Affilorama Review – A Decent Affiliate Marketing Training Program

Welcome to my review of Affilorama, you are probably thinking of starting an affiliate marketing business and want to know if Affilorama can help you.

The good thing is, Affilorama is one of the oldest and most trusted affiliate training programs that has helped thousands of people over the years start their first online business.

In an industry that is rife with get rich quick schemes and outright scammers, Affilorama stands out as one of the few online training programs that has stood the test of time and consistently been ranked as one of the best in the market.

However, It is not without its faults and in this review, I will cover everything Affilorama has to offer including its free and paid programs and if it is worth joining.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Since you are reading this review, I assume you have an idea on what exactly affiliate marketing is and how you can make money through it.

However, if you are still unsure of the mechanics of how affiliate marketing works, I’ll give you a brief explanation.

Affiliate marketing is simply a business model based on referral commissions, you promote a product or service through a special affiliate link and anytime someone buys through that link, you get paid a commission.

Now, that is the simplified explanation, to become a successful affiliate marketer will require more than just sharing affiliate links.

You will need to find a profitable niche, build a website, write articles, generate traffic to your site, build an audience, find affiliate programs to promote and then finally make some money.

This is where the Affilorama training program comes in.

Who Is Mark Ling?

Before I review the Affilorama program, I want to say a couple of things about the owner.

Mark Ling is the brains behind Affilorama, he is an internet millionaire and has been making money online for nearly two decades.

He is a New Zealand native and co-owns a couple of other companies along with Affilorama.

He founded Affilorama in 2006 along with Co-founder Simon Slade, Mark is also part owner of Traffic Travis, an SEO/PPC software and Salehoo which is a dropshipping supplier directory.

Mark recently started producing a documentary series on Food and health which is due to be released sometime this year.

Suffice to say he is a very successful businessman and a respected affiliate marketer.

What Is Affilorama?

Affilorama is a membership site that offers affiliate marketing training through videos, articles and PDF reports.

According to the website, it has over 750,000 members and its aim is to minimise the obstacles to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Founded in 2006, it is one of the oldest online companies that provides training for aspiring affiliate marketers.

Affilorama has several products inside its membership area, they provide an 8 part free affiliate marketing training program that consists of video tutorials and articles.

They include the following modules;

1. Introduction to affiliate marketing

2. Market research

3. Content creation

4. Building a website

5. Promoting your website

6. SEO

7. PPC

8. Outsourcing

Each module consists of several lessons that all include video tutorials as well as written articles.

Although I had actually joined Affilorama a couple of years (after I had escaped the MLM industry), I never watched more than a few videos and didn’t make most of the free training they provided.

However, to provide a comprehensive review,  I sat through all the videos and read most of the articles.

One thing that stands out more than anything is that the videos and articles have not been updated for a few years.

That is not to say the information they provide is outdated or irrelevant, most of the training material still applies today.

Mark certainly knows his stuff and has made a ton of money through affiliate marketing, so it would be wise to follow what he teaches.

The free lessons provide a solid foundation on how to start affiliate marketing by building a niche website and producing high-quality content.

It touches upon the foundations of SEO and PPC to generate targeted traffic, there is also some good material on promoting your site through inbound marketing and social media.

There are however a few things that could be improved, for example in one of the lessons in the PPC module, it talks about creating landing pages. The basic principles are sound but the landing page examples they provide are not optimised for mobile viewing which will have an adverse effect on your conversions.

There is a whole module on website building that consists of 19 videos, I enjoyed this module but I was disappointed in their choice of website builders.

They mention complex website builders like Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web and Kompozer ( Kompozer has been discontinued but the article has not been updated to acknowledge this).

I really don’t understand why it does not mention WordPress ( which powers nearly a 3^rd of the web) and is very easy to learn. Not to mention all the other benefits that come with using WordPress such as its SEO friendliness, modern themes, extensive range of plugins and support.

There are a couple of comments on the article asking why WordPress wasn’t included, a moderator replied that it would be soon but to this date, there is no mention of WordPress.

Overall, the free lessons are decent but nothing you wouldn’t find on popular internet forums or on YouTube. It would be helpful if they could update some of the content the reflect the more recent standards for affiliate marketing.

The Affilorama Forum

As a free member, you also have access to the forum, however, this was another disappointment.

If you search for certain topics, you can sometimes find pretty good posts and conversations, but the forum is not as active as before. As you can see from the image below, there are hardly any replies to new posts and posts that have multiple replies are few and far between.

Pathway to Passive

Cost – $37

Pathway to Passive is an in-depth report on how to start an affiliate marketing business that will give you the best chance at success.

It has a pretty standard sales page with Mark explaining how he got involved in affiliate marketing and how his first affiliate site was a failure (mostly because he was lazy and also he didn’t follow the training he was getting).

The report covers 4 topics related to starting an affiliate marketing website, the topics are as follows;

1.Finding profitable niches and high converting affiliate offers

2.Attracting the right customers for better conversions

3.Conversion optimisation

4. Creating high-quality content that attracts natural backlinks and more traffic.

Although the guide is targeted for beginners the sales page suggests that even advanced marketers can benefit from the content.

Affilo Jetpack

Cost – $997

This is Affilorama’s own business in a box solution, it’s a system designed to make it as easy as possible to start an affiliate marketing business.

They provide everything for you which includes the following:

1.Niche selection,

2.A 90-day email sequence

3. High converting squeeze page

4.Cheat sheets for content ideas

5.3*10,000 word reports to help you build an email list

Theirier own premium WordPress theme

7.12 Months of web hosting

If I was a newbie and had the budget to invest in something like this I would have done so. However, after a couple of years of experience, I know that there are no short cuts to affiliate marketing success.

Notice I said ‘no short cuts to success’ many people who purchase products like this have the impression that the money will start rolling in after they purchase this business in a box type of product.

It doesn’t help that the sales page gives of this impression as well but there is a lot of work to be done even after you purchase a done for you system like Affilo Jetpack.

You will have to create lots of high-quality content, for some this may come easy, however, speaking from personal experience, publishing well-written content on a consistent basis is tough.

Building an audience whether it be through SEO, social media or Video marketing also takes times, especially SEO since Google is always updating its ranking algorithm and it takes longer than ever to start ranking for your target keywords.

This can be helpful for people who just do not have the time to learn and build a website themselves but I personally think it will be more fruitful if you did it yourself.

Affillo Tools

This is a set of web-based SEO tools that comes free with an Affilorama membership.

With Affillo tools you can do the following;

Keyword research

Rank tracking

Backlink analysis

Analyse your website health

Facebook and Twitter analytics

Integrate with Google analytics

I was surprised by the quality of this tool, it comes with a lot of features and is completely free.

Although the free version does come with limitations, if you are just starting out, it provides more than enough data to get you started.

There are three paid options if you want more access to all the features.

Final Thoughts

In a nutshell, if you are new to affiliate marketing, Affiloramas free training will provide a solid foundation on the basics of starting an online affiliate business.

Affilorama are part of a handful of online training programs that have been in business for over a decade that teach you how to make money online the proper way.

Others have come and gone but they thrive because their teaching method is solid and do not promote the mentality of getting rich quick (a mindset that has poisoned this industry).

Having said that the free training is decent but some of it needs to be updated and the forum could do with more interaction.

Although I do think this is a good program, I would not recommend any of the paid products ( apart from Affillo tools), this is because of two reasons.

The first reason is that I honestly believe there is a better alternative in Wealthy Affiliate, they are a similar company but they are constantly updating their training and always making improvements.

The other reason is to do with Mark Ling, like I said he is a very successful businessman and runs several other online businesses’ and has recently started making a documentary series.

I am also on his email list and I know for a fact that he launches one high -ticket product every year and promotes a couple of others. In other words, he is a very busy man and it may be one of the reasons that the Affilorama training hasn’t been updated for so long.

That is the main reason I would advise against purchasing any of the paid Affilorama products because I really can’t be sure whether they are updated on a regular basis or not and you don’t want to be paying for stuff that is not relevant for the modern affiliate marketer.

So, in ending this review, I would say that Affilorama is a legitimate system that has some good training material but I believe Wealthy Affiliate offers the superior option for affiliate marketing success. And to show that Wealthy Affiliate really works, here is my personal results which I achieved by implementing their training on a consistent basis.