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Is Affilorama Worthy Of The Praise It’s Received?
By Luke T. | Positive Reviews
There are very few courses online, no matter the subject, that have been around for longer than a few years. Many fizzle out in weeks, months or a year or two. Affilorama by Mark Ling first saw life in 2006 and is still around today.
That’s an accomplishment in itself! But it is any good?
I am not an affiliate for Affilorama. We’ll dig into Affilorama today and see how it compares to the stock pile of crap we’ve compiled here at StoppingScams.com and just like all my other reviews, this will be ruthless and I’ll hold nothing back.
If it’s crap, I’ll say it’s crap.
So let’s see which pile we’ll be putting Affilorama into.
Affilorama is an online study course that trains people how to do affiliate marketing. With 100+ videos in the library you’ll learn what affiliate marketing is, how to do it, and more importantly how to make good money from it.
At least this is what Mark promises.
Affilorama has been around for 9 years now and has gone through many versions. Mark says the entire course has been updated back in 2014 so it’s up to date. 5,445 people have gone through this course and Mark says some of them have gone on to do big things.
Is he another scammer? Is Affilorama worth your time or money?
Well that’s what you’re just about to find out.
At the moment you can gain access to Affilorama for free. That’s right… Free. You’ll get 100 free lessons which walks you though how affiliate marketing works and the different methods you can use to get people to click on your affiliate links.
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As you can see in the picture above, not only do you get videos but you’ll also get PDFs too. I didn’t see too many PDFs so maybe that’s old copy Mark didn’t change in his latest update. But there’s transcripts and pictures that act as a walkthrough accompanying each video.
What I love about Affilorama is the way Mark and his team have broken down each topic. You can clearly see what’s covered in each section:
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This is just one section that contains 9 different videos about discovering what affiliate marketing is. All of this is free inside Affilorama.
As you’re watching the videos and learning all the different facets of affiliate marketing you’ll see a little tab at the top of each video that’ll say either “complete” on “incomplete” which indicates whether you’ve watched that video yet.
The videos are a decent length too. The majority are 5-6+ minutes so it’ll take you a while to go through all 100. The longest one I saw was 23 minutes!
Once you’ve watched a video, that “incomplete” will turn green and say “complete.” When you go back into the library of videos you’ll see your progress has changed:
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Now you can easily see how far you’ve progressed through the lessons.
When you first login you’ll see a small orange bar at the top with a little countdown timer:
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If you decide to go premium within the first 7 days of signing up to Affilorama you can get your next 30 days for just $1. After that you’ll be charged $67 per month. You can cancel at anytime so if you change you mind you’re not locked into any contract.
What do you get for your $67 per month? What’s the difference between the two?
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The picture above doesn’t really tell you exactly what you get. There’s only 3 things you get for upgrading to premium and they are: an online magazine subscription, premium videos, and premium hosting.
Now let’s break down each of those into more detail.
The Online Magazine Subscription
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You’ll be drip-fed a magazine full of different topics written by a variety of internet marketers. You won’t get access to all the issues right away. You’ll only have access to issue 1 and you’ll receive a new issue every week.
You have the option to view them online or download them as a PDF.
Premium Videos
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You’ll find 19 extra videos in the “Premium Vault” which go in-depth on some of the same topics you’ll find in the free lessons. The majority of the videos go through how to create your own product.
These videos aren’t too bad if you’re interested in creating your own eBooks. I think this isn’t really relevant because the main selling point of Affilorama is to teach people how to sell other peoples products (that’s what affiliate marketing is) because they don’t want to create their own.
The videos are good but I don’t see them being 100% relevant to an affiliate marketing course. If this is something you’re interested in then you’ll definitely learn how to create a simple eBook to sell.
Premium Hosting
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You’ll be able to host up to 15 websites on their servers. This matches what our #1 recommendation for beginners offers with their premium membership, which is $20 cheaper per month.
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With your premium membership you get access to something called Affilotools.
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AffiloTools is basically a simple version of Google Analytics with the option to add your Facebook and Twitter details into it as well. If you’re promoting products through ClickBank you can also track how many sales you made and the revenue you’ve generated.
AffiloTools seems to be Mark’s main selling point for you to upgrade to Affilorama Premium. But I’m afraid it’s just not worth the money.
This is mostly a “watered down” version of Google Analytics, which you can use for free. There are plenty of training videos on how to use Google Analytics, so within an hour you’ll be able to do 80% of what you’ll ever need to do. Paying $67 per month for this just isn’t worth it in my opinion.
Besides, you have to create a Google Analytics account and link it to your website before you can use AffiloTools. You’ll have to allow AffiloTools to access you Google Analytics account anyway, so you might as well create a custom dashboard within Google Analytics itself and save yourself the monthly fee.
I’ll quickly go through my main two problems I’ve found with Affilorama. The first being a product being sold separately within the members’ area called AffiloBlueprint for $197:
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This course seems to be exactly what’s promised within Affilorama and Affilorama Premium. So why is this selling for $197? Not only that but you’re given a one month free trial of Affilorama Premium which you’ll then be charged $67 per month if you don’t cancel.
With Affilorama Premium you get access to AffiloTools and with AffiloBlueprint you get the AffiloTheme website builder. Neither of which I’m sold on for being valuable.
The second gripe is their focus on PLR articles and duplicate content.
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PLR articles were an “old school” way of getting content without having to do any writing yourself. You’d purchase a bundle of articles for a specific topic which you could do whatever you wanted with. You can use them for blog posts, turn them into an eBook, or publish them to article directories for links back to your website (another “old school” marketing technique).
If you tried posting these, even after you’ve rewritten them, onto your website you’ll be smacked by Google for duplicate content. You’d have to do a lot of rewriting so you don’t get punished, but at that point you may as well have written an article yourself from scratch.
Affilorama’s saving grace is that they do warn you about it:
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I think PLR training should be removed completely from the training. It’s almost 100% outdated by this point and can get new, aspiring internet marketers into a lot of trouble.
What? A dual rating? Well it’s tough to place Affilorama.
This is definitely a fantastic course. At least the free material is. At the time of writing this review, the premium content doesn’t really justify the $67 per month. I’d say the $197 for AffiloBlueprint would be the better option compared to Affilorama Premium.
The other option is to register for one of our 100% free advanced internet marketing courses, which are very similar, but more up-to-date and structured a little bit better.
Here’s how the two compare:
Affilorama’s free training is pretty awesome, so I’d recommend checking it out if you’re not going to check out our #1 recommendation. But what are your thoughts on the premium version? Do you think it’s worth the $67 per month price tag Mark Ling has put on it? What about comparing it to AffiloBlueprint which is a one-time payment of $197?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let me know your thoughts if you’ve gone through Affilorama’s free lessons too.
