Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review (+ SPECIAL OFFER!)

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review: Is it worth it?

Looking for an honest Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing review? I took the course six months ago and decided to write this review to share my thoughts on the course and whether I think it’s a worthwhile investment for bloggers.

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of affiliate marketing as a way to make money with my blog. I’m always looking for ways to increase my affiliate marketing income. So when I read that Michelle (the blogger behind the seven-figure Making Sense of Cents blog) had a course sharing her secrets on how she makes $50,000 a month from affiliate marketing, I signed up immediately.

Maybe you have heard of her course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, and are on the fence about buying it. So if you’re considering the course for yourself and your blog, here is my honest Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing review. 🙂

What is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing?

First of all, let me give you a brief rundown about Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing if you aren’t already familiar with it!

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is an online course created by Michelle of Making Sense of Cents. Michelle earns over $50,000 per month from affiliate marketing on her personal finance blog, and she made over one million dollars from her blog last year! In this course, she shares the exact strategies she uses to earn an income from affiliate marketing on her blog.

There are six modules in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing:

• Module 1: What is Affiliate Marketing?
• 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

Here’s a more detailed overview of the topics covered within the course modules:

• What affiliate marketing is and how it works
• Why affiliate marketing is great
• The exact steps Michelle has taken to earn over $300,000 from one blog post
• How to pick the right affiliate products to promote
• Ways to increase conversions
• How to build trust and not lose followers
• Required disclosures that you need to know about
• The one major tool you need for affiliate marketing
• Different strategies to use to promote your affiliate products
• How to use Pinterest to succeed at affiliate marketing

The course also contains some valuable bonuses, including:

• The Pinterest strategy used by seven-figure health and fitness bloggers Lauren and Alex of Create and Go
• 80+ affiliate programs for bloggers of all different niches
• Extremely active private Facebook group where Michelle answers questions from students of the course once a week

I really love these bonuses, especially the private Facebook group, and for me they are worth the price of the course alone!

More about Michelle

The creator of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, Michelle Schroeder-Gardner is a personal finance blogger who runs the website Making Sense of Cents.

A former financial analyst, Michelle started blogging in 2011 as a side job. Soon, she was earning enough money from affiliate marketing on her blog to quit her job and travel full-time with her husband.

She now earns six figures every month from her blog, with around half of that coming from affiliate marketing.

You can read more in my interview with Michelle.

Who is the course for?

If you’re wondering if this course is for you, here’s what I think:

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is for anyone from total beginner bloggers, to bloggers who currently make some income from affiliate marketing, but want to see that number increase. It’s NOT an extremely advanced course for bloggers who already make thousands per month from affiliate marketing.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that ANY kind of blogger can earn money from it. Fashion, lifestyle, travel, business, mommy bloggers, etc. There are bloggers in every niche who are super successful with affiliate marketing.

You WILL need a self-hosted blog in order to use affiliate links on your blog. If you don’t already have one, you can check out my simple step-by-step guide on how to start a self-hosted blog in less than an hour!

How much does it cost?

You can purchase Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing for $197 (best deal) or two payments of $105.

If you’re thinking that’s a pretty high price and are concerned in investing so much in an online course, trust me, I understand the feeling. I was hesitant to make such a large investment in my blog, but it’s one that has really paid off, as I will discuss in a minute.

I absolutely think Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is worth the price, but if for some reason you take the course and don’t feel the same way, Michelle does have a money back guarantee so there is really no risk for you!

My results from Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

I am writing this review just a month and half after buying the course. I’ll update it again in a few months with more numbers!

I bought Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing during the last week of January and went through the entire course in about a week, implementing all of the new strategies I learned as I went.

• In January, I made $278.30 from affiliate marketing.
• In February, I made $745.25 from affiliate marketing

That’s a 268% increase in affiliate marketing income after just one month of implementing the strategies from the course!

UPDATE: I’m writing this six months out from taking the course, and my affiliate income has been steadily at $500+ every month. I even had a month where I earned over $1,000 from affiliate marketing, using the strategies I learned from the course. This is incredible to me considering my blog is still less than a year old!

UPDATE #2: It’s now been a year since I’ve taken the course and I’m earning $2,000+ a month from affiliate marketing. I have also gone back through the course several times now because Michelle has added some updates and released a few new bonuses!

Pros of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

I love making pros and cons lists to help me make decisions!

Are you the same way? If so, this list might help you decide whether investing in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is the right choice for you.

Here are some of my favorite things about being a student in the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course.

1. The course bonuses

As I mentioned, the bonuses alone are worth the price of the course – seriously. For example, you get access to the Pinterest strategy that Lauren and Alex of Create and Go use. They drive a ton of traffic to their blog from Pinterest and were able to go from $0 to $10,000 a month in less than a year!

You also get a bonus lesson about how to effectively use Facebook ads from a Facebook ads specialist (haven’t tested this out yet but it looks valuable) as well as a few other awesome resources.

2. The Facebook group

It seems like every online course these days offers an “exclusive” Facebook group for students as one of its perks. But I’m always skeptical of how valuable a Facebook group can really be…

However, the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Facebook group is one of THE most helpful groups out there. Once a week, Michelle does a Q&A and she answers every single question. There are also plenty of other full-time bloggers in the group who are always sharing their advice.

Even though I finished the course, I feel like I am still learning new things every day because of the Facebook group. It’s a great community and everyone is very active, helpful, and supportive.

3. Super helpful strategies

When I took this course, I already knew the basics of affiliate marketing. I had already been earning money from affiliate marketing for a few months on my new blog. However, I was stuck in the $200-$300 a month range.

I felt like I FINALLY got “unstuck” after learning new strategies from the course. Things like using my email list for affiliate marketing, doing interviews and product reviews, and updating my top ten blog posts with affiliate links that I wouldn’t have really known how to do on my own.

4. Written lessons

This might not be a big pro for everyone, but it was for me. I personally prefer written lessons to videos. Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is all written lessons, with worksheets you can fill in at the end of every section. There are also a bunch of screenshots and graphics to illustrate exactly what she’s talking about.

If you would rather learn from watching videos then this might actually be a con for you. I personally found the course easier to understand and faster to get through because of the written lesson format.

So those are some of the biggest pros of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing for me. Now onto the cons…

Drawbacks of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an HONEST review. Which means I’m sharing the good AND the bad about the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course.

So what are the negatives about this course?

I am not going to lie, I found some of the material to be pretty basic, especially while going through some of the lessons at the beginning of the course.

This is actually a pro if you are a total beginner – the course is EXTREMELY thorough and walks you step by step through everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.

But if you are like me and already have a little affiliate marketing background coming into the course, then you might find yourself thinking that some of the material in the first few modules is pretty basic.

I definitely learned a lot from the course though, because despite my prior knowledge and experience, I was still an affiliate marketing beginner. I would say if you’re in the range of making $0 to $1,000 per month from affiliate marketing, this course will be beneficial for you and you should buy it.

But if you’re already making thousands each month, you would honestly be better off investing in a more advanced course on affiliate marketing.

So is it worth it?

My answer: YES! Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is worth it.

This is one of the few blogging courses I recommend to all new bloggers. I found that it paid for itself quickly (I more than doubled my affiliate earnings in ONE MONTH.) So I’d say it’s worth it.

Learn more about the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course!

Special offer for my readers!

If you read all the way to the end of this post and want to buy the course for yourself, I have a special offer just for my readers!

If you purchase Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing through my link, please email a copy of your receipt to me at [email protected] and I will send you a FREE copy of my ebook Amazon Affiliate Affluence, which is all about how to make money as an Amazon affiliate. It’ll go great with your course materials!

If you have any questions about the course, please feel free reach out to me and I will be happy to answer. I know this course a big investment, but it’s one that I really think is worth it for bloggers who are serious about monetizing their blog with affiliate marketing.

FREE Profitable Affiliate Programs List

If you’d like to download my FREE guide to 40+ Profitable Affiliate Programs for bloggers, plus tips on how to promote them, sign up here and I’ll send it your way!