Name: Affilorama
Website url: www.affilorama.com
Price: $1 thirty day trial, $67 monthly, $497 for three years + upsells
Owner: Mark Ling
Overall Rank: 80 out of 100
Affilorama: The Membership Overview
Affilorama, started by Mark Ling in 2005, is a community dedicated to affiliate training. After years of success as an merchant owning products like “Jamorama” and “Rocket Piano”, Mark set out to create a platform that would help train his affiliates within these respective niches.
There are several levels of the Affilorama Membership and different products to choose from including the very basic entry level to more advanced options that features several plug in tools. Unlike other programs that simply do not evolve, Affilorama is one of the better products in the industry at keeping up (although they do not do a perfect job) and within this review I am going to be walking you through the program along with the many “upsells” within this affiliate marketing product.
But first, let’s have a quick look at the positives and negatives of this program, then I will go into detail discussing the different aspects of the membership.
The Pros vs. Cons of Affilorama
Pros:
- Easy to follow educational resources including software applications
- Access to one of the largest affiliate marketing communities
- Free option allows you to explore the basics without investment
- Payment options for the Premium program includes a three year payment plan for convenience
- Owner is very well respected in the industry
Cons:
- Too many options can make choosing the right program difficult
- Basic program is quite limited compared to the paid programs
- Some blatant misinformation (and harmful) training to your business
- Program costs can become really expensive once you start adding in the additional “offerings” & upsells
- Your “support” is handed off to a support team, you don’t get to connect with Mark directly
Want to Become a Pro Affiliate Marketer? Go Here!
First, What Type of Marketer is Affilorama Program Intended For?
With several levels to choose from and training at each of them, Affilorama is meant to be employed by anyone who wants to make some extra money online as an affiliate marketer. The training within the Affilorama is geared towards everything from the fundamental website set-up to more advanced promotional techniques.
There is no need to have prior knowledge of website building, hosting, marketing or content management. The training is based on knowledge from an experienced and very involved affiliate marketer, Mark Ling, who has a significant track record of not only just being a merchant (having affiliates) but promoting his own products and services himself (a good thing).
The Breakdown of the Training Within Affilorama
Affilorama’s training starts with the basic program which combines videos and other online tools to follow step by step. In addition there are a number of software apps that can be used as well (site ranking and analysis tools).
The Affilorama Premium level offers additional training, interviews with various successful Internet Entrepreneurs, and the bootcamp videos. This level also includes content which has been created for your chosen niche.
Additional tools include the Affilorama Jetpack which is the customized website creation and hosting package and Affilorama Theme which is another version of that service.
These are discussed in much more detail below.
Can You Expect Support From Mark Ling Inside Affilorama?
All levels of Affilorama have the support from the community of members, many of which are free members. This can be a good thing and a bad 
thing. Often times someone will be there, but not all the time someone will be there to give you direct help. The nature of a forum allows for “delayed” support and sometimes it can take several days for your query to get responded to, but sometimes this can also allow for more thorough help (versus telephone or live chat style support)
All discussions, questions and comments can be shared within the community via forums and message boards. Mark Ling on occassion will join in on the discussions, but you should not expect a response from him in a timely matter (if at all) if you are posting questions. He is a very busy entrepreneur and at any given time he has MANY different projects on the go.
How Much Does Affilorama Cost?
This is where it can get a little bit confusing as Affilorama has MANY different product offerings and upsells within their program. This is something that I usually do not agree with simply because I do believe that when you pay for a product, you should get access to EVERYTHING. These products are quality, but they are definitely inferior and more expensive than my #1 ranked program for affiliate marketing training.
Below I am going to explain in detail what is included within the different products and outline their different price points.
Affilorama Premium ($67 per month)
The Premium membership (month to month billing at $67 per month) is the core offering at Affilorama. This package includes training, software, limited hosting, and forum access.
As you can see from the above photo, the included Items are the Affiliate Training, Blog Bootcamp, Premium Tools, Website Hosting, and PLR Articles. Although some of this training is absolutely excellent, there are some critical “training” flaws in the offering at Affilorama Premium membership that can actually adversely impact your business.
The first item is the emphasis of Link Building within the Blog Bootcamp. In fact, 1 of the 4 bootcamp lessons is dedicated to training you about backlinking strategies. That is 25% of the entire course.
The problem here is that backlinks can get you in A LOT of trouble these days with Google and although this strategy may have worked in 2012, it has long since lead to people losing their entire business and rankings online. This outdated misinformation will lead you to failure if you follow it and that is never something I like to see. With every Google Panda or Penguin update, more and more websites that put ANY emphasis on backlinking strategies are being removed from the search results. NOT A GOOD THING.
The second potential issue I have with the Premium package is the fact that they are promoting the idea of PLR (Private Label Rights) content (you get 30 new PLR articles every month) being worthwhile. This is also an outdated and blatantly wrong strategy that will lead you to content marketing failure.
This content is duplicate and if you even consider putting any of it on your website, you will lose all rankings. Also, it is outsourced content meaning that it will never have the same impact that content you create will have. PLR may have been OK back in 2010, but not this year and using it will adversely impact your business. . NOT A GOOD THING.
And the Affilorama Premium tools…
There are also 15 tools that are available within the Premium membership, some useful and some that will provide you with meaningless data. For example, there is an Trusted Site Tool which analzyes the Page Rank within Google (also known as PR). PR however is an outdated metric and in no way indicates whether or not a site is “trusted” in Google any longer. It is apparent that the “tools” within the community are not being updated at the same speed that the affiliate marketing/internet marketing world is evolving.
There is also a tool called “Social Snoop” that finds social sites that you can again, get backlinks to. This is not good for SEO or an online business and has been deemed an irrelevant marketing technique since late 2012. And you have an article spinning tool…that will absolutely KILL your business if you even think about using it. There could be other applications where this could be useful.
This really bothers me and I really wish the folks over at Affilorama would update their training and their tools to reflect the current state of SEO and the online business world. They are in many cases doing more harm than good to your business.
And now come the upsells…
There are also several other offerings or “upsells” that are promoted to you within Affilorama, something that I am not a big fan of. My line of thinking is that if you are paying $67 per month, you should get access to the full system and all of the tools, but you be the judge. The $67 price point is also much higher than more cost efficient services that are available to you as an aspiring affiliate marketer.
Upsell #1: AffiloBlueprint 3.0 Membership ($197, then $67 per month)
The package includes 13 lessons, 85 videos covering topics from affilaite marketing, niche marketing and research, free traffic methods like SEO, PPC via Google’s content network, and 6 WordPress themes that are geared more towards PPC than SEO.
This is then followed by an upsell (when you join) of the Affilorama Premium. AffiloBlueprint does not actually come with any support, so if you want the additional support and help for this particular product, you will have to pay the additional $67 per month.
Upsell #2: AffiloJetpack Membership ($497)
The AffiloJetPack is a high ticket “niche marketing” package that Mark Ling has created to help you with the promotions of his products and services. These packages do contain some good information and within the membership you are going to get access to the following:
- Your Choice of 5 Niche Packages (out of the 10 available)
- 15 Newsletter Email Series, one per niche
- 3 e-books, 3 per niche (these are intended for free reports)
- Access to Affilotheme
- Graphics for each niche
- 20 PLR Articles
This is a great way for Mark to train you how to become his affiliate (and earn him more money). In my opinion this should be a service that is included in his membership since he does have a motive and his is going to benefit from your hard work. Nothing wrong with offering this sort of set-up, but something that probably should be included in particular because of the high price point. These packages do seem to be a bit dated in respect to their offerings and at $497, they are vastly overpriced.
At $497 you really do need to decide whether or not this is worthwhile to you as you could get access very thorough and useful alternatives in the world for an entire year for a fraction of this price.
Upsell #3: Affilotheme ($97)
The last major upsell you will be approached with inside of Affilorama is the Affilotheme. This is a Worpdress theme that comes with supporting training showing you how to properly use it. It also comes with one year free hosting, beyond that you will be encouraged to join Affilorama Premium to maintain your hosting. I really do love the fact that they have piggybacked the WordPress content management system because it is bar none, the best out there.
Here is what is included within this package:
- Affilotheme WordPress theme
- Training videos on how to use it
- Private Members Only Forum
- Graphics Creation tool
- One year of hosting
As you can see, Affilorama Premium is just the initial component of the offering inside of this system. If you take them up on all of their offers, you will be looking at spending $791 + $67 per month for the Premium membership. This is something that you need to consider prior to getting involved with the training.
My final opinion of Affilorama
This is a great product which offers a good deal of tools, training and support. Although I may be a little critical of just a few different aspects of their system, Mark Ling and Affilorama are definitely one of the more legitimate groups within an industry that is known for “shiesters”. He is definitely one of the good guys of the industry.
However, because of the sheer number of upsells and some what could potentially be deemed as “misinformation” or “outdated” within the training techniques, it can be confusing to the beginner where to get started. This is one program that should be approached with a careful and well thought out plan of action, and you should be starting with the very basics (Premium Membership) if you do decide to join and then adding on additional tools and products if you feel comfortable enough and have a suitable budget for it.
Final Product Overview
Name: Affilorama
Sales Page: www.affilorama.com
Owner: Mark Ling
Overall Rank: 80 out of 100
VERDICT: Legit, overall quality training with a few flaws, expensive upsells
Want to Become an Expert Affiliate Marketer?
If you have an questions or comments or you would like to add your own personal review of Affiloram, I would love your feedback within the comments section below (I will get back to you right away). Thanks again.
Thank you for your reviews Kyle,
I am a member of Affilorama starter membership, but am looking at joining WA premium for a while. The only problem is, I may not be able to afford the ongoing premium membership, which means I will lose access to the WA community.
Are there any other websites/forums/communities who I could get in touch with once this happens?
There are lots of forums out there in this space, the problem with forums is it often times equates to the blind leading the blind and then anyone with a decent amount of knowledge usually hangs out in these types of forums with ulterior motives (to poach customers).
You may want to consider the yearly option (which is heavily discounted at WA), if you are not interested in monthly payments.
Hi Kyle 🙂
I am impressed of the amount of detailed information you’ve got about Mark Ling’s Affilorama
I am actually a member of both Wealthy Affiliate and Affilorama I went premium on Wealthy Affiliate and I don’t regret it at all 🙂 I love every single aspect of wealthy affiliate !
As you said affilorama is a good product and one of the most trusted programs out there.
I would have given 85/100 grade for Affilorama and 99/100 for Wealthy Affiliate 🙂 It’s great !
Ps: I am ranking on page one for Affilorama
Thanks for the feedback Juba and I am really glad your are enjoying your experience and taking advantage of the platform at Wealthy Affiliate.
Affilorama is definitely a quality program as well and Mark Ling definitely has experience within the affiliate marketing world, he also teaches what works and doesn’t theorize about what “might” work like many of the gurus out there that are simply selling their hyped up products which are teaching things that simply don’t work.
Hi Kyle.
Thanks for your views. However I have a question for you.
Evidently you are competitors, but how can I be sure that your information is not outdated or harmful?
Regards
The wonderful thing about both Affilorama and Wealthy Affiliate is that they both offer completely free trials. Very few companies can do this within the industry because they wouldn’t have any customers if they showed them what their offer was for (or lack thereof).
The best bet would be to join both and see what is the best for you Sue.
Hey Kyle, Awesome read! I was actually looking into affilorama and what I like about them is they focus only on email marketing and that’s something i’m really interested in getting into. I love that affilorama helps you by doing a lot of the work for you, but I guess that’s not great in the long run!
I just signed up for wealthy affiliate, but I was wondering if you guys focus at all on email marketing. I see a lot of the content is for blogging and I am not much of a blogger. I haven’t signed up for premium yet. I want to focus on squeeze pages and building email lists. I just worry about writing content and if it will be good. If you guys have courses on email marketing I am sold!
Yeah, I would agree and say that Affilorama is one of the better programs in the industry.
The thing I recommend in respect to email marketing is learning first about the foundation of your business, your website, and how to drive an audience to that (traffic). Without traffic (PPC, FB Ads, Social, SEO), you have very little going for you and it there is no point in worry about building a list or marketing to that list.
So that is the first step. Once you have traffic and you understand how to scale traffic, then you can incorporate an email marketing aspect to your business. There is an incredible amount of training about email marketing within Wealthy Affiliate.
I am looking to start an e-business but I really have not much or too much idea and my basics with computer is really just the basic. Will you be able to help?
I am looking at affiliate marketing and also marketing own product (say e-book). Any suggestions you could share with me? Thanks
I can definitely help and there are also some products/services out there that can help you out. Affilorama is definitely one of the better ones out there although there are some drawbacks as per mentioned above. Mark Ling is a reputable guy with a lot of experience in the industry.
If you want to get started for free, there are several different approaches you could take. If you wanted to work with me personally, you would be able to get rolling at WealthyAffiliate.com. You can create your Starter account and by lesson 4 you are going to have your very own niche website up and running (and it is still free). This is training that will educate you on how to build a successful business in any niche…and at the end of the day what you promote, will be up to you and what will mesh best with your audience (this could be your own e-book, an affiliate program, or otherwise).
Outside of that, the only other free service I am aware of is actually Affilorama (to get rolling). Any product in my opinion that doesn’t have a very low entry point ($1, free) and let you have a look before you invest into it, is typically hiding something in particular within this industry.
Hope this helps you out.
great read , just one question. If your site is up to date why is all the comments and replies dated 2013?
You were reading the oldest comments Mike, the site is kept up to date and is very active. If you look at the top comments they were from 2015. The Affilorma program has lost a lot of popularity in recent years so it is not a popular search though, thus the activity has definitely dwindled within this thread over the years.
If you ever do have any questions about affiliate marketing or creating a business online though, do let me know. I will be happy to help you out.
Hey Kyle, does WA offer a affiliate program?
Yes, WA does have an affiliate program with some very lucrative payouts/incentives. You can actually take part in the affiliate program as either a free starter member or a Premium member.
Thank u for your info. I have been searching for help to set up a small online business selling ebooks on craft that I am writing. Also wanting to get into affiliate marketing to help earn a small income. I came across Affilorama and another one called Google Sniper have u heard of this one and is it any good. Thank you. I am off to join your program
Stay away from Google Sniper. It is a known scam Bev and I also recommend that you check out my #1 ranked product before investing your time and energy into the affilorama system. The techniques are becoming more and more dated within Affilorama as time goes on and people are actually experience negative SEO (not getting ANY rankings in Google) as a result.
I know this post is over a year old but I thought I would share my recent Affilorama experience. I definitely agree it is “legit” but it took me a couple of weeks after purchasing the Jetpack to think this wasn’t the right thing for me.
After they tried to convince me to keep at it I agreed for two more weeks before finally requesting a refund. I also noticed that some of the tactics were outdated and that this was becoming a money pit that was making someone else rich…NOT ME!
I kept asking them if the Jetpack product was so good why was I still having to do so much work to make it work for me and why I needed to purchase other products to make mine profitable. Really the only reason I bought it in the first place was the 60 day money back guarantee which I obviously took advantage of. The other issue for me was getting tech support for my site.
Since they are located in Australia (I’m in the US) it was very time consuming as opposed to logging into my GoDaddy (or other hosting service) and fixing plug in issues, etc. I am glad I am getting my money back but wish I would have read this article first since it would have saved me a month’s work towards something more productive (TIME IS MONEY!). Thanks!
Yeah, that is a huge problem and it is not just with the Affilorama program and their products…it is with this entire industry. Companies will push out a product/service that gets rarely updated even YEARS later, by that time the concepts behind the training/tool are irrelevant and outdated and this is the case with most of Affilorama’s products. They are outdated and if you use them, it can actually negatively impact your business.
Anyone with any knowledge in the industry understands that things like Backlinks and programs like Jetpack are totally useless. You need to get yourself involved in a community that is current and keeps up with the rate at which the Internet world evolves (like Wealthy Affiliate).
I purchased the the affilorama Jetpack, and I agree that the customer support is absolutely terrible. In a couple of the jet packs the videos in the newsletters didn’t work, after going back and forth with them via email, as they wouldn’t take phone calls about this issue, they said I would have to fix it myself, but it was the affiliates that Mark Ling chose to go in the newsletter, ugh too hard to deal with them. Customer support is so bad to resolve issues. I would def avoid dealing with affilorama and wouldn’t recommend affilorama.
Sorry to hear about your experiences Joanne. Although there are definitely some good points with Affilorama, there are becoming more and more negatives as time goes on. Not only are they promoting ideas and technology that are OUTDATED and will actually do great harm to your business, they don’t offer much support to their customers. These two things alone should leave people second guessing any product, Affilorama included.
Hi Kyle,
You mentioned that Mark Ling’s ulterior motive, is that he will benefit from others hard work.You said he trains people to be his affiliate’s and this earns him more money? You didn’t elaborate on this topic. What do you mean and in what way? Thanks Terry
He has products that he owns within the Clickbank network that he recommends that you promote once you are a member of affilorama (as well as the Affilorama products). So you in essence are paying to get training on how to promote the products that are owned by Mark. This is not necessarily a horrible thing, but it is something that you should be aware of prior to joining.
Hi Kyle.
I am member over at WA and love the wealth of info over there. This is a bit off topic but I landed here today in a convoluted way by calling a work from home craigslist ad, landing on an Affluentry training webinar and going on a internet search of scams that led me here, lol! What do you know about these Affluentry guys? Scam or no scam?
Definitely a scam and you should absolutely stay away from this program. This however is in no way associated with Affilorama (just so you know). Really glad you are enjoying WA Christine!
Hi Kyle, Great information about Affilorama. Thanks!
You mentioned your concern about outdated information that worked in the past, but can harm a person’s business today.
What does WA do about outdated information on your site? I’ve noticed that WA has training from 2008, 2009, 2010 with topics about getting on first page of Google, SEO tactics, and getting backlinks. Have these been removed or do you consider them evergreen content?
We are constantly updating our information on our website for accuracy, with the latest improvements and updates (system wide) happening just this month. We keep our training current and there are 1,000’s of training modules and 10,000’s of active discussions at any given time that are available to keep you current and in the know.
We remove training that is no longer relevant as well, much of the back link training has been phased completely out and replaced and much of the strategies that we focus on worked then, will work now, and will work for years to come.
Hi Kyle, great read! Just before joining WA I had joined up as a premium member of Affilorama. Within a few days I requested a refund. Why?
(1) The videos were out of date.
(2) The programs used to train you were the full programs that you had to pay for to use. It said you could use the free options but you couldn’t due to the limitations.
(3) No support directly with Mark.
(4) I already knew all of the premium content. To me the premium content was pretty basic stuff. Stuff you get in WA for Free!
(5) I found some practices outdated and damaging to implement to your business.
(6) The training was focused around building many websites and using clickbank. So first of all you were limited to picking clickbank products only and then being told to build lots of websites etc. It just made me feel that it was all about making money without putting in real quality content. To me the reader is who we should be thinking about. Not picking something we know nothing about, trying to blag our way through it, add affiliate links and then replicate.
There rant over! 🙂
I am continuing to hear the same things Andrew.
Outdated training, harmful techniques are still being taught (like mass backlinking, building mini sites, etc) and that the Premium content lacks substance.
It is unfortunate that this is happening because the only thing worse than “no” knowledge is the wrong knowledge and advice. That appears to be what people are getting over at Affilorama which is actually hurting their businesses.
What really works. Before I start to promote my business (travel)I would like to know where to really start.
Thanks for the honest review.
John K
Hey John,
Building a business the PROPER way works…and there are really no secrets out there on how to do this (although there are lots of shady gurus that would like to tell you otherwise). I can definitely help you out with your travel site and show you how to turn your idea into a long term business. To do this, grab a starter membership (no cost) at Wealthy Affiliate and you will be able to get in touch with me there.
A business online looks like this:
(1) Getting a niche website up and running
(2) Building out content
(3) Getting content ranked in Google (leads to traffic)
(4) Monetizing that traffic (there are 101 ways to do this)
This is the process that I cam going to help you out with and that the training/platform at Wealthy Affiliate is going to offer you.
I’m new at all this and don’t know where to go or who to believe. Can someone help?
I can take you by the hand and show you what you need to build your own business online. What I suggest you do is create a Starter account within Wealthy Affiliate (completely free) and I will be in touch with you there. It is a community that includes EVERYTHING you need to build a business, from the websites/hosting, the training, the video classes, the keyword tools, the support, the networking and interaction and the personal mentoring.
Good review Kyle. Affilorama is ok and I do think Mark Ling is reputable but here’s the thing I can’t stand about him.
I’m on his list. And whenever there’s a big launch the guy sends out a mail for you to buy whatever with his big package bonus. He’s a marketer yes and I get that.
But, why is he going sending out a mail for a program that offers affiliate marketing training of some sort? Isn’t the Affilorama program good enough?
The last email I really had to question this guy’s credibility with is one he sent out for a high ticket program that offers training for Fulfillment by Amazon. If I’m trying to learn how to make money with affiliate marketing, the last thing I need is to be distracted by some Amazon ecommerce program and your bonuses.
That really ticked me off and it also got me thinking how I’ve NEVER seen you and Carson do this. You guys really protect the community from distractions and help us focus. You guys know the obstacles faced by novice affiliate marketers, the “shiny objects” and you address these things by getting involved with the launches and the JVs. Much respect for that.
Nothing wrong if Mr. Ling wanna promote something every now and then but at least make it something that is complimentary to Affilorama. That’s the point I want to make here.
I hear your frustration Jay. I wrote a blog post awhile back on the ethics of the “circle promotion” and why so many of these gurus do this. I didn’t realize Mark Ling was so bad for this, but I do think it is a cowardly move to promote other products that are the same as yours.
You don’t see Coke promoting Pepsi or Apple promoting Samsung and that is for a reason. They have confidence in their product and them promoting something else would indicate that their product is inferior to others. Perhaps that is what Mark Ling is stating, that his product is OK but there is much better stuff out there. A definite red flag for anyone considering to buy into this program.
This industry is one that behaves in a way that no other industry behaves and it comes down to marketers putting their own financial situation before their audiences and I think this is the case of all the promotions you have been getting from Mark.
I found Affiliorama when I was just starting out. I was impressed with the free information but the price point was a bit hefty.
Now that I have been with Wealthy Affiliates for awhile, I see that this is to get you in the door.
I recently reviewed this product and when I went back to look at what they were offering, I was appalled at the lack of current products.
I was quite put off by the upsells as well. This place was once a good choice. It has deteriorated by not keeping up with the changes that have occurred.
Yeah, you are not alone Craig. I found their offering to be a bit dated as it is apparent that they are not keeping up with the speed of Google, which can have some severe affects in terms of rankings and in some cases, getting sandboxed in the search engines for using spam techniques.
A few red flags for me were definitely:
(1) PLR content (dupe, not good) – PLR is a thing of the past and has no tangible use for someone trying to create a business online
(2) Article Spinners – These are an absolutely horrible idea and one of the “feature” tools
(3) Backlink Emphasis – This can really hurt your SEO these days, in more cases than not.
(4) High ticket AffiloProducts – Upsells have always been a red flag within any reviews that I do
Thanks for stopping by Craig and I do appreciate your feedback.
Hi Kyle…..
Thanks for the honest review…
I have been a part of this program and I can definitely affirm to the fact that this is one of the top-notch product we have in the industry today.
This is the same training program that made me my first dollar online. I respect and admire Mark Ling a lot. He is one of the most genuine and honest guys in the IM arena.
The only little shortfall that I do have to agree on your review is that it is sometimes quite difficult to get any response or feedback from Mark himself. But I guess he is quite a busy guy and it might be a big problem for him to be there all the time to answer to every question being asked!
I really do appreciate the fact that YOU are always present with your personal support in WA. That’s absolutely commendable and rare!
But otherwise, Mark Ling’s Affiloblueprint is one of the best affiliate training programs available. I can’t rave about it enough (after all its the reason I made my first ever affiliate sale online)! 🙂
Regards!
I do agree that Mark Ling is one of the more honest, stand-up folks in the IM arena. It definitely needs more guys like Mark, because folks and programs like this are few and far between (even though I do have some negatives associated with the Affilorama products).
Thanks for your feedback!
Hi Kyle, it’s good you didn’t come down too hard on Mark – he’s not a bad guy. I think this program has a free option too which had some good training if I remember correctly. I haven’t been on the site in years and have to agree with Jillian, if he’s nowhere to be found that’s not cool.
Yeah, from what I have seen and heard, Mark is a great guy and well respected. There are aspects to the program which I do think are misleading people and this is a matter of the training not being updated regularly and not having a community that can react at the speed that the Internet evolves. Overall, some very solid training and I do agree with you and Jillian, the owner should be “present” at all times if they want to be a credible resource in this, what has become, a sell first and then fight with the wolves industry.
Hi Kyle,
I have to agree with you about Affilorama here. I reviewed the program myself, and tried out their “free” membership, but I was sorely disappointed in what it had to offer. The free training wasn’t anywhere near the level of Wealthy Affiliate’s, at least in my opinion. However I suppose everyone is different and what works for some may not work for all.
But I think what bothered me the most, (excluding the high price tag) was the fact that it is one of the better training programs out there for online marketing, yet they just offer so much outdated information and bad tools!
All that aside, I am a little confused about the backlinking as it seems there are different opinions on the issue. It seems like you’re saying they’re outright BAD and can de-rank a site, yet Carson says they don’t actually hurt you, but just don’t help? Well I suppose in the end it’s all the same message of “don’t focus on backlinks”. Right? Heh.
Yeah, backlinks can harm an “existing” site that is ranked, by devaluing all links to a sum value of ZERO. This means that you can lose rankings from having low quality backlinks and by showing Google that you are forcing backlinks. This is such a KEY part of the training at Affilorama that it is worrying to think of how many people could be adversely affected by this information. Hopefully they do update it.
If this is correct, then you can kill your competitor’s site by purchasing backlinks to their site. I thought they just simply gave those obvious backlinks weight zero. I didn’t realize that they gave all links 0 weight.
They took a clean swipe initially with the first roll out of their Google Panda and Penguin updates and they have sophisticated algorithms (they are smarter than to just let competition blast a site) that will determine the quality of backlinks and how natural backlinks are. They don’t release exact details of algo (that is why they are Google), but I can tell you that if you are making backlinks part of your ranking game plan you are going to suffer the consequences.
Ouch! Those are some hefty price tags for that information. I haven’t seen what the quality is like, but I know there are similar or better products out there for cheaper.
I’m also really surprised that so many ‘training communities’ are pushing PLR content. I’m not the brightest bulb in the barrel, but I thought it was pretty much known that spun and re-purposed content does not rank at all in Google. More importantly, it’s general info that doesn’t really appeal to any niche audiences.
Yeah, PLR articles are useless and the fact that this is a big part of a “paid” product is not good for the, in many cases, unknowledgeable and unsuspecting customer. Many people put trust into products like this assuming that everything they say and do will work, when in actuality it can actually become a detriment to their businesses.
I was a member of Affilorama for a year and I bought into all of their packages, the affiloprint, the jetpack and also the WordPress theme. They were all pretty good content, but at the same time they weren’t great.
A few times I went into the forum within the membership hoping to at some point see Mark Ling and connect with him, but there wasn’t a trace of him. I feel that when you have a community of people that are paying you, it should be an obligation to help these folks. I mean, he is the expert.
That didn’t sit well with me and I have since quit Affilorama and am now part of your membership Kyle. I can’t thank you enough for all the help you have given me with my niche campaigns and I love your video training. It truly is a light and day difference over the training and support I was getting inside affilorama.
If you do join affilorama, just get the regular membership. The rest is a bunch of fromage in my opinion and I didn’t end up using any of it and didn’t make any money from it.
I agree with you, the “additional” components of the program can be quite high ticket for some individuals and will ultimately serve little benefit. Mark Ling and Affilorama are reputable but ultimately I do feel they could do a better job of keeping their training and tools up to date with the way things are going on the Internet. Things like backlinking, PLR and article spinning have not been a good idea for some time but they are being promoting and condoned across all of the products offered at Affilorama.
Thanks for stopping by and offering your insights into this program Jillian.