing” online and not come across at least 4 or 5 training courses.

But how do you choose the best affiliate marketing course for yourself among all these courses? How can you pick the one that best suits your needs?

After all, everyone is claiming their course is the best one and all you need to succeed online. That is also where the madness and the lies begin. Because every affiliate is trying to sell you something (including me) and earn themselves a commission. And in their effort to do that some of them choose to spread myths and misinformation.

That is what we’ll talk about in this post. The lies and the nonsense that surround the affiliate marketing courses.

The MMO Niche

By MMO I mean the “Make Money Online” niche. That niche is not only about affiliate marketing but also includes all the Internet marketing niches like blogging, digital marketing, social media, SEO, e-commerce, dropshipping, and any other way you can use to make money online. As you can see MMO is a huge niche. A very profitable niche no doubt but still a very competitive one.

So the question you should ask yourself is should you enter that niche?

I am afraid the answer may not be that simple. Some say you shouldn’t and others that you ‘ll be making a huge mistake by not joining that niche. In my opinion, it would be better to pick something else for your first attempt. I’ll explain later why I say this and why I joined the MMO niche in the first place.

But if you do choose the MMO as your niche you should try and focus on a specific sub-niche. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin trying to create content about everything in the MMO niche. You can’t cover everything anyway.

No matter what you choose to talk about though affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize your site. It is something everyone can do and starting an affiliate business will cost you almost nothing. Affiliate marketing is a low-risk business model and definitely not a scam.

It is very common for people looking to earn money through affiliate marketing to do a training course first. There is nothing wrong with that. In my opinion sooner or later you’ll have to spend some money on a training course. Legit affiliate marketing courses can save you a lot of time and help you succeed online. They can guide you, show you what works, what doesn’t work, and what to avoid.

There is a training course online for everything and everyone. For both beginners with no prior experience and seasoned affiliates. For people looking to learn the basics steps of affiliate marketing and how to build an affiliate website from scratch to experienced bloggers and marketers wanting to learn more about a certain online marketing method, such as social media.

Why did I join the MMO niche?

To learn more about digital marketing. I believe the best way to learn anything is by doing. That is why I joined the MMO niche and created this site. Writing about affiliate marketing and blogging would require me to research online and learn as much as I can about these things. If I wanted to publish some content about how to write a blog post I should first learn how to do it. That is the reason why I entered this niche.

If I had chosen any other niche as my first attempt I would still need to find out how affiliate marketing works. So, although I didn’t know much about the MMO niche I decided that joining it was going to be the best way to learn how to make money as an affiliate marketer.

How would I describe the MMO niche?

If I had to explain to someone what this niche is all about I don’t think I would use words such as competitive, crowded, profitable. Not because they don’t apply to it but because I feel they don’t accurately describe it. In my opinion, the MMO niche is a “freak show”.

All kinds of people from every corner of the earth join this niche hoping to make some quick cash. You have scammers, fake experts, real experts, fraudsters, bloggers who actually want to help others, professional online marketers, and of course victims. The MMO niche has it all.

People selling affiliate marketing courses are no different. You have affiliates pretending to be millionaires or digital marketing experts and others claiming they know the affiliate marketing “secret” that can earn you thousands of dollars in a few weeks. And you also have people believing that there is an easy way to earn lots of cash online at no time. And the more they keep looking for that “system” that will make them money on autopilot the more money they waste on buying useless training courses.

That is the reason why there are so many scammers promoting programs and systems that are nothing more than a waste of time. The conditions are ideal for scammers looking to sell the “dream” and earn themselves a fortune by taking advantage of people facing financial hardships.

If you are interested in buying an affiliate marketing course and learning how affiliate marketing works you should stay away from such people. Below is a list of 5 types of marketers promoting affiliate training courses you should definitely avoid.

 

• I know the secret. They tend to promote some kind of automated affiliate marketing software that will supposedly earn you passive income. The “secret” is usually a DFY (Done-For-You) system that gives you access to pre-made affiliate sites without you having to create any content yourself. Is either that or a bunch of pre-written emails that you can send to your subscribers. That is if you already have an email list. If you don’t they’ll tell you to buy solo ads.

There are hundreds of such programs online and almost all of them are a waste of time and money. In most cases, the only way to earn money with such products is to try and resell them to earn a commission. The truth is there is no secret. People who claim to know the “secret” or the magic formula of affiliate marketing that can solve all your problems are usually -if not always- promoting low-quality digital products.

• I am so successful. That’s the type of Internet marketer who is always telling people how they went from rags-to-riches all thanks to this amazing affiliate training course. All they had to do is follow the steps of this training course (which they are now promoting) and after a while, they achieved financial freedom.

They tell you how they can now easily earn hundreds of dollars per day doing Facebook ads and running email campaigns. All thanks to this training program but they forget to mention how much they spend on ads to achieve such results. That cost is of course extra to the price of the course.

There is nothing wrong with promoting a legit training program that helped you increase your earnings and affiliate sales. But you won’t succeed by copying the steps of a training course. You’ll become successful thanks to your hard work and dedication and not by simply buying a training program.

• I have no past. Online marketers and bloggers who promote low-quality info products, borderline scams or scams (like MOBE & Digital Altitude) don’t stop doing it after getting busted. People who used to promote MOBE for example (and knew it was a scam right from the start) telling people how great it was and that this is the best affiliate training program money can buy didn’t disappear after MOBE was shut down by the FTC.

They are now promoting other similar scams. They just deleted their YouTube videos and their Facebook pages promoting MOBE and moved on. When asked about it they simply ignore you or they say they don’t remember anything about that.

But it is always the same people who are selling these overpriced useless training courses. They make videos on YouTube showing you cheques worth thousands of dollars telling you how easy it is to earn that amount of money by joining the training program they are marketing.

One thing you can’t hide online though is your past. People who promoted scams and pyramid schemes in the past are still doing it. Do your research before listening to anyone online. Finding out about what they used to promote in the past is not that difficult. You shouldn’t trust marketers who try to hide their past.

• Payback is a bitch. That is how I named a technique some online marketers use to promote affiliate courses. They suddenly start bushing the training course they promoted to their audience all this time calling it a scam, a fraud, outdated, a waste of time, etc and they invite their audience to join this new training program they now promote. They say this new program is what you should be doing right now if you want to make money online.

Now before I continue I should explain myself to avoid any misunderstandings. I am not implying here that it’s a bad thing to change your mind and promote another training program if you believe it can serve your audience better. That is fine. There is no problem in doing that. Or if you feel that the affiliate course you are promoting has lost its edge and there are simply better ones out there right now. That is also fine. But that is not what I am talking about here.

What I am talking about is the method some affiliates use to earn more money by deceiving their readers. That is how it works. Once they have established themselves a dedicated audience ( through social media, YouTube, email marketing, content marketing, etc) that regularly buys the products they promote they try to take advantage of that trust.

Why wasting time promoting this training program earning a $50 commission per sale and not promote that other one and earn me a $200 commission per sale. That is what it is all about. But they can’t tell their audience that this is the only reason they are asking them to quit a training course. Instead, they create some sort of drama. And we all love that “hidden truth” that is now finally being revealed. And we take the bait.

You see they don’t care if the new course they are promoting now is better, the same or even worse than the previous one. All they care about is increasing their earnings. They do know they risk losing some followers or email subscribers by doing such a thing but they also know that the majority of them will follow their suggestion.

Trashing the training program though is just the first part of the technique. The second part is going after known affiliates of that program. They usually attack them on places like Quora and Facebook calling them scammers or that the course they promote is a waste of money and they know this because they used to be a member. It is not uncommon for them to create new accounts on social media so they can do just that.

• Fake it till you make it. Last but not least we have another popular type of marketer promoting training programs you should avoid. They pretend to have earned thousands of dollars by signing up for this and that training program. But the truth is they have earned either very little or nothing at all.

They don’t care about offering any value to their audience. They just want your money. Their content usually consists of a few blog posts (mostly reviews) and landing pages asking you to buy something right now. Their content is badly written and looks like it was copied from another source. They pretend to be successful but in reality, they are desperate to make a sale. They fake it but unfortunately, they will never make it. At least not until they start helping their audience.

Affiliate Marketing Scams To Look Out For

You should never blindly trust anyone online who is selling affiliate marketing courses. Everyone is trying to sell you something and earn a commission. We are all biased in some way. Every blogger and digital marketer in that niche is affiliated with a training course.

But that doesn’t mean all affiliate courses are scams. There are plenty of high-quality courses you could join. However, there are several low-quality training courses you should avoid. Since we talked above about the type of marketers you should avoid here I’ll mention 4 types of affiliate training course creators you should also avoid.

• Fake Online Gurus. They are everywhere. They know it all they are super-wealthy and they can teach you how to become rich yourself too. There is no shortage of fake Internet marketing gurus in the MMO niche and they are all eager to rip you off!

They always pretend to be more successful than they really are. Self-proclaimed affiliate marketing experts telling you how you can earn thousands of dollars per day from the comfort of your house. All you have to do is follow their blueprint to success for only $67 or something like that. As soon as you do pay they bombard you with upsells and empty your wallet in no time.

It is not difficult to identify the fake gurus online. They are the ones showing you pictures of themselves with their supercars, liar jets, piles of cash, expensive watches, and making videos from glamorous locations. Real experts don’t need to do that. They “talk their walk” and practice what they do. They don’t need to dazzle you with their money and extravagant lifestyle.

• The Industrialists. They mass produce training courses. They create them one after another. Every couple of months they release a new training program or a DFY affiliate marketing system on Clickbank, JVZoo, or WarriorPlus. All of their products are about making money online promoting digital products using paid traffic sources (Facebook ads, email marketing, PPC campaigns, etc). Most of the time the products you are told to promote are the creator’s previous programs.

They advertise their training courses by saying things like “the new best way to easily earn affiliate commissions” or “learn to make $10,000+ each month on autopilot”. Of course, all of them are low-quality, useless info products. You won’t learn anything from them. Such products usually don’t cost much (costing between $10 to $100) but are filled with hidden costs and upsells. They also don’t hesitate to call themselves “Facebook experts” or successful online entrepreneurs.

• Pay First, Ask Questions Later. They create affiliate marketing training courses that look similar to MLM recruiting schemes. Usually, they are not very clear about what kind of training you’ll be getting or what tools and resources their training course offers. Their website is nothing more than a landing page full of hype and how you can easily earn hundreds of dollars per sale.

Of course, there are membership levels for you to buy and in most cases upsells. You must first buy each level to be able to promote it and earn a commission. The first level is usually relatively cheap (costing less than $100) but offers nothing more than some basic information about affiliate marketing. You’ll have to upgrade hoping to earn some of your money back.

The only way to make money with such products is to resell the membership level you purchased. The quality of the training is irrelevant. In most cases, the training is there so the creator can say there is a product. But there are no products. Only levels that you have to buy first and then recruit new members to earn commissions.

• Snake Oil Salespeople. Their products are not just bad or useless. They are worse than that. They gather info from various sources online that are already available for free and then charge you for it. They create a few PDF files or a webinar and they sell them back at you.

You end up paying for something you had access to all along. They promote their “training course” using phrases like “affiliate marketing secret revealed” or “earn $200 per day with only 5 minutes of work” and stuff like that. Some of them don’t even bother if their training course makes sense or not. They randomly throw anything they can find in it. They target people who are desperate for money or people who believe online marketing is posting your links all over the social media.

Don’t despair

I know you may feel a bit overwhelmed with all this information right now but it’s not all doom and gloom. Like I said at the beginning of this post affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. There are several affiliate marketing courses that can help you succeed online.

In the list below I’ll mention some of the most popular ones. (I am not affiliated with all them)

• Wealthy Affiliate
• Affilorama
• Savage Affiliates
• Commission Hero
• Authority Hacker

There are of course many more. Some are more expensive than others. Some (like Wealthy Affiliate & Affilorama) are more suitable for complete newbies and intermediate affiliates and others for more advanced and expert affiliates. What all these courses have in common though is that they are legit affiliate marketing courses that can help you build a profitable affiliate business.

They also have one more thing in common. Overzealous affiliates (not all of them) that sometimes tend to exaggerate in their effort to make a sale. All the above courses have their pros and cons but they are all legit. It is impossible for a training course to satisfy everyone anyway. You should just pick the one you can afford and like the most.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for an affiliate marketing course to sign up with now you know what and who you should avoid. But you need to remember an affiliate course is… well simply a course. Not a ticket to paradise or financial freedom.

It can guide you and show you step-by-step what you need to do to make money online with affiliate marketing but you have to do the heavy lifting. A training course, no matter how good it is, is unfortunately useless in itself. You must put into practice what you learned and have patience.

Finally, be careful who you choose to trust online and stay away from marketers promising you fast and easy money. And of course like any other blogger in this niche I also promote a training course. It is called Wealthy Affiliate (you can read my review here) and I believe that for its price is one of the best affiliate courses you can find online.

What I like about Wealthy Affiliate is that it’s free to join. You can try it yourself and find out if this is the right training program for you. The first month will cost you $19 and after that, the price is $49 per month. I doubt you’ll go bankrupt for $19. There are no hidden costs or upsells. If you don’t like it you can delete your account and cancel your payment at any time.

I suggest you give it a try. It’ll cost you nothing.

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