The Pros and Cons of Free Affiliate Marketing Training for Beginners

Score! You just found someone who is going to offering you free affiliate marketing training for beginners. That fits your budget. You are intrigued and enticed. However, you are probably savvy enough to know that nothing in life is free. He will probably try to upsell you on some additional training. That is the online business model. Get a taste of something and make a larger purchase down the line.

PRO #1: No Money Risked

This is perfect if you are broke! You can allocate your resources to things like food and shelter.

You can get a ton of free content online. There are loads of courses for affiliate marketing that you can download and watch to your hearts content. You don’t have to pay a dime. Your hard earned money can stay in your pocket for now. The people who offered the free training now have an interested potential customer, so watch out for upsells. Pay  attention to whether or not they are working on you! Do their sales pages lead you to want to buy something? Why or why not?

PRO #2: You Gain Valuable Information

Believe it or not, many free marketing tips online are very useful. A lot of markete

rs put their best food forward into their lead generation freebies. Take advantage of some of them and get ideas from them. Make sure that you are not copying their work, but just gaining inspiration from their ideas. (You definately don’t want a lawsuit for copyright infringement on your hands if you are pinching pennies and can’t afford affiliate marketing training.)

PRO #3: You Can Make Money

You can apply the free training and start making money online. You probably won‘t, but you could. The reason that most people won’t is because the free methods of building an online business and making money tend to require you to stick with it for a few months. It requires you to tweak what you are doing, ask some experts and other marketers for help when you get stuck or something isn’t working.

CON #1: Outdated Info

You have no idea if the information is up to date or not. Internet marketing methods change at lightning speeds. What is relevant one day, could be dated information the next day. Even in the premium version of wealthy affiliate, I have discovered older modules that needed some updating. While the information was still pertinent, the websites they referenced had been updated and some of the links were in a different place. I had to look around a bit to find them.

This happens with all affiliate marketing training, but especially the free versions. No one is going to be complaining and asking for a refund from the free version, so there is no motivation to keep it updated.

CON #2: No Feedback on Your Efforts

You won’t get great feedback when you get free affiliate marketing training. You can ask your friends and family members for feedback on your website, but usually they haven’t had any affiliate marketing training. It is best to ask people who are experienced. People who have struggled with affiliate marketing and come out on top will let you know what to expect. You can get that with the free training. Savvy internet marketers know that and they upsell you on overpriced coaching or their latest and greatest online course.

CON #3: No Skin in the Game

Because you didn’t put any skin in the game, it is easier to give up. When you put money on the line, your commitment level increases. Free affiliate marketing training often leads to the “shiny penny syndrome.” That means that when you start to struggle with making sales, you change paths. You see the next guy’s training and think, “this is perfect for me. This is better than what I have now.” You give up the path that you are on and start over with some new and improved method. The problem then becomes that you aren’t making money with affiliate marketing because you aren’t sticking with it long enough. Another problem is when you start paying for every single course and losing money because you just didn’t take action long enough to make money. Many people market affiliate marketing as a quick way to make money, but successful marketers know that it is a slow and steady way to build a successful online business. It requires months of consistent effort. 

I recommend Wealthy Affiliate as a place for free affiliate marketing training for beginners and advanced affiliate marketers alike. This is a great community of affiliate marketers that are focused everyday on creating the most up to date affiliate marketing training. It is very useful to be able to ask expert affiliate marketers how to improve your website.

You can test out wealthy affiliate’s community with a free membership, but do yourself a favor and commit to learning affiliate marketing. Commit to being involved in the community for at least a year. Give yourself time to succeed. Give yourself time to make mistakes and learn from them on your road to affiliate marketing success. You’ll be glad that you did.

Here’s a walk through of what wealthy affiliate offers and how to use it: