A growing number of people are becoming interested in affiliate marketing, a way to earn money online by promoting other companies’ products and services and receiving a commission on each sale.
Technically, the process behind affiliate marketing is quite simple: you join one of the many affiliate programs available online, you receive a special link, you add it to your website, blog, or social media channel and you earn a commission every time somebody clicks on that link and buys a product or service from the merchant’s website.
In practice, you can’t just randomly add affiliate links on your blog and expect to generate traffic and sales out of the blue. You need to develop a specific set of skills to become a successful affiliate marketer and consistently earn money online.
To help you move your first steps in this field, we have reviewed some of the most popular free online affiliate marketing courses. Choose the one you like the most and start learning today.
To offer free quality reviews, we earn affiliate commissions on some of these courses. This doesn’t affect our evaluations, as our mission is to help learners select the best courses based on their needs and goals.
Wealthy Affiliate
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This is by far the best website available for beginners. After creating a free starter account, you will have access to a great 10-lesson course for people who know nothing about affiliate marketing and want to move their first steps in this field.
Each lesson contains both written teachings and a video tutorial. The combined length of the free video teachings available on Wealthy Affiliate is almost 3 hours, and the teaching quality is very high. A lot of value for a free course.
In each lesson, you will complete various tasks to make sure you understood the notions and concepts explained.
Here’s the structure of Wealthy Affiliate’s basic course:
– Lesson 1: Getting Rolling
– Lesson 2: Understanding How to Make Money Online
– Lesson 3: Choose a Niche
– Lesson 4: Building Your Niche Website
– Lesson 5: Setting Up Your Website
– Lesson 6: Getting Your Site Ready for Search Engines
– Lesson 7: Creating Your Initial Website Content
– Lesson 8: Creating Custom Menus on Your Website
– Lesson 9: Understanding Keywords, The Start of Your Content
– Lesson 10: Your Next Steps
This basic training is not the only thing offered for free at Wealthy Affiliate. This platform also gives you access to some amazing free tools for beginners, like free hosting to build your first website and a free tool to perform keyword analysis (an important step of the affiliate marketing process that you will learn during the basic course).
Moreover, you have 7-day unlimited access to Wealthy Affiliate’s live chat. This tool is of amazing value because it allows you to interact with some very experienced affiliate marketers who have operated in this field for years and can offer you real-time advice by answering your questions.
Wealthy Affiliate has helped over one million beginners to take their first steps in the world of affiliate marketing and it’s a must-try for somebody new in this field who needs to gain the basic skills to make money online with this method.
We highly recommend you create a free account today so you can start the basic training right away.
TO SUM IT UP The greatest learning resource available for affiliate marketing beginners. Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t just provide you with basic teachings for starters but also with all the tools and community you need to start your first project.
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Udemy Free Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners
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This is a great introductory course if you are looking for a comprehensive overview of what affiliate marketing is and what are the different steps it requires to generate consistent revenue online. All you need to join is a free Udemy account.
This course has helped over 8000 beginners. It comes in the form of video classes (2.5 hours of teaching). Here’s the course’s structure:
– Section 1: What is Affiliate Marketing?
Understand How Affiliate Marketing Works and How You Can Get Started Right Now
– Section 2: How to Build a Website for Affiliate Marketing
Review the Tools Needed to Create the Best Foundation for Your New Business
– Section 3: Review the Best Strategy for High Profits
How to Make the Most Money With Your Affiliate Marketing Website
– Section 4: Choosing a Niche for Your Affiliate Marketing Business
General thoughts on choosing a niche
– Section 5: Affiliate Programs and Network
Affiliate programs vs. networks
– Section 6: Bonus
The Secret Most Marketers Never Tell You About Making Big Profits Online
As you can see this course includes all the essential notions an affiliate marketing beginner needs to learn: how to get started with affiliate marketing, how to set up your website, how to attract the right visitors, how to choose a niche, and how to earn commissions.
While overall this course contains fewer teaching and support resources than Wealthy Affiliate, it is a good starting point if you like quick and essential step-by-step guides. It also provides a link to a free “Affiliate Marketing Blueprint” (downloadable in PDF) to help you through the learning process.
The teacher is very communicative, sociable, and easy to follow and his course has mostly 4-star or 5-star reviews on Udemy.
TO SUM IT UP This free course offers an effective step-by-step learning experience to Affiliate Marketing newbies. It breaks down the main process you need to follow to target the right niche, attract the right visitors, and generate affiliate revenues.
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Affiliate Marketing Dude (YouTube Channel)
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This YouTube channel is managed by a very experienced affiliate marketer who has been in this business for over 16 years. It has over 70,000 subscribers and over 600 free videos uploaded in the last 8 years. It is updated weekly with new videos containing new advice for affiliate marketers of all levels.
Besides tons of videos on affiliate marketing tools, techniques, and secrets, this channel provides additional advice and tips for online marketers, like how to make money with Adsense, how to manage social media effectively, and how to create and grow a money-making YouTube channel.
On this channel, you will find 16 different playlists. 11 of these playlists are dedicated entirely to Affiliate Marketing:
– Affiliate Marketing is Freakin’ Easy
– Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
– How To Make Money Online: Simple Affiliate Marketing Video Tutorials
– Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Today: Official Playlist
– Landing Pages, Squeeze Pages, and Affiliate Funnels
– Affiliate Marketing Tutorial Live Streams
– Ultimate Free Traffic Guide for Affiliate Marketing
– Affiliate Marketing: Blog Profit Network
– Offervault: Affiliate Marketing Tutorials
– Affiliate Marketing: Make Money on Black Friday / Cyber Monday
– Make Money with Clickbank Affiliate Offers
The other 5 playlists include advice and information on other tools used by online marketers to increase their revenue stream:
– Adsense: How to Make Money Online
– Making Money with Social Media: Influencer Marketing
– YouTube Channel Growth and LifeStreaming
– Money Mindset
– Book Reviews and Life Lessons
Another great feature of this channel is that it regularly offers live video tutorials with an embedded real-time chat that allows you to interact with the teacher and with other learners instantly. It’s basically like attending school seminars, except it’s much less stressful and you are doing it from the comfort of your home.
The channel’s teacher (and owner) is very good at explaining both theoretical concepts and real-life affiliate experiences in a very engaging and entertaining way. He also offers a paid course on his website. Yet the free video tutorials available on his YouTube channel are enough to keep you going for several weeks.
Keep in mind that while the number of teachings available on this channel is enormous, these videos are not structured and sequenced like an actual course but more like a video library from which you can select the stuff you’re interested in.
This can be very helpful for those who already have some basic knowledge of Affiliate Marketing so we suggest you start with a basic “structured” course like the one offered at Wealthy Affiliate (first review in this article) before using the information available on this channel.
This will give you a better beginner’s perspective and will allow you to make the best out of the information this and other YouTube channels and affiliate marketing blogs provide.
TO SUM IT UP This regularly updated YouTube channel is recommended for those who want to explore digital marketing beyond just affiliate marketing. It contains a massive quantity of free learning resources and it hosts live seminars with real-time chat interaction with the teacher.
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Learn by Doing
While learning the theory is important, it’s even more important to apply what you learn right away.
Your first website must not be perfect. Building it will help you get acquainted with website editors WordPress and with basic SEO tools like keyword analysis and content marketing.
If you have questions about these affiliate marketing courses or want to share your personal learner’s experience, feel free to leave a comment below.
Check also our other reviews of online courses, guides, and tutorials.
Last updated on October 7, 2022 – First published on April 14, 2020
This is really good to see and thank you so much for sharing . though I am just an aspiring affiliate marketer, seeing all of these here makes me really delighted and thank you for sharing this out here. Personally, I feel that this post has covered it all for me in terms of learning affiliate marketing freely. I will check the udemy affiliate course too fsince I’m on wealthy affiliate already
We are glad found this article useful, Ella. Wealthy Affiliate is definitely the best choice out there. It was a great choice to start there.
Affiliate marketing really is amazing! I started with affiliate marketing for 4 days ago and i have already made a website and written 3 blogs! Wealthy Affiliate is an amazing platform for people with long term business plans! The community really is the best. You get help in a matter of seconds!
Amazing blog, i really enjoyed reading it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your comment Ragul and keep up the good work.
It’s great to have options as to where to learn affiliate marketing and all thee of these seem to be good picks. Frankly, I need money now so I am wondering which one would be the best to earn money fast? I think that having a week for free could really get a person off to a flying start. Which one of these platforms will get me earning the quickest?
Hi Feochadan! As outlined in the article, Wealthy Affiliate is probably the best choice for a total beginner who wants access to free training and tools to build an affiliate website quickly.
Not too long I joined Wealthy affiliate and I’m really enjoying every bit of the training. I have understood that affiliate marketing is not easy but I know it is worth it and at last, success will become inevitable.
The training at wealthy affiliate is unique and I’m fully convinced not to ever relent in putting into work all I have learnt from the training. It is actually worth the stress.
Thanks for sharing your amazing experience, Kenechi.
Great article
I like affiliate marketing, it is one of the best way to earn sine the break out of this pandemic disease corona virus, there has been a total lockdown in most countries, while some is social distance etc, and most people are not working because of these reasons, currently online business are the best way to earn, in this case wealthy Affiliate, imagine the rating being 5 out of 5, that shows it is a really good business to get involved with, the free lesson are great and beginners dont have to worry about being ignorant, other affiliate are good, but Wealthy is the best…Thanks for sharing
Thanks for your feedback, Alexy. We totally agree, there’s not a better time than this to become interested in affiliate marketing.
Thank you for such post that comes with great opportunities.
success in business comes when you know the right direction. and website creation becomes easy when you have the right access to information needed. the courses outlined here can take you from beginner level with no experience to a great website builder. thank you very much for this article
Hello Kirman, it’s great that you liked this article.
Thank you very much for this great opportunity that you have shared her. it is really helpful.
the simple 10 steps that you have given will help any one get better and establish his or her own website. after watching the video i gained more insight and the practical process seems better.
It’s great that you have decided to built a website, Smoochi. We wish you all possible success.
I know the first too you have listed but I did not know about the affiliate dude. I took some minutes to check his videos and some are quite interesting but I do not think that he always play by the rules. Some tips are made to make you a quick buck but you may also get banned from certain platforms. So, one should be very careful before applying his advice.
The best one for me will always be wealthy affiliate, the training are made to help you create a sustainable online income.
Thanks
Wealthy Affiliate is definitely one of the best places online to learn Affiliate Marketing. It’s also a great platform to build and manage your website. Still, some YouTube Channels (like Affiliate Dude) have many interesting videos that can help you gain additional knowledge.
I have never heard of the Affiliate Marketing dude on YouTube before but I am going to give him a try. I think it is best to learn my affiliate marketing strategies from several sources 🙂 As for WA I love their trainning platform, it is very simple and easy to follow plus I get to build the free site on the platform. The best part it is free. As for Udemy, I took other classes with Udemy (coding) but did not take the affiliate marketing, I am going to give it a try, I have a lot of time to learn new skills anyways. Thanks for sharing useful information!
It’s great to hear you found this article useful, Nuttanee!
Your review of places to learn about affiliate marketing for free is well done. I agree that Wealthy Affiliate was best for me. I had a lot to learn and needed help, structure and encouragement.
Your article offers a glimpse into more places for help, and there are so many that comparisons are important. Before I tried the free level at Wealthy Affiliate I bounced in and out of a number of the free sites. The time I wasted because I was overwhelmed. I needed the structure offered in the WA program.
However, I have learned some of the steps from other sites and just when I think I am “good enough” to do this on my own, I will have a revelation of what I didn’t learn or what the other guy’s free course left out. So I know that for people like me who have a lot to learn, the learn as you go method offered at Wealthy Affiliate is better. After all. time is money as well. So while it may not cost money to learn from an unstructured site, it will cost a great deal of time.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Sami. We also think Wealthy Affiliate is the best platform for those who are starting in Affiliate Marketing and want affordable access to structured courses in affiliate marketing, as well as many other tools to create and manage their first website.