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One of the best side hustles you can choose to get into is affiliate marketing.
I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for over 17 years now and it’s one of the easiest and most profitable ways to generate an income.
There are several things that make affiliate marketing so attractive. Just to name a few:
- you can start with very little to no money
- you don’t need any special type of experience or education (you still need to learn the process though)
- you do not need to buy and stock any products
- you don’t need to deal with customers
- you don’t need extra staff
- you can do it from anywhere in the world
- you aren’t tied to any location
- you only need a computer and an internet connection
- there is infinite income potential
I believe that this is why so many people turn to the internet everyday to try to make money via this wonderful business model.
The process though, can vary because there are different ways of doing affiliate marketing.
Some people choose to:
- build websites and optimize them for organic search engine traffic
- build email lists so they can contact their prospects over and over
- make videos on YouTube and monetize them
- make Facebook pages about a specific topic and grow their audiences
- build Amazon review sites
These are just a few ways to do affiliate marketing. They may vary but the core idea is the same. You find an audience you want to market to, you build a website (or use an existing one), you create content and then make money recommending affiliate offers.
It’s a simple 4 step process but you need to learn the details on how to make each step work.
It’s not hard to find courses and ebooks or even articles online telling you what to do but one of the wisest and most secure way to learn is to join a membership site where you can have all of the following in one place.
- access step-by-step instructions
- access tools and resources you’ll need to apply the process
- connect with other people who are also learning
- have access to reliable support so that you can know when you’re making mistakes and correct them
- keep up to date with the latest industry changes
Sure, an ebook will have instructions but the internet and details of the process can change very quickly. By being a part of community where information is shared, you’ll always be on top of things when these changes happen.
Ebooks also don’t work for some of the reasons I’ve listed above.
Below, I’ve put together a list of some of the best memberships online where you can learn how to do affiliate marketing.
1. Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate is my number one choice for many reasons.
First of all, I’ve been a member there since 2007 and even though I’m way past the beginner stage, I still learn a lot by being active in the community.
The site is especially useful in getting beginners to understand how to make money online with affiliate marketing and gives them a simple 4 step process for running an online business.
- Choose a niche/topic.
- Build your website (very easy with SiteRubix)
- Create content to attract visitors
- Monetize with affiliate offers
With step-by-step training, quality support, a very active community and all the tools you need to make affiliate marketing work, Wealthy Affiliate has everything included in it’s membership so that you won’t need to seek out a lot of external stuff.
Furthermore, you can always join the site free of charge (without even needing to put in your credit card information) and begin working through the lessons.
Free starter members can access the site and everything else for as long as they like but there are still some limitations. To have unlimited access, a premium account is needed and that will give you a whole range of tools, support and training for as low as $1 per day.
You can check out my full review of Wealthy Affiliate to learn more about this top site for learning affiliate marketing online.
2. John Crestani’s Internet Jetset
Internet Jetset is an affiliate training system created by super-affiliate John Crestani.
John Crestani is the real deal and you can certainly learn a lot from him as an affiliate. You’re introduced to the program through a webinar which seems to be Crestani’s main way of teaching.
The training, though not streamlined like Wealthy Affiliate, contains the basics as well as the most popular strategies for getting traffic and making money with affiliate offers.
Within the system, there are upsells where you can upgrade to get even more specific training, for example, on using Facebook ads to promote affiliate offers.
There are also regular webinars.
One drawback from using this system though is that you can get distracted because on a lot of the webinars that John promotes, there is a product being sold which can lead you to spend even more money unnecessarily.
Internet Jetset also doesn’t have web building tools so you’ll have to get web hosting and domains off-site.
The affiliate training available helps you to understand the process and get you started so you can make money following this system.
3. Affilorama
Mark Ling is the creator of Affilorama and several other businesses geared to help people make money online.
Affilorama has been around for over 10 years and offers free and paid affiliate marketing training. The training, created by super affiliate Mark Ling is very high quality and gets you up to speed about what affiliate marketing entails and also how to do it.
While there’s free training available on Affilorama, as well as community and support, there are some upsells like Affilotools, Affilojetpack and Path2Passive where you can access training and tools to grow your affiliate business.
The upsells can become expensive as well as the distractions from Mark Ling to try other external systems, some of which have nothing to do with affiliate marketing.
That aside, you can get a good start with the free training available from Affilorama.
4. Chris Farrell Membership
Another site that shows you how to do affiliate marketing is the Chris Farrell Membership.
There is no free access available to you here though. You’ll have to pay the membership fee to get started with the training. The good news is that you can usually get a 7 day trial for about $4.95 before you’re asked to pay the $37 monthly fee.
The training is very beginner friendly. More advanced training isn’t available but there is just enough to get you started on the right path.
The community is almost inactive compared to Wealthy Affiliate and some of the content available can be considered a little dated.
5. Clickbank University
Clickbank University is kinda like Clickbank’s training system for affiliates and vendors.
The main faces of Clickbank University are Adam Horwitz and Justin Atlan who are accomplished marketers themselves.
The reason I put Clickbank University at #5 is that their main focus with the training isn’t affiliate marketing but rather product creation for Clickbank.
However, since affiliate marketing is a big part of Clickbank, they do include affiliate marketing in their training as well. It’s just not their main focus.
The affiliate marketing training, which you get access to after purchasing a membership goes for 8 weeks and may be enough to get you started.
There aren’t any tools provided for building websites except for a very expensive upsell for Clickbank Builder which you must host with Clickbank.
In other words, you’ll probably have to pay for external tools and resources while trying to learn affiliate marketing with Clickbank University.
Get Started Today with Affiliate Marketing
Now that you have five options to choose from, you can get started with affiliate marketing by getting some step-by-step training.
All the sites weren’t all made the same so it’s up to you to decide which one you’ll go with. You can just pick one and try them all but my advice would be to check them all out and just pick one training system that you’d like to stick with.
My choice as I’ve pointed out would be Wealthy Affiliate because it is free to get started, has easy step-by-step training, an active community and all the tools you need included so that you can follow the process and succeed.
Affiliate marketing is totally worth the effort and this could be the start of a new career for you. With one of the 5 websites outlined here, you should get started today with this awesome business model.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve tried any of these, which ones you are looking at trying and why.
