Mark Ling’s AffiloBlueprint – My Complete Review

Product: AffiloBlueprint
Website: affilorama.com
Price: $197, +$67/month for Affilorama premium (unless cancelled within first 30 days)
Creator: Mark Ling
Summary: AffiloBlueprint is high quality, comprehensive training for creating a niche affiliate site step by step. If you sign up for Affilorama, you can access the AffiloBlueprint program for just $1 for 2 weeks.

Please note that this review and rating is exclusively for AffiloBlueprint and NOT the Affilorama premium membership. The premium membership serves a bit different purpose than AffiloBlueprint and is a bit expensive for complete newbies (in my opinion).

I recommend you check out my #1 rated training for learning affiliate marketing here, as you can test it out for $0 and no credit card!

AffiloBlueprint is a complete guide created by Mark Ling that walks beginners step by step on how to get started in affiliate marketing. It’s just one of a few products offered at Affilorama, along with the premium membership and AffiloJetpack. While there are some flaws to this system, it is an extremely well put together resource for starting a website in niche marketing and learning how to earn a sustainable income from it.

I’ve purchased the product and gone through the training to provide a thorough review of AffiloBlueprint for anyone who may be interested in what it has to offer, and are curious as to if it even works at all.

What’s included?

Affiloblueprint consists of:

• 12 sets of lessons, each consisting of sets of videos and notes (the notes basically cover the entire video, word for word).
• Homework assignments to complete and check off after each lesson
• Private members forum
• Affilotheme for WordPress
• 1 year of complimentary hosting for up to 5 websites
• 1 free month of the Affilorama premium membership (normally $67 per month)

Training

I found the training guide overall to be very high quality. It consists of 12 steps, and within each step there are videos, notes and homework assignments. The notes basically cover the videos word for word (with screenshots of any involved steps) so you can either go through and watch the video lessons, or just skip them altogether and follow along from the notes. I found that really convenient because I personally hate watching videos and prefer to learn from a written tutorial, but everybody learns differently so it’s great they accommodate both visual and written learners.

Overall there’s about 90 videos (and 90 sets of notes) and a little bit over 13 total hours of viewing time. The videos are voiced over kinda cheesy, but they are clear and easy to understand and the notes are a great alternative if you get bored watching.

The training within Affiloblueprint is comprehensive and completely up to date (as of 2016), there’s no questionable or outdated tactics.

It walks a beginner how to select a niche, find affiliate products (both digital and physical), buy a domain, set up and design a WordPress website, research keywords, then create, research and write content. It also gives a pretty decent guide and advice to outsourcing content creation.

There’s quite a bit of details provided on ways to research for your website and get ideas for content and keywords, as well as different ways to generate traffic through organic search, social media (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube marketing) as well as very in depth training on Google PPC.

It also goes into ways to reach out to other authorities and higher ranking sites within your niche, and also provides in depth training on email marketing.

Here’s an outline of the training steps:

• Intro & Mindset
• Step 1 – Market Research and Keywords
• Step 2 – Creating Content
• Step 3 – Setting up Your Website
• Step 4 – Website Design
• Step 5 – On Page SEO
• Step 6 – Off Page SEO
• Step 7 – Inbound Marketing
• Step 8 – Newsletters
• Step 9 – Where to Now? Tweaking Your Website
• Step 10 – Intro to Google PPC
• Step 11 – Creating PPC Campaigns
• Step 12 – Advanced PPC Techniques

One of the aspects I really enjoy about this program is it isn’t marketed as a “get rich quick” scheme. Instead, it’s simply a training guide on how to build a solid foundation for creating an income online through affiliate marketing. What he teaches does work, and people are really making money from implementing the tactics. 

Here’s some success posts from the member’s forum

I’ve been earning money online for a few years now, and I’ve seen my far share of products within the internet marketing industry. This is one of the very few that provides decent training on how to actually do it the real way, without the hype and trying to sell people “on the dream”.

Price

Affiloblueprint: $197 (one time fee)

Affilorama premium membership: $0 for first month, then $67 per month (you need to email support to cancel this within the first 30 days, otherwise they WILL start billing you the $67 on a monthly basis)

While they do give you access to the premium Affilorama platform for 30 days, if you aren’t interested in keeping it, it is crucial to email Affilorama support either on their contact page or directly at [email protected]

They make the cancellation process a bit clunky and that is one thing I do not like about this platform.

They do also try to point you in the direction of the Affilojetpack, which is basically a “done for you” website that provides the initial framework and you simply add to. It is insanely expensive though, priced at nearly $1,000. I never have been a fan of these mass produced, “done for you” sites, because normally they aren’t going to lead to a lasting business online.

Who’s Affiloblueprint for?

In my opinion, Affiloblueprint is a good choice for newbies who are more independent learners. People who may not necessarily be needing constant support or their hand held along the way may find this program a good fit for them.

This program is also for those who just want a comprehensive step by step guide on how to get started and succeed with affiliate niche marketing and little else. There’s no recurring fees with Affiloblueprint itself so if you don’t keep the premium membership to Affilorama you’re going to have to eventually find a different web host (after the first year) and find another keyword tool (since that’s included within Affilotools).

Need more help when it comes to starting affiliate marketing? Check out Wealthy Affiliate and get an entire community and private mentorship along the way.

My #1 complaint on AffiloBlueprint/Affilorama

Despite the good, there is a major issue I have with their system. Since the Affilorama platform is set up a bit confusingly, it’s unclear when joining Affilorama what product you’re supposed to start with. They pitch their premium membership, the AffiloBlueprint as well as the AffiloJetpack, and if you are unfamiliar with these things it might be overwhelming as to what step to take first.

Someone who decides to join the premium membership first may think they’re getting all the training and tools they need for a quality online education, only to find they have to pay another $197 for the actual step by step training (within AffiloBlueprint). On top of that, they’re also nudged into buying another system for nearly $1,000. 

The fact there isn’t step by step training included in the premium membership of Affilorama isn’t clear when signing up. While you can buy Affiloblueprint and get a free month of Affilorama, I don’t think it was really explained.

And actually, upon further research I found that Affilorama premium itself is merely meant as a tool suite, hosting provider and advanced education for intermediate to successful online marketers – NOT newbies. AffiloBlueprint is where you are going to actually find the beginning training portion.

But they don’t exactly make that part clear in the Affilorama sales page…

Huge profits from scratch, and ultimate affiliate marketing education seem to imply it’ll be a comprehensive education for anybody looking to make money online. Instead, you have to pay an additional $197 for the basic steps?

Pros vs Cons

Pros

• Provides an up to date, comprehensive guide for newbies on how to make money as an affiliate marketer
• The stuff he teaches actually works if you put in the effort
• There’s not really any hype or “get rich quick” mentality
• The private members forum and support desk are decent. While the members forum isn’t incredibly active, there are thousands of posts and they have team members that do make a point to quickly respond to each and every one. The help desk also responds fairly quickly, within an hour or two (a day max).

Cons

• You’re automatically tied in with Affilorama premium upon purchase. While it’s free for the first month, you will be billed $67 after the first 30 days unless you cancel ([email protected])
• Membership cancellation for Affilorama premium isn’t smooth sailing, there’s no “cancel” button – you have to contact support and deal with them.
• The Affilorama website is confusing, it’s hard to understand what products you need as a total newbie and isn’t clear that the premium membership is for advanced marketers.
• Continuously brings up (and tries to sell) their AffiloJetpack product within the training. It isn’t totally in your face, but it does get annoying because it’s mentioned in nearly every lesson.
• Will need to get hosting elsewhere after the first year
• Some people may not find the level of support offered adequate for their needs

Conclusion – Is AffiloBlueprint worth it?

Overall, I do like the AffiloBlueprint model and I think it could serve as a great training resource to a lot of people that are interested in getting started in affiliate marketing. That being said, however, there are a few things that bug me about how their program is set up – the upsells , price and confusing system setup being the major flaws.

I realize nothing is perfect and in the world of internet marketing products, Affiloblueprint is definitely one of the good ones. It’s well put together and what they teach you is actually stuff that works.

As long as you know to start with AffiloBlueprint and are able to access the free month of Affilorama, I think it’s a pretty good value for your money considering everything that’s included.

However, if you want a cheaper alternative I highly recommend the Wealthy Affiliate platform for getting started out with affiliate marketing. You can actually check it out for $0 and you don’t even have to put down a credit card for a starter membership. Their premium membership is $49/month (only $29/month if you go yearly!) and includes managed WordPress web hosting for up to 25 of your own domains! You also get access to an entire community plus full use of their Jaaxy keyword tool within the membership.

Overall, it’s much less expensive and since you can try it free, you have nothing to lose in testing it out. You can read my full review of Wealthy Affiliate here.