Hello, my friend and a very warm welcome back. Affiliate marketing has been a massive industry for absolutely years and the stats are still growing every single year.
With that in mind, I’m going to look at a program called Affiliate Institute.
People who wish to make money online are naturally drawn to programs with the word affiliate in the title and some companies take full advantage of this fact.
Unfortunately, that one word does not mean that it is a legit offer.
The Affiliate institute appears to be about affiliate marketing but, is it legit training or is it an MLM in disguise?
Have you visited the website? I did and I found it to not be very easy to understand what they are doing!
After further research, I discovered the previous name of the company which was GAZ and they actually sold water filters for Enagic. I kid you not!
Disclaimer: I am not associated or affiliated with Affiliate Institute in any way shape or form. If you buy into this concept I will not be compensated financially or otherwise.
This post may contain affiliateLinks. This means if you click through and make a purchase I will receive a commission. The price you pay will not be affected.
Affiliate Institute Overview
Program Type: Affiliate Marketing Training
Program Name: Affiliate Institute
Founders: Julian Sherman and Mathieu Jang
Cost of purchase? One-off price of $2994 or you can pay $99 a month.
Is it Recommended? NO.
As I alluded to above the website is basically a lot of hyped-up BS that doesn’t really explain what you are going to be learning about.
You will end up on a webinar where things become a little clearer but not much!
Promises of free ebooks and then signup for $99 to learn how to do affiliate marketing.
What you will discover is Affiliate institute is not training you how to be an affiliate marketer in the true sense. No. You will actually be learning how to sell water machines and filters.
The machines belong to a company called Enagic and in a lot of cases, you will be required to actually purchase the machine.
A machine like that costs thousands of dollars and in the MLM world, it is required for you to receive high ticket commissions.
Getting involved with MLM companies is not my idea of a good way to build a business especially when you have to recruit to earn!
MY #1 Recommendation is a 100% legitimate training program that has been around for 16 years and has helped me to go from $0 to earning $100’s per day promoting ANY products/programs I want.
What is Affiliate Institute?
What Affiliate Institute is in actuality and what it is perceived to be are 2 very different things.
The company is supposed to train you how to become an affiliate marketer which is a brilliant way of earning an online income and 1 I highly recommend!
One thing that points to this being an MLM is the fact you have to recruit for it in order to make money online.
Another giveaway sign is it has many different levels inside.
Having reviewed many MLM’s I find it simple to spot the signs and the total lack of transparency on the website is a big red flag.
Would your preferred method of affiliate marketing be to promote water machines? If you have answered yes then this could be a good fit for you.
To join the webinar you must provide your name and email address and you will be sent a link to the webinar.
The second link sent in the email provides a cheap and nasty ebook that shares nothing of any real value.
The Owners Of Affiliate Institute
There seems to be a lot of mystery regarding the actual owners of Affiliate Institute.
Julian Sherman is a co-founder, which means there is at least one other person involved. He is a college dropout, who then became a personal trainer and then got involved online.
It took quite a lot of digging to get any more info but finally, I had a breakthrough!
The other co-founder is Mathieu Jang and they both happen to be the founders of Global Affiliate Zone which was another MLM company. Now defunct!
Both of these guys profess to be successful 6 figure earners but in all of my time online (7 years) I have never heard of them.
Julian speaks to you in the webinar and there are images of him in the free ebook. He does actually know what he is talking about which really surprised me!
Lets, now look at the memberships and the all-important costs:
Memberships and Cost Of Affiliate Institute
There are 3 memberships available:
- Level 1 Membership is a cost of $99 per month
- Level 2 Membership – is a $2995 one time fee
- Accelerator Course – price not available
After paying the membership fee you will receive step-by-step training, resources, and tools for starting an affiliate marketing business.
Also included are some live training sessions, weekly Q&A webinars, and personal mentoring.
The training from the Affiliate Institute can be applied to any Affiliate Marketing, it doesn’t have to involve water machines, You could Promote products from Shareasale, Amazon, or any other affiliate program.
Learning how to start marketing campaigns and get traffic to your offers so you can start earning commissions is very valuable training.
Having gone through some of the training I found it to be quite informative as well as covering the basics that you need to make a success of affiliate marketing.
Some of it is a bit on the beginner side and quite raw in places.
At the upper end of the scale, they rely on paid ads mainly through Facebook to get traffic from and that is not a business model I wished to follow at that time.
The reason is paid ads are expensive and can add many hundreds of dollars to the monthly fees.
There are free methods available for traffic and I chose that route instead.
Plus I really wasn’t interested in becoming an affiliate for Enagic selling Kangen water purifiers.
How Affiliate Institute Works?
Your job is to recruit other people into the scheme and sell Kangen water machines.
The machines themselves cost lots of money so that means you can obtain big commissions. But, that is not where it ends!
In the case of how MLM’s work you would need to buy a machine yourself in order to receive any commissions from recruits.
How the process works:
1. Join Affiliate Institute
2. Go through the training
3. Purchase Water Machine (if you want to get paid, optional)
4. Create a campaign and run Facebooks ads to it
5. Alternatively post campaigns all over social media and try to get free traffic. (not an effective method)
If you choose the paid option you are going to have a lot of unwanted competition which will make your job a whole lot harder and your ad spend much higher.
Another downside is you will also have to purchase all of the levels to get paid.
A good thing about this training is that you have other opportunities to use other networks with thousands of products like Amazon which is far simpler to make money with.
You can make money using these methods if you apply the training and put in the necessary work effort.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to applying what is taught after attending the seminars, webinars, and training to learn it all.
Being in an MLM is not a quick way to make money regardless of what is promised on sales pages and webinars! One Thing I say for these guys is they don’t tell you it is quick.
You can earn a 30% commission for every new member that you recruit.
Related Post: 9 ways to Affiliate Marketing
Is Affiliate Institue A Scam?
No. Affiliate Institute is not a scam.
You can signup for a 14-day free trial before spending any money at all.
This way you can look around and see if the business model is one you want to take up.
Even though this is an MLM company it does have a product and that is what separates it from being a scam.
MLM companies with no products are what the FTC see as a scam business.
The Pros Of Affiliate Institute
- It is a legit business model
- 14-day free trial
- Affiliate training included
- Paid ads training
- The trainers know what they are talking about
The Cons Of Affiliate Institute
- Not suitable for novices who have never done anything online
- The main course is expensive at $2995
- You need even more money for an ad budget and newbies don’t usually have that kind of money
- There are no free traffic methods taught only paid ads
- The founders are the same 2 of another company called Global Affiliate Zone which is no longer around (what happened to it?)
- No mention of a money-back guarantee
Conclusion
Just because a business is not a scam doesn’t mean it is suitable for everyone.
I would not recommend this to my readers who do not know anything at all about working online.
Getting involved with paid ads should be left until you have gained experience and want to scale up your business and not before.
So many people have gone done that slippery slop and been left heavily in debt, don’t be the next victim!
keep investigating and reading reviews like this one and you won’t make life-changing mistakes.
A better Alternative
99 out of 100 people who land here are looking to start their own online business.
Are you looking for the best way to make money online?
Do You Need affiliate marketing training that is suitable for total beginners?
Don’t have and don’t want to invest $ 1000’s just to get started?
Being provided with the right training is all you need to make a successful business.
I work In the world of Affiliate Marketing. There are many positive reasons for this:
- You can start a limited trial of the platform (with my #1 recommended program) Then upgrade to the premium membership if you can see the value of using this amazingly successful training.
- There are no expensive tools or software to pay for
- You can work on this a couple of hours a day in your spare time
- You don’t need to make your own products
- You will learn all about SEO which is the organic and sustainable way of driving free traffic to your site
- No need to recruit others to join
- You don’t need to be concerned with customer support
- No special skills are needed (which is good because I didn’t have any 🙂
- You can still earn from whatever you are writing today for many years to come, a truly passive income
- Everything you need all in one place including hosting and domain purchases.
- No ad spend required
I Quit My Job!
After starting with this training program 14 months ago and learning all I needed to know for a fraction of the money that some courses are charging I quit my hated day job at the 10-month mark.
Affiliate Marketing is a simple business model that takes a lot of work to get started in the beginning because you are getting traffic organically instead of paying for it.
Now I spend my days writing reviews to stop innocent people like yourself from being scammed like I was!
(If you want to make your new business work better upgrade to the premium membership for $49 a month or $1.63 a day that’s less than a Starbucks costs!)
Thanks for supporting me to the end of this post I appreciate your time.
Have a question for me then please leave it in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
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Lisa. Founder and CEO of mistakesbloggersmake.com
