7 Best Affiliate Marketing Course Reviews in 2023 | Earn Passive Income Online!

Affiliate marketing is one of the best and most popular online money-making endeavors. In fact, it fuels 15-20% of all online sales. There are many reasons behind the popularity of affiliate marketing, from its low cost of start-up and a low risk to its high ROI.

Making it in the world of affiliate marketing is no easy task, though, as the competition is pretty stiff. This is especially the case if you’re a complete beginner.

Fortunately, there are many high-quality online affiliate marketing courses on the web that cover the entire business model from A to Z. 

Whether you’re a beginner who’s just starting out or an experienced marketer looking to brush up on newer tactics, you ought to stick around, as we’re about to help you find the best affiliate marketing course for your needs. Or is a dropshipping course better for you?

3 Top Affiliate Marketing Courses

[Best Overall] 

1. ClickBank Success: Affiliate Marketing Without a Website

The course consists of 2.5 hours of on-demand video content as well as 23 downloadable resources. Enrollees get to enjoy lifetime access to the course and a professional certificate upon completion.

4.9/5 

  •  2.5 hours of on-demand video content
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
  • It has over 10,000 positive reviews

[Best for the Money] 

2. Skillshare Online Affiliate Marketing Courses

It showcases real-life examples of big-name entrepreneurs using affiliate links in their online businesses to generate passive income.

4.8/5 

  • Training sessions progress is stored online
  • Creativity and enthusiasm of the instructors
  • Low cost of entry

[Best for Beginners] 

3. Income School Project 24

This course revolves around teaching students how to start a niche site or YouTube channel that can earn them a full-time income within 24 months, hence the ‘24’ in the course’s name.

4.7/5 

  • Live online courses, interactive classes with individual attention
  • Industry-recognized certification
  • Exclusive Learning manager

What Is the Best Affiliate Marketing Course?

Different levels of experience require different types of content as well as different teaching methods, so it's hard to say that a single affiliate marketing course is perfect for everyone.

To accommodate all levels of experience, we decided to round up the 7 best affiliate marketing courses available today. We're quite confident that one of the following courses will meet your needs.

Best Affiliate Marketing Course Reviews

Udemy’s broad assortment of affiliate marketing courses is nothing short of impressive, and ClickBank Success: Affiliate Marketing Without a Website is by far the most popular of the pack. The course consists of 2.5 hours of on-demand video content as well as 23 downloadable resources. Enrollees get to enjoy lifetime access to the course and a professional certificate upon completion.

As the name suggests, this digital marketing course is formulated to help you make money online through ClickBank, which is one of the most prominent affiliate marketplaces today. Whether you’re an absolute beginner or have quite a bit of experience in the world of affiliate marketing, this course will fill you in on the ins and outs of ClickBank affiliate marketing.

The man behind this course is an online business coach and business owner by the name of KC Tan. KC specializes in e-commerce, WordPress, and SEO. To add, he’s the founder of WebSprout Academy, which is an online learning platform dedicated to helping self-employed business owners scale their businesses. KC Tan has helped almost 90,000 students and has over 10,000 positive reviews.

This affiliate marketing with no website course consists of 62 lessons divided into 8 modules. The course starts out with a 5-lesson introduction that spans around 9 minutes. Throughout this introduction, you’ll learn how to use ClickBank, how to set up a ClickBank account, and some of the most common problems you might face when trying to set up your account. 

You then move on to learn about ClickBank’s key metrics, passive income, how you get paid through Payoneer and other channels, research and selection of affiliate products, how to pinpoint non-profitable affiliate products, and how to avoid beginner mistakes.

Thereafter, KC Tan begins explaining tried and tested direct linking strategies and how you can choose the perfect product for direct linking. You also learn how to match traffic to chosen products and how you can acquire affiliate products without any shady business. The course then progresses to cover traffic generation secrets, traffic sources, ClickBank conversion, sales with low investment, and more.

One of our favorite modules in this course is the one that covers how you can secure long-term income via lead capturing. The module consists of 10 lectures that span around 26 minutes. It’ll teach you how to create a squeeze page without the need for a domain or hosting and how you can get people to subscribe to your page. KC Tan also sheds light on various case studies of different successful squeeze pages.

The last module, disregarding the course’s conclusion and bonus content, covers how you can create a buzzing Facebook page without running any ads. It also covers how the different link formats that are allowed on Facebook and how you can shorten affiliate links to fit within your Facebook page without looking all wonky.

All things considered, we truly think that this is the best affiliate marketing training program for ClickBank on the web. It’s super insightful yet budget-friendly. It puts a huge emphasis on building a solid affiliate marketing business without spending much.

The course comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you’re not satisfied with its content, you can get a full refund with no questions asked. 

Pros

  • 2.5 hours of on-demand video content
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
  • It has over 10,000 positive reviews

Cons

  • I have not found anything that needs to be improved

Like Udemy, Skillshare is a prominent online learning platform rich with affiliate marketing courses. The thing about Skillshare’s affiliate marketing training programs, however, is that they’re more introductory and geared toward beginners. So, if you’re new to the whole concept of affiliate marketing, you may want to check out some of Skillshare’s offerings.

We typically like to shed light on specific products when we’re doing our reviews, but as we were sifting through Skillshare’s affiliate marketing courses, we came to the conclusion that most of them are worth checking out, especially when you take into consideration how short they are. Some courses are as short as 20 minutes!

Before we discuss our favorites, we feel the need to repeat ourselves by saying that Skillshare’s affiliate marketing courses are merely introductory. They’re not full-fledged programs that will cover the science and art of affiliate marketing, per se; they’ll just teach you ropes and help get your feet wet.

One of our favorite Skillshare courses on affiliate marketing is Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle: A New Entrepreneur Guide. It’s a 20-minute course presented by teacher Jules Tillman. She explains what affiliate marketing is and isn’t. She also goes over the different rules you must follow when trying to implement affiliate links. Julia also covers how you can go about promoting affiliate links.

The main reason we’re fond of Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle is that it showcases real-life examples of big-name entrepreneurs using affiliate links in their online businesses to generate passive income. It’s not the most actionable course out there, but it’s perfect for newbies. 

Another popular affiliate marketing training course on Skillshare is Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest. It’s a 30-minute course that covers everything from how to select the ideal affiliate program and why you should start utilizing Pinterest for your business, all the way to commission junction, merchant selection, and Pinterest analytics. The course is tutored by Med Heddy Kesraoui.

If you’re somewhat experienced in the field of affiliate marketing and you’re looking for an affiliate marketing course that's a bit more advanced, you should check out Skillshare’s Set-Up an Affiliate Marketing Campaign for Your Brand. This 50-minute affiliate marketing training program covers identifying brand differentiators, setting irresistible offers, finding suitable affiliate marketers to pitch to, creating affiliate campaigns, and more. The instructor of this course is author and fashion e-commerce consultant Luna Vega.

Skillshare is home to plenty of other excellent courses that can help you get started with affiliate marketing. Just keep in mind that most of these courses are formulated primarily for beginners. Experienced marketers can benefit from some of these courses, but they won’t find them all that comprehensive. It's also worth noting that Skillshare has a few free affiliate marketing courses.

Pros

  • It it showcases real-life examples
  • Creativity and enthusiasm of the instructors
  • Low cost of entry

Cons

  • Someone may find the courses too short

[Best For Beginners]

3. Income School Project 24

4.7/5 

It’s highly likely that you’ve come across Income School’s Project 24 on your quest to find the best affiliate marketing courses, and rightfully so. This course revolves around teaching students how to start a niche site or YouTube channel that can earn them a full-time income within 24 months, hence the ‘24’ in the course’s name.

This course is geared toward beginners who are looking for a step-by-step, data-driven approach that they can implement in a specific niche to acquire predictable income. 

The course not only focuses on affiliate marketing but also digital products and ads. It's open all the time, so you can enroll whenever you’re ready.

Cost-wise, this isn’t the most affordable affiliate marketing program out there. It’s not a crazy high-ticket course, but it’s not within the same price range as Udemy or Skillshare courses, for instance. Please bear in mind that there are also incidental costs that come with taking this course, such as the cost of setting up affiliate sites. Such costs are quite minimal, though.

Instead of walking you through the curriculum of the course like we usually do, we’ll just point out the positives and negatives of the course. For starters, we like the fact that this course focuses heavily on niche sites. Creating a general blog dedicated to a broad niche isn’t the smartest way to go considering the stiff competition. The more specific you are with your site, the more traction you’ll get.

Another thing we like about this affiliate marketing course is that it puts a huge emphasis on being actionable. The faster you publish your content, the quicker SEO will work in your favor. The content doesn’t have to be 100% perfect. Just publish it and refine it later. We also like the course’s content, in general. It’s not overly fancy the way other courses are. It’s grounded and relatable.

Income School’s Project 24 has an active community where you’ll receive a lot of encouragement and support from other affiliate marketers. You’ll find several posts of different students sharing how they were able to cross certain milestones so that other learners can benefit from their experience.

One of the strongest selling points of this affiliate marketing course is that it sets clear and realistic expectations. It doesn’t promise you instant gratification the way other courses do. Further, the course is remarkably well-structured and easy to follow. It grabs you by the hand and walks you step by step through the process of becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Project 24 isn’t without flaws, though. For starters, it’s not a lifetime membership type, of course. You’ll have to renew your membership every year (lower price). Further, we don’t like the fact that there are no refunds with this program, be it full or partial. If you don’t mind these two drawbacks, this affiliate marketing course is right up your alley.  

Pros

  • Live online courses, interactive classes with individual attention
  • Industry-recognized certification
  • Exclusive Learning manager

Cons

  • It’s not a lifetime membership type

Wealthy Affiliate is an online business academy that was launched back in 2005. The academy focuses primarily on the affiliate marketing business model of generating passive income. The academy has hundreds of thousands of active members helping each other and sharing their experiences.

Wealthy Affiliate’s task-based teaching approach has proven effective in helping students master different skills vital to making money online.

Some of these skills include knowing how to build high-quality affiliate websites, how to make money online, how to perform niche research, how to carry out keyword research, and how to utilize affiliate marketing SEO techniques.

Owners and co-founders of Wealthy Affiliate, Kyle and Carson, are among the most active members of the WA community, sharing their expertise and well-rounded background with other members and students. The pair spend most of their days trying to help students improve upon their projects and increase their means of acquiring passive income.

There’s a lot that we like about Wealthy Affiliate, first of which is that there’s something for everyone. Whether you’re an absolute beginner or an experienced affiliate marketer, WA’s extensive library of content will certainly be of value to you. We also like that Wealthy Affiliate courses adopt a self-paced learning approach, so you don’t have to worry about being pestered by instructors.

In addition to covering all, there is to know about making money online, Wealthy Affiliate courses help instill a business mindset in students. This mindset contributes to successful entrepreneurship. We also love the fact that Wealthy Affiliate has an advanced support system composed of classrooms, forums, instant chat, direct messaging, and comment sections.

Note that you don’t need a credit card to join Wealthy Affiliate. The platform runs on a membership model. The free membership gives you limited access to most of the training material and website-building tools. It also gives you 7-day access to the WA community. The premium membership, on the other hand, grants you full access to all of the content, tools, and community.

Like any learning platform, Wealthy Affiliate is not without flaws. Two of the attributes that help set WA apart from other business learning platforms can also be viewed as drawbacks. The diverse range of content, for instance, can be quite overwhelming for a newcomer. There’s a “Getting Started” button that helps address this problem, but still, if you’re not focused, you’ll easily get overwhelmed.

Secondly, Wealthy Affiliate’s active community and interaction between students can be viewed as a negative because it can be distracting. It’s also worth noting that there are too many buttons and options that can also be distracting sometimes. We personally prefer cleaner layouts that have a lot of white spaces, but that’s just us.

All things considered, there’s no denying the tremendous value that Wealthy Affiliate has to offer its members, whether they’re novice or professional marketers. If you’re able to maintain focus on your end goal, this online learning platform is most definitely for you. 

Pros

  • The platform runs on a membership model. 
  • It help instill a business mindset in students
  • A self-paced learning approach

Cons

  • The diverse range of content, for instance, can be quite overwhelming for a newcomer

Affiliate Marketing Mastery is the flagship affiliate marketing training program of Stefan James, a 7-figure online entrepreneur, and business coach. Stefan is also the founder of Project Life Mastery, which is one of the most popular online business and self-development programs. It’s also worth noting that Stefan is an affiliate of Amazing Selling Machine, a popular Amazon FBA training course.

Affiliate Marketing Mastery teaches students how to make money online with the aid of a tried and tested system. The affiliate course will help you understand the entire model of the affiliate marketing business from A to Z, as well as the fundamentals and strategies that are implemented by successful affiliate marketers.

This affiliate marketing course is composed of 7 individual modules, with each module containing a host of lessons. There are also a few bonus modules at the end of the course covering advanced strategies, interviews with affiliate marketing experts, case studies, website reviews, and more. In total, the course contains over 70 on-demand video tutorials that span a little over 20 hours, in addition to downloadable resources, weekly webinars, and a 90-day email coaching program.

The course starts out with an introduction that’ll help you get your mindset in the right place. Next, you start learning about niche research, from how to find a profitable niche to how to select the right affiliate products. The third module covers the brand building. It shows you how to set up high-quality affiliate websites via WordPress and how you can use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms to your advantage.

The fourth module is all about creating quality content. Stefan James puts a huge emphasis on building relationships and pre-selling your target audience. The following module covers advanced marketing strategies that you can use to garner traffic and attract visitors, followers, and subscribers, depending on the platform you’re trying to promote.

You then move on to learn about traffic monetization and earning revenue. The seventh and final core module covers performance, analytics, split testing, tracking, and optimization. As you can probably tell, the course is comprehensive through and through.

It’s worth noting that, as an aspiring affiliate marketer, you’ll need to have a few essential tools at your disposal, including web hosting, domain registration, email marketing provider, and a keyword research tool for SEO. Sadly, Affiliate Marketing Mastery doesn’t offer access to any tools, which is actually the case with a lot of courses.

Cost-wise, Affiliate Marketing Mastery is one of the costliest affiliate marketing courses available. It’s actually the most expensive on our list. However, if you don’t want to make a lump-sum payment, you can pay for this course in installments; 3 installments, to be exact. Fortunately, this affiliate marketing course is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you’re not satisfied with its content for whatever reason, you can get a full refund, no questions asked.

Pros

  • Affiliate marketing business from A to Z
  • The course is composed of 7 individual modules, with each module containing a host of lessons
  • It contains over 70 on-demand video tutorials

Cons

  • It is expensive

Learn How to Build High-Quality Affiliate Websites is another excellent course from Udemy. This course is designed for absolute beginners. The only prerequisite you need in order to take this course is WordPress familiarity. The course consists of 7 hours of on-demand video content, 5-6 articles, and a couple of downloadable resources. Upon completion, students earn a professional certificate.

The course is developed and tutored by Andrew Williams, an expert in SEO, WordPress, and digital marketing as a whole. Andrew has a total of 29 courses on Udemy and has helped over 100,000 students. Further, Andrew has over 25,000 positive reviews, and his overall instructor rating is 4.5/5.

The course is composed of 8 different modules. It starts out with an introduction and an overview of the affiliate website built in the course. Then, it goes over different monetization techniques, including how to monetize a website, niche research and selection, affiliate program selection, product selection, domain name and extensions, and WordPress installation.

The course goes in-depth with regard to initial site setup by covering Gmail and Gravatar, WordPress settings, WordPress themes and plugins, author bios, and Google analytics and search console. Thereafter, you’ll learn about website content, from website homepages and web content mind-mapping to researching content ideas and adding staple pages such as contact and legal pages.

The course doesn’t stop there, though; it teaches you how to set up social media channels, from how to set up a Facebook page to a Twitter account to an IFTTT account. It also teaches you how to set up automated Facebook and Twitter posting. The course then continues to cover blogs and so forth.

As you can tell, this course is designed for those who have no idea how to build an affiliate website. It’s not the most comprehensive when it comes to explaining the whole model of affiliate marketing, though, which is why we recommend pairing it with another Udemy course that does so.

Learn How to Build High-Quality Affiliate Websites is quite affordable, so pairing it with another course won’t set you back a whole lot. Like virtually all Udemy courses, this one comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you’re not satisfied with its content, you can request a full refund with no questions asked.

Pros

  • Great for beginners
  • Upon completion, students earn a professional certificate
  • It goes over different monetization techniques

Cons

  • It’s not the most comprehensive when it comes to explaining the whole model of affiliate marketing

Beginner Affiliate Marketing to Start in 1 Day is by far one of the best affiliate marketing courses for newbies. It leaves no stones unturned, teaching you all about the umbrella that is a digital marketing and how you can start earning passive income on ClickBank, Amazon, and JVZoo without the need for a website.

The course comprises 10.5 hours of on-demand video content, 6 articles, and 47 downloadable resources. Upon completing the course, you’ll earn a professional certificate solidifying your status as an affiliate marketer. Best of all, the course is surprisingly affordable. It comes with a 30-day guarantee as well.

Beginner Affiliate Marketing is developed by one of the most prominent online entrepreneurs today, Alex Gendinik. Alex has over 10 years of experience in SEO, digital marketing, and online entrepreneurship, and he has coached over 1,000 online entrepreneurs. Alex has 130 courses on Udemy, having helped over 320,000 students, so it’s safe to say that he has extensive expertise.

Okay, so how does this course differ from other competitor courses? Well, a lot of courses preach the same strategy, which is to set up a landing page or two, use Instagram or Facebook ads to drive traffic, and just sit back until you make some money. This doesn’t really work. For starters, you’re not getting free traffic since Facebook and Instagram ads are quite expensive. Secondly, social media platforms don’t drive that much traffic anyway; traffic that converts, at least.

This course, on the other hand, flips the table on its competition by first highlighting worthwhile affiliate programs that you can join today, how you can promote your affiliate products right from the get-go, how to choose a profitable niche and best practices that you can implement to make the most money.

The course also has individual modules for search engine optimization, effective marketing to drive traffic, keyword research, social media marketing, email marketing and transponders, YouTube marketing, and many, many more.

What we love the most about this course is that it has a personal touch that’s hard to find in other courses. This is because Alex holds office hours with his students so that he can coach them through the entire process of building a successful affiliate marketing business. Students are free to start discussions with Alex and message him with private questions. Alex guarantees a response within 24 hours.  This is one course you don't want to miss.

Pros

  • Excellent for newbies
  • It comprises 10.5 hours of on-demand video content
  • It has individual modules for search engine optimization

Cons

  • I have not found anything that needs to be improved

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is basically an online sales strategy that enables product owners to increase their sales by allowing “affiliates'' to promote their products. Marketers earn a commission for every product recommendation. Affiliates can recommend such products on their affiliate sites, blogs, or social media accounts.

As you can probably tell, affiliate marketing is a performance-based tactic. The better you are at it, the higher your chances of generating greater income. Note, however, there are different types of commission models in the business of affiliate marketing.

Marketers can be paid with the Cost Per Sale (CPA) model, which entails earning a commission once a product or service is sold. The commission is typically a percentage of the overall cost of said product or service.

Marketers can also be paid with the Cost Per Click (CPC) model, meaning they get paid for every visit they send to the product owner’s site. Lastly, marketers can be paid with the Cost Per Lead (CPL) model, which enables them to earn a commission for every contact they generate via filling out forms or other means of acquiring leads. 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

There are five main steps that you need to take in order to venture into affiliate marketing. Firstly, you need to find and join an affiliate program. Secondly, select the products or services you want to promote. Next, generate unique affiliate links for the products or services you selected.

Subsequently, share those unique links on your website, blog, social media platform, or other. And lastly, collect your commission whenever someone uses your unique links.

Please bear in mind that commission rates vary from one product owner to another. You can earn as low as 5% or as high as 50% per sale, depending on the product owner you’re affiliated with. Note also that there are affiliate marketing programs that payout flat rates per sale rather than a percentage of the sale.

What Are the Highest Paying Affiliate Programs?

Now that you've learned about the best affiliate marketing courses and how affiliate marketing works, it's time to go over some of the highest-paying affiliate networks out there.

  • ClickBank. A platform that specializes in digital products and has over 200 million customers. Many of ClickBank’s products come with commissions as high as 40%. Product owners have to pay $75 to list their products on ClickBank, whereas marketers don’t have to pay a single dollar.
  • JVZoo. Similar to ClickBank, JVZoo is a marketplace that specializes in digital products. It’s free to join for both affiliates and product owners. Commissions are as high as 40%. Successful marketers get to enjoy instant payments.
  • Supermetrics. This is an analytics tool that digital marketers use to analyze their results. Supermetrics has an affiliate program that pays a 20% recurring commission per sale. In other words, every time one of your referrals renews its license, you receive 20%.
  • Jungle Scout. This is a one-stop platform that enables users to launch and sell Amazon products. Affiliates can choose to receive a $150 flat fee per referral or %100 of the amount of each purchase in the first month.
  • Amazon. Considered the king of the hill when it comes to affiliate marketing programs. The only problem with Amazon affiliate marketing is its short cookie lifetime. An Amazon affiliate marketer can earn varying rates based on the products they promote.
  • MailChimp. This is one of the most popular email marketing providers out there. The MailChimp Partner Program doesn’t pay affiliates in cash. Rather, it enables affiliates to run email campaigns at a notably low cost.
  • GetResponse. Another email marketing service that enables you to manage various email marketing activities, from email list creation to email auto-response. The GetResponse Affiliate Program has two commission options. You can either get paid a flat fee of $100 per sale or you can get a 33% recurring fee with every referral license renewal.

Final Thoughts

There you have it; the best affiliate marketing training programs available today. There are a few other excellent courses out there, but we assure you that the ones reviewed in this article are the best of the bunch. Just be sure to pick a course that suits your level of experience to get your money's worth.

If you’re an absolute beginner, we recommend starting out with one of Udemy's or Skillshare’s courses, as they’re tailor-made for beginners and they’re quite affordable. If you’re somewhat experienced in the field, however, Affiliate Marketing Mastery, Wealthy Affiliate, and Project 24 are right up your alley.