Starting in affiliate marketing is far from easy. It requires a lot of knowledge and experience to be competitive with the industry experts. Those who are in the industry for years or even decades know all the secrets to making their campaigns profitable. Going head to head with people who are well established in the industry is just insane. Newcomers simply lack the experience and know-how. This knowledge and experience can take years to learn, but there are ways to speed this process up!
Newcomers usually flock to blogs, forums, and YouTube channels that promise to teach the secrets of affiliate marketing. While all of these are great resources to learn from, there is one thing that is even more focused on teaching.
One of the things that beginner affiliates love doing is affiliate marketing courses. Luckily for affiliates, there are a bunch of them available online. Some are completely free, and some have to be paid for. The paid ones can be affordable, but some courses are insanely expensive. But which of these are actually worth the buy? Or, if you don’t want to pay anything, which free courses are the best?
Beginner affiliates are in luck, this is the exact topic we are going to cover today. We will present you a few free, and a few premium courses that we think are useful. So, without further ado, let us start!
The Best Free Courses for Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners by Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the biggest names in the industry. They are a household name that every affiliate should know for their incredible SEO tools. Ahrefs are also famous for providing great free tips videos on their YouTube channel. And this affiliate marketing course is no different! While this singular video is a bit short for a course, their YouTube channel offers plenty of material from which you can learn. It is important to note that they mostly focus on SEO and topics around it. So if you are not interested in SEO (You should be tho) this might not be the thing for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-nbsnXtSZIFREE Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners by Tyler Stokes
Udemy is one of the best places to learn anything on the internet. They offer incredible masterclasses at different price points. But in this case, it’s completely free. Over 37,000 students have enrolled in this course and it has an incredible rating of 4.4/5 stars! If you want to learn the basics, this might be the perfect place to start!
https://www.udemy.com/course/free-affiliate-marketing-course-for-beginners/Free Affiliate Marketing Courses by various creators
SkillShare is an incredible learning website not too different from Udemy. It hosts some premium affiliate marketing courses, but the highlight for people who don’t want to pay a dime is the free affiliate marketing courses. Currently, 15 free courses have a total of over 10 hours of content. Some info might be outdated but most of these courses are still a great thing to take a look at and learn something from. The best part about it is that it’s free!
https://www.skillshare.com/browse/affiliate-marketing?time=all&seeAll=1YouTube Channels by various creators
What is freer than a public YouTube channel that offers its contents to millions of viewers? I doubt anything is, and we think it should stay that way. There are a bunch of incredible affiliate marketers on the platform that share incredible tips to beginners and pros alike.
Some of the best YouTube creators we have stumbled upon are:
- Income School (They also have the incredible Project 24 course that we will cover later)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCytOqtKYpACcWMD14UjhSeQ
- Miles Beckler (Miles focuses on affiliate marketing on a tight budget. Making it perfect for beginners)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RZRFCrN4XKoMsy5MgJKrg - Ferdy Korpershoek (Ferdy offers some incredible guides and knowledge that can be useful in a plethora of situations. His channel is full of helpful information about everything affiliate marketing-related!)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpkfpfGe2ZC3AIQ69ERCJw
- Doug Cunnington (Doug is another creator that focuses on the Amazon affiliate program. You can learn incredible tips, tricks, and secrets that you can use to get ahead of your competition!)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFnt8WCRc5uHWx82W1LQgtg
- Santrel Media (Great and up-to-date guides that are helpful for every affiliate. There is a lot to learn, and Sentrel Media is always uploading something new and interesting.)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg60QRUSvLZMF4zHv2ajBqA
- Income School (They also have the incredible Project 24 course that we will cover later)
The Best Paid Courses for Affiliates
Digital Marketing Masterclass - 23 Courses in 1 by Phill Ebiner and Diego Davila
Udemy offers a lot of courses that can be incredibly informative and helpful. One of the best courses this website has to offer is the 23 courses in 1 masterclass. It covers everything an affiliate needs, from social media marketing, Facebook, email marketing, websites, advertising… Simply everything! The price on this course is usually around $95, but it can be found on sale often for as low as $12.99!
https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-marketing-masterclass/
ClickBank Success - Affiliate Marketing Without A Website by KC Tan
If you are interested in learning proven methods of affiliate marketing on Clickbank, you came to the right place. The talented KC Tan will teach you the basics and even some advanced tips in his incredible course. This course is one of the paid ones. It usually starts at $159.99 but sales on Udemy happen often, and this one often gets some crazy discounts. The sad thing about this course is that it used to be free some time ago!
https://www.udemy.com/course/clickbank-affiliate-marketing-success/
Project 24 by Income School
Project 24 is one of the high-profile courses that a lot of people flock to when starting affiliate marketing. It has great advertising and people seem to like what the guys from Income School have to teach in general. This course is a packed and detailed one on how to build niche websites and earn passive income. The authors mention you can achieve all of this by only spending 1hour a day. But this is sadly just not true. If you want to do affiliate marketing, you will have to consider it as another job! The course currently costs $449 for a year of access. You will get access to 265 videos and over 130 podcasts as of the time of writing this. All in all, it’s worth the money if you have some extra cash!
https://incomeschool.com/project24/
Affiliate Lab Complete Courses by Matt Diggity
This is probably one of the biggest affiliate marketing courses available. This bundle by Affiliate Lab offers the following courses in one package:
- The affiliate Lab Core Training
- The Beginner’s Lab
- Exclusive Facebook Group
- CRO Masterclass
- Feature Snippets Masterclass
- Authority Masterclass
- Flipping Masterclass
- Website Recovery Kit
- Outreach Masterclass
- Affiliate Email Masterclass
Currently, Affiliate Lab values all of these courses at $15270. This is absurd as they are inflating the price by a lot. But they are “offering” a bundle “discount” of over 1500% and are charging only $997! This is the price that we think this bundle should be priced in the first place, if not even a bit lower. The courses themselves are great and full of detailed insight. But the price is something that not everyone will be able to afford.
What Are the Biggest Differences?
The biggest difference between the paid and free courses is the quality and quantity. There are only a few affiliates online that are willing to share their hard-earned knowledge with their competition for free. Most of the paid courses by famous industry names are great pieces of content that you can learn a lot from.
If you are going the free way, you will have to mix and match courses and websites to get a similar experience. Most free courses also offer only partial information as they are used to advertise the paid courses by the same authors. To be completely honest, we support this fully as this kind of knowledge sharing should reward the creators with something.
But no matter if free or paid, if you want to learn affiliate marketing there are ways. The only thing that can stop you is you!
Final Thoughts on Affiliate Courses
Learning affiliate marketing nowadays is easier than ever. There are so many free and paid resources online, that all you need is the motivation to learn. One of the biggest allies in studying affiliate marketing can be affiliate courses. These are usually made by industry veterans that want to share some of their experience and knowledge with others.
As usual, there are better and worse ones, but this list should cover a big part of the best courses available. Picking the right one for you might be a bit difficult since there are a lot of variables you have to consider. We recommend you try a free course and then slowly transition to paid ones if you feel they can offer you additional value.
But keep in mind that no course can beat your motivation to learn. You can become an expert by not attending a single course, and you can be a complete failure by buying every expensive course there is. Give it your best and try learning as much as possible, no matter what your source is.
Hopefully, this list helps you guys out! Good luck with improving and joining the ranks of pro affiliates!
Have you gone through a course for affiliate marketing? What was your experience with it?
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