My “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” Review: Earn Over $50k a Month From Your Blog

Recently I purchased the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – where Michelle, the founder of a personal finance blog called Making Sense of Cents, shares how she makes over $50,000/month from her blog. That is more than most people make in a year, she makes it in just a month!

While I run what you can call a relatively new blog, I certainly have benefited from this course already in just 30 days after purchasing and completing this course. I am on my way to have this course paid for and way more. That being said, this course might not be for everyone and that’s okay but hopefully this review will help you decide if the $197 Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course is right for you!

You might be wondering who is Michelle? And why should I care what she has to say?

I was brought to her site more than once when I was casually looking through my Pinterest feed. Occasionally I would search for topics like how to save money, how to make extra money, and the big kicker that got my attention, how to pay off $40,000 of college loans in 7 months.

For me, it wasn’t the college loan but I saw my auto loan, heck even my credit card debt. How can I make this possible for myself! I totally related to Michelle and I was so inspired to get myself together to make this happen!

But I have to say it’s amazing how fast you click on a link when it says “I earn $50,000 a month through my blog”.

When I clicked through to her site, I found a 28 year old blogger who earns $50k/month while traveling around in an RV with her husband and her 2 dogs. As a fan of the traveling and making money from anywhere in the world lifestyle, that’s definitely the kind of story that catches my eye!

As I explored her site Making Sense of Cents, I found her monthly income reports. Over the last 6 months it’s clear that Michelle has been consistently making over $50k every month!

But here’s what’s crazy about it. She doesn’t push sell and she’s not part of any sleazy multi-level marketing scheme. There are an awful lot of bloggers that get rich by selling worthless books, courses, and advice on how to get rich. And regretfully I have signed up and paid for those courses. It was awful!

I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone and people were just worried about the bottom line, not about the people that were looking for their help!

That’s simply not the case with Michelle. She’s a personal finance blogger and only mentions products that she values. Such as Bluehost for hosting a website, Tailwind for scheduling on Pinterest, and Ebates for online shopping (Michelle earns about $1,000/month from Ebates alone, just for shopping).

Here it is the purpose of this post…

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work?

Affiliate marketing is how Michelle and many other successful bloggers make money. Each of these companies I just mentioned above (and so many more) have an affiliate program that gives bloggers, even beginners, the opportunity to earn a commission when their readers click through a link to sign up or make a purchase.

For example, I am an affiliate like many bloggers of Amazon Associates. Amazon is one of the biggest affiliate programs in the world. Think about it for a second, who doesn’t shop on Amazon?! It’s a great way to share with your readers what products you use and you love!

Meanwhile, businesses LOVE affiliate marketing. Because they only pay when a sale is made, making it very low-risk for them. While a TV, radio, social media ad costs a fortune and might not bring in a single sale, an affiliate is only paid once the business has money in the bank.

Now of course it’s not that easy, you can’t just put link in your posts ad cross your fingers someone is going to buy through that link. First of all, you won’t be making money that easy, if that’s all you do. Remember it’s NOT just about the bottom line, money. You’ll go a lot further and make way more if you provide real value for your readers.

Secondly, if you try to be too polite – placing a single link in your website footer – you’ll never make any money either. You have to find the right balance to get people to your links without turning them off. This is where Michelle’s course comes in.

My “Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing” review…

Since I first came across Michelle’s blog this last October (2016), I’ve been fascinated with her success and obviously would love to follow in her footsteps. I crave the travelling, being my own boss lifestyle, so when I see someone around my age, I can’t help but take notes.

So when I found out about her course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, I read through a good amount of reviews that helped me make the plunge into this course.

It’s been awhile since I bought a course online. My last experience was a doozy and rattled my cage, but this one was definitely worth the money! In fact, I’ll be sharing my first income report in the near future to show you what I am talking about. The course has more than paid for itself over this last month. I’m finally earning from my blog to call it more than just a hobby, you can call it a business.

That being said, Michelle’s course isn’t for everyone. I say that because I knew I wanted to monetize my blog from the beginning but also I had some knowledge already on affiliate marketing so it wasn’t a new concept for me.

The best advice I can give is, if you buy this course you HAVE to work on it. Don’t just buy it, quickly read through it, or for some, not at all. I promise it is worth the effort and you’ll see the return before you know it!

If you are a beginner and worried that you don’t have enough traffic you don’t need a huge amount of traffic to start this course. I had less than 1k page views a month when I started this course, 30 days later I am now up to 5k page views and that’s from one of the bonuses on Pinterest Strategy.

Here’s what you get from Michelle’s course…

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing helps you do exactly what the title suggests, maximize your affiliate marketing revenue. You’ll discover how to guide readers towards your affiliate links, manage affiliate programs effectively, and do this all legally (yes, there are laws that bloggers have to follow).

You need a running site to make this course work or if you want to Start Your Own Blog, that part is easy and I show you how to do it in 5 steps!

Take a second and ask yourself these questions, are you committed to making your site a success? Do you want to discover how to improve your affiliate income?

If you answered yes to both questions then this course is incredibly valuable for you.

In my opinion, there are four benefits to this course that make it worth $197:

First of all, you gain access to an exclusive Facebook mastermind group: Everyone who joins the course gains access to an exclusive Facebook group where we all can ask questions, offer advice, and compare strategies. In short, you are able to experiment with, and learn from, an active group of people at various paths in their blogging journey. You’ll even come across me on occasion!

Second, the course has a lot of great information: As I mentioned before, you discover how to encourage readers to click on your links without spamming them, keep track of all of your affiliate programs, and much more. There’s a lot of valuable content – which is the obvious reason to buy any course.

Third, you are able to ask Michelle questions: At $600,000 a year, Michelle earns more than the majority of CEOs in America. Not only does this make her an incredibly valuable mentor, it also means that her time is worth $300/hr! And when you sign up for the course, she often responds to your questions and comments directly. Essentially, you gain the ability to ask a $300/hr consultant for advice at any time (but please, don’t go overboard).

Fourth, one of the bonuses Michelle amazingly offers is a Pinterest Strategy Course from another successful blogger, Rosemarie of the Busy Budgeter, who makes over $20k a month on Pinterest. Rosemarie shares her exact formula on how she makes Pinterest her full time job. For me that is more than worth the investment in itself. Pinterest is a leader in image SEO. This bonus is where I learned how to go from 0 followers 1,000 followers in just 30 days! That means 1,000 people can now easily access my blog posts!

Considering the four benefits above, for someone eager to excel at affiliate marketing and raise their income online, this course is definitely worth the $197 investment.

What this course is not…

As I mentioned above, for me this course was a great investment. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone only those who are prepared to work at it. The more you work on it the better the results.

Why? Because it’s a course on affiliate marketing – not a course on blogging, writing great content, or growing traffic. Although a new blogger could benefit from the information shared, it’s a pricey purchase for someone who’s simply experimenting with a new hobby. If you are determined like I was to make my blog into a business than go for it!

Before you decide to make an investment in this course, realize that it will only help you with one piece of the blogging puzzle. Remember, unless you’re also willing to put the time and energy into learning how to grow your traffic and improve your writing, this course will offer you little value.

So is the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course right for you?

Thanks largely to what I’ve learned from Michelle, my affiliate earnings for this month are on track to pay for this course three times over! And I’m just getting started! With more money coming into my blog, I now have the ability to invest more into it as well.

So if you already understand the basics of blogging, or would like to Start a Blog and then ramp up to making money online, and are committed to making your blog a success, then Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing could help you turn your hobby into a business.

Michelle’s strategy hasn’t only helped her make $50,000/month, it’s also played a valuable role in helping dozens, if not hundreds, of other bloggers improve their blogging income as well – and that includes me!

So thank you to Michelle, for creating and sharing this amazing course! I am so excited to see many more successful blog income reports around the internet!

I’d love to hear your tips and thoughts in the comments below!

Happy Blogging!