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Updated: February 13, 2024

Reviews

Affilorama Review

A brutally honest look at Affilorama's free and premium training

Affilorama
1.5/5 1.51
Rate This Course
affilorama roadmap

This is the ultimate Affilorama review.

We spent 25+ hours reviewing the free and premium training materials for Mark Ling and Simon Slade’s popular affiliate marketing program.

(Have you taken this course? Add your rating!)

If you want to know:

  • Which parts of Affilorama are worthwhile
  • What discounts are available
  • How Affilorama compares to Wealthy Affiliate
  • If students are actually getting results
  • How to get a refund for Affilorama

Then you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s get started.

Affilorama – Key Points
  About

Affilorama is a suite of courses and tools that promise to help you make money online with affiliate marketing.

💰  Price

Lots of free material. Paid products starting at $19.

😍  Pros

Some decent free and cheap training. 60-day refund policy.

😩  Cons

Largely outdated. Few practical examples. Sketchy success stories.

  Verdict

Affilorama’s tools and training might have been useful in the dark ages of the internet. Nowadays, not so much.

Overall Rating
1.5/5 1.52

About the Author

Niall Doherty

Hey, I’m Niall Doherty.

I quit my last 9-to-5 job back in 2010.

Since then, I’ve earned my living online doing a variety of things:

  • Blogging
  • Web design
  • Advertising
  • Online courses
  • Ebooks

At the end of 2018, I decided to focus on affiliate marketing.

Several months later – when I began writing this review – I was already earning more than $1000/month in affiliate commissions.

Affiliate Payments may oct
Total affiliate payments received in six months (May-Oct 2019).
See my finance reports for latest earnings.

All that to say: I already knew a bit about making money online and affiliate marketing when I signed up to Affilorama.

To learn about our review process, click here.

This review is a joint effort between Niall Doherty of eBiz Facts and digital marketer Tana Jencks (Linkedin).

Our process:

  1. We signed up for Affilorama’s free training and bought Pathway to Passive in November 2019.
  2. We went through the training materials, played around with AffiloTools, and took more than 250 pages of notes (seriously).
  3. We discussed our impressions of Affilorama, what we liked, what we didn’t like, etc.
  4. We agreed that, for the most part, Affilorama’s tools and training are severely lacking and outdated.
  5. Niall searched online for other reviews of Affilorama to see if there were any key points we missed.
  6. Niall wrote a first draft of this review.
  7. We sent the draft to our Freedom Business Builder community and asked for feedback.
  8. We made our final edits and published the review.
  9. We sent the review to Affilorama and asked if they had any comments or corrections.

Note: We earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase through referral links in this review. Read our full disclosure here.

What is Affilorama?

Affilorama is a New Zealand-based company that offers tools and popular training courses for affiliate marketers.

affilorama homepage
The Affilorama homepage

Here’s how Affilorama describes itself:

Affilorama was founded back in 2006 by Mark Ling and Simon Slade (more about them below).

It’s become quite popular:

I checked the last number again after 10 days and there were 3,274 new “members,” which presumably means about 300 people per day are signing up for the free Affilorama training.

Update: Affilorama have informed me that the “members” number is misleading, and say more like 60 people per day are signing up for the free training.

Is Affilorama legit or a scam?

Affilorama can’t be considered a scam because you do get access to their tools and training when you pay for them, and they also offer a 60-day money-back guarantee on everything they sell. That said, it’s hard to call their tools and training “legit,” as none of them are very good.

We’ve spent 25+ hours researching Affilorama and checking out their free and premium products.

The reviews of Affilorama online are overwhelmingly positive:

And through all my research, I’ve seen no complaints about getting a refund from Affilorama.

On the contrary, getting a refund from Affilorama sounds easy:

But despite all that, I’m still hesitant to refer to Affilorama as “legit.”

For two main reasons:

  • Outdated and Abandoned
    Many of Affilorama’s paid products – and especially their free training – haven’t been updated in years, and the co-founders barely seem to be involved in the company anymore. (See below for more on this)
  • Severe Lack Of Student Success
    While you’ll find many people praising Affilorama online, the praise is almost entirely generic. You’ll find suspiciously few reports of students actually earning a significant income from affiliate marketing. (See below for examples)

I asked my co-reviewer how she’d describe Affilorama’s training and she replied with this meme:

how to draw an owl

Having now reviewed several affiliate marketing courses, I don’t rate Affilorama highly compared to alternatives:

🏆 Best Affiliate Marketing Courses 🏆

1.The Authority Site System (review)
4.8/5
2.The Affiliate Lab (review)
4.6/5
3.Scale Your Travel Blog (review)
4.6/5
4.Blog Growth Engine (review)
4.5/5
5.Passive Income Geek (review)
4.4/5
6.Niche Site Profits (review)
4.3/5
7.Income School's Project 24 (review)
4.3/5
8.Blogging Fast Lane (review)
3.9/5
9.Perfecting Blogging (review)
3.8/5
10.Solo Build It (review)
3.7/5
11.123 Affiliate Marketing (review)
3.4/5
12.Passive Income Unlocked (review)
3.2/5
13.Jungle Influencer (review)
3.1/5
14.Affiliate Escape Plan (review)
3.1/5
15.Digital Worth Academy (review)
2.9/5
16.YouTube Affiliate Marketing System (review)
2.9/5
17.Home Business Academy (review)
2.7/5
18.Entre Institute (review)
2.6/5
19.Affiliate Marketing Success MasterClass (review)
2.5/5
20.Passive Income Pathways (review)
2.5/5
21.Simple Profit System (review)
2.5/5
22.Wealthy Affiliate (review)
2.5/5
23.Legendary Marketer (review)
2.4/5
24.Super Affiliate System (review)
2.3/5
25.72IG WhatsApp Income Blueprint (review)
2.3/5
26.Invincible Marketer (review)
2.3/5
27.Commission Academy (review)
2.2/5
28.Partner With Anthony (review)
2.0/5
29.Inbox Blueprint (review)
1.9/5
30.Spark by ClickBank (review)
1.9/5
31.Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers (review)
1.8/5
32.Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (review)
1.7/5
33.12 Minute Affiliate (review)
1.7/5
34.Four Percent (review)
1.6/5
35.Commission Hero (review)
1.6/5
36.Affiliate Marketing Mastery (review)
1.5/5
37.Affilorama (review)
1.5/5
38.Ministry of Freedom (review)
1.5/5
39.ChatGPT Short Form Riches (review)
1.5/5
40.Six Figure Mentors (review)
1.4/5
41.FullStaq Marketer (review)
1.3/5
42.Perpetual Income 365 (review)
1.3/5
43.Launch You (review)
1.1/5
44.Wolves Academy (review)
0.8/5
45.7 Figure Franchise (review)
0.7/5
46.ClickBank University (review)
0.6/5
47.Click Wealth System (review)
0.5/5
7 Figure Acceleration (review)
Incomplete/5
Adam Cherrington (review)
Incomplete/5
E-Farming Course (review)
Incomplete/5
Profit Singularity System (review)
Incomplete/5
Savage Affiliates (review)
Incomplete/5
See all reviews of affiliate marketing courses »

What training + tools does Affilorama offer?

Affilorama has offered several tools and training programs over the years. Some are free, some you have to pay for, and some have been discontinued.

Here’s a quick list of the most popular Affilorama offerings:

  • Free Training
    Affilorama’s dangerously outdated free training consists of 100+ video and text lessons, as well as a Quick Start guide. More info below.
  • Pathway To Passive
    Affilorama’s short and inexpensive overview of affiliate marketing is a decent starting point for newbies, but also outdated in places and lacking specifics. More info below.
  • AffiloTools
    Billed as a “premium suite of online tools for marketers,” AffiloTools doesn’t compare well to free alternatives. It may still have some value for users of ClickBank. More info below.
  • AffiloJetpack
    Affilorama’s high-ticket offering, normally priced at $997 but lacking verifiable positive reviews and testimonials. More info below.
  • AffiloTheme
    Affilorama’s premium WordPress theme. As of 2020, it was no longer available.
  • Affilorama Premium
    Affilorama’s monthly membership offering that included tools, training, hosting and community for affiliate marketers. As of 2020, it was no longer available.
  • AffiloBlueprint
    Similar to Affilorama Premium, except it was offered at a fixed cost (no ongoing monthly fee). As of 2020, it was no longer available.

Review: Affilorama’s Free Training

affilorama free training menu
  About

Affilorama’s free training promises to teach you how to make money online via affiliate marketing.

💰  Price

Free, but email verification required.

😍  Pros

One decent PDF download and that’s about it.

😩  Cons

Dangerously outdated, poorly organized, little practical instruction.

  Verdict

So much content, so little value. Download the PDF and ignore everything else.

Overall Rating
1.0/5 1.03

7 Things To Know About The Free Affilorama Training

Dangerously Outdated

Most of the problems with Affilorama’s free training come down to this: it’s very outdated, and often dangerously so. While a lot of their teachings and recommendations may have worked from 2006-2014, they’re unlikely to work now. In fact, you could actually harm your site following the advice and recommendations in Affilorama’s free training.

For example, the training barely mentions the popular WordPress platform, instead recommending these five ways to build a website:

 affilorama website building software
Source: Which website building software (affilorama.com)

PSA for new affiliate marketers: DO NOT use any of those options to build your website!

Artisteer no longer exists, KompoZer and Microsoft Expression Web haven’t been updated since 2009 and 2012 respectively, and only a masochist would build an affiliate site via Dreamweaver or hand coding these days.

Commenters on that Affilorama lesson have been asking about WordPress for years…

affilorama comments wordpress

…but for whatever reason the material STILL hasn’t been updated to mention it.

If you check the source code for the free Affilorama lessons, you’ll find that many of the videos were recorded back in 2008.

Like this one:

affilorama source code
Source: How to Use Twitter for Affiliates (affilorama.com)

The fact that so much of the training seems to have been produced way back in 2008 helps explain their old-school example of a landing page that “works particularly well”…

affilorama single product review example
Source: PPC Landing Pages (affilorama.com)

And why you’ll find lots of outdated recommendations and broken links throughout the training…

affilorama recommending discontinued amazon products
Source: How to record affiliate videos (affilorama.com)
affilorama neverblue
Source: 10 Alternatives to ClickBank (affilorama.com) … best I can tell, Neverblue was shut down in 2016.

I could go on, but I think you get the point: once upon a time, Affilorama’s free training may have been current and useful, but those days are long gone.

Poorly Organized

Affilorama’s free training looks like it was pieced together haphazardly over several years, making it confusing to follow.

A glaring example of this would be positioning the “Content Creation” lessons ahead of the “Site Building” lessons…

affilorama disorganized training

And covering how to upload files to your website BEFORE telling you how to set up your domain and hosting…

affilorama website building ressons
Source: Site Building (affilorama.com)

Focused On ClickBank

Most of Affilorama’s free training is centered around finding and promoting products on ClickBank, a controversial and poorly-aging marketplace.

For example, ClickBank dominates Affilorama’s How to Choose an Affiliate Program lesson:

affilorama clickbank recommendation

As noted in my review of ClickBank University (another affiliate marketing course), there are two fundamental problems with the ClickBank platform:

  • It appears to be dying
  • It’s full of very questionable products

One Affilorama video – recorded in 2008 – shows 391 results within a particular niche on ClickBank:

While putting together this review, I ran the same search and found almost 40% FEWER results in that niche…

clickbank results

ClickBank seem to be losing more and more products from their marketplace as time goes on, and are now bleeding approximately 20 products per week.

Meanwhile, many of the products that remain are highly controversial, and some are considered outright scams.

You can see three examples of such in a section of my ClickBank University review.

Affilorama does pay lip service to other affiliate programs and marketplaces in their free training, but anyone following along is led to believe that ClickBank is the best option available.

Which certainly isn’t the case nowadays.

Lots of Telling, Little Showing

The free training from Affilorama is mostly theory, with very few practical examples. It’s more a collection of “things to keep in mind” than it is a practical instruction in affiliate marketing.

A prime example of this is the Writing Product Reviews lesson.

You’d think that lesson would show and link to many excellent examples of product reviews.

But no.

You get four small screenshots and one link to a super-basic review posted on affilorama.com back in 2007.

Here’s the entirety of their instruction for creating a “full-page, comprehensive review”…

affilorama full review

By comparison, another affiliate marketing course – The Authority Site System, reviewed here – gives you ~3.5 HOURS of detailed, over-the-shoulder video instruction on writing reviews, and comes complete with handy templates you can use.

Furthermore, you’ll find no detailed case studies or data to back up claims and recommendations within the Affilorama free training.

For example, this lesson outlines an 8-step process for making money online:

The steps:

  • Create a one-page website
  • Give them a good reason to subscribe
  • Connect your page to an autoresponder
  • Add emails to your autoresponder
  • Getting visitors to your page (the fast way)
  • You get subscribers
  • You get commissions
  • You leverage your list to earn REALLY BIG commissions

Sounds great in theory, but how do we know this actually works?

Does Affilorama provide real-world examples of this process achieving great results? Maybe some screenshots of conversion rates or commissions earned?

Nope, none of that.

Just general assurances, unsubstantiated claims, and zero proof:

Dead Forum + Forgotten Comments

As part of Affilorama’s free training, you can post questions in a forum or below each lesson. But you shouldn’t expect a helpful response.

Here’s what I saw when I checked the latest activity in the Affilorama forum:

affilorama forum activity

That’s only 7 active threads in 7 days, despite the fact that ~60 people per day sign up to the free Affilorama training.

Worse still, the quality of conversations and responses within the forum ain’t great.

Here’s a typical example:

affilorama forum conversation
Source: How do I boost sales? (affilorama.com/forum)

Meanwhile, the comments below each lesson are in even worse condition.

Comments are often left unanswered completely, or for months at a time…

affilorama forum late response
Source: Step-by-step: Building a Basic Web Page (affilorama.com)

And it seems nobody at Affilorama can be bothered to clean up the occasional comment spam:

affilorama forum spam

Quick Start Guide To Affiliate Marketing

One of the few bright spots in Affilorama’s free training is the Quick Start Guide To Affiliate Marketing, a 32-page PDF available for download as soon as you sign up.

You can download the PDF from your “dashboard” as soon as you sign up for a free Affilorama account:

affilorama download quick start quide

Once downloaded, you’ll see it looks like this:

affilorama quick start quide

While this guide is not without issues, overall I found it to be a solid introduction to affiliate marketing, something I can refer friends and family to when they’re curious about the topic and want a quick overview.

It hits the important points, without any fluff, hype, or outrageous claims.

Affilorama’s free training would actually be better if they got rid of everything else and made this PDF the centerpiece.

If you’d like to grab a copy of the guide…

Multiple Options

One more bright spot in Affilorama’s free training: they don’t push you towards specific affiliate products or services. Instead, they usually list several options, and rarely include an affiliate link.

For example, here they are providing 4 options for email marketing software (only the Aweber link is an affiliate link):

Better still, they often mention alternatives to Affilorama’s own tools.

For example, here they are listing a free keyword tool (Ubersuggest) ahead of their own freemium tool…

This was refreshing to see coming off my previous review of an affiliate marketing course – Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – where you were usually given only one recommendation, often for a product or service the course creator was an affiliate for.

(You can see examples of this in the Hidden Costs section of my MSoAM review.)

Final Word On Affilorama’s Free Training

The vast majority of Affilorama’s free training is a waste of time. Skip the 100+ outdated video and text lessons. The only thing worth signing up for is the Quick Start Guide – a 32-page PDF that will give you a solid overview of affiliate marketing.

You might also see the PDF referred to as a “roadmap” or “get started pack.”

If you’d like to grab a copy…

Then download it by hitting the big green button on the dashboard:

affilorama download quick start quide

Or…

Review: Pathway To Passive

affilorama pathway to passive
  About

Affilorama’s short guide for new and aspiring affiliate marketers.

💰  Price

$37 regular price. $19 with discount (discount info)

😍  Pros

Super cheap, and a decent introduction to affiliate marketing.

😩  Cons

Fuzzy in places, lacking practical examples, not much in-depth info.

  Verdict

Still a little overpriced at $19, but far better value than some other affiliate marketing courses.

Overall Rating
2.0/5 2.04

8 Things To Know About Pathway To Passive

Better Than The Free Training

Pathway To Passive is better and more up-to-date than Affilorama’s free training. But given how bad the free training is, that ain’t saying much.

Here’s what it looks like when you get access:

affilorama pathway to passive homepage

Those 7 chapters contain 33 lessons, and I was able to skim through them in ~2 hours while taking notes.

So there’s not a lot in there – and nothing is covered in-depth – but it’s about what you’d expect for a $19 product (assuming you buy it with the discount).

Three other things Pathway To Passive does better than Affilorama’s free training:

  • Use WordPress
    Remember how the free training told you to build your site with software from the dark ages of the internet? Mercifully, Pathway To Passive is more progressive…
affilorama pathway to passive homepage wordpress
  • Well Structured
    While the free training has lessons scattered all over the place and is hard to follow, the lessons in Pathway To Passive are properly arranged and lead into each other nicely.
  • Easy On The Upsells
    The free training had promos for Affilorama’s paid products – AffiloJetpack especially – at the end of every lesson. Thankfully, Pathway To Passive isn’t constantly trying to upsell you to a more expensive product.

Somewhat Outdated

Best I can tell – via the Wayback Machine – Pathway To Passive was first released in 2018, but many of the references within the material seem older than that.

For example, this screenshot within the course is clearly from May 2016…

affilorama pathway to passive outdated

While this sample signup form looks like something from 2008:

affilorama pathway to passive singup form

You also get access to three bonus ebooks when you sign up for Pathway To Passive:

affilorama ebooks

They’re all marked as being updated for 2019, but the first page of 5 Step Formula suggests that the content hasn’t been updated since 2013 or 2014…

affilorama 5 step formula dated

This seems to be a common pattern with Affilorama: they modify dates to make their content appear recent, but really it was all produced several years ago and barely updated since.

Which isn’t such a big deal for Pathway To Passive, since most of the material in there is general advice and theory, and affiliate marketing has changed little in that respect over the years.

Focused On ClickBank

Just like in Affilorama’s free training, Pathway To Passive primarily recommends affiliate marketers find and promote products from the ClickBank marketplace.

See for yourself:

affilorama pathway to passive clickbank

Actually, Pathway To Passive is a bit worse than the free training in this respect, because there’s ZERO mention of other affiliate marketplaces.

As mentioned above, this is problematic for two reasons:

  • ClickBank appears to be dying
  • And it’s full of very questionable products

As my co-reviewer wrote in her notes for Pathway To Passive:

Following the directions for ClickBank, I have to say it looks like a dying platform. There is way less available. Since the course is only directing us to Clickbank, it is very limited in the niches I could pick.

For example, using his dog training, dog and puppy evergreen selection yields a lot of competition and not all that many products in Clickbank. Since his directions limit you to Clickbank, this is actually a bit challenging.

To that point, here’s an example ClickBank search from Pathway To Passive:

affilorama pathway to passive clickbank search

I ran the same search on ClickBank and received almost 40% FEWER results…

clickbank health fitness search

No Video

As bad as Affilorama’s free training is, at least it has many videos to help illustrate certain concepts and step you through everything. Meanwhile, Pathway To Passive has zero video training.

Some of the lessons in Pathway To Passive are just fine as text + screenshots.

But some of them would be far better in video format.

For example, the only lesson in the course about keyword research:

affilorama pathway to passive keyword research

That entire lesson is about 2,700 words and contains 8 screenshots.

A simple, 10-minute video stepping through the keyword research process would have been much more useful.

Lots of Telling, Little Showing

Similar to Affilorama’s free training, Pathway To Passive more often TELLS you what to do instead of SHOWING you how to do it.

Prime example:

affilorama pathway to passive no snow

You’d expect them to drop a link to that example, or at least provide a screenshot.

But no. 

You just have to take their word for it that the content existed, still exists, and that “people are still linking to it and sharing it like crazy” nine years later.

Another example:

affilorama pathway to passive no snow 2

That lesson clocks in at 1300 words, includes 1 screenshot of what NOT to do, and contains ZERO links to actual examples of “window dressing” content.

Presumably, if Affilorama created a lesson about elephants, it would look like this…

affilorama quide to elephants

That article would go on for another 1000 words, show no photos of actual elephants, and neglect to link to additional info.

This once again speaks to how Affilorama is fairly solid on affiliate marketing theory, but terrible when it comes to showing you practical examples.

Multiple Options

Pathway To Passive doesn’t try to steer you towards specific products and services that they’re affiliates for. Instead, they usually present multiple options and recommendations, often without any affiliate links.

The same is true of Affilorama’s free training (covered previously).

Here’s an example from Pathway To Passive:

affilorama pathway to passive hosting options

I was pleasantly surprised to find that NONE of those links were affiliate links.

Again, this is in stark contrast to Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – another affiliate marketing course. See the Hidden Costs section of my MSoAM review for examples of the opposite approach.

Pathway To Passive Price + Discount Info

Pathway To Passive is normally priced at $37, but sign up for a free Affilorama account and you’ll have three days to grab it at the discounted price of $19.

Once you sign up for a free Affilorama account, you’ll land on a page showing you a free sample of Pathway To Passive, with the discount offer at the bottom of the page…

affilorama pathway to passive discount

Skip the offer there and you’ll land on your Affilorama dashboard, where you’ll still be able to access the discount offer for three days:

affilorama pathway to passive discount countdown

Pathway To Passive Refund Policy

Pathway To Passive comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

From the Pathway To Passive sales page:

affilorama pathway to passive quarantee

I was happy enough with the value I received for $19, so I didn’t ask for a refund.

But through all my research, I’ve seen no complaints about getting a refund from Affilorama.

More info on Affilorama refunds below.

Final Word On Affilorama’s Pathway To Passive

Pathway To Passive is a decent introduction to affiliate marketing, but little more than that. It’s probably still a bit overpriced at $19, but far better value than some other affiliate marketing courses.

For example, the affiliate marketing course I reviewed prior to this one was Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (read my review here).

That course costs $197 but provides about the same level of information. (Although in fairness to MSoAM, the private community that comes with the course is pretty good.)

But before you go signing up for Pathway To Passive, I’d recommend first going through the Quick Start guide that you get access to with a free Affilorama account.

Then download the guide by hitting the big green button on the dashboard:

affilorama download quick start quide

If you find that free guide helpful, then you’ll probably get decent value from Pathway To Passive, since it goes a little deeper into everything.

Alternatively…

Review: AffiloTools

affilorama affilotools homepage
  About

Affilorama’s self-proclaimed “premium suite of online tools for marketers”

💰  Price

Limited free plan. Paid plans start at $17/month. (discount info)

😍  Pros

Free to try. 60-day money-back guarantee on paid plans.

😩  Cons

Compares poorly to other free tools. Barely any updates since 2013.

  Verdict

You might get some use out of the free version, but this is not software worth paying for.

Overall Rating
1.0/5 1.05

7 Things To Know About AffiloTools

A key feature of AffiloTools is the SEO Backlinks analysis. But it doesn’t seem to report nearly as many backlinks as other tools.

Using AffiloTools, I ran a backlinks analysis for affilorama.com and it reported 1050 backlinks for the site:

affilorama affilotools backlinks
AffiloTools backlinks overview for affilorama.com
affilorama affilotools backlinks 2
AffiloTools backlinks list for affilorama.com

Unfortunately, that differed significantly from Ubersuggest’s backlink analysis of affilorama.com, which reported almost 300k backlinks from more than 5k domains:

ubersuggest affilorama backlinks
Ubersuggest backlink report for affilorama.com

Ahrefs also reports far more than 1050 backlinks for affilorama.com:

ahrefs affilorama overview
Ahrefs overview for affilorama.com

So if backlink analysis is what you need, I’d recommend skipping AffiloTools and going with Ubersuggest instead.

The free version of AffiloTools:

  • Limits you to 1 backlink report per day
  • Finds only a small % of backlinks
  • Doesn’t differentiate between backlinks and referring domains.

Whereas Ubersuggest:

  • Is completely free
  • Finds far more backlinks for each site
  • Lets you view unlimited reports

Rankings Checker

Another key feature of AffiloTools is the Rankings Checker. This also compares poorly to other free tools.

Here’s the AffiloTools Search Rankings report for ebizfacts.com:

affilorama affilotools ebizfact rankings

Doesn’t look very useful, does it?

And it only updates once per month on a free plan:

affilorama affilotools free limit

Meanwhile, Ubersuggest lets you see the search rankings of any website for free:

ubersuggest ebizfact rankings

Ubersuggest also allows you to track up to 25 keywords for free:

ubersuggest ebizfacts position tracking

While the free version of The HOTH’s rank checker also lets you see changes in rankings:

the hoth ebizfacts rankings

Social Monitoring

Another key feature of AffiloTools is Social Monitoring. And yup, you guessed it: this also compares poorly to free alternatives.

AffiloTools social monitoring connects to your Facebook page and Twitter account and displays your likes and follows over time.

affilorama affilotools social monitoring
Screenshot from the AffiloTools sales page.

You can also post to Twitter and/or Facebook from within AffiloTools, and it suggests content for you to share:

affilorama affilotools discovery
Note that the “suggested contents” here are sorted by relevancy, yet somehow a Portuguese result shows up second 🤔

All in all, it’s pretty useless.

Especially compared to something like Cyfe, which gives you more and better information for free:

cyfe dashboard
The Cyfe dashboard. Free plan is limited to 5 widgets.

Link Finder

The Link Finder feature inside AffiloTools promises to help you “build backlinks better, faster.” But the results you get from it aren’t all that useful.

Here’s how the Link Finder is described on the AffiloTools sales page:

affilorama affilotools sales page

Keep that highlighted section in mind as I show you the results I got from the Link Finder, using the keyword “rabbits” as an example…

affilorama affilotools link finder

There doesn’t seem to be much filtering going on there. It’s basically just a big list of sites that mention the word “rabbits.”

And sites like YouTube, Reddit and Wikipedia – all listed in the results above – could hardly be described as “receptive to building links” or open to “guest blogging.” 

My favorite example from that list was commonsensehome.com/holistic-goat-care, which is an article all about goats. But I guess since it mentioned the word “rabbits” one time in the entire article, AffiloTools considered it a great prospect 🙄

So don’t bother with Affilorama’s Link Finder tool.

Skimming these articles by Glen Allsopp (Detailed.com) is a much better use of your time:

Rarely Updated

It looks like AffiloTools has changed very little since 2013, and it’s still labeled as “beta” software.

Here’s a walk-thru of AffiloTools from 2013, posted on Affilorama’s official YouTube channel:

I see very little difference between the interface and functionality shown in that video, and AffiloTools today.

My guess is that Affilorama launched AffiloTools back around that time, and haven’t done much to improve it since.

No wonder they still have a message at the bottom of the interface saying the software is still in beta:

affilorama affilotools beta

AffiloTools Price + Discount Info

AffiloTools is a freemium product. You can use the basic version for free, and paid plans start at $17 per month.

Here’s how the plans are laid out inside AffiloTools:

affilorama affilotools pricing

I haven’t been able to find mention of any discount for AffiloTools.

But you can easily save yourself $17-97 per month on AffiloTools by NOT buying it and using the free/better alternatives mentioned previously and summarized below.

AffiloTools Refund Policy

AffiloTools comes with Affilorama’s usual 60-day money-back guarantee.

You’ll see the guarantee clearly stated on the checkout page:

affilorama affilotools quarantee

Remember though that AffiloTools is a freemium product, so you can sign up and play around with it for free.

More info on Affilorama refunds below.

Final Word On AffiloTools

AffiloTools looks like a failed product that’s barely been updated since 2013. It has some decent features, but nothing that isn’t matched – and often bettered – by other free tools.

The only folks who might get some use out of AffiloTools are people using the ClickBank marketplace, as it does hook into that as well:

affilorama affilotools clickbank
Screenshot from the AffiloTools sales page

So if you want to get your top-level traffic, social and ClickBank stats all in one place, the free version of AffiloTools might be worth your time.

But I wouldn’t rely on it to make any big decisions.

You’re better off using the following:

Half-Assed Review: AffiloJetpack

affilorama affilojetpack
  About

AffiloJetpack claims to be a “hugely powerful system” for generating passive income.

💰  Price

$997 regular price. $747 with discount (discount info)

😍  Pros

Unknown

😩  Cons

Severe lack of students reporting positive results from the program.

  Verdict

Most likely another outdated and disappointing offering from Affilorama.

Overall Rating
Incomplete/5

3 Things To Know About AffiloJetpack

We Didn’t Buy AffiloJetpack (Here’s Why)

After spending 25+ hours going through Affilorama’s free material, checking out AffiloTools, and buying Pathway To Passive, we were in no way convinced that investing $747 in more training from Affilorama would be a good move.

To put it more clearly:

  • Affilorama’s free content is awful.
  • Affilorama’s “success stories” are highly suspect.
  • Pathway To Passive is barely worth the $19 price tag.
  • AffiloTools is nothing special and hasn’t been updated in years.
  • We couldn’t find any believable reports of real people crediting AffiloJetpack with their success in the last 3+ years.

Regarding that last point, this thread in Affilorama’s own forum is telling:

affilorama affilojetpack forum

A few students responded, but none reported any big results.

This is the “best” result reported, and it refers not to AffiloJetpack, but the cheaper and now-defunct AffiloBlueprint:

affilorama affilojetpack forum
Part of a comment from user dizzylizzy in January 2017

To summarize:

  • That customer bought AffiloBlueprint in 2013
  • 4 years later, she was earning $83/month passive income as an affiliate

Not bad, but if that’s the best result posted in a thread about AffiloJetpack, then it hardly lives up to its billing as a “hugely powerful system for building money-making machines that earn you an income on autopilot.”

I also found two threads on Warrior Forum (a popular internet marketing forum) about AffiloJetpack.

The first was started in 2015 and received zero replies:

affilorama affilojetpack warrior forum

The second was started in January of 2019 and received one irrelevant reply:

affilorama affilojetpack warrior forum 2

Given all that, I’m not convinced AffiloJetpack is worth buying or reviewing.

Most likely, it’s as disappointing and outdated as Affilorama’s other products.

AffiloJetpack Price + Discount Info

AffiloJetpack is available for the regular price of $997, or the discounted price of $747. (But you definitely shouldn’t buy it.)

Here’s the discount link

But to be clear: I DO NOT recommend anyone sign up for AffiloJetpack!

AffiloJetpack Refund Policy

AffiloJetpack comes with Affilorama’s usual 60-day money-back guarantee… with a twist.

The twist is that they offer to pay you an extra $100 on top of giving you a full refund:

As noted below, Affilorama seem to honor their refund policy, but this $100 offer seems a bit fuzzy.

  • How much is “good money” exactly?
  • What qualifies as “good results”?
  • And how would you “prove that you’ve REALLY tried”?

🤷‍♂️

Final Word On AffiloJetpack

As noted, we didn’t buy AffiloJetpack, so all we can do here is speculate. But given how disappointing Affilorama’s other products are, combined with the severe lack of students reporting positive results, I can’t imagine AffiloJetpack is worth its high price.

Probably a much safer bet to…

5 More Things You Should Know About Affilorama

Who created Affilorama?

Affilorama was created by two guys from New Zealand: Mark Ling and Simon Slade.

From Affilorama’s about page:

affilorama founder

Also from that about page:

Affilorama is division of Doubledot Media Ltd, with our head office in Christchurch, New Zealand.

According to ratings and reviews on Glassdoor, Doubledot is a great company to work for: 

glassdor doubledot media
Average of 14 ratings

Here’s a bit more about each of the founders…

Mark Ling

Mark’s something of an enigma, with no strong/active personal presence online.

He does have a Twitter account, but it hasn’t been updated since 2015:

affilorama mark link twitter
btw: you should totally follow @ebizfacts on Twitter

Mark has apparently been making money online since 1999.

The most recent earnings screenshots I could find for him inside Affilorama are dated 2014:

affilorama mark link 2014
From an eBook within Affilorama entitled, Earn Piles Of Cash By Giving Away Free Content (it’s not very good)

Update: Mark shared these more recent earnings screenshots in a comment on the eBiz Facts Facebook page…

During my research, I also found mention of several other courses Mark has sold over the years:

  • Learn Build Earn
  • Quit 9 To 5 Academy
  • Overnight Freedom
  • Manifestation Miracle

The interesting thing is that NONE of those courses were still available as of this writing.

Update: I stand corrected – Manifestation Miracle is still available, though it was hard to find via Google.

The impression I get is that Mark is great at a couple of things:

  • Generating affiliate commissions for products he prefers to keep secret
  • Creating short-lived courses and squeezing as much profit as possible from them

Obviously, Affilorama is an exception to the latter, since it has been around since 2006. 

Though I’d argue that it should have been shut down years ago 😕

And, as I’ve come to learn from reviewing several other affiliate marketing courses

  • Just because someone is good at making money online themselves, doesn’t mean they’re good at teaching other people how to do it.

Having spent 25+ hours going through the Affilorama training, I’d count Mark Ling as one of those people who’s awesome at doing, but not so awesome at teaching.

(Though I should caveat that by emphasizing that I haven’t been through any of Mark’s more recent courses. For all I know, they could be excellent.)

Simon Slade

Simon is the second co-founder of Affilorama, and also a bit of an enigma.

He has a Twitter account, but it hasn’t been updated since January 2018:

affilorama simon slade twitter
btw: you should totally follow @ebizfacts on Twitter

Via his personal website and LinkedIn profile, you can see that Simon is involved with several companies:

  • Affilorama (co-founder)
  • SaleHoo (co-founder)
  • Smtp2Go (co-founder)
  • SwiftMed (board director)

All of which have stellar reviews on TrustPilot:

simon slade companies trustpilot
Source: Affilorama, SaleHoo, SMTP2GO, and SwiftMed company profiles on TrustPilot

(Actually, the reviews of those companies are so good it’s hard to believe. I counted 1105 reviews between them, and 98.9% of those reviews were excellent/great, which is very unusual on TrustPilot.)

Simon has also been prolific with guest posting and media mentions, having written for or appeared in publications such as:

  • Success.com
  • GoDaddy
  • NZ Business
  • The Baltimore Sun
  • The Chicago Tribune
  • The Irish Times
  • Inc.
  • Business Insider

(You’ll find a full list of Simon’s media appearances at affilorama.com/in-the-news)

You won’t hear much from Simon within Affilorama – it seems Mark and various staff members are responsible for creating the bulk of the content in there.

Sketchy Success Stories

In contrast to the excellent credentials and proven results of Affilorama founders Mark Ling and Simon Slade, Affilorama’s students don’t seem to have achieved much success. And some of them might not even exist.

Affilorama maintains a list of “customer testimonials” at affilorama.com/success.

The top of the page looks like this:

affilorama testimonials

There are about 40 students profiled on that page.

I researched 19 of them and reached out to six I found contact info for. (I heard back from two.)

My findings…

The vast majority don’t report actual $$$ results

Instead, you see a lot of generic praise for Affilorama, like this:

affilorama testimonial

Several testimonials are from 10+ years ago

Like this one:

affilorama testimonial 2

Worth noting that Chrisi’s site – primeinsiders.com – doesn’t exist anymore.

The most recent thing I found about her online was this 2016 news story about how she got attacked by pit bulls (she was fine).

7 of the 19 students I researched couldn’t be verified as real people

Even some students with very distinctive names couldn’t be found elsewhere online.

And a reverse image search of one student brought back a Quora user with a different name:

affilorama testimonial 3

The students I did find elsewhere online don’t seem to be all that successful

Like this guy:

affilorama testimonial

I found profiles for Derek on:

The last one ain’t so bad:

affilorama student people per hour

But earning $10/hour as a freelance writer doesn’t exactly count as affiliate marketing success now, does it?

The most successful student I’ve been able to verify is a guy who has earned quite a bit as a freelance writer on Upwork:

affilorama student upwork

But again, that has little to do with affiliate marketing.

I reached out to that student in November 2019 and asked for his thoughts on Affilorama.

His response:

affilorama student upwork email

So there we have the most successful Affilorama student I could verify.

He bought AffiloBlueprint back in 2012 and still recommends it, even though several years later:

  • AffiloBlueprint no longer exists
  • That student doesn’t appear to be having much success as an affiliate marketer 😕

Given all that, Affilorama reminds me of Wealthy Affiliate:

  • Full of students who’ve never achieved the levels of success promised by the program, yet still happily singing its praises.
meme not sure if delusional or just in denial

(Read my brutally honest review of Wealthy Affiliate here)

Has Affilorama been abandoned?

It certainly seems that Affilorama is no longer a priority for co-founders Mark Ling and Simon Slade. Much of the training hasn’t been updated in years, the Affilorama comments and forums have become a ghost town, and verifiable students success stories are almost non-existent.

You’ve seen plenty of examples to illustrate all that throughout this review.

One more clue: Affiliorama’s official YouTube channel hasn’t seen any updates for years…

affilorama youtube channel

Given all that, I think it’s safe to say that Affilorama has been abandoned.

It might have been a decent place to learn affiliate marketing up until 2014.

But certainly no more.

Affilorama vs Wealthy Affiliate

Many people search online for comparisons of Affilorama and Wealthy Affiliate. Both are popular affiliate marketing courses that have been around for 10+ years. Rather than choose one over the other, your best course of action would be to avoid both.

affilorama wealthy affiliate double knockout
Affilorama vs Wealthy Affiliate: no winners, both losers.

You may have come across other reviews of Affilorama that say it pales in comparison to Wealthy Affiliate.

Be advised that practically ALL such reviews are written by affiliates of Wealthy Affiliate, with the goal of convincing you to sign up for WA through their link so they can earn a hefty commission.

This shady practice became clear to me after I personally spent 40+ hours reviewing all the free and premium training materials inside Wealthy Affiliate, and found it severely lacking.

Affilorama’s Refund Policy

Through all my research, I’ve seen no complaints about getting a refund from Affilorama. On the contrary, getting a refund from Affilorama sounds easy.

Affilorama state on their checkout pages that all their products come with a 60-day money-back guarantee:

affilorama affilotools quarantee

They seem to honor this guarantee, as I’ve yet to find anyone complaining that they couldn’t get a refund.

The one comment I did find in relation to Affilorama’s refund policy was complimentary:

So while I’m not impressed by any of Affilorama’s paid products, kudos to them for having a solid refund policy and for staying true to it.

BOTTOM LINE

Are Affilorama students actually getting results?

Despite ~60 people signing up for a free Affilorama account every day, I’ve seen little indication that the program produces successful students.

We’ve already covered the sketchy testimonials provided by Affilorama themselves (see above).

However, Affilorama has scores of great reviews from students on TrustPilot and Facebook…

But here’s the thing: the vast majority of those reviews are incredibly generic and don’t speak to any actual results achieved.

An example from TrustPilot:

affilorama truspilot review

Same same on Facebook:

affilorama facebook review

Ask any of these people for actual results achieved and you’re unlikely to hear back:

affilorama facebook review 2

I won’t go so far as to say that the reviews of Affilorama on Facebook and TrustPilot are fake, but they hardly inspire confidence that the program is helping real people earn money through affiliate marketing.

Who should sign up for Affilorama?

I’m hesitant to recommend ANYONE sign up for Affilorama, because they apparently do a great job of upselling: 

affilorama clickbank
The listing for Affilorama on the ClickBank marketplace. That average rebill total is insane!

To be clear: NOBODY should spend $80 on Affilorama, let alone $1,618.

But if you do want to give the program a try, here’s what I recommend:

  • Sign up for a free account (here) and read through the free Quick Start guide
    If you’re a complete newbie, that will give you a decent overview of affiliate marketing. (More info on the guide and where to find it.)
  • If you find the free guide helpful, consider buying Pathway To Passive
    Pathway To Passive goes a bit deeper into everything covered in the free guide. But don’t pay full price for it: grab it at the $19 discount. (More info on P2P above, including how to get the discount.)
  • If you’re using the ClickBank marketplace, consider signing up for a free AffiloTools account
    The dashboard shows your top-level traffic, social and ClickBank stats all in one place. There’s little beyond that, but it might be useful for some people. (More info on AffiloTools above.)

Even if you do all three of those things, you should spend NO MORE than $19!

And $19 is about how much value you’ll receive in return.

Spend anything more on Affilorama and you’ll be throwing money away.

Better alternatives to Affilorama

I’m on a mission to review all the top affiliate marketing courses.

Here’s my progress so far:

🏆 Best Affiliate Marketing Courses 🏆

1.The Authority Site System (review)
4.8/5
2.The Affiliate Lab (review)
4.6/5
3.Scale Your Travel Blog (review)
4.6/5
4.Blog Growth Engine (review)
4.5/5
5.Passive Income Geek (review)
4.4/5
6.Niche Site Profits (review)
4.3/5
7.Income School's Project 24 (review)
4.3/5
8.Blogging Fast Lane (review)
3.9/5
9.Perfecting Blogging (review)
3.8/5
10.Solo Build It (review)
3.7/5
11.123 Affiliate Marketing (review)
3.4/5
12.Passive Income Unlocked (review)
3.2/5
13.Jungle Influencer (review)
3.1/5
14.Affiliate Escape Plan (review)
3.1/5
15.Digital Worth Academy (review)
2.9/5
16.YouTube Affiliate Marketing System (review)
2.9/5
17.Home Business Academy (review)
2.7/5
18.Entre Institute (review)
2.6/5
19.Affiliate Marketing Success MasterClass (review)
2.5/5
20.Passive Income Pathways (review)
2.5/5
21.Simple Profit System (review)
2.5/5
22.Wealthy Affiliate (review)
2.5/5
23.Legendary Marketer (review)
2.4/5
24.Super Affiliate System (review)
2.3/5
25.72IG WhatsApp Income Blueprint (review)
2.3/5
26.Invincible Marketer (review)
2.3/5
27.Commission Academy (review)
2.2/5
28.Partner With Anthony (review)
2.0/5
29.Inbox Blueprint (review)
1.9/5
30.Spark by ClickBank (review)
1.9/5
31.Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers (review)
1.8/5
32.Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (review)
1.7/5
33.12 Minute Affiliate (review)
1.7/5
34.Four Percent (review)
1.6/5
35.Commission Hero (review)
1.6/5
36.Affiliate Marketing Mastery (review)
1.5/5
37.Affilorama (review)
1.5/5
38.Ministry of Freedom (review)
1.5/5
39.ChatGPT Short Form Riches (review)
1.5/5
40.Six Figure Mentors (review)
1.4/5
41.FullStaq Marketer (review)
1.3/5
42.Perpetual Income 365 (review)
1.3/5
43.Launch You (review)
1.1/5
44.Wolves Academy (review)
0.8/5
45.7 Figure Franchise (review)
0.7/5
46.ClickBank University (review)
0.6/5
47.Click Wealth System (review)
0.5/5
7 Figure Acceleration (review)
Incomplete/5
Adam Cherrington (review)
Incomplete/5
E-Farming Course (review)
Incomplete/5
Profit Singularity System (review)
Incomplete/5
Savage Affiliates (review)
Incomplete/5
See all reviews of affiliate marketing courses »

Your Affilorama Review

  • Have you taken this course yourself?
    Add your rating so others can see if it’s worthwhile.
  • Do you have a question about this course?
    Let us know below and we’ll try find the answer.

Student Reviews of Affilorama

Rate This Course

4 Questions & Answers

  1. That’s an insanely detailed review… I mean, did you even take the time to create that fake post about elephants? It seems completely insane you’d go to such lengths to illustrate your point. Completely blew my mind as far as content quality goes.

    Reply
  2. I bought a product from affilorama recently that sounded like it was advanced information about content creation. It was good, but it wasn’t advanced. I got a refund with no problem. I’m still interested in a few of their products and may get them in the future. I’ve had no problems with affiorama whatsoever and use a few of their tools regularly. I hadn’t noticed that they weren’t updating, though. I remember how big this site was when I first started online years ago.

    Reply
  3. I thought I will buy their jetpack and try it because I stand at no financial risk and they said they will paid $100 on top if I don’t get the benefits. Over the years I have wasted a hell of time and money on crappy courses. The most recent was John Crestani’s, but soon after was the discovery of life – Tai Lopez and now exploring courses of people connected to Tai. Some are novices, some advanced, a few crappy (that includes Tai’s brother and half brother). And a few unsung heroes… just brilliant and no one knows them. Anyways coming to the point, your review seems fair… and I have decided not to waste precious time if not money. For me, time is more precious than money. The worst part is sometimes learning at the wrong place can be dangerous. For example, I find Evan Kimbrell courses costing $5 (India) pretty good and he personally answers questions. On the contrary, there are tonnes of popular courses at Udemy that give outdated and false information. Implementing them can cost you time and money, and far worse – legal consequences… Like some teach you to spam calling it a “gray hat technique.” And to learn the right things something it is a big pain to undo the wrong skills you build up that are passed to you with the wrong connections. Thank you very much for waking me up @affilorama!

    Reply
  4. Hi Niall,
    This review series has been really amazing.

    I have never seen anybody doing an in-depth
    review series like this anywhere online.

    With affilorama, you confirmed my thoughts,
    outdated and abandoned.

    Since you have finished reviewing all the courses
    in your list, I kindly request you to review two other
    courses:

    1. Digital worth academy – https://digitalworth.com/academy/

    By Andrew hansen and Sara young-Both successful
    affiliate marketers for over a decade now.
    This course is similar to “Authority site system”,
    but they have 3 custom tools.

    One of their successful students is making over $200k/month
    and both Andrew & Sara have sites making over $20k/month.

    2. Savage affiliates – https://savageaffiliates.com
    This course is by Franklin Hatchett.

    What makes its stands out from the other courses is the
    low price:
    $197 for Standard training
    $297 for Super training
    Also, the course covers all types of affiliate marketing:
    1.Clickbank
    2.Amazon
    3.Launch jacking
    4.Clickfunnels
    5.Web hosting

    I request you to review “Digital worth academy” first,
    as it is more high-quality training, even if it is a bit pricey
    at $797.

    Also, I really love to read your opinion of Digital worth,
    since it is similar to Authority site system.

    You are like an intelligent detective 🙂

    So I like to decide whether to go with Authority site system
    or Digital worth after reading your review of Digital worth.

    Whether Authority site system or Digital worth academy
    I like to buy through your affiliate link when I make the purchase.
    And I don’t even need a bonus to signup through you 🙂

    Because, I believe you will be giving honest and unbiased review.

    Thank you, Niall

    Reply
    • Thanks for the kind words 🙂

      I have never seen anybody doing an in-depth review series like this anywhere online.

      Well, you have to be a bit mad to do it! I calculated this morning that I’ve spent at least 350 hours on this series, and that’s only the time I bothered to track. I’ve made some decent affiliate sales based on my reviews but my “hourly rate” so far would be too depressing to calculate 😛

      Thank you for the recommendations to check out those other two courses. Next week I’ll be publishing a round-up review, which will include a list of courses that I’m aiming to review in the future. I’ll add those two to the list. Digital Worth Academy looks especially interesting.

      I like to buy through your affiliate link when I make the purchase.
      And I don’t even need a bonus to signup through you

      Because, I believe you will be giving honest and unbiased review.

      Thanks, I really appreciate that! I’ll keep working to deliver the most in-depth and objective reviews I can.

      Reply
      • After reviewing your review of Affilorama, I’d have to say that you did not go far enough. I went a couple of steps further. While there are multiple reviews indicating about what you mention of Affilorama being outdated, that may be true except for one thing. Affilorama is in the process of updating their website. I don’t think this is a sign if it being abandon. But everyone is entitled to their opinion. I do appreciate your review as it motivated me to press further. Thanks

        Reply
        • Hi Tim,

          Yes, I’m aware that Affilorama is being updated. They contacted me after seeing my review. Apparently what I wrote helped inspire the update.

          I’ll take another look at Affilorma once it has been updated and publish and update review here.

          Reply
          • ok, that sounds good, and basically your reply not only shows that you took me seriously it also shows that the information I found is true, supported by the fact that Affilorama contacted you. thanks for your reply.

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