If you’re a beginner, don’t start (or buy) an affiliate marketing course until you’ve read this…
If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing course, chances are you’re a beginner and you’re looking for an affiliate marketing course suitable for beginners.
Well the good news is, there’s a lot of them to choose from.
The bad news is most affiliate marketing courses are useless for beginners and it’s extremely difficult to identify a good one.
I’ve been through this merry-go-round myself and spent thousands of dollars on affiliate marketing courses that looked great on the surface, but turned out to be trash.
In this article, I’m going to show you step by step how to find a good affiliate marketing course for beginners.
Like you, I was a beginner once.
I bought lots of courses, most of them were a waste of my hard earned cash.
Back then I was a car mechanic and earning peanuts. You can read all about my backstory here.
Anyway, I got burned a whole bunch of times buying Affiliate Marketing Courses, money I’ll never get back and time I won’t get back either.
As someone who’s bought well over a dozen courses before I found one that worked, I’m well placed to show you what to look for in a good affiliate marketing program, I’m also well placed to show you what to look for in a bad one aswell.
My pain and financial loss is your gain. 🙂
So let’s jump in..
1. The person behind the course has to be legit and have done whatever they’re teaching themselves.
Thanks to social media, finding this out is pretty easy.
Simply search for the creators name on Twitter or Facebook, they’ll be prominent on at least one of them.
If they’re not, that’s probably a red flag right there.
If they are, a quick scan of their profile and page will tell you a lot about their Methods.
Another way you can find this out is with a quick Google search.
Type in the name of the affiliate marketing course you’re thinking of investing in followed by “review”.
So you’d type in something like “product name review”.
That will bring back a lot of reviews written by people who have actually used the course and will give you a pretty good idea of what’s inside it.
Asking around on Internet marketing forums is also a really good way of find out if the Affiliate Marketing course for beginners, you’re interested in is actually worth your hard earned cash investment or not.
I find people on forums are usually really blunt and say what they truly think about something.
They tend to be more anonymous, which is great because…
If something’s really good they’ll say.
If something’s really bad they’ll say.
There’s nothing really inbetween.
There’s no blow-back on themselves, so they tend to be really open about it.
Of course you’ll get the odd troll in between all that, but what you’re looking for are the detailed comments.
Forums are actually my #1 way of researching a product and it’s creator.
It almost never let’s me down.
2. The sales letter or video isn’t open and transparent.
Here’s what I mean..
Let’s suppose you’re considering an Affiliate Marketing course for beginners and for simplicity we’ll call it “Beginners Course A”.
You’ve probably seen this yourself, sometimes you’ll read a sales letter or watch a VSL (Video Sales Letter) and you have no real idea what it’s about.
These types of sales letters are easy to spot.
They’re usually stuffed full of money screenshots, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, beaches and not much else.
They’re selling you the dream, not the steps to actually get it.
These are what I call “shove it down your throat” or “Empty box” tactics.
You need to avoid these types of programs especially if they don’t really tell you much about the program itself.
This is usually because it’s built on something wafer thin or outdated.
9 times out of 10, you’ll end up buying an empty box.
3. Avoid anything that uses words like “loopholes” or “hacks”.
Now here’s the thing, sometimes, it’s rare, but sometimes it’s a genuine loophole or hack.
And that’s fine, I still don’t like them.
And here’s why…
This is the definition of a loophole:
A loophole or loop hole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system.
And loopholes tend to stop working as soon as they’re discovered.
So, if “Mr Super duper marketer” is selling a course (and you’ll see a lot of these) with the headline: “The secret loophole I discovered that makes $10,000 a day on complete autopilot” and he’s openly telling everyone about it, guess what…
The loophole isn’t a secret anymore and eventually stops working!!
And guess what that means?…yup. Your money has just gone straight the F down a blackhole never to be seen again.
I’ll give you an example.
Back in about 2011, somebody discovered a GENUINE loophole in the Google Adwords system. (it’s now called Google Ads).
This was something Google had genuinely missed, this will probably never happen again, and it was real.
What the loophole meant, was that Advertisers could get clicks for literally $0.10c for any keyword they chose, once you knew what setting to switch on, which, of course, was the loophole.
I’m talking really competitive terms with loads of competition.
Keywords like “Lose Weight Fast” or “Make Money Online”.
It ACTUALLY worked.
A smart dude, figured it out and instead of being low-key about it, he went and told EVERYONE.
He started selling a training system on how to exploit this loophole and he sold it cheap as dirt for like $50 bucks.
And because it was so cheap and it actually worked, EVERYBODY bought it.
What that meant was, everybody now knew about it, including -ahem- Google.
The loophole worked for about 2 months and then Google fixed the Loophole they’d now been made aware of and started shutting down 1,000’s of accounts.
I really do mean literally THOUSANDS.
It was a bloodbath.
Affiliates were waking up to their Google Adwords campaigns shut down and locked out of their accounts.
I mean…completely BANNED from Google.
My point is, if you buy into any system that’s built on a loophole, it rarely ever lasts and usually ends badly.
Not to mention, loopholes are usually a result of a terms of service breach in whatever ‘thing’ they are trying to ‘teach’ you and that is only ever going to end one way….and rarely a good way.
So, avoid anything that’s built on short term strategies.
It never ever lasts. EVER.
What to Look For In A Good Affiliate Marketing Course Best For Beginners
So now you know what to avoid.
How can you tell if what the best Affiliate Marketing course for beginners looks like?
- The course creator is reachable.
What I like to do is find the course creators contact page and just send a quick and to the point email asking them about the course.
Now of course, they’re not going to say anything bad about their own Affiliate marketing course, but that’s not the point here, we can find all that stuff out ourselves like I’ll show you just a second.
The point here, is you just want to make sure the affiliate program creator a) actually exists and B) is contactable and helpful.
It’s a good idea to just very briefly explain to them that you’re a beginner with a very brief outline of what you do and do not know about Affiliate Marketing.
You’ll find most course creators will give you an honest answer about whether their course would be a good fit for you or not.
If it isn’t a good fit, they’ll tell you.
It’s not in their interests to lie to you, ok they may get the initial sale, but if the course doesn’t suit you, you’re going to refund it anyway.
This usually sets the tone for everything that follows further down the line.
2. Has a social media presence
This by itself isn’t going to tell you if the course is any good or not, but what it does do, is confirms it’s not just phantom guy behind it.
I’m not saying stalk anyone, just have a quick look and make sure they’re around.
3. Once you’ve established they are a real person, it’s probably a good idea to make sure they have walked the walk.
This is when forums come into play and also facebook groups, you can do a quick search on the persons name and you’ll find lots of conversations going about the person, read through the comments and see what people are actually saying.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about…
I once paid $697 for a paid traffic course that was focussed on PPC.
I discovered a few weeks later, the guy didn’t actually use paid traffic in his business himself, he just “teaches” it.
The only way I found that out, was via a post by somebody else that he’d replied to on facebook.
I wish I’d seen that earlier and before I spent close to $700 bucks!
Ouch!
4. The sales letter or VSL (Video Sales Letter) gives you enough information to make a judgement.
You need to make sure you have enough information to make an informed decision about investing or not.
Here’s a quick tip for beginners looking for an Affiliate Marketing course…
Do they use a lot of jargon on their sales letter without explaining it?
If they use a lot of Jargon on their sales letters without explaining it, that usually means you are NOT their target audience.
eg: if I start talking to you about “Launch Jacking” or “link cloaking” or “CPA offers” without explaining what those things are, I’m kind of assuming you already know what those things are, when if you’re a complete beginner, you probably don’t.
That’s usually the tell-tell sign of an affiliate marketing course that’s beyond the scope of beginner level.
If they’re using those kinds of terms on their sales letter, you’re probably going to have a hard time following the course, even if they do explain it inside.
5. There is some sort of coaching or further support that comes with the course.
I’ll tell you straight out, for most people, I’m talking 90%+, just buying the course isn’t going to be enough.
You need a mentor or at least some kind of coaching to stear you through it.
Back when I first started, almost 10 years ago, Affiliate Marketing Courses aren’t like they are now.
It was rare to find anything with even videos.
There was rarely ever a coaching element.
It was usually a PDF and away you go, to figure it out on my own.
Which is what I had to do.
These days it’s a LOT different.
Most courses are online with lot’s of video tutorials and other resources.
But the one thing that’s going to give you the cutting edge in todays world is having a mentor or some kind of coaching that goes along with it.
Having a mentor can be literally the difference between success and failure.
What puts most people off buying Affiliate marketing courses that have a coaching element is that they’re usually expensive.
But it’s worth the investment, especially if you’re a beginner just starting out.
And anyway, the kind of people with that mindset, find themselves bouncing around, investing in course after course spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars, spinning their wheels and getting nowhere.
When all they needed was a bit of guidance along the way.
This has been quite a long blog post, so I’m going to wrap it up here with an Affiliate Marketing course for beginners I highly recommend…
And guess what?…this training is 100% FREE.
This is the Affiliate Marketing Course I highly recommend if you’re a complete beginner:
It’s created by a very successful affiliate marketer and friend of mine called Mark Ling.
He’s spent the last 14 years figuring out the very BEST Affiliate Marketing Strategies and he now has over 6 Affiliate marketing websites and 90 staff.
He’ll walk you through step by step how you can get started as an Affiliate Marketer. Just go here.
And don’t forget my free Affiliate Marketing case study for how to make $25,000-$100,000 per year from Affiliate Marketing, even if you’re a beginner, click here.
