The Best Legitimate Affiliate Marketing Training Program in 2021 and Beyond

Intro.

To become a successful affiliate marketer, your education is going to be the key to progressing further than just being a hobby. I’m sure that if you want to start this type of money making opportunity, you intend earning more that pocket change.

With this in mind, your going to need to educate yourself with the correct methods and training. Trust me, I tried learning without signing up to a course and I wasted 6-9 months because of my lack of knowledge. As they say, knowledge is power!

I’ve been an active member of all 3 of these training courses here, and know what they have to offer. Currently, I’m still a member of only one, the best one, Wealthy Affiliate.

Here’s the lowdown of each of the following legitimate affiliate marketing courses, and for what it’s worth, my opinion of each. I’ve been in this game since 2013 and have stuck with the program that I believe is the best out there to educate anyone.

If you’re just about to begin an affiliate marketing website, I suggest you read up on these programs to give yourself every chance of success.

#1. Wealthy Affiliate

Website URL: wealthyaffiliate.com
Cost: Free / $49pm / $499py (Great Black Friday offer)

The platform that Wealthy Affiliate provides is astounding. When I first started with WA back in the day (2014), they were really just growing into the most diverse educational platform they are today. I’ve seen big enhancements every year, and they continue to improve the user experience constantly.

The founders of this platform are Kyle and Carson, two entrepreneurs that understand that if you build it, they will come. And ‘they’ve’ come alright, in droves. I couldn’t tell you the exact figure of current memberships but it’s at least in the tens of thousands.

Members come and go for various reasons, I suspect the most common, is that people realize you need to actually work to create an affiliate marketing website. There’s a lot of people of there searching for a way to make a quick buck with affiliate marketing. The truth, as WA will tell you, is that nothing comes easy and you’ll need to work at this.

So, lets check out the training inside Wealthy Affiliate and see what they offer.

The Training

When it comes to rating the training courses in these programs, one of the big factors is whether the training is current or outdated. The training within the Wealthy Affiliate platform is always being updated, but this is a large job as there’s lots of it.

The main training for beginners at Wealthy Affiliate is known as the ‘Online Entrepreneur Certification Course‘. When Wealthy Affiliate opened their doors in 2005, they we’re just a keyword tool. They have progress so much that they’re now the leading affiliate marketing online education portal that exists today.

While their training videos and content were created years ago, you can see that they are all updated to provide the most up to date, relevant information. Some videos that are still relevant today will remain as is, but some the content may be modified to suit.

As far as diversity goes, you will not find another course that takes so much into account. The initial course goes into all the relevant detail that will get you on the path to operating a profitable website, including setting up a WordPress website via their platform.

They also have what’s known as their ‘Affiliate Bootcamp’ course for those that begin a website in the ‘Make Money Online’ (MMO) niche. This is a more tailored course to help affiliates promote money making programs and teach recommended product reviews.

In fact both courses touch on writing product reviews, as these are found by commonly searched keywords. Oh yeah, keywords! Wealthy Affiliate will teach you all about SEO, which uses keywords to rank highly in search engines such as Google.

WA also has classrooms dedicated to marketing topics such as email marketing, video marketing, everything WordPress etc. Every week they run a live training session that can be easily accessed by any Premium member.

There’s also more training which the community of support can create, I’ll touch on that next.

The Support

The support at WA comes in various formats. Firstly, there’s support from the program itself in terms of website support, and it’s much quicker than any other web hosting provider. General response time is 2-5 minutes.

I mentioned earlier that there’s thousands of members here, many of which are also affiliate experts. They’ve learned the trade at WA and continue to stay and offer support to new or old members. Every member can be contacted personally via an inbox, including the owners of WA.

There’s also a constant chat facility which will allow you to ask a question at any time of day, and you’ll be sure to get an immediate answer. I really like the support options that are available. With so many support options, you’ll never be stuck for answers. So along with my affiliate marketing tips, you’ll also have expert knowledge from within.

The Tools

What makes this the complete training platform, is the available tools that are integrated within. SEO requires keywords to rank in search engines, so Wealthy Affiliate includes a keyword tool where you can search the competition you’re up against, and how often the search term is searched.

Many new marketers will feel this may be beyond them because they don’t know how to build a website or maintain one. Well, WA has an integrated website builder which will have a website built for you in under 1 minute.

There’s also a Site Content section where you can write all your own posts and publish them directly to your website. This includes a free image search, so you can attach any images from various free image websites easily.

With a few other tools to help build up your SEO efforts and build out your website, this has got to be the number one legitimate affiliate marketing training program in the industry.

#2. Chris Farrell Membership

Website URL: chrisfarrellmembership.com
Cost: $4.95 1st month / $37pm / $297py

When I first started at this caper, Chris Farrell was the recommended affiliate program that I came across. I watched a few videos of his, and found Chris’s clear delivery of training was perfect for me as a newbie.

Chris explains the processes of affiliate marketing in a simple, yet descriptive way that even the most simple people can understand. He’s a very likeable person and is not pushy in any way. His style will make you feel very comfortable.

The Training

The main meat and potatoes of Chris Farrell membership is the core of 31 videos that are each approximately 10 minutes in length. This is known as the ‘10 minutes to Success’ section.

There’s also the specific Skills menu, loaded with videos for, yep, specific skills. Many of these are for setting up additional add-on’s to your site, many requiring extra costs. Some of these are programs such as ClickFunnels, LeadPages or Camtasia a video creator.

Other videos here are the ‘Money Making Labs’ section, brilliant in the way they are explained, as Chris has such a way of getting a message across. This is a genuinely good training platform, especially for the very inexperienced.

The Support

When I used to be a member of CFM, the support was not all that great. I remember attempting to contact the support team and still hadn’t had a reply days later. I understand this in house support is much better now, but still not as extensive as what you’ll receive at WA.

Like any good platform, there is a community support forum where you can have your questions answered. Again, the responsiveness is not like other programs.

#3. Affilorama

Website URL: affilorama.com
Cost: $Free / AffiloBluePrint $197, then $67 per month / AffiloJetpack $997 / AffiloTools Varies

Whilst I joined Affilorama 4-5 years ago, a few enhancements have been made in this time. They offer a free membership which is actually very good value. With a range of lessons that can be accessed easily, the training is well explained.

You probably get more from the free membership here than you do at Wealthy Affiliate, but when push comes to shove, the cream always rises!

The Training

You’ll have access to a wide range of video courses that can be accessed any time. The courses are diverse and the content well written.

The thing I find a little odd about their lessons, is that they are in no particular order. Whilst the content is great and the videos are well put together, new affiliate marketers require some kind of direction.

For instance, I found a link to ‘Outsourcing’ in an area where members would be learning about content. Yes, content can and will eventually be outsourced, but not for possibly years down the track. I then decided to watch the video on outsourcing. It’s actually about finding affiliate programs within networks, such as CJ Affiliate or ShareaSale. So it’s not the outsourcing I’d expect.

Another thing I’m a little sceptical of, is the membership tally that they display. As I write this, there are apparently 734,998 members. Yet every lesson has a comment area below it, and they all have minimal comments. Some maybe 1-2 comments, others up to 10. And the most recent comment on these are 500 -1000 days ago! Surely with this many members, more recent comments would be submitted.

Anyway, the free training does look good and relevant to today’s practices. But what they go on to say when you check out their AffiloJetpack page, is that you won’t succeed unless you purchase this package. A done for you website with email newsletter, autoresponder emails, fee giveaway etc. Everything but traffic!

So whilst you can pay for a nice hosted website, you’ll still be required to write content and play the patience game waiting for SEO traffic, like every other platform.

Don’t get me wrong, many people don’t have the time or inclination to build a website themselves, so this can be the perfect balance for the right person. Just be aware that this will cost you $997 for the privilege.

The Support

The majority of support through Affilorama is FAQ. Each of the 7 different support options directs you to a page with the most common questions. However, if you search deep enough, there is a members forum which is quite reasonable.

What I do like, is they have a contact form and phone number for contacting Affilorama directly. However, there’s no immediate interactive support like Wealthy Affiliate has.

The Tools

As far as tools go, this is what you’re actually paying for. Affilorama have several tools that are paid resources. As opposed to helpful side tools, they’re packages that are tailored for you.

What I don’t like about these, they offer a ‘foolproof’ system. Sorry, but no affiliate system is foolproof. This is what their AffiloBlueprint says on their sales page. Every website, ‘foolproof’ or not, requires maintenance and constant content.

So, they offer an AffiloBlueprint, AffiloJetpack, AffiloTools (for checking your stats), and a ‘Pathway to Passive’ guide.

Wrapping Up

All 3 of these programs are legitimate and genuine programs that are not out to steal your money, unlike some other programs out there. The idea of these platforms is to give you a head start in affiliate marketing, whether you have no clue how to begin, or you’re stagnant because it’s just not working for you.

Having said that, I can tell you that the most complete platform that offers not only great training, but also the best support and tools to get you to where you want to be, is Wealthy Affiliate.

If you’re unsure and just want to dip your toe in the water, you could try the other platforms as they are also great to get started. The one reservation I have, is that Wealthy Affiliate will also host your website (which is great because that’s an extra cost you’d pay with the others). If at any time you wanted to change to WA, you’d have to learn how to transfer your website across. It’s not necessary, just convenient. Having said that, Wealthy Affiliate have a specific website transfer facility. They will help you with the move.

You can check out each of these platforms by clicking on the links below.

Wealthy Affiliate

Chris Farrell Membership

Affilorama