I came across the No Cost Affiliate Marketing program while searching for resources to help with online business startups. I thought the name was a bit spammy, but decided to check it out anyway. It turns out that the program wasn’t too bad, but is this the right learning platform for you to grow your affiliate business? Let’s find out more in this review.
What’s Inside The Program
The program comprised of 22 (YouTube) videos conducted by the founder Carl Riedel, who walks you through the basics of the affiliate marketing model, program application and the usage of affiliate links.
Most of the videos run for about 3-10 minute, showing you step-by-step on how each process works.
The videos aren’t the best qualities, but they do get the message across. Since it is offered for free (no membership fee required, hence the name of the program), I couldn’t complain much.
What I Like
- Carl is a pretty decent tutor and quite honest in his teaching approach. He doesn’t do any up sell (which is very rare in online marketing these days) and delivers his information straight to the point.
- He does encourage you to write original and helpful content and doesn’t advocate any act of spamming the internet.
- The program focuses on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which I think is suitable for beginners because free traffic doesn’t cost a lot of investment.
- The video series do give you a good understanding on how to select a niche market, how to search for keywords and how to create content from ideas.
Overall, the program is legitimate and Carl tries his best to keep things as rudimentary as possible to help you understand the basics of affiliate marketing.
What I Dislike
But after spending 1 ½ hours watching the entire video series, there is some information that I have to disagree with.
- The focus is on creating a webpage; NOT a website and you are taught to promote this page using different formats such as slide presentations, YouTube videos and submit to article directories to create backlinks (this is no longer important in modern SEO). Plus, it’s a lot of work to go through various platforms when you can achieve the same results with just one website.
- Carl uses (the retired) Google Adwords (now called the Google Keyword Planner) for demonstrating keyword research based on average monthly searches and not the level of competition. This is not a smart approach for beginners because it would take you forever to rank if you are in a competitive market.
- Both of these strategies used to work in the past, but the current SEO technique is all about content creation, primarily textual information, which you need to publish regularly to achieve good ranking in organic results. In order to get high ranking on Google, you need to target for low competition keywords and not just looking at popularity parameter.
- Like many affiliate training courses, Clickbank is used as a model for finding products to promote and this presents a few problems for beginners. (1) You don’t need a website to apply for affiliate programs (2) The focus is on digital products, but keep in mind that promoting physical products can be just as lucrative (3) The network is filled with unreliable/scammy products so you need to do your due diligence before affiliating with them.
- At some point, you might want to invest in paid traffic to grow your affiliate business, but such tutorial is not available in the video training at this point of writing. The topic might be included in the advanced training course, but there’s no sign of that one coming either.
- The program doesn’t offer any support or discussion board for members. This could be a big problem because beginners are bound to encounter with difficulties and not having this service as a learning platform can be a huge disadvantage for the users.
- Last but not least, some online resources provided are outdated and are no longer practical (such as links to article directories) to be implemented by new business owners.
Is No Cost Affiliate Marketing Worthy of Your Time?
In my honest opinion, no. Most of the techniques that they teach will not reward you with any good rankings and you’d be struggling a lot as a new affiliate marketer. If you want something that works, you’ll require a more up-to-date training and supportive community, such as the one at Wealthy Affiliate.
Here’s a quick glimpse of what you can benefit as a WA member.
The Right Way to Become a Successful Affiliate Marketer…
Is to treat it like a business. You need to have an infrastructure (domain and website) and a ton of information (targeted keywords and content) to attract the right kind of customer (online audience) that are ready to buy your recommended product. The sooner you learn these skills, the faster you’ll earn your first commission and generate recurring income online.
Wealthy Affiliate has all the tools and resources in place for you. In fact, I can also be reached within the training area if you need any help. Do check out my personal review about WA to find out how you can start the program for free. Hope to speak to you soon.
You may also be interested in;
How to Become an Affiliate Marketer with Clickbank
Thanks for this information!
I wanted to ask, as part of the course training, do they have videos that you can watch on YouTube? I was searching for the links but haven’t found any.
I enjoy working online and have a website of my own, and while this course may not offer everything I want, I am sure it can teach me something. Learning a little from many people can be good, don’t you think?
I see also you mentioned this other program called Wealthy Affiliate. How is their course like? Thanks.
Hi Chris, it’s a bit difficult to search for the videos on YouTube, but if you sign up as a member, you can access those videos easily. It’s free so there’s really no harm trying.
As for Wealthy Affiliate, their training is more comprehensive. You have step-by-step tutorials with videos and the weekly live webinars. There are also other tools that help to engage with your training such as the free keyword tool and comment exchange system.
To learn more about their program, you can read my personal review here.
Hi Cathy,
The old school presentation technique advocated by this program might not work, but using SlideShare to create presentations is actually very effective. Not for the purpose of back links (which are no follow anyway). It is good because you do tend to get a lot of views (hence traffic) and more importantly shares from other people using SlideShare (they are using your presentation) which helps a lot with brand recognition.
I agree the name “No Cost Affiliate Marketing†kind of seems like an odd name. Originally, I thought that there is no cost at first and then Carl would try to upsell you.
I have also heard that using backlinks is an outdated tactic, too. It’s all about having quality content. How much is the private coaching though? Think it’s possible he does this to leverage his private coaching?
Hi Garen, there are no indications that Carl is offering private coaching services and I doubt there will be any in the future. The site look pretty much outdated with no member involvement at this point.
Thanks for your No Cost Affiliate Marketing course review. I was considering of purchasing this program when I saw it online the other day.
It appears that some of the techniques he teaches have become outdated as you pointed out, such as using backlinks. I am curious about this Wealthy Affiliate training that you recommend. Is this a complete course or will there be any up sell?
Hey Chris, the training is fairly complete from a beginner’s point of view. Each course will initiate you to take important actions such as buying a domain name, building a WordPress website and finding an profitable niche. When you implement what you learn, you’ll make more progress than just doing theories. Once you have a good grasp of the basics, you can proceed with advanced techniques in acquiring paid traffic which is also covered in the training area.
There are only two types of memberships – free and paid – no up sells and no hypes. Just lots of information to keep you abreast of the latest online marketing tips. If you are interested, please read my personal review here to see how you can get started.
Hello Cathy
Thank you for providing this review on “No Cost affiliate Marketing” program. I came across it and wondered what it was about and whether I should follow it.
I thank you for pointing out that much of the program is outdated. At least it is free and no up-sells, but it would have taken up much of my time so I appreciate the heads up.
You indicated the importance of keywords to help with ranking in SEO. Is there any particular tool that you use or suggest?
Keep up the great work you do, it was really helpful.
Hey Paul, I used Jaaxy Keyword Tool. It has a ‘clean’ user interface, it gives you long tail keywords within seconds and it’s easy to interpret. It also comes with 30 free trial searches. You can read more about it in my personal review here.