PRODUCT NAME: Affilorama
Overall Ranking: 7.5 out of 10
Price: Free to join to explore a limited amount of training; Affilorama Premium: $67/month; Upsales to different programs within Affilorama ranging in price from $97 to $997
Owners: Mark Ling
Website: www.affilorama.com
INTRODUCTION
Headquartered in New Zealand, Affilorama is an affiliate marketing training platform that has been around since 2005 and was developed by Mark Ling, a man who along with his friend Charlie got into the business of affiliate marketing in 1999 by promoting diverse group of niche sites through GeoCities sites. For those that do not know what GeoCites, it is the earliest form of web building, before Twitter, Facebook or even MySpace. Yahoo bought GeoCities at the peak of the do com bubble for $3 billion dollars but has since closed it down due to so many alternatives that now exist. Mark Ling quit his full-time job to begin making money online full-time because he saw the potential. He is probably of one of the first affiliate marketers and has since built a successful business from it. Ten years ago Mark launched Affilorama to teach others how to build an affiliate marketing business just as he did. One thing about Mark is that he is very busy with many different projects, external to Affilorama, and therefore is not seen too much within the community of Affilorama.
Affilorama has valuable lessons and offers you enough information through the Premium package ($67/month) to get started earning an online revenue with a trial month offered at $1, but there are some major flaws with the training to include strategies that will kill your rankings with Google and ultimately, kill your online business. The set up of Afflorama is pretty confusing too. You can easily become lost within the platform being pressured to purchase a program that you are not ready for and is not right for you. Affillorama is not my first recommendation. Check out my #1 Recommendation.
PROS/CONS
Pros
- It is legitimate and offers many training programs to help you become successful in affiliate marketing.
- Has been around for 10 years now which says something about its legitimacy. Most scams do not last longer than a couple years.
- Does offer premium membership for the first month for a $1 and you do seem to get quit a bit for that one dollar.
- Has a generous affiliate partnership where you can promote Affilorama on your website.
- Has plenty of information and training available even as a free member (non-premium), enough to get started anyways.
- Offers a free tool for checking site health called AffiloTools which I found valuable as I discovered there are some issues with this website. See my screenshot below to get an idea of the information you can gather from this free tool. It is limited to only one website as your “project” but it can be any website and does not necessarily need to be hosted through Affilorama. For instance, I used this website and I have this site hosted through Wealthy Affiliate.
- With AffiloTools (free tool) you also can pull in your Google Analytics data saving you time in having to log into Google Analytics via a separate browser tab.
- 60-day Money Back Guarantee
- Offer education solutions for educators of both K-12 and university settings.
- With each of the video tutorials, you can download the entire script which is nice because not everyone can listen to a video due to web accessibility reasons. I really like that Mark has taken the needs of others into consideration.
- Mark Ling does have staff working in the front lines of Affilorama to help other members and is not trying to do it all himself. Not even my #1 recommendation has that.
Cons
- Makes affiliate marketing out to be much easier than what it really is. For instance, in the screen shot, you are given the false impression that there is very little work involved and that simply is not the case. There is a lot hard work involved with affiliate marketing. It is not as “foolproof” as the image below indicate it is. There is much more to it.
Affiliate Marketing is Not as Foolproof as This - Very expensive program. There are other programs that offer more for a much cheaper price tag, such as my #1 recommendation.
- No Live Chat to get help immediately.
- Too many high-priced upsales. They have two programs on top of the premium membership ($67/month) + AffiloBluePrint ($197 lifetime access) and AffiloJetPack ($997). Most people who are just starting out cannot afford these costly upsales. When added up, that comes to about $1200 plus the $67 monthly premium membership.
- Some of the training methods being taught by Affilorama will get you in BIG trouble with Google and cause you to be Google Slapped which is a coined term for doing something that Google will penalize you for. For instance, creating backlinks is a HUGE no-no and you will be deemed a spammer by Google and could potentially lose your entire business. For those who do not know, backlinks are links that you post on other websites linking back to your website, hence, the term backlinking. If other webmasters post links from their website to yours, that is fine, but when you are actively placing links from other websites back to yours, that is a form of spam. In the image below, you see that Mark Ling brags about teaching backlinking and how to “borrow” from others.
- No welcome wagon!! Whenever you join a new program, you should always be welcomed to the program. When I joined Affilorama, I did not receive any new messages in my inbox. I would have figured there would have been at the very least, and automated email from Mark Ling welcoming me to Affilorama, but there was nothing.
- The membership forum seems to rather inactive compared to other programs. The image below show the most “recent posts” in Affilorama News and you can see the “last reply was 6 days ago.” If you are building an online business you want an active responsive community so that you can get help when you need it.
- PLR (Private Label Rights) is also taught which I think is ethically and morally wrong to do when creating an online business. PLR is a form of duplicate content and article spinning. You get large quantities of content from other sites and than re-construct it to your own liking. That too will get you penalized on Google.
- Site navigation can be a little confusing, but I can see once I learn how to navigate it, I would be fine, but there is a definite learning curve to the navigation.
WHO IT IS FOR?
Affilorama is for anyone from the beginner to the advanced who wants to begin building a business online. Affilorama has some great training that helps you get started. AffiloBluePrint, which is an upsell, for a lifetime access of $197 gives the newbie to the business of affiliate marketing many useful tutorials to get them going in the right direction.
One of the features of Affilorama which helps new members decide which is best for them is a quiz that asks a few questions and based on your answers, you are either directed to AffiloBluePrint which is for the newbie or AffiloJetPack which is for someone who has a good idea what affiliate marketing entails and just needs some additional help. When I took the quiz, I was told that AfflioJetPack would be the best choice for me. From what I can tell from my research and reading other reviews, AffiloJetPack has a limited number of pre-designed niche sites that you can build from. This is contradictory to what I know about affiliate marketing. First of all, everyone should be able to discover their own niche without being funneled into a limited list of niches. Second, if you are skilled in affiliate marketing, you probably have taken enough courses on how to build a website that you know how easy it is to build a website using WordPress that you do not need someone to pre-build a site for you.
In the interest of wanting to see what AffiloJetPack had to offer, I clicked on the link to be taken to this expensive upsale and apparently the “door was closed” – see my screenshot below:
So not only are they trying to sell a program which really is not something I would recommend for nearly a thousand dollars, but I could not even get access if I wanted to.
TRAINING/TOOLS OVERVIEW
The training seems to be quality training. I was impressed with the AfflioTools as discussed above. That is included in the premium membership and is not an upgrade. Even as a free member, I liked what I could access and find out which could help me with my own websites. I did not indication of certain things which are necessary when building a website such as a basic understanding of HTML. Sometimes you will need to go into the code and make the necessary adjustments to your website. You need a basic understanding of HTML (hypertext markup language). I did like that the training you get from Affilorama seems to be step-by-step and offers not only a video tutorial, but the script of the video as well. As mentioned above, this shows a sincere interest in applying web accessibility standards to their training and I give them lots of credit for that. I also like that they are opening the doors to working with teaches and faculty in both K-12 and university campuses. They understand the need to educate students about the opportunities that exist for online business marketing.
What I disliked is that they are teaching two areas in which could irrevocably destroy what you have worked so hard for. Affilorama teaches how to use backlinks and also PLR which is a form of plagiarism.
Check out my free computer tutorials in both textual step-by-step and video format.
SUPPORT
You can receive support by emailing support@affilorama.com or by calling the telephone number listed on the website or by clicking on the Support Link which will bring you to the a screen allowing you to enter your question or issue in the box they provide.
One thing that stood out to me when I did enter a question into the box shown in the image above, I was immediately brought to another page that indicated, I might have to wait up to six hours before receiving a response or answer to my question. See my captured screenshot below. Personally, I think six hours can be a ridiculously long time to wait, especially if you have a pressing issue that needs immediate attention, you could be looking at an entire day of productivity lost if you have to wait six hours. There are all these people who are staff members of Affilorama and not one of those individuals can help you within a six hour window? Yet, in my image above they claim to offer support on a 24 hour / 7 day a week time frame.
As anyone who begins to understand the the issue with working online is that often times you may have urgent needs which are directly impacting your user’s experience and costing you massive amount of traffic and conversions. Six hour lag time could be devastating. As mentioned in my list of cons for Affilorama, there is no live chat, so you are stuck waiting for those six hours to get a resolution to your problem.
FINAL OPINION/VERDICT
As you can tell from this reviews as well as my other product reviews, when I write a product review, I provide as much detail as possible and I try hard to not leave anything out. I want all of my readers and visitors to my site to have everything at their disposal to make the best educated guess based on your needs and your deal-breakers, because what will be a deal-breaker for you, may not be for another person. I have provided what I feel is the good and the bad of Affilorama. They have some good points as well as some bad points. I do believe Affilorama is a legitimate online opportunity. You can read other reviews on Affilorama that agree with my review that it is a legitimate program. Check out this review of Affilorama by Kevin Balcker.
Even though it is a completely legitimate opportunity, Affilorama is not my #1 recommendation. Check out Wealthy Affiliate and see how they compare to Affilorama. The chart below only eludes to a few of the comparison points. I listed others throughout this article. There are some things that Affilorama has that Wealthy Affiliate does not and could use, such as staff members. According to my comparison chart, Affilorama should only get 5 out of 10, but I give them a higher rating because of all the good things they are doing. Again, I always try and provide the most honest and upfront information for you because my site visitors deserve that.
Thank you for checking out my review today of Affilorama. I would love to hear from my readers. Please leave a comment or question below and I will respond shortly.
27 thoughts on “Review of Affilorama”
Hello Steph,
This is a good review on Affilorama, I heard about this program on Facebook when a friend of my was trying to persuade me to join the platform because he has already signed up to join the community.
As I usually do, I never sign up for any program without doing research online for reviews about the offer or or the program.
And I’m so glad I came across your site in the course of my search. You have made things very clear that though Affilorama is not a scam, it wouldn’t be the best option for me, especially as a newbie, I do not have much experience in online marketing and I will surely need help to succeed. And since they do not offer help immediately and I have to wait for about 6 hours to get help, I think it is not the best for me.
I like your comparison with the other platform called Wealthy Affiliate. I like the fact the they have a Live Chat within the community. I think this alone is good for me.
I will check it out and see how their platform works. Thanks a lot for sharing this great review with me.
Hi Stephen:
You are very welcome. I am glad I was able to help out. I am very honest and down to earth on my reviews of the other programs that are out there. Thank you for taking the time to read through the article and through the comparison. If you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at owner@legitimateonlineopportunity.com
Sincerely,
Stephanie
Affilorama is an OK affiliate marketing training platform to join. This comes from my experiences as a former member of the program.
However, the only things that put me off were the training because I found it a little awkward to follow and the costs too, since there were and still are “upsells.”
Affilorama will benefit those after online business start up’s but it just wasn’t for me I’m afraid.
Thanks for a great review and Wealthy Affiliate is the better option by miles!
Neil
Hi Neil:
I could not agree more. Wealthy Affiliate is by far the best choice to make when selecting an affiliate marketing program.
Sincerely
Steph
Affilorama will be good if there was no upsells and system is not so expensive and there is not best alternative as Wealthy Affiliate. But there is Wealthy Affiliate so, it is better for all to join Wealthy Affiliate instead of Affilorama.
Hi Deraj:
Yes, I agree that Wealthy Affiliate is the better way to go as opposed to Affilorama.
Stephanie
Hi Steph, I had heard of Affilorama but I had not taken the time to research them. Your review really answered many of my questions, and taught me about some of the good points of the program. I especially like the fact that they support the teaching of internet marketing in school. This is wonderful, because of the state of our economy I do believe that internet marketing will continue to grow as a career choice for many. The AffiloramaTool sounds fascinating and I am going to check it out! I also am a member of Wealthy Affiliate and I do think WA is superior in quite a few ways. Thank you for such a detailed review.
With Kind Regards,
Linda
Hi Linda:
I could not agree any more with you. I too think that with the current state of our economy, that Internet Marketing will continue to grow into a very prosperous and popular field. I am glad to hear that you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate. You are right in that it is the superior program for learning Internet Marketing the right way.
Steph
Thanks for the information, Steph. As you said, this program has both good and not-so-good aspects, but considering the cost and the severity of the bad aspects (backlinking and Private Label Rights), it’s not looking like too attractive a program to join. Sharing your experience is much appreciated.
Thank you Susan for stopping and checking out my review of Affilorama. I am glad you found it worthwhile.
Sincerely
Steph
Hi there Steph,
I was with Affiliorama for a short time and the basic training was okay. But when I wanted to learn more, I was a bit overtaken with all the up-selling packages. They are ridiculously expensive and without having any free trial, I don’t really know if it’s worth paying that kind of money.
Glad I landed on Wealthy Affiliate training instead as they provide me bootstrap tools to grow my online business in the right direction.
Hi Cathy:
Thank you for checking out my review of Affilorama. I am glad you visited. I agree with you that Wealthy Affiliate is probably the best affiliate marketing training platforms out there. Affilorama has numerous and costly upsells – one right after the other. Glad you found the best one to be at.
Steph
I thin you have got all the information about Affilorama that I know. I have read about it, I think that they are too expensive. I think that Wealthy Affiliate is much better, that why I am here.
Elma
So it’s not a scam, but it sounds like a ripoff! Thanks so much for sharing this comprehensive information on Affilorama. I don’t believe I would be interested in this company because it seems like their monthly fee is a bit high, not to mention all the upsales they are doing. I particularly liked the comparison chart you did with Wealthy Affiliate. They are obviously the better group to go with if you really want to get into it the right way and for a reasonable price.
Thanks again for sharing this.
Hi Debby:
Thank you for visiting my website today and reading my review of Affilorama. I appreciate you taking the time to check out the information I have available which I hope helps my readers who are looking for a legitimate online opportunity. I agree with you that the monthly fee of $67 is a bit high and like you said, it does not stop there as there are numerous upsells. I personally feel that when you sign up for a premium membership that you should get everything they have to offer and no gimmicks.
Wealthy Affiliate is the superior choice. I am glad you liked the comparison chart. I think Wealthy Affiliate, although not perfect, but has much more to offer.
Affilorama is indeed legitimate but the price tag is too high in my opinion.
Thank you!
Steph
I’m a little speechless. Afflorama sounds good on the surface but once you get involved it doesn’t appear to deliver what it promises.
How is a person able to build a business if they can’t get an answer for six hours?
Its nice that he has employees but it seems they are under staffed if it takes that long to get back to someone.
Thanks for the heads up on the real of this business.
Hi Rawl:
Thank you for checking out my review of Affilorama. They do look pretty good on the surface as you said, but I agree with you that it can be a deal-breaker if you have to wait six hours to get a reply because that could be six hours who have a website that is down. I do think it is worth checking out what is available within the free membership, but I do not see it being worth the $67 per month membership as their training is limited and has many holes in it.
I agree it is nice to have employees who are working within the forum and helping other members with their questions. The employees I am sure aid in ensuring the members get the help they need in a timely manner, but perhaps they are understaffed as you suggested.
Thank you Rawl and I hope to see you again soon.
Steph
Affilorama is a fairly expensive tool for training that is out-of-date. I’m not sure why they don’t take the backlinking section out of the training? it’s been years since online marketers have been able to get away with shady practices like that.
There is a much better option out there in Wealthy Affiliate, as you’ve mentioned. No upsells and the training is up-to-date. The community is also top-notch and the owners are highly involved in live chat and forums. The monthly fee is also cheaper. It’s really a better service in every aspect.
Hi Matthew:
You are right in that Affilorama is very expensive and much of the training is out-of-date. I too have no idea why they do not remove the backlinking training from their program, because, as you said, it has been years since affiliate marketers have been able to benefit from this unhanded strategy.
Wealthy Affiliate is better indeed and you do get much more bang for your buck. I have to admit that there are some areas in WA where the training is out-to-date. No place is absolutely perfect, but when it comes to comparing all of the affiliate marketing training platforms, WA is my #1 recommendation.
Steph
Hi Steph,
Really thorough review of Affilorama you made here! I really love the education solutions offered on the platform, that’s a really smart move. 😉
Also the quiz to put you in the right direction is very well thought of.
I’m a member of both Affilorama and Wealthy Affiliate, and if I ultimately had to decide, I’d choose WA as well just for the sense of community.
Btw, I don’t think WA is run just by the owners, they clearly have to have staff as well, else the training wouldn’t be that up to date 🙂 I’m quite sure they get more than a 1000 private messages a day, if they would be answering all of these themselves I think that’s all they’d be doing all day. 🙂 Cheers, great article!
Hi Maarten:
Glad to see you. Thank you for checking out my review of Affilorama. As a former teacher and educator, I too was impressed with the education solutions that Affilorama is offering. They are wanting to reach out to the education community and that is awesome.
Wealthy Affiliate does have support staff that work behind the scenes with websites that are acting weird and other technical issues, but they do not help members on the front lines of Wealthy Affiliate. They are not visible within the community helping members with questions, etc. Affilorama does have staff that do on occasion help out on the front lines, within the community.
I am pleased to hear from someone who is a member of both Affilorama and Wealthy Affiliate, because you are in a good place to offer some great comparisons between the two.
Thank you for visiting today.
Steph
Thank you for the review. This just sounds like another one of those “university” programs that claims to teach you everything that you need to get started but you have to keep buying into the university to get all the information. This program is not as expensive as others I have seen, but I still wonder if it is really worth all of that money.
Hi Jessica:
Thank you for reading my review of Affilorama. You are right when you say there are other programs out there which are even more expensive, but yes, one has to ask if it is really worth the money. That being said, I think you can learn a lot from the free membership area and should definitely check it out.
Steph
Hi Steph
Great review here. Whilst I am an extremely happy Wealthy Affiliate member like yourself, I do have a quick look around every now and then, to see what is available. No single platform could hope to cover every bit of information about creating and maintaining a well-ranked website! Even tho’ I believe Wealthy Affiliate comes close! But your review really helped me out – there’s one less site I need to look at! A few less hours wasted!
Another site like this is MLSP – very, very overpriced, difficult to navigate and intent on a lot of upsells. Have you ever reviewed that? I’d be interested in your opinion. I wasted hundreds of dollars there before I found WA.
Please keep up the good work – it’s so refreshing to find honest, quality reviews that help us keep our CC’s in our pockets…:-)
Cheers
Ellie
Hi Ellie:
You are absolutely correct when you say that no single platform could hope to cover everything there is to know about building a website and keeping up with SEO best practices. As you said, Wealthy Affiliate does come close and like you, I have been happy for the most part.
I have heard of MLSP (My Lead System Pro) and no, I have not yet written a review on it, but I have a growing list of companies that I intend to write legit and/or scam reviews on. There are so many out there, it can be hard to keep up with all of them. I am immediately suspicious of any company that has many upsells because there is never any reason for that. I believe upsells are unethical and just a cheap way to get more money out of you.
Thank you for the compliment on my hard word. It is a pleasure. Please come back and visit soon.
Sincerely
Steph
Way over priced and now I hear he’s affiliated with Mike Long of the OMG machines ($6,999.00) to join. Support is slow. $1 for 30 days is a good deal after that you should walk IMO.
Hi Peter:
Thank you for reading my review of Affilorama. You are absolutely correct in that it is way overpriced. Wealthy Affiliate is only $47 per month and does not have the upsales that Affilorama does. I agree about spending that one dollar for the one month of training and than after that, going elsewhere.
I did now know that about Mark Link affiliating with Mike Long of OMG Machine. I will have to research that a bit. Thank you for sharing that piece of information regarding Mark Ling and Mike Long working together.
Steph