12 Minute Affiliate Review

The Best Affiliate Marketing Course?

We’re on a mission to find the best affiliate marketing course, based on our own extensive research plus feedback from real students.

12 Minute Affiliate is more of a system than a course, but regardless, it doesn’t make the top of our list…

How does 12 Minute Affiliate help you make money?

Affiliate marketing is when you promote other people’s products or services, and collect a commission for every successful referral.

12 Minute Affiliate doesn’t really teach you how to do affiliate marketing. Instead, they aim to provide you with an automated system for generating affiliate commissions.

So instead of teaching you how to fish, 12MA gives you a system that will apparently catch fish automatically on your behalf, once you have it set up 🐠

They market their program as a simple 3-step process:

Going a bit deeper, once you have the system set up, it looks like this:

• You buy traffic from 12MA.
• That traffic goes to your landing page set up via 12MA.
• Some of that traffic (ie. people) opt-in to your email list.
• You send them an automated series of emails, encouraging them to buy something.
• If they buy, you earn a commission.

The products you promote to your email list are chosen from Clickbank, a popular marketplace with thousands of products to choose from. 12 Minute Affiliate recommends specific products on Clickbank for you to promote. 

They advise sticking to products in these three categories:

• Home Business / Make Money Online
• Weight Loss
• Personal Development

Here’s a quick video that will give you a feel for Devon and his 12 Minute Affiliate system…

• Learn more about affiliate marketing
• Affiliate marketing website examples

Who is 12 Minute Affiliate for?

12 Minute Affiliate is primarily marketed to people new to making money online.

You’ll see things like this on their sales page:

The 12 Minute Affiliate System is 100% newbie-friendly. So, even if you’re a complete newbie, you can use this system with ease.

With 12 Minute Affiliate, even the newest newbie can start getting results with the system their very first week!

It’s also marketed somewhat as a budget-friendly way to make money online.

However, based on my own extensive experience with affiliate marketing, plus the hours I’ve spent researching 12 Minute Affiliate, I personally don’t consider 12MA to be a reliable way to make money online.

I’d especially advise caution with this program if you’re new to online business or have a tight budget.

• Full list of ways to make money online (including easier options)

Does 12 Minute Affiliate have a good reputation?

12 Minute Affiliate seems to have a decent reputation overall, as does the creator of the program, Devon Brown.

You’ll find very few people referring to 12MA as a scam, and I don’t consider it to be a scam myself. 

However, the way the program is marketed can be misleading, IMO.

For example, one of the big marketing tactics they use is the promise of a free vacation just for trying the system…

But once you sign up for 12MA you’ll see that you have to jump through quite a few hoops to get your vacation…

Get your FREE VACATION! Take advantage of our free vacation contest, and show off your results in the Facebook group! Make just 5 Affiliate Sales with 12 Minute Affiliate (12MA) in your first 45 days of using the system… and we’ll send you to one of over a dozen exotic locations (restrictions apply for those living outside of the U.S. or Canada)!

To achieve those results you will likely have to spend hundreds of dollars buying traffic from 12MA.

Furthermore, it’s hard to find examples of 12MA users earning a significant amount of money…

Are 12 Minute Affiliate users getting results?

Listed on the 12MA sales page you’ll find many screenshots of “results from actual users.”

However, I found only one who seems to be earning $1000’s per month…

Far more often, 12MA user results look like this…

And it’s hard to know how much money these users are really making, as it’s unclear how much they spent on traffic to generate the revenue shown in the screenshots.

12MA users buy traffic direct from 12MA, and that traffic costs about $1-2 per visitor, depending on the niche you’re targeting.

12MA also says that you can expect an opt-in rate of 20-25% from your traffic. So for Guy above to have 145 subscribers, he had to buy about 600 visitors, which would have cost him around $600 or more. 

And, unfortunately, it looks like he’s so far generated far less than $600 in revenue, meaning he’s yet to turn a profit 😟

Seeing results like this being used in the marketing for 12MA makes me skeptical that many people are actually profiting from using the system.

How much does 12 Minute Affiliate cost?

There are several different costs involved with 12MA and also several upsells offered to you after you sign up.

To use the most basic version of 12 Minute Affiliate and get your system up and running, you will need to spend:

• $9.95 for the first 14 days of access to 12MA
• $99 to $192 on traffic (90-100 visitors, price dependent on niche)

You will also need to sign up for an account with Aweber to get started, but that’s free for your first 500 subscribers.

So the total cost to try out the system will be at least $109 for the first 14 days.

If you want to keep access to 12MA beyond the first 14 days, you have a couple of options:

• $47/month or $397 one-time for Basic Membership
• $97/month or $797 one-time for Gold Membership

The main difference between those: Basic Membership lets you promote products in one niche market – your choice of Home Business / Weight Loss / Personal Development – whereas Gold Membership lets you promote products in all three.

Say you go Basic, focus on the Home Business market, and buy 90-100 visitors (traffic) each month. Your minimum expenses for one year would be:

• $9.95 + $397 for 12MA membership
• $300+ for Aweber account (once you have 500+ subscribers)
• $1,188 for traffic

Total expenses for one year = at least $1895

A couple of other upsells to be aware of within 12 Minute Affiliate:

• Done-For-You System Setup
  $67 for Basic setup, $97 for Gold setup.
• 1-on-1 Coaching
  Starting at $297 for three 1-hour coaching sessions.
• Affiliate Mastery Platinum (AMP) Coaching
  Price undisclosed, must apply to join.

So while you can try out 12MA relatively cheap, if you really want to make a go of it you should expect to invest a lot more in the system and be pitched several upsells.

12 Minute Affiliate Discount?

I’ve seen some reports and rumors about a discount for 12 Minute Affiliate, but haven’t been able to confirm any of them.

Devon already offers 14-day trial for only $9.95, and that’s as good as you’re likely to get.

Refund Policy

This 12 Minute Affiliate sales page specifies a 60-day money back guarantee:

For a full 60 days, and for less than 10 measly bucks, you can give the 12 Minute Affiliate System a test drive and put it to work for you.

Apparently this is a “no questions asked” refund policy, and I haven’t seen any complaints from 12MA users regarding refunds, so you shouldn’t have any problem getting your money back if needed.

However, best I can tell, there are no refunds offered on the traffic you order via 12 Minute Affiliate.

How is the program structured?

Here’s how 12 Minute Affiliate looks once you’re logged in…

There’s not much there in the way of training. Most of the menu items lead to sections that help you set up and feed the 12MA system.

Notes on a few of the sections:

• Other Traffic Methods
  This is an ebook that covers free traffic methods, but it appears to be very outdated, with sections about defunct platforms like Google+ and Yahoo Answers.
• Education Center
  This contains a handful of training videos from Devon, plus recordings of the monthly “12MA Team Training” group calls.
• Personal Development Library
  Access to ~20 books (MP3 and PDF downloads) covering topics like public speaking, leadership, self-esteem, etc. I didn’t recognize any of the titles or authors but some may be worthwhile.

Green Lights 🟢 

Here are a few things to like about 12 Minute Affiliate:

• 14-day trial for only $10 (+ cost of paid traffic).
• Helps you build a real affiliate marketing sales funnel with little effort.
• 60-day money-back guarantee.
• Monthly live Q&A calls.

Red Flags 🚩 

A few things about 12 Minute Affiliate that might give you pause:

• Few significant success stories from users.
• Some of the marketing can be misleading (eg. the free vacation offer, referring to 12MA as “the ultimate shortcut”).
• Paid traffic is quite expensive ($1-2 per visitor).
• No refunds on paid traffic.
• Quite a few complaints about upsells.
• Very little training included, so you don’t actually learn much about affiliate marketing.
• Some of the Clickbank products recommended by 12MA are controversial (eg. John Crestani’s Super Affiliate System).
• 12MA is recommended to 12MA users as the #1 home business product to promote, which is a bit too MLM-y for my liking.
• Provided email swipes use questionable marketing tactics.

Other things you should know

• If you sign up for 12MA, expect to spend more than 12 minutes setting up your system. The name of the program is a nod to the absolute best-case scenario, but most people seem to need at least a couple of hours to get the basics up and running.
• It seems 12 Minute Affiliate does not disclose the source of the paid traffic you buy from them. I’ve seen one user speculate that the traffic comes from udimi.com, where the cost can be as low as $0.40 per visitor. If that’s true, 12MA could be making a handsome profit as the middleman.

Should you join 12 Minute Affiliate?

If you are new to entrepreneurship and are looking for a quick and easy way to make money online, there’s a good chance you’ll end up disappointed with 12 Minute Affiliate.

Some people do seem to find success with 12MA, but to start seeing significant and consistent income with it, you will likely need to invest several hundred dollars or more.

You’ll also need to be comfortable promoting various Clickbank products – some of which are quite controversial – and positioning yourself as an expert on topics that you may have little-to-no experience with.

• Learn more about affiliate marketing

12 Minute Affiliate Alternatives

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