Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is a well-known course that was created by popular blogger, Michelle, of Making Sense of Cents. She has multiple blog posts sharing her wild success with affiliate marketing to the point that she is comfortably making over $50,000 per month with affiliate marketing alone. Naturally, this makes Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing a temping course to take. Now that, I made the leap and decided to invest in the course, I want to share with you my honest opinions. What was good? What fell through the cracks? Is this a course worth investing in? Let’s talk truth about Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, the good, the bad and the Pinterest!

*This post contains affiliate links through which I may make a commission. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Why I Invested

Since starting my blog, I knew it was something I was hoping to turn into a full-time income for myself and my family. That meant, I knew right off the bat that I wanted to invest in courses, products, and companies that would help me excel. To make money, I needed to spend money investing in only the best courses. None of these investments were ever taken lightly. Before purchasing any course, I  make huge efforts to ensure that any purchases I make are well done and will benefit me and my business. Because of this, I will research, investigate and study the creators of the course before making any purchases. I also take the time to read reviews like this one.

I started by reading Making Sense of Cents and studying Michelle’s income reports. Each month she gives a very detailed account of the income brought in by her blog and you can see first hand just how much of it is from affiliate marketing. Every blog post Michelle creates is of the best quality and her income reports are no different. The idea of making over $100,000 a month blows my mind. She clearly was doing something that I was not doing, so I decided to give her free course a try before leaping into purchasing Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

The Free Course

One of the biggest signs of a potential quality course to invest in is if the blogger’s FREE courses are high quality and informative. Michelle’s absolutely was and I learned so much! Now, the biggest mistake a lot of bloggers make is learning stuff for free and then not paying for the courses! Why is this is a mistake? Because if you are getting all that info for free, what has still not been told you? You’d better believe that if a blogger takes the time and effort to give you all that information for free then there is still so much more than you have to learn from them!

What I learned

The most helpful tip I learned from Michelle’s free email course was to start small. In order to make money with affiliate marketing, she recommended only having a few affiliates. This went against everything I believed. I mean…the more, the better, right? Nonetheless, I took Michelle’s advice and I went through my old posts and started removing affiliate links where I could. I then chose 10 affiliates that I would stick with and put my focus toward supporting. You know what? From that tip alone, I made $1,000 that month just by implementing that one tip.

There was no doubt in my mind if Michelle could help me make money with her free tips, there was still money was I still leaving on the table!

Purchasing Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

After having such a successful month with the knowledge already gained through Michelle’s free email course, I knew I was ready to make the leap and decided to purchase Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I also knew I still had other bills to pay and debt to pay off! While it meant paying more in the long run, I opted for Michelle’s monthly payment option of 2 monthly payments of $105. This felt a little easier on my budget and I loved that this option was available. Yes, I could have just saved and made the purchase the next month but I had already missed out on 2 different sales Michelle offered with Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, so I was itching to finally get started!

The course itself

The pros

• Layout – The course itself is laid out very clearly and simply
• Short lessons – The lessons were short and easy to read through which means I was able to finish the entire course in less than a week (that included breaks to start implementing her methods.)
• BONUS features – Michelle has now added a whole section of bonuses to her course, one of which included a guide to Pinterest that has helped my Pinterest grow literally overnight! Get Pinterest scheduling setup for yourself!
• Online access – With your purchase you also get access to a private online Facebook group and can even get advice from Michelle directly!
• Become an affiliate – After completing the course, Michelle allows you to become an affiliate! I love this because when I like something I love talking about it…it comes naturally to me so to get rewarded for that is extra awesome in my book! This is a great bonus for bloggers because if you are able to recommend Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing to two other bloggers, you can easily earn back almost all the money you spent on your original purchase.

The cons

• Visuals – I am very much a visual person and the course was really lacking here. While I would have preferred videos or PowerPoint-style presentation, I was still able to easily get through and understand each lesson.
• Wanting more – Now, I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but because I finished the course so quickly I was left wanting more. Make no mistake, I was given tons of new ideas and ways to implement my affiliate marketing and Pinterest strategies but still wish I had a little bit more! I loved taking the time to implement new methods and really wanted to just keep on going!

Final Review

I am so glad I purchased this course. In my opinion (and in business in general) it takes money to make money as long as you’re smart about who/what you’re investing in.

Who the course benefits

• New bloggers
• Bloggers who don’t make much from affiliate marketing
• Bloggers struggling with Pinterest
• People with a strong e-mail following (this helps but isn’t necessary) Make sure you’re setup with a quality email host!
• Serious bloggers. You have to do the work if you want the results.

After taking Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, I have already started transforming my blog, Pinterest and e-mail styles in order to implement all of Michelle’s different strategies and while time will tell (I’ll check back in) I really know I only stand to benefit from this course. I have made a lot of mistakes while blogging, you can learn from all of them here, purchasing this course was definitely something I did right! If you are ready to take your affiliate marketing to the next level, it’s time to invest in Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing!

My other blogging favorites!

Blogging Bloopers – Learn all my best/worst blogging mistakes so that you can avoid the same fate! Get started

Constant Contact – I have used Constant Contact as my email provider from day 1 of starting my blog! They were perfect to start with when I needed to stick to a budget, have easy to use templates and have helped me grow my list by the thousands!

Tailwind – Tailwind is a great scheduling tool to help with your Pinterest posting and Instagram sharing. It takes a lot of time and guesswork out of building your social media so you can spend your time doing other things.

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