Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review – Is The Course Worth it?

Welcome to my Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing review. There are many ways to make money online, especially affiliate marketing.

I am on a mission to review every affiliate marketing training course on the internet. So you won’t have to spend time researching it before buying. 

If you are interested in purchasing a membership of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, stop for a while and read my review.

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing doesn’t live up to its hype.

In this Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review I will cover:

• What is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing all about
• Who is Michelle Schroeder Gardner?
• What’s the cost of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (MSoAM)? 
• Is MSoAM legit or a scam? 
• Alternatives to MSoAM

So without further ado let diving into this Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing review…

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What is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

As the name indicates, this course teaches you how to make money online with affiliate marketing. Michelle Schroeder Gardner created this course in July 2016. 

MSoAM is hosted on a teachable platform. It includes 6 modules, 30 lessons, 20 worksheets and bonuses. The layout of course is easy to digest. 

 Michelle shares all the strategies and secrets she used to make $50,000 per month from affiliate marketing. Here is the intro of MSoAM from its sales page: 

Who is Michelle Schroeder Gardner?

Michelle Schroeder is a successful American blogger and affiliate marketer, without any doubt. She started her career of blogging at the age of 22 in 2011.

Her blog, which she named Making Sense of Cents, is about finance and lifestyle blogs. 

She got her MBA degree in Finance. According to her, she paid off her debt of over $38,000 from her blog.

Impressive!

Her blog has earned several awards and nominations.

Michelle has also been featured in many well-known magazines, including Forbes, Business Insiders, Reader\’s Digest, Investopedia, MSN, etc. 

Michelle founded Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing (MSoAM) in 2016. Within only 2.5 years of launching this course, she has earned over $1,100,000 from it. 

She is liked among other bloggers and entrepreneurs because of her genuineness.

She publishes her monthly income reports and shares how she earned over $100,000 a month online on her blog. 

Here is her income report from 2013 to 2018:

Here is another report of her income from making sense of cents: 

She didn’t publish exact numbers after 2018 because of apparent reasons. 

Pricing of MSoAM 

It is priced at a one-time payment of $197. You can also pay for this course in two instalments. But it would be a bit expensive as each instalment is worth $105.

You would end up paying $210 if you opt for instalments. 

After reviewing many affiliate marketing training courses, I must say the course is very affordable compare to other programs I find on the internet. 

But you also, keep in mind, there is some hidden cost. You would end up spending money on other toots if you go for this course. 

What is MSoAM cover in the course?

Following are the modules inside MSoAM: 

1. What is affiliate marketing? 
2. How to find and apply to affiliate programs? 
3. Follow the rules
4. How to get your readers to convert? 
5. Strategies and ways to promote an affiliate link
6. Rinse and repeat

Michelle further divides each module into different lectures. Honestly, I didn’t expect such a strong affiliate marketer like Michelle to create a course like this.

MSoAM does not include many important factors vital for succeeding at affiliate marketing.  Michele also offers several bonuses that don’t hold too much value. 

MSoAM Pros and Cons 

Pros

• Refund Policy

I always appreciate training programs that offer a refund policy. It indicates the founder is optimistic about the course and gives the customer a sense of security. 

MSoAM also offers a 30 days refund policy.

You can get your money back within 30 days of purchasing the course if you don’t like the course.

The process of getting a refund is also easy. You just have to email Michelle and explain the reason. 

But Michelle makes sure the person makes the use of course and takes some action before refunding. It’s fair enough. 

• Active community

This is the best thing so far I have encountered about MSoAM. The official Facebook group community is active and responds to sensible queries.  

Michelle even herself actively participates and replies to the queries. The other point worth mentioning is the activity she conducts in the group. It’s called a weekly winning post where she asks about the progress of her students. 

• Lifetime access

Many courses demand recurring fees to access the course. Michelle offers lifetime access to the course once you pay for the subscription.

That means you will get free updates whenever the course is updated. But Michelle rarely updates the course.

• Encourage ethical approach to affiliate marketing

It’s a common practice observed in affiliate marketing to highlight only the positives when reviewing the product. I love Michelle for it as she encourages her students to practice white hat techniques. 

In a lesson, how to build trust, she advises her students to talk about both the negatives and positives of a product. 

• Michelle is a successful affiliate marketer

One of the reasons people buy Michelle’s course is Michelle herself. Needless to say, she is a well-known blogger and affiliate marketer. Her published income reports make her even more trustworthy. 

But not every successful affiliate marketer is good at teaching affiliate marketing. And the saying goes very well for Michelle. 

Cons

• The course is not designed for new bloggers

Michelle claims the course is helpful to bloggers, either they are new to blogging or already doing it.

But after analyzing her course content, I must say she is overconfident about her course. 

She didn’t teach many things a brand new blogger should know. For example, I didn’t see any module answering questions like How to start a blog from scratch? 

How to get traffic to the blog? 

However, Michelle teaches about how to set up a blog through her free email course and articles. But this content is not a part of her premium course.

Perhaps, she assumes the student has already gone through her free email course. 

Based on the above information, I conclude the course is not helpful for brand new bloggers. However, someone looking to monetize his/her blog may benefit from this course.

• Michelle don’t focus on SEO

No one can deny the importance of SEO in 2021. It is an excellent strategy for every successful affiliate digital marketer.

SEO helps your website rank higher, promising greater visibility and organic search traffic. 

Knowing the importance of SEO, I expected her to cover SEO in MSoAM. But she didn’t even mention on-page SEO optimization. 

When she started blogging, most of the traffic on her blog was from social media platforms like Pinterest. But nowadays, search engines contribute to most of her blog traffic. 

If you want to opt for a training course that includes everything related to affiliate marketing, check My Top Recommendation.

• More text-based lectures

Videos engage the audience better than text-based content. Many studies prove the audience can get a lot more out of videos. 

I reviewed many courses, and all of them offer video-based lectures. It makes sense because these are easy to digest.

But modules inside making sense of affiliate marketing contain more text with some sprinkled stock images. There are only a few videos. 

Some topics like google analytics and email marketing are difficult to understand for newbies in text.

Honestly, what’s the need of buying this premium course if there are bundles of web pages that offer the same information in the form of blog posts and articles? 

You can check out My Top Recommendation platform that provides easy-to-digest and engaging video lectures. 

• No in-depth content

Michelle covers only basic information with only a few in-depth lessons. Her course is more like what to do rather than how to do it. 

The lessons in her course include statements, claims, and questions. But these lack learning value as she doesn’t give answers to these questions and show actionable steps. 

Most importantly, you can quickly get this bunch of information on different web pages and youtube pages. In fact, a lot more value!

Here is the review of MSoAM on Reddit:

 So what’s the point of buying this course? 

Wealthy Affiliate provides in-depth content and covers all aspects of affiliate marketing and it is my #1 recommendation for all my readers and subscribers. You can sign up for free training if you really want to be a successful Affiliate Marketer.

• Hidden cost

Buying an affiliate marketing training course for a lifetime for just $197 sounds good. But what if it’s not worth your money and encourages you to spend more? 

Making sense of affiliate marketing is the same. Michelle offers several upsells and recommendations: 

• Convertkit: An email marketing software that is priced at $29 per month. 
• Bluehost: A website hosting company that can cost you $2.95 a month.
• Tailwind: Company for handling Pinterest marketing can cost you $9.9 a month. 
• Facebook ads: To boost Facebook posts for $10 to $20 

It can easily cost you up to $45 per month, excluding Facebook ads. 

The tools she recommends would not have bothered me so much if she mentioned them on the sales page of her course.

After all, many affiliate marketers recommend their affiliate tools. But Wealthy Affiliate you will find all the tools in one place including keyword research tools and hosting.

• Non Editable pdf worksheets

Michelle offers various downloadable pdf worksheets and workbooks so that students can keep track of their progress.

But these pdf are not user-friendly, as these are not editable. If you want to use these sheets, I recommend you print them beforehand. 

Is MSoAM legit or a scam?

MSoAM is a legit training program. But I am hesitant to recommend this training to anyone knowing there are many other good courses too. 

Its course content is also not up to the mark. Jump to the upcoming section to find the best alternatives to MSoAM.

Alternative to Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

They are many Affiliate Marketing course on the internet. Some are a bit unethical they are in the business of looting people and some do not provide any value to the student.

Wealthy Affiliate is the best platform which is also my #1 recommendation that I recommend to my readers and my subscribers to set a strong affiliate marketing business foundation.

It provides insight into all aspects of affiliate marketing. Unlike MSoAM, Wealthy Affiliate teaches you all about SEO, so your website can rank higher and attract more visitors. 

The lectures in the form of videos are engaging and easy to understand. Moreover, it also offers free access to premium keyword research tools and website hosting services. 

You can join the freemium membership of WA for a lifetime without any cost and no credit card required. I recommend you join it before signing up for MSoAM and compare which one suits you best. 

If you are more into forex training and investment. ForexSignals.com can be another alternative if you wish to make money through training online.

It offers access to trading rooms, mentorship of experienced traders, 24/7 support and everything you need to succeed in forex trading. 

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review – Final Verdict

Michelle Gardner is a successful affiliate marketer, but her Affiliate Marketing training course should have been a simple ebook that worth selling on Amazon for less than $29.50

Is not worth the hype it’s getting.

Considering the shallow training that doesn’t even include SEO, I don’t recommend this course to my readers. 

You can check My Top Recommendation that provides in-depth training, free tools and website hosting services. 

Let me know in the comments about your experience with MSoAM.