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Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review
Looking for an honest Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing review?
Maybe you have heard of this online course about affiliate marketing, and you are wondering if it is worth the cost or not. I originally purchased this course in 2018 and have now gone through it several times. This is my honest review on whether or not I think it’s a worthwhile investment for bloggers.
I am a full-time blogger, and I have started five profitable blogs in different niches. Affiliate marketing makes up about half of my income. However, when I first took this course, I was barely making any money from affiliate marketing.
So when I read that Michelle (the blogger behind the seven-figure personal finance blog Making Sense of Cents) 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.
Free Affiliate Marketing Ebook
Ready to get started with affiliate marketing?
Before I get into the review, I wanted to share this FREE resource with you.
Michelle, who runs the popular personal finance blog Making Sense of Cents, created a free ebook about affiliate marketing, including how she went from $0 to $50,000 a month as a blogger. The ebook also includes case studies from other successful bloggers about how they earn money from affiliate marketing.
If you’re ready to learn more about affiliate marketing, grab the free ebook here!
What is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing?
Let’s get into this review of 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 her top tips and 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 from the blog 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 have been worth the price of the course alone.
In addition to the course content and bonuses, once you enroll in the course, you will have lifetime access to everything, including future updates.
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 while living on a sailboat.
She now earns six figures every month from her blog, with around half of that income coming directly from affiliate marketing, which is amazing.
You can read more about her 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. I would personally recommend already having a blog set up before buying this course.
However, there is some info about starting a blog at the beginning of the course.
How much does it cost?
You can purchase Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing for one payment of $197 (the best deal) or two monthly 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 too, but it’s one that has really paid off, and I will discuss with my results 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
Note: I originally took this course during 2018. I have updated the rest of this review since then, but I’m leaving my original results below.
I enrolled in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing during the last week of January 2018 and went through the entire course in about a week, implementing all of the new strategies I learned on my blog 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 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 again because Michelle has added some updates and new bonuses.
Pros of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
Now that you’ve heard my results, let’s talk about pros and cons.
I personally 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.
First up, the pros. 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 from 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!
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, and I’ve been in some that aren’t great.
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 people ask. 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 that is active and helpful if you have questions about blogging and affiliate marketing.
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 simple, straightforward written lesson format.
Cons 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 my experience taking 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, and even many blogging basics too.
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 final 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 definitely worth it for bloggers.
Enroll in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing!
FREE Profitable Affiliate Programs List
If you have any questions about the course, please feel free to reach out to me and I will be happy to answer. This course is a big investment, but it’s one that I think is worth it for bloggers who are serious about monetizing their blogs.
That being said, I also have a free affiliate marketing resource to share with you.
If you’d like to download my FREE guide to 250+ profitable affiliate programs for bloggers, sign up here and I’ll send it your way!