Is Affilorama Worth The Money?

Name of Tool: Affilorma
Website:  www.Affilorama.com
Prices: Free Membership, $0, AffiloBlueprint, 297$, AffiloJetpack, 997$
Owner: Mark Ling
LifestyleFreedomBusiness Rating: Legit and Useful Platform
Geared Towards: Newbies in Affiliate Marketing with Options Available for more Advanced Users

In a glance: Affilorama is a legit platform for someone to learn about affiliate marketing with useful free lessons. The AffiloBlueprint seems to be a quality step-by-step course that helps someone build successful affiliate marketing websites. AffilloJetpack is their premium course that I didn’t particularly like due to the ready-made vibe that it has. All in all, a quality platform with my main criticisms being a focus on backlinks and PLR content, many upsells, a somewhat inactive community and Mark Ling’s promotional e-mails.

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Today I’m gonna try to answer a question that nagged me for quite some time. Is Affilorama worth the money?

When starting out in internet marketing, I scoured the web for hours on end about ways to make money online. As a result, I came across many different programs and courses that promised me riches and supposedly held the secrets to online success. I’m sure you all have!

One of the courses that captured my attention among others was Affilorama by Mark Ling. While I didn’t end up becoming a member (I joined Wealthy Affiliate instead), Affilorama certainly stood out compared to the shitty courses that the internet is full of.

Recently, I came across their website and noticed some changes. This sparked my interest and I decided to become a free member to check the place out. I also researched online for reviews on the premium products that are also offered on the platform.

However, I was disappointed because many of the reviews were outdated and didn’t take into account the changes that have been made on the platform recently. As a result, I chose to delve deeper and compiled the most updated info I could find here.

But first things first…

What is Affilorama exactly?

Affilorama is simply a platform that aims to teach affiliate marketing in a step by step fashion with training videos, articles, courses and tools provided that you can access directly from your PC or laptop.

It was founded by Mark Ling in 2005, the owner of another website called Jamorama and a product called Rocket Piano or something. Searching the web for Mark I found that he is quite known in the world of internet marketing and some people also say he is a successful entrepreneur.

I didn’t find any more info regarding his endeavors besides the websites I mentioned. I don’t want to be skeptical (he is not obligated to be transparent with all his businesses), but I have to state that I didn’t find any tangible info on something else he has created that is successful.

However, we have to point out that Affilorama has clearly stood the test of time. There aren’t many products out there that have been selling for so many years.

That being said, let’s move on to the platform itself…

Affilorama – The Free Membership

What I like about Affilorama is that it provides a free membership for you to check the platform out. As far as the free membership is concerned, it offers a good amount of value, especially for newbies.

You get access to lessons about most of the fundamentals of affiliate marketing in video and text format. That’s something I really liked about the Affilorama free membership.

However, I didn’t like the fact that there isn’t any step by step format integrated into the training. Rather, the info is laid out according to the different topics. Not a bad way at all, but for someone who isn’t knowledgable about the topics covered, it’s really easy to get a bit lost and lose your direction.

As well as that, I didn’t like some sections of the training that are a bit outdated I believe. More specifically, there is training available on backlink strategies and using plr articles, two methods I wouldn’t recommend and don’t really believe in myself. I’ll talk about those two a bit more later.

With the free membership, you also get access to the Affilorama blog, which also has a pretty decent wealth of helpful articles. That being said, you can also easily get lost here and consumed by the volume of information in front of you. Not that helpful for a newbie.

Lastly, you get access to the Affilorama forum, which seems to be somewhat active. However, I noticed many irrelevant promotions and not that many replies to the threads. So, it doesn’t seem to me that the community is even closely as active as the Wealthy Affiliate one.

AffiloBlueprint

AffiloBlueprint is the first main upsell that exists in Affilorama. It’s a 197$ course that is supposed to give you the full step by step training to build successful websites. Judging from its contents and the reviews I saw online, it seems to be a quality course overall.

What I especially like is that the concept of step by step is integrated into the training with tasks after each lesson. That’s the best way to learn in my opinion.

Another nice addition is that you get hosting for one website for a year and the Affilorama WordPress theme, Affilotheme. I don’t know the quality of the theme since I never used it, but I believe it must be pretty decent at least for a premium theme.

In my opinion, you don’t actually need a premium theme, especially when starting out. In fact, there are many high-quality customizable themes out there for you to use.

Moving on, it also seems that the training touches on the user experience and web design part of your website.

One thing I didn’t like about AffiloBlueprint is once again the focus on backlinks and some plr content strategies. Also, the sales page talks about trial access to Affilorama Premium, which was a membership that is no longer available, so I can only imagine there is an upsell involved here.

A private forum is also mentioned. However, judging from the free community, I can’t believe this forum is more active.

All in all, I believe AffiloBlueprint would not be a bad choice for someone who wants to build an online business step by step. It seems legit from what I have seen.

AffiloTools

AffiloTools is a suite of tools you can access for free. They seem to be in beta right now. I actually went inside and checked it out myself.

I must admit that I wasn’t that amazed. There seems to be an integration with Google Analytics for you to get stats into the tools. However, I can’t imagine why someone wouldn’t do that directly from their Google Analytics account.

It seems you can also add an affiliate network like ClickBank to track your sales and stats. Also, there is some type of facebook and twitter integration so they can suggest content related to your niche you can share.

Moreover, I saw some ranking check tools, a tab to manage your keywords and another to write your tasks, I guess for productivity.

All in all, nothing too fancy that you can’t do elsewhere for free. There are tools that do all that for free online. Also, I must say that I don’t really believe all these tools are that important. In fact, for a newbie, they may even add complexity unnecessarily and lead to paralysis by analysis.

That is in direct contrast to the tools in Wealthy Affiliate that aim (and succeed) in adding simplicity to your internet marketing endeavors. The tools at WA are for the really important stuff (like keyword research and website building). The AffiloTools seem more like bells and whistles to me.

That being said, I really like the idea of having a lot of your tools centralized and I may even test some of the tools for some time to judge what they can offer.

I even urge you to do the same as the whole platform is free right now.

Just a caveat here. My senses tell me that the platform won’t stay free forever. I even saw some pro features coming soon, so be prepared for an upsell in the future. Or at least a premium version introduced.

Let’s move on to the last course offered…

AffiloJetpack

My thoughts about AffiloJetpack are a bit mixed. It is the most premium course offered by Affilorama at the hefty price of 997$.

First of all, that’s a big price tag to pay. Let’s start with what I don’t like about it.

The sales page seems to me a bit cheesy, at least compared to AffiloBlueprint. It starts to talk about the big gurus and the big secrets they have. All tactics that I have seen a lot in internet marketing sales pages and have grown to not like that much anymore.

The course seems to be heavily focused on email marketing and the sales page makes it seem like it is the solution to all your selling problems. I don’t like this whole panacea idea.

The other aspect of the course I don’t like at all is that it promises ready-made email sequences and ready-made websites in “hand-picked” niches.

I have heard the whole story before and I believe it is all bullshit. Besides the fact that you don’t learn to do all these yourself, something that can prove to be a really valuable asset down the road, there is another problem.

Ready-made and PLR content is rubbish. Google has grown more clever and these ancient tactics won’t work anymore, at least for the long term.

A final point I want to make about “ready-made” is the following. Imagine many of the members get those niches and PLR articles handed to them. What do you do when all these people pursue something identical to you?

At the end of the day, I can’t really tell you if AffiloJetpack is worth it because I don’t own it. I’m sure there must be people who have had success with it. Also, maybe many of the strategies are done with some Affilorama twists that I don’t know of and may be helpful.

However, since I don’t believe in the whole ready-made attitude that many internet marketing courses promote, I have to tell you that I wouldn’t suggest AffiloJetpack. If anyone has bought it though, I would love to hear your feedback!

My main criticisms for Affilorama

The main points I have against Affilorama are 4:

1. Backlinks

Backlinking is a strategy that shouldn’t be used by people that know nothing about internet marketing. Done wrong it can hurt your website and take away your precious time.

There are some strategies of backlinking that can be quite helpful. In fact, I really like some of Brian Dean’s strategies, because they seem quite legit and they are not spammy.

However, I have built a website that gets over 400 visitors a day with under 70 posts and I created ZERO backlinks. I just used the simple but effective SEO that is taught at Wealthy Affiliate. Nothing more and nothing really fancy.

That’s why I wouldn’t advise anyone (especially people starting out) to use the spammy backlinking strategies of the last decade, like web 2.0 properties. They no longer work and even if they do, they don’t hold enough importance for you to waste your time on them.

2. PLR Content

I hate the whole concept of PLR articles. They are of low quality and they are duplicate content. That means that they are copied content that others have already used and holds no value in the eyes of Google.

Furthermore, using PLR content teaches bad habits. If you can’t provide your audience original quality content and value yourself, you simply don’t deserve an audience in my opinion.

What we would certainly suggest nowadays is to start capitalizing on AI content. Our got-to AI writer Content Redefined is the best place to start.

3. Upsells

I also kinda hate the number of courses and tools that are available, some of them being upsells. Just researching for this article and trying to make sense of the different products to buy gave me a headache.

This compared to Wealthy Affiliate‘s simple three plans (free, premium, and premium+) brings Affilorama low to my eyes. Wealthy Affiliate has ZERO upsells and you get everything there is to get with you membership.

4. Mark Ling Is a Classic Internet Marketer

Just sign up for his email newsletter and you’ll see what I’m talking about. He promotes a lot of products outside Affilorama (some of them of low quality) which is something that I hate. Free webinar that upsells for 10000$ anyone? Come on, I’ve had my share of these.

In today’s internet marketing landscape people more and more start to value honest advice and are getting tired of the noise these types of marketers are making.

Verdict: Is Affilorama Worth the Money?

My honest opinion about Affilorama is that it is certainly a quality product and provides really good value, especially in the free membership. However, my top recommended platform remains Wealthy Affiliate. Affilorama does a pretty good job to come close but at the end falls a bit behind.

What I certainly urge you to do is maybe join both using the free membership option and judge for yourself which platform suits you better. You can’t go awfully wrong with any of them.

My personal choice is Wealthy Affiliate but I can see that Affilorama is certainly a quality platform. Whatever you choose be sure to focus on the program itself and make it work. Don’t go around chasing shiny objects and losing focus.