This post contains affiliate links. You can go here to read the affiliate disclosure.
I have reviewed many affiliate training solutions on this blog, and each has their own pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses.
In case you aren’t clear on what affiliate marketing is, it’s based on a simple concept: promote someone’s product and get paid a commission for sales you make.
There are certainly a lot of programs and courses out there that claim to teach you how to prosper with affiliate marketing. Affiliate Institute is one of them.
I hadn’t heard of Affiliate Institute in my online money-making journey, but I started to hear rumblings about it and decided to see what is was all about.
Now, I want to write an honest review of it so you can answer these questions for yourself:
How can Affiliate Institute help me make an affiliate marketing income online?
Is it a good training course? Is it worth the investment?
If you’re interested in Affiliate Institute and are on the fence, don’t make any decision until you’ve read this eye-opening review.
Here’s what I’m going to be covering:
- What is Affiliate Institute?
- Affiliate Institute Results
- A Quick Tour Of Affiliate Institute
- What I Like About Affiliate Institute
- What I Don’t Like About Affiliate Institute
- Affiliate Institute Pricing
- Frequently Asked Questions
- An Alternative Program
- Conclusion
If you’re ready to get access to the best affiliate marketing program, click the button below or scroll down to the bottom of my review to see my final verdict and recommendation!
What is Affiliate Institute?
Since you’re reading this review, and given the name of the platform itself, you probably already have a pretty good idea of what Affiliate Institute is.
Affiliate Institute (AI) is education company that teaches you how to “claim your piece of the new digital economy” and become financially free through affiliate marketing online.
Affiliate Institute is focused on one method of affiliate marketing in particular: creating simple sales funnels with email sequences, and sending traffic to these funnels with paid adverts.
This is a nice change from many other affiliate marketing platforms I’ve reviewed in the past like Wealthy Affiliate and Affilorama, which mostly focus on building up niche blogs.
Affiliate Institute is a rebrand of the former Global Affiliate Zone, which was founded in 2015 by Julian Sherman and Mathieu Jang. This program got some bad publicity, with people accusing it of being a pyramid scheme and a scam.
Regardless of these past accusations, I’m going to take an objective look at AI in this review, so it’ll be judged on its true merit.
Affiliate Institute can be divided into two main sections:
1. Free Webinar Training
This is what Affiliate Institute has on their main homepage, and it’s the first step you take when joining their program.
On the main website, you can sign up for a free training webinar. This web class is hosted by Julian, and it breaks down the exact steps he used to successfully sell other people’s products as an affiliate.
The web class touches on a simple affiliate funnel with opt-in page, thank-you page, offer, and email sequence.
Sherman shows you how to set up ad campaigns in 24 hours, and he also talks about various tools that he uses in his business.
You can choose from several dates to attend. Once you sign up, you’ll be given a link where you can take part in the webinar.
What’s in the webinar?
The webinar contains a pretty useful overview of affiliate marketing, but not much more than that. There’s a lot of talk and fluff that lasts just over two hours.
It is possible to take the information you learn in the webinar and build a successful online business, but it’s difficult. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn, then, that there’s a pitch for a paid product at the end.
2. Paid Membership
This is the paid offer of Affiliate Institute. Unless you have the direct link or go through the free web class I covered above, you won’t be able to sign up.
The first paid offer that Affiliate Institute promotes in their webinar is the Level 1 Pro Membership.
At the core of the Level 1 Membership is step-by-step training walking you through how to build an affiliate business: choosing offers, putting together an affiliate funnel, and setting up paid advertising.
You also get additional benefits including access to a Facebook community, 1-on-1 calls with an advisor, additional training courses, and access to high-ticket offers and affiliate campaigns.
Beyond Level 1 is the Level 2 Membership, which is much more expensive. This gives you more detailed training, coaching, and other benefits to help fast-track your success.
Affiliate Institute Results
Affiliate Institute takes every opportunity to showcase the results and success stories of their students.
Some notable cases include:
- Garret F: went from generating no revenue in his business to upwards of $25,000/month. He was able to leave his oil job.
- Melissa W: implemented the AI training and was able to quit her 9-5 job and travel the world.
- Alicia W: took the training and increased her sales by 350%.
- Draper G: after working on his business for over 2 years, he was finally able to start generating 5 figures per month in revenue consistently.
There are many more success stories, which you can hear about in the free training webinar.
I won’t spend much more time talking about them, because at the end of the day, what’s important is the quality of the program.
A Quick Tour Of Affiliate Institute
Now I’ll briefly walk you through the process of learning about Affiliate Institute and becoming a member of the program.
The first thing you’ll want to do (and the only thing you can do) when you arrive at the homepage is sign up for the free web-class. As I mentioned in a previous section, this is where Sherman shows you how to create automated affiliate campaigns and set up paid ads.
Select your preferred date, enter your name, email, and (optionally) phone number.
You’ll then land on a confirmation page.
Now wait for the webinar date. Reminders will be sent to your email in the hours leading up to the webinar.
Once you’re in the web-class, digest as much information as you can about affiliate marketing and living on your own terms.
Sherman brings in a guy called Kameron George to speak.
At about the 1-hour mark, they’ll introduce the Level 1 Pro Membership. If you decide to sign up for Level 1, you’ll be able to log in to the Affiliate Institute members area, which looks something like this:
This is where you access the training. From here, you can also access support and every other feature that comes with membership.
Now, at some point, you’ll be introduced to the next level of membership. You didn’t think it was called “Level 1” for nothing, did you?
Level 2 contains more in-depth training, additional benefits, and costs a lot more than Level 1, although it’s a one-time cost instead of a subscription.
I believe Level 2 is currently the highest level of membership within Affiliate Institute. I’ll have more to say about it later.
What I Like About Affiliate Institute
Here are what I believe are the greatest strengths of Affiliate Institute:
1. They teach methods that work.
Affiliate Institute teaches you how to create profitable affiliate campaigns with opt-in pages, offers, and email lists.
There’s no doubt that this method works, as it’s what many of the world’s most successful online entrepreneurs do. It has worked for a long time and will continue to work in the future.
In fact, it’s one of the fastest and most scalable ways to make money online. But the catch is that you usually need some initial capital to start running ads, and you have to continually test, manage and tweak the ads in order to keep making money.
2. The content is clean and well-organized.
I like the Affiliate Institute website. It loads fast and it’s easy to navigate.
The webinar process is smooth and convenient. You get several reminders before the web class date, and you don’t need to download a bloated webinar client just to take part — all you need to do is click the link sent to you and participate within your browser.
The members area is also designed quite well, with “watch later” and progress marking capabilities for the training videos.
Basically, this isn’t a website that looks and runs like it was built in 2003, and that’s cool.
3. The free webinar offers a solid overview of affiliate marketing.
It’s nice that you can get an affiliate marketing strategy blueprint for free with Affiliate Institute.
Of course, they want you to become a paying customer. But if you had the drive, you could run with what they teach in the webinar and build a successful business online.
In addition to the blueprint, the webinar offers other useful nuggets that can help you in your endeavours.
What I Don’t Like About Affiliate Institute
1. It only focuses on one way of building an online business.
Affiliate Institute focuses on one method of affiliate marketing: building affiliate sales funnels with an email follow-up and sending paid traffic to them.
While this is an excellent way to make money online, there’s so much more to affiliate marketing.
For example, you can build niche websites or YouTube channels and get organic traffic that will make you sales for years to come. This is what I do, and the benefit of this is that you don’t have to keep running ads to keep your business going.
The more flexible you are in your online marketing, and the less dependent you are on any one method or traffic source, the better off you’ll be.
2. It’s way too expensive.
The Level 1 membership fee, $99/month, is already a lot more expensive than most other affiliate training subscriptions that I know about.
What’s worse, the Level 2 package is well over $2000. Let’s face it: most people looking to get started online won’t be able to afford this.
I’m not saying that these offers won’t help you become successful. What I am saying is that if you’re not a total idiot, you can get the education you need to build a thriving affiliate marketing business without having to spend anywhere near this amount of money.
3. It has a shady past, and the face of the program gives off “sketchy guru” vibes.
As I touched on early in the review, Affiliate Institute used to be known as Global Affiliate Zone, which had been accused of being an MLM scheme.
That’s not to say that the program didn’t have merit. But Sherman and co. wanted to disassociate themselves from this perception, so they rebranded and did an overhaul.
Moreover, take a look at the face of AI, Julian Sherman. He’s the typical online marketing “guru boy”: young, tight shirt, gelled hair, and a public speaker. I don’t know about you, but these kinds of people give me vibes of “I’ll ask for a ton of your money and then under-deliver”.
I don’t know him personally, and he may very well be a great guy. But perception has an impact.
Knowing this, how comfortable would you be going all-in with AI? Yes, they have a refund policy, but still, I wouldn’t blame you if you had reservations.
4. They don’t offer direct access to the paid membership.
One thing I found a bit annoying is that you can’t sign up for the Level 1 or Level 2 Affiliate Institute memberships directly by going to their site.
Instead, you have to sign up for their web-class and sit through an hour of them leading you into their paid offer. At that point, you’ll get the direct link. And you still have to wait even longer for the link to the Level 2 signup.
I understand that webinars are an effective lead-in, and this particular webinar gives decent value. But there are some people who know the deal and just want to get to the chase.
People should be able to view the benefits of the paid offers and sign up for them right off the bat if they choose.
Affiliate Institute Pricing
Affiliate Institute offers two main paid membership levels: Level 1 and Level 2.
Level 1 Pro Membership
Level 1 is the membership that Affiliate Institute pushes in their free web class.
It costs $99/month and has a 14-day money-back guarantee. It includes:
- step-by-step video and text training on how to build profitable affiliate campaigns
- the creation of your personal affiliate business plan
- access to a high-ticket offers section
- advisor call & discovery session
- additional training courses
- live weekly training
- access to an exclusive Facebook community
You might think you’re getting a lot here, but $99/month is a pretty steep ask no matter how you look at it.
Level 2
Level 2 is the next tier of Affiliate Institute. It costs $2495 or $500/month for five months.
This level contains more advanced training and personalized options for fast-tracking you to your online success.
I wouldn’t recommend either membership. But if you had to jump on board, I would stick with Level 1. Most people either don’t need or can’t afford the cost of Level 2.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Affiliate Institute a scam or an MLM?
In short, no, Affiliate Institute isn’t an outright scam.
But that’s not the whole story. AI offers genuine value in their memberships including in-depth affiliate marketing training, and they have a refund policy.
However, the creators of Affiliate Institute, Julian Sherman and Mathieu Jang, are distributors for Enagic, a Japanese company that sells water purifying machines for up to $6000.
One of the offers within Affiliate Institute is becoming a representative for these machines. You can recruit others and earn commissions, but the catch is that you have to purchase a machine yourself before being able to sell it to others.
This is a classic MLM scheme. However, because of the fact that this is optional and there’s value in the other content within the AI membership, it can still be considered a legitimate source of online business training.
How does Affiliate Institute compare with Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate was founded in 2005 by two Canadian internet marketers named Kyle and Carson.
Like Affiliate Institute, it’s an affiliate marketing training platform that operates on a subscription basis. It also has its own marketing community and offers additional benefits in addition to the training.
There are a few key differences between the two platforms:
- Wealthy Affiliate came into existence in 2005, while Affiliate Institute was started much later after 2015.
- Wealthy Affiliate focuses a different method of affiliate marketing: building up niche websites that get organic search engine traffic.
- The membership fee of Wealthy Affiliate is cheaper, and it doesn’t have high-ticket offers.
I actually don’t recommend either platform. But if I had to choose, I would go with Wealthy Affiliate because the monthly cost is much more reasonable and the community is larger.
An Alternative Program
Affiliate Institute has solid affiliate marketing funnel training and gives you some useful insights into running paid advertising. At the end of the day though, it’s far too expensive and has some scammy elements that hurt its credibility.
In fact, I wouldn’t recommend you bother with Affiliate Institute at all. When it comes to the education you need to succeed with affiliate marketing and online marketing in general, there are better options out there that will have a much lesser impact on your wallet.
One such option that I want to to recommend to you right now is a training program called Savage Affiliates.
Why I Recommend Savage Affiliates
First off, what is Savage Affiliates? It’s a full affiliate marketing course created by 7-figure marketer Franklin Hatchett that walks you through everything you need to know to make a full-time income online.
Frank teaches you the cutting-edge affiliate marketing methods and strategies that work today. He teaches you how to build an online business from the ground up, with methods that he has used himself to achieve amazing results.
In addition to this, you get full access to a private Facebook group where you can share results, ask questions, and help others. This community consists of Savage Affiliates customers and Frank himself, who you can talk to one-on-one.
The course contains over 10 video modules, each with 5-20 videos walking you through every step of the process. It outclasses Affiliate Institute because:
1. It teaches you more.
As I’ve mentioned before, Affiliate Institute focuses on only one method of affiliate marketing: creating affiliate sales funnels and sending paid traffic to them.
Building profitable funnels and scaling paid traffic is great, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of affiliate marketing.
Savage Affiliates gives you a much bigger picture. Not only does it walk you through sales funnels, paid traffic and email marketing, but it also goes in-depth into:
- building websites that will make you money for years to come
- search engine optimization (SEO), including how to build backlinks
- choosing the best offers from various affiliate marketplaces
- harnessing free traffic sources like Quora, YouTube, Pinterest, and other social media
Savage Affiliates teaches you many different business models under the umbrella of affiliate marketing. This allows you to choose a method that you like the most.
In contrast, the main training of Affiliate Institute is much more narrow in its scope, which doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility in what you do.
2. It costs far less in the long run.
Affiliate Institute wants you to become a Pro member. At $99/month, this means that you’ll quickly rack up an expense of over $1000 if you stay a member for at least a year.
If you take them up on any of their upsell offers including Level 2, you could potentially spend five figures or more. That’s crazy.
With Savage Affiliates, you get some of the best affiliate marketing training online and a private Facebook community for a one-time price of only a couple hundred dollars, depending on the package you choose.
Frank keeps the course updated too. He recently came out with a major 2.0 update to Savage Affiliates, adding the latest strategies and techniques for success.
When it comes down to it, Savage Affiliates provides arguably better training material and a community that’s just as helpful for a much more economical cost.
3. It doesn’t have scammy offers or a shady past.
The sketchy water purifier stuff and the questionable past of GAZ really weigh down Affiliate Institute.
Frank Hatchett, on the other hand, has never been known as anything other than a legitimate and reputable online marketer and teacher.
His courses don’t jerk you around with shady offers and outrageous pricing; they jump right into over-the-shoulder training to get you building a profitable online business as soon as possible.
Savage Affiliates has hundreds of success stories, and more continue to be posted on a regular basis in the private FB group.
There are no upsells to worry about. Just pay once, dive into the training, and start taking action.
Savage Affiliates Bonuses
What’s more, I’m offering a tailored bonus package for those who try Savage Affiliates under my link. These bonuses are going to be a great help to you in your quest to build a successful affiliate marketing business.
You can see what these bonuses are in my Savage Affiliates review.
Once you purchase Savage Affiliates, you can email me at paul@thefreedomfellow.com with the name you purchased under, and I’ll send over the bonuses after verification.
Conclusion
Affiliate Institute is an online business platform that provides solid affiliate marketing training, a helpful community, and some other cool features.
Unfortunately, it has some big problems that, in my view, don’t make the paid offers worth it. In particular, it’s too expensive, and the scammy Enagic MLM offer is really off-putting.
In my view, this isn’t a program that you want to get involved in. Instead, the affiliate marketing training that I recommend is Savage Affiliates.
Savage Affiliates has no ongoing membership fees. It not only provides a training program that is more comprehensive than AI, but it also provides an inner-circle private community and has no annoying upsells.
Just pick it up and give it a try. If it doesn’t work for you, you can refund it within 30 days.
Thanks for reading my Affiliate Institute review. Note that I am an affiliate for Savage Affiliates. The views expressed here are my own and are not official statements by Franklin Hatchett.