Our honest take from a Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing review will show you how great the course is and how it can change your money-making strategy.
We now make a full-time income from affiliate marketing and blogging after taking the course, and can’t recommend it enough!
Whether you are looking to start your own blog or already have one we highly recommend you consider increasing your income by utilizing affiliate marketing.
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In our review of the best affiliate marketing course for beginners, we are going to go over what is included, our experience/results, pros & cons, who the course is for, and FAQs.
By the end of our review, you’ll have a better understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how you can start making extra money this month.
If you are looking for a good blogging jumpstart, you can also check out our Start Your Blog Bootcamp to get a strong start on money-making!
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review
Blogging can be a great side hustle or become your full-time job if you do the work- but what work needs to be done?
Not many people understand how bloggers make money from writing and what affiliate income is.
We were there once, and Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing changed the direction of our blog, and we went from making nothing to making thousands!
We regularly tell new bloggers & business owners the most important thing you can do is spend money on educating yourself, so you know where to put your time and get money from it.
If you are looking for a high-quality in-depth affiliate marketing for beginners course, this is the one you need to increase your income from your blog.
Let’s dive in and discuss who created the course and what you’ll learn from it:
Who created the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course?
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner is one of the BEST personal finance bloggers on the internet. She runs Making Sense of Cents and created the “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” course back in 2016.
Michelle has been a HUGE inspiration for us since starting our blogging & business journey.
She was one of the first people we met in the blogging community and has always been extremely helpful. We owe much of our success to her and the course she created.
Michelle routinely makes $100,000+ from her blog every month! You can check out her latest income reports to see how she does it.
When we first ran into her blog we were completely shocked that you could get paid to blog and make that much money. She is extremely hard-working and deserves every dollar she earns.
Course Cost
To take this course, it’ll cost $197 or 2 payments totaling $210. That covers all 6 Modules (over 30 lessons), all 8 Bonuses, a workbook for the course, and more.
It may seem like a big investment, especially for a new blogger, but the return on investment can appear quickly once you get to work on improving your blog!
You can also get a free eBook with our affiliate link, which is a 36-page book that gives you a rundown of what affiliate marketing is and answer some of your questions before you commit to the full affiliate marketing course.
Free eBook
What You Will Learn
The Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course has a welcome and six modules:
- Welcome
- Module 1: What is Affiliate Marketing? (affiliate marketing for beginners)
- Module 2: How to Find and Apply to Affiliate Programs
- Module 3: Follow the Rules
- Module 4: How to get your Readers to Convert
- Module 5: Strategies to Promote Affiliate Links
- Module 6: Rinse and Repeat
One of the best parts about Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is how easy it is to follow!
Michelle also goes into her favorite tools she uses to drive traffic to her blog and convert readers into income.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Bonus Section
Truly this section alone is worth the cost of the course. The amount of material to help you succeed is unbelievable.
- Bonus #1: Access to the private Facebook Mastermind group ($250 value!)
- Bonus #2: Free Group Coaching Sessions ($100 value!)
- Bonus #3: Pinterest Strategy – How To Drive Thousands Of Visitors From Pinterest a Month ($136 value!)
- Bonus #4: How to Always Get Approved To An Affiliate Program
- Bonus #5: 9 Things You Must Do When Something Goes Viral
- Bonus #6: How To Increase Your Page Views
- Bonus #7: My Affiliate Products And Services
- Bonus #8: The Perfect Affiliate Link Checklist
- Bonus # 9: How To Maximize Your Reach, etc.
- Bonus #10: Editing And Writing Strategies (Content Writing)
- Bonus #11: How To Legally Protect Your Blog (read more about blogging laws to set up your safety net)
Course Details
- The course relies on text. There are no videos in this course (besides the bonuses). If you are a visual learner don’t worry she has tons of screenshots she uses to help convey her lessons. This course goes in-depth on how to promote affiliate products/services naturally on your site.
- It’s self-paced. There are no open or close dates for enrollment- you can take a week to read the lessons and revisit them as often as you need. We have found this is by far the best way to take courses! Everyone learns at different speeds, so this is very helpful, but not having to pay for a membership afterward is great when you want to change your marketing strategy after a while and need some pointers.
- The course is designed for everyone, you don’t have to be in a certain niche to take it. This course is truly designed to help you learn how to make money through affiliate marketing.
- This isn’t a ‘how to start a blog’ course. That’s not to say you can’t take the course. We honestly wish we took it before we even started our blog to get a jump start. If you have not started a blog yet you should check out our step-by-step tutorial.
If you want, you can check out the most frequent questions and answers on her course (scroll to the bottom of the page to get to the FAQs).
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing: Our Experience & Results
As we stated above, we owe much of our success to Michelle and her course. We were able to master affiliate marketing and make our blog our main source of income.
For the first six months we started our blogging business, we struggled to make any amount of income.
After taking her course, our blogging income more than doubled within the first month. It has continued to grow each month since then.
We are now at the point where we earn thousands of dollars every month from our blog alone.
It’s crazy to think just a few years ago, I quit my day job to run our site!
Before taking her course, we had no idea what we were doing with our blog. Without Michelle’s course, this would have never been possible!
The picture below is my “time off request form” when I quit my job to run our blog full-time.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing: Pros vs Cons
Pros
- Self-paced
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Lifetime access to the course and updates
- You can earn a 40% commission as an affiliate to the course (~$80)
- Mastermind Facebook group to ask questions
- Bonus lessons on driving massive amounts of traffic
- Extremely easy to follow and understand
- In-depth course on how to get paid to blog
- You can pay in two installments
- You won’t struggle for months/years to earn income blogging
- Her course worked wonders for our blog!
Cons
- $197 price tag (not cheap when first starting out)
- Mostly text-based learning
- Not a “how to start a blog course”
- Veteran bloggers will find most of the value in the closed Facebook group rather than the course itself
- You cannot fill the worksheets in online, you have to print them off
Affiliate Marketing FAQs
Who is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing for?
This course is for anybody looking to make affiliate marketing income- meaning you have a website or social media that uses affiliate links to earn money.
We’re bloggers, and you can start a blog and make money from affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, merch, printables, and more.
We started out as a mom and dad looking for a profitable side hustle. Because of our affiliate marketing strategies, Brittany is now a working stay-at-home mom, and I quit my job too!
So this course can benefit students, stay-at-home parents, new bloggers, and even experienced bloggers who are struggling to increase their monthly income.
Is the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course going to help me make more money with my blog?
Unfortunately, we can’t answer this question for you. It would be foolish for us to promise that after taking this course, you’ll instantly start making an income from your blog.
The fact of the matter is after taking the course, you’ll have the knowledge and education on affiliate marketing that you’ll need to be successful.
From there, it’s completely up to you to use that knowledge for your blog.
You must put work into your blog, connect with readers better, create more optimized content, and use the tools the course gives you to grow.
Can I get a discount or promo code for Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing?
Currently, there aren’t any promos for the course, and while you may be tempted to sit and wait, just remember that your time is money.
If you want to learn about affiliate marketing and find concrete strategies to monetize your blog, it can hurt to wait in this case!
You can get a free eBook to learn some basics on what affiliate marketing is, or even take our Start Your Blog Bootcamp to give your blog direction before investing in Michelle’s course.
Is the Facebook group a way to get help directly from Michelle?
Michelle is, of course, a big part of the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Facebook group, but she doesn’t comment on every post that comes up in the group.
You can still get a lot of value from the group- as a whole, it’s a great way to get feedback and directions from other experienced bloggers and stay in the know about the blogging world.
We started our own Facebook group, Blogging With Purpose, for the same reason- so that you can see what others are doing on their blogs, talk about blogging resources like Jasper or SurferSEO, and ask questions when you’re hitting a wall.
What other affiliate marketing courses are out there?
We’re frugal people, so we know it’s a smart money move to check out your options before paying for a course, regardless of what you’re trying to learn!
We use SkillShare to take courses and recommend the site in general, but here are a few courses and the cost for your to compare your options:
The list goes on as there are so many courses on SkillShare, Udemy, and elsewhere- you can check out an in-depth list of affiliate marketing courses here.
As you can see, though, there are some smaller courses with lower costs you could try out, and some huge courses carry a hefty price tag for a blogging beginner.
Final Thoughts
Blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme like many think it is. It takes a lot of hard work and determination to learn how to make money online and get paid to blog.
With that being said, we wholeheartedly believe that with the right work ethic and determination, anyone can be successful blogging once they have the practical knowledge to monetize their work.
And now that you’ve read our Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review, I’m sure you can see why we recommend it as the best course and just one of our top-notch blogging resources!
With a money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose by investing in your own skills and education and everything to gain with this course.
This course completely changed our lives! Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is worth its weight in GOLD!
Free eBook
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
Pros
- Amazing course on affiliate marketing
- High ROI price point
- Easy to follow and impliment
- Thousands of successful students
Cons
- Mostly text based
- Lack of content on email marketing