Looking to make money online? I am. I've purchased and used several affiliate marketing training programs from top affiliate marketing gurus.
Here, I document my impression of the effectiveness of each guru's training program. How? I've actually used the methods taught by people like: Mark Ling, Potpiegirl (Jennifer Ledbetter), Matt Carter, George Brown, Terry Kyle, Travis Sago, Lisa Parmley, Cary Bergeron, Ryan Moran, Tiffany Dow and others.
There are also tons of free affiliate marketing training resources available on the web. These have been produced by real gurus and wannabe gurus. Some are good. Some, not so much. In any case, I want to give you my honest evaluation of what these programs have to offer.
This is NOT a shameless plug for each of these affiliate marketing training programs. I give an honest review of each specific training method. So, if you want to know if you should purchase one of these training methods, then keep reading. Here's the list of training programs I've purchased and actually used in my own affiliate marketing business:
- Rapid Profit Formula
- Affiloblueprint
- Google Sniper 2
- One Week Marketing
- Adsense Recipe
- SEO Experts Academy
- Lump Sum Profits
- Building an E-book Empire
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Looks Can Be Deceiving!
Affiliate marketing is an online business model whereby affiliates promote products for a commission.
Affiliate marketing is a very attractive way to make money because there are very low start up costs. All you need is an internet connection and a computer. Sometimes, you don't even need that if you have access to a public computer at a library.
All one needs to do is see the wild tales of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars in income resulting from a couple websites promoting e-book products like "Get Your Ex Back," or "Stop Yeast Infections at Home."
The whole prospect of becoming an online marketing millionaire seems so real and achievable. After all, the gurus are living in exotic locations, traveling the world, and just sitting back letting the commissions roll in, right?
Start up costs for an affiliate marketing business are so cheap, it's almost unbelievable. Hosting for your websites costs around $10-$15 per month or less. And, a domain name costs around $10-$20 per year. Prices for both web hosting and domain names can vary, so each person's mileage may vary depending upon several factors. Yet, what an incredibly small investment for such potential for wealth.
The reality is that affiliate marketing is very hard work! Do not be deceived. Running a successful online business is intensely time consuming for one reason: Website promotion.
The key to success in affiliate marketing is to find what people want and put what they want on the first page of Google. How do you get on the first page of Google?
You have to build great content on your web site (money page) and point a diverse number of back links to your money page. No matter what anyone tells you, you are attempting to game the Google algorithm based on what any given guru thinks are the best methods to acquire "Google Love." The philosophy of "build a website and they will come" almost never works.
Truth be told, building back links is a soul crushing time sucking activity that can only be relieved if you can find someone to do it for you for a fee. You will soon realize this when you discover that your competitors have thousands of back links for one keyword, like "stop dog barking." So, unless you have a large amount of cash to outsource your back linking work, get ready to spend countless hours in front of a computer.
If you don't have the time or money to do that, then don't bother with affiliate marketing because you will be sadly disappointed.
Rapid Proft Formula Review
Guru: Matt Carter
Matt Carter has been doing affiliate marketing for several years. He claims that he's made tons of money promoting products and not just selling a training program. He stresses doing online marketing honestly and focuses on teaching how to make money by generating free internet traffic.
Rapid Profit Formula is for the newbie to intermediate affiliate marketer. The training modules are online and require a username and password. Each of the seven modules in Rapid Profit Formula include video and PDF instructions. The modules are:
- Introduction
- Keywords and Affiliate Networks
- Buying Domains and Hosting
- Building Your Site
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO
- Assessment and Results
Rapid Profit Formula Cons: One of the drawbacks I found when using this system is that it is a little thin on the website building component. Sure, the topic is covered, but there are important details that get left out, probably due to time constraints. In any case, if you have no experience building a Wordpress website, you might find yourself at a bit of a loss. Yet, essential items are present and you will be taught what you need to know to publish a website. There is very little information about list building.
Rapid Profit Formula Pros: This is one of the best affiliate training programs in terms of keyword research training. Since keyword research is critical to success in online marketing, the cost of the program is well worth this training alone.
There are also several bonuses and links to free tools, which is very helpful. I find Matt to be an honest Guru and delivers a solid product. Excellent section on product research along with detailed back linking methods. Also includes some high-level secrets toward getting good back links.
Focus: The focus of this training is on free traffic generation methods and is geared toward selling physical products, but can be easily applied to e-book marketing.
Recommend?: Yes, but only if you don't mind having to figure out more customizable website design on your own. Recently updated to accommodate changes in the Google algorithm.
If you would like to find out more about Matt Carter's training, go to
Rapid Profit Formula.
Affiloblueprint Review
Guru: Mark Ling
You might call Mark Ling an "old timer" when it comes to affiliate marketing. He's been at this business for many years and is a true rags to riches affiliate marketer. In fact, he started out in college by selling posters online using old 386 machines. Mark knows his stuff and he also knows how to leverage almost everything he's learned over the years.
Mark Ling's Affiloblueprint is connected to an interactive internet marketing community known as Affilorama. Incidentally, Mark Ling and Matt Carter are friends and they have done joint venture promotion of their products.
Affiloblueprint is delivered over the course of 12 weeks with videos and PDF instructions. The training is done by Mark Ling and his trusty sidekick, Aletta. While Aletta is no longer with Affilorama, her voice is quite pleasing and she really knows what she's doing.
Every week focuses on a specific aspect of affiliate marketing. You literally look over Aletta's shoulder as she shows you how to do the following:
- Market Research and Keywords
- Content Building
- Website Design
- Monetizing Your Website
- Search Engine Optimization and Product Reviews
- Off Page SEO and Link Building
- Newsletters and Mailing Lists
- Advanced Link Building and Web 2.0
- Advanced Website Tweaking
- Pay Per Click (PPC)
Affiloblueprint Cons: This training program is comprehensive, but the keyword research component is very weak and teaches almost nothing about how to do keyword research correctly other than using free software provided by Mark Ling. I would not suggest you rely on this system to learn how to do keyword research.
Affiloblueprint Pros: If you are a total newbie to affiliate marketing, there is no other program that shows exactly how to set up a website like this one. From domain name registration to setting up web hosting to customizing your webpage to designing an auto responder, this is it and there is no other like it.
I cannot over state the importance of Affiloblueprint simply because of the step by step website design training along with the free bonuses, including a couple Wordpress themes. And, there's access to all of Mark Ling's old training programs. I use what I learned from Affiloblueprint every time I sit down to do affiliate marketing.
Focus: Affiloblueprint focuses on generating free traffic to a website in order to promote e-books, but the training can also be applied to promoting physical products. There is a Pay Per Click (PPC) component, but I would not recommend anyone do PPC unless they are a seasoned veteran affiliate marketer.
Recommend? Yes, if you are a total newbie to affiliate marketing and website design. If you are intermediate or beyond, you might try another more advanced program.
If you would like to see what Mark Ling's program has to offer, go to
Affiloblueprint.
Google Sniper 2 Review
Guru: George Brown
Google Sniper 2 is the second edition of the fantastically popular (and effective) Google Sniper. George Brown's philosophy of affiliate marketing is built around finding one main keyword that has a high search volume and low competition. The idea is to build an entire website around one specific word, for example, "stop excessive armpit sweating."
As you might imagine, these kind of websites do not have a whole lot of content, but are laser targeted for on page SEO to the extent that less back linking is required, or none at all. At least that's what is promoted.
In case you don't already know, Google has been cracking down on what they consider thin affiliate sites. Unfortunately for Google Sniper 2 users and George Brown, this method is much less effective than it used to be. Over the years people have been filling the internet with complete garbage and this is not George at all. He would rather you offer value to users, but with as little work as possible. That's what I liked about the training. All good things come to an end though.
Google Sniper 2 is an online interactive community with lots of video training and PDF manuals. The training is broken into 7 modules with up sells to grant you access to other training areas. Here are the basic training modules:
- Picking Products
- Finding Keywords
- Building a Sniper Site
- Secrets of a 20% Conversion Rate
- Cloaking Affiliate Links
- How to Create Your Site
- How to Get Ranked in Record Time
Google Sniper 2 Cons: It was a great idea and fairly commonly known, but George put the system into an easy to understand training program. Too bad lots of people abused Google and the Big G made it nearly impossible to use this system with any kind of success without doing tons of back linking.
GS2 Pros: I learned lots of cool techniques from George that can be applied to any website style. Also, the training about conversions was good as was the training about latent semantic keywords, even though I doubt many people can achieve a 20% conversion rate for any product over $10.
Focus: Google Sniper 2 is focused on generating free internet traffic by using highly targeted keyword rich articles and domain names. There is supposed to be limited back linking needed, but in today's search engine environment, you will be generating more traffic from Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.
Recommendation? I regret that I cannot recommend this product simply because the strategy is no longer effective, although there is still valuable training. If you would like to check out George Brown's training to see if it might be right for you, go to
Google Sniper 2.
SEO Experts Academy Review
Gurus: Terry Kyle and Matt Carter
SEO Experts Academy is a 'tour de force' of mid-level to advanced affiliate marketing training. Long-time affiliate marketing technical expert Terry Kyle and Matt Carter join forces to bring one of the most comprehensive affiliate marketing training programs around.
SEO Experts Academy is definitely not for the beginner. Not that a beginner could not follow the training, but the program is geared for a more advanced affiliate marketer.
Matt Carter and Terry Kyle deliver their training in a series of videos, PDFs, and a special training segment called 'Sunday SEO' where Terry Kyle presents some of the most cutting edge information about the current state of affiliate marketing and business development.
SEO Experts Academy is an online training source and contains in-depth training segments that really dig into how to develop either a new affiliate website or build an authority affiliate marketing site. There is so much good information in this training program, I couldn't begin to focus on one or two aspects.
Suffice it to say that SEO Experts Academy is devoted to building a profitable online business that generates customers from free search engines. There are in-depth examples with video and work flow charts that clearly map out exactly what you need to be doing and when to do it.
One thing you need to be aware of though is that it will take hard work and lots of it. Even if you are able to outsource much of the work, you will still need to work hard at implementing everything you learn in this training.
SEO Experts Academy is broken into 4 major sections: Intro, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. Here's what you can expect:
- In-depth comprehensive keyword research techniques
- Developing Quality Content
- Philosophy of SEO and Affiliate Marketing
- IP Diversity
- Diverse Link Building
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO (Comprehensive and Very Detailed)
- Instruction for free and paid tools
- Google Panda and What to do about it
- Site Structure
- Reverse Engineering
- Outsourcing
- Web 2.0
- Using Proxies
- Saving a rankings turkey
- Mastermind Groups
- SEO Software Creation
- Secret Guru Tips and Tricks
SEO Experts Academy Cons: The training is a little pricey, but in my opinion, well worth it. And, the tasks seem insurmountable if you are doing affiliate marketing part-time or less. It might be too much for a newbie though.
SEO Experts Academy Pros: The training is comprehensive and in-depth. There's always something to learn and you can spend quite a bit of time going over the various techniques and methods of affiliate marketing. The step-by-step instructions and work-flow charts are very helpful.
Focus: Comprehensive high-level advanced affiliate marketing training based on search engine optimization, on-page and off-page SEO techniques. This training can be used for any type of affiliate marketing, whether it's affiliate marketing, CPA, or Adsense. There is no limit to how you can monetize a website once you have this training in hand.
Recommendation? YES!
If you would like to know more about this excellent affiliate marketing training program, then go check out
SEO Experts Academy.
There are more reviews coming. If you would like me to give an honest review of an affiliate marketing program, then simply drop me a line and I will see what I can do
Cary Bergeron is the Adsense guru who sold an Adsense website on Flippa for $80,000. After I learned about this fact, I then listened to a couple webinars starring Mr. Bergeron where he claimed earning thousands of dollars every month from adsense on a few websites. I couldn't resist.
