Affiliate Marketing Mastery Review

PRAISE FOR AFFILIATE MARKETING MASTERY 👍

Stefan James seems to have genuinely helped many people

Stefan James has built a large fanbase online, and it’s not hard to find comments from his followers saying they find his content to be hugely inspirational and motivational.

Here’s a popular video on Stefan’s YouTube channel:

You’ll find comments such as the following in response to that video:

Here’s another video from Stefan, this one about overcoming social anxiety…

Typical comments in response to that:

Go to any of the 1000+ videos Stefan has posted on his YouTube channel and you’re likely to find similar comments.

Given that, it’s clear that Stefan regularly offers tips and strategies that many people find useful for living a better life.

He seems especially adept at motivating and inspiring his audience…

Stefan has also used his success to help fund charity projects, like this one where he helped build a school in Kenya…

Decent introduction to digital marketing

If you’re looking for a broad introduction to digital marketing, Stefan’s AMM course will likely serve you well.

Note that I wrote digital marketing rather than affiliate marketing.

That’s because the course covers a wide variety of topics, many of them beyond what I’d expect to find in an affiliate marketing course.

Overall, the impression I get is that the AMM training is broad rather than deep.

As a student, you’re likely to come away having learned the basics of many different topics related to digital marketing.

Given that, perhaps a better name for the program would be Digital Marketing Competency.

(Also: I’m not convinced the price of the program justifies the level of training. More on that below.)

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Affiliate Marketing Mastery has a 30-day refund policy, and I’ve found no reports of students being unable to get a refund.

Some affiliate marketing courses I’ve reviewed don’t give refunds – eg. Income School’s Project 24 – and others make it difficult to claim a refund – eg. Commission Hero – but AMM seems solid in this regard.

As far as I can tell, you just need to ask for the refund within 30 days of your purchase and they’ll give it to you, no questions asked.

CRITICISMS OF AFFILIATE MARKETING MASTERY 👎

Underwhelming Testimonials

A handful of AMM students seem to be making very good money doing affiliate marketing, but the vast majority of the testimonials for the course inspire little confidence that the training is effective.

At least 1,700 people have signed up for Affiliate Marketing Mastery over the years, but I’ve only managed to find 6 graduates who I’d consider successful affiliate marketers:

• Tatiana James – Stefan’s wife, who apparently earns $20k per month as an affiliate
  .
• Steve Raiken – claims to have earned $108k in one week as an affiliate
  .
• Kev Blackburn – affiliate earnings unclear but he seems to have done well.
• Victoria Strong – claims to have earned as much as $4k in one month as an affiliate
  .
• Jussi Hyvärinen – affiliate earnings of approx $2000/month.
• Angie Navarro – claims to have earned $4k in one day as an affiliate
  .

(I’ve seen screenshot proof of earnings from only one of those six, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Every other student testimonial or earnings screenshot I’ve seen has been underwhelming.

For example, Stefan shows several screenshots throughout his AMM promo webinar, none of which can be considered impressive…

Upon close inspection of those low-quality images, you find students reporting such accomplishments as:

• First $50 commission
• $5000 commissions in 3 years (about $138 per month)
• About to launch something, but no earnings yet.
• First $1 in affiliate income
• Starting to get traffic to their website
• Affiliate earnings of about $1400 after a year
• Earnings of $300 in one month via YouTube
• First few dollars earned on Amazon

Hey, I like to celebrate small wins as much as the next guy, but are those really the best success stories Stefan has to show from his students??

Apparently so, because he hardly shows any better on the sales page for Affiliate Marketing Mastery…

I found 16 testimonial videos on that sales page and researched them all.

My findings:

• 3 are testimonials from non-students (Dan Lok, John Crestani, Mike Thomas)
• 2 are from students who could be considered successful (Steve Raiken, Victoria Strong)
• And 11 are from students who apparently haven’t had much success online.

Take Philip, for example:

Seems like a nice guy, but he recorded that testimonial back in 2016 and four years later I found his website almost empty and saw he had only 58 total followers across 4 social media accounts.

Then there’s Jenine:

She also seems nice, and her testimonial was also recorded back in 2016, but it looks like her website was abandoned that same year and the only social media account I found for her (Twitter) had a grand total of 5 followers.

Not sure about you, but the #1 thing I want to know about a course is if many students are achieving success with it.

Unfortunately, judging by the testimonials and screenshots Stefan James highlights in his webinar and on the course sales page, the vast majority of Affiliate Marketing Mastery students end up achieving very little.

This is in stark contrast to affiliate marketing courses like The Authority Site System, Project 24 and Commission Hero, all of which show far more – and far more impressive – examples of students succeeding with their training.

Skeletons in Stefan’s Closet

In December 2019 a series of YouTube videos claimed that Stefan James has a history of selling fake medical cures online. Stefan seems to be aware of the criticism but has yet to address it.

The first video:

The video description on YouTube:

Recently an anonymous tip led me to discover Stefan James of Project Life Mastery’s start in ecommerce / making money online. He sold dubious cure systems through a network of pen names and marketed them as 3-day cures. He claimed to be a 5 year medical researcher of these diseases, some of them incurable and all but promised results to desperate sick people for the low price of $37.

The second video:

• Google Doc detailing the research from the 1st video
• Google Doc detailing the research from the 2nd video
• Washington Post article mentioned in the 2nd video

The claims made in those videos are pretty shocking on their own.

But perhaps even more shocking was Stefan James’ response…

In short, instead of actually addressing the criticism, Stefan brushed it off as “a few haters out there… spreading false information and attempting to defame me.”

Meanwhile, the creator of the videos (Coffeezilla) has stated multiple times that James is welcome to correct the record if any of the claims are untrue…

I take Coffeezilla at his word there, since he did acknowledge and correct multiple errors I alerted him to in a video he made about Sam Ovens (see here).

Regardless, to the best of my knowledge, Stefan James STILL hasn’t addressed the criticism.

It looks like he even deleted this popular comment from his YouTube channel…

I fact-checked Coffeezilla’s evidence myself and couldn’t find any holes in it.

During my research I even found this old forum post by Stefan showing that a Google Adwords account for his “remedy website” had been flagged and disabled for “unacceptable business practices”…

But Stefan’s silence on this matter is the main reason I’m inclined to believe the accusations are true – if it was simply a big misunderstanding, surely he’d be able to prove so easily.

All that said, you could argue that none of the above criticisms should be a knock on Stefan’s AMM course. Maybe he did make a lot of money selling bad information in the past, but then decided to change his ways and produced a legit affiliate marketing training program.

Are you willing to give him the benefit of the doubt?

Or does all the above leave you hesitant to buy anything Stefan James is selling?

Let me know via the comments below.

Questionable Marketing

While Stefan James comes across very likeable and genuine in his videos, there are some questionable elements to the way he markets AMM and other programs.

Three examples…

“Affiliate marketing is the easiest and simplest way to make money online”

Stefan makes this claim about 30 minutes into his promo webinar for Affiliate Marketing Mastery:

As of this writing, I’ve been working online for 10 years myself and have been doing affiliate marketing for 1.5 years.

And while my affiliate earnings are now up to $4000/month, it certainly hasn’t been easy to achieve. I’ve worked harder the past 18 months than I did at any previous business or 9-to-5 job.

Regardless, later in his webinar, Stefan gives an example of how “easy” affiliate marketing is:

What he downplays here is that he was sending that email to almost 60,000 subscribers and had more than 2000 of them click through to see the offer he was promoting.

Make no mistake: building that big an email list, and gaining that much trust from your subscribers, takes a TON of work!

Only AFTER you’ve done that immense amount of work might you be able to sit on a beach, knock out an email in five minutes, and see $1000’s in affiliate commissions pour in.

Later still in Stefan’s webinar, he shows the following on-screen while saying, “that’s not that hard to do.”

Actually, that is hard to do.

Collecting a $500 commission usually means selling a $1000 product, and selling a $1000 product over the internet ain’t easy.

(I managed to do it only four times in my first 18 months as an affiliate marketer.)

So when Stefan tells you that affiliate marketing is an easy way to make money online, be skeptical.

You should also be skeptical when he tells you it only takes 3-5 hours per week to build a successful affiliate business:

In reality:

• You should have at least 10 hours per week available to build an online business.
• You’ll likely find it much easier to make money online via freelancing or a remote job.

Stefan’s 60-second quiz

You’ll find this quiz on Stefan’s website:

I took the quiz four times.

Despite selecting different answers each time through, three times my result looked like this:

And a fourth time my result looked like this:

A commenter on YouTube experienced similar:

It seems everybody gets recommended one of those two business models no matter what, even though there are many more options available.

But what I found especially interesting about the quiz was that it recommended either Affiliate Marketing or Amazon FBA for me even when I specified that I was desperate to earn money as soon as possible…

Despite that, Stefan ended up recommending that I pursue online business models that (a) are unlikely to earn me any significant income for SEVERAL MONTHS and (b) require that I actually SPEND a significant amount of money to get started.

His Affiliate Marketing recommendation points you towards his Masterclass webinar, where he pitches you his $997 course.

And his Amazon FBA recommendation points you towards a $4997 program that he’s an affiliate for:

In general, I take no issue with Stefan promoting expensive products.

But recommending those products to people who explicitly state that they are “broke, desperate and impatient” is insensitive at best.

At worst, it’s highly unethical.

The Affiliate Marketing Mastery “Masterclass”

Stefan regularly recommends people check out his free affiliate marketing “Masterclass”…

He often refers to this as a “live” Masterclass.

On the registration page it says “Only Available For A Limited Time,” and after registration you’re told that there will be no recordings…

The truth is that the video you end up watching is pre-recorded – the version I watched was more than a year old – and repeated automatically every 15 minutes using a software called WebinarJam.

Oh, and Stefan emails you the recording 48 hours later 🙄

But that’s not really a big deal: so many internet marketers use evergreen webinars these days that it’s par for the course.

What bothered me was that the “Masterclass” ran for almost 3.5 hours and contained very little practical information to help you get started with affiliate marketing.

Instead, Stefan spends most of the webinar showcasing his own success and the success of a few other big-time affiliate marketers, then pitching you his $997 affiliate marketing course.

Sitting through that 3.5 hour webinar is not a bad way to spend your time if you really like listening to Stefan James and want to know a little more about his course.

But if it’s free training you’re after, you’re better off checking out this list of free affiliate marketing resources.

Overpriced Training

Given the above issues with Stefan James and his course, a price of $997 for Affiliate Marketing Mastery seems quite steep.

This is the criticism I’ve heard most often about the course, and the price of AMM doesn’t compare favorably to popular alternatives.

Even students who like the program think it costs too much…

It’s also worth noting that students are advised to spend more money on various tools and services after they’ve signed up for Affiliate Marketing Mastery.

But this isn’t made clear on the course sales page:

There’s no mention there of paid tools like Aweber ($29/month) and Leadpages ($25/month) that Stefan recommends in the training.

And of course you’ll need to buy hosting and a domain if you want to set up your own website.

Pretty much every affiliate marketing course will advise you to invest money in similar products and services, but it’s nice when they tell you that BEFORE you buy the program. 

Like Authority Hacker do on the sales page for their affiliate marketing course (reviewed here):

WRAP UP

What exactly is included in the course?

You’ll find 7 core modules and 50+ video lessons inside Affiliate Marketing Mastery, as well as ~30 bonus lessons. You also get access to a private Facebook group when you join.

From the 6:00 mark of this video, one of Stefan’s students shows us the inside of the program:

(Btw, I researched the creator of that video and he doesn’t appear to have had much success as an affiliate marketer. So best take his super-positive recommendation of AMM with a pinch of salt.)

Lesson pages inside the course look like this:

I’ve seen six of the video lessons inside Affiliate Marketing Mastery. The lessons seem to range from 10-40 minutes and the content is decent.

When you join AMM you also get access to a private Facebook group:

The group looks to be quite active and almost 3 new people are joining each day…

Are Stefan’s students actually getting results?

I’ve found little evidence that Affiliate Marketing Mastery regularly produces successful students.

As noted above, during my research I found only 6 students of the course who I would consider to be successful affiliate marketers.

Given that more than 1,700 people have joined the program, I would have expected to see way more success stories if the training was truly effective.

Instead, the majority of Stefan’s testimonials seem to be from students who just started his course and have yet to earn any affiliate income.

Like Meghan here:

Key quote:

“I’m super happy I got the course. I haven’t started monetizing yet…”

And most of the screenshots Stefan shows you from AMM students depict accomplishments that are either minor or unrelated to affiliate marketing.

For example:

Best I can make out, those students are reporting the following accomplishments:

• $46k earned in two years from selling their own ebook (not affiliate income)
• Announcing a new website launching in 7 days
• First ever affiliate commission (amount unknown)
• First $1 earned as an affiliate
• Starting to get organic traffic to blog and YouTube channel

I don’t mean to belittle the accomplishments of those students – fair play to them for making progress – but I’d expect Stefan to have far better “success stories” to show us if his training was truly effective.

Who should join Affiliate Marketing Mastery?

I’d only recommend joining this program if you’re a big fan of Stefan James and would like him to teach you the basics of digital marketing.

Personally though, I think there are too many red flags with this program to justify investing any significant time or money in it.

Especially when there are so many better and cheaper options available…

Better Alternatives To Affiliate Marketing Mastery

I’ve reviewed several other affiliate marketing courses that I’d consider better alternatives to AMM.

You can see the full list in the table below.

Two courses in particular are likely to be of interest to readers of this review:

• The Authority Site System by Authority Hacker
  This is the best affiliate marketing course I’ve seen that teaches you how to get free traffic from Google. It takes longer to earn income with free traffic, but it’s also much cheaper. Read my full review of TASS here »
• Commission Hero by Robby Blanchard
  This is the best affiliate marketing course I’ve seen for paid traffic. Worth considering if you’ve got a bigger budget and want to start generating income as quickly as possible. Read my full review of Commission Hero here »

Here’s the full list of affiliate marketing courses I’ve reviewed to date:

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