Affiliate X: A members perspective review

Well where do we begin with this one? Affiliate X by some guy called Chris who is reported as making over $5 million in Clickbank alone.

If you are anything like me you will have probably been alerted to Affiliate X by an email from a (trusted?) source? Am I right? Well that is how I got to first look into what Affiliate X was all about. I received an email from the guys who run, (well I won’t mention them but lets just say I once trusted them until it turned out their product didn’t work but I stayed on their list just to see what other stuff they were trying push), and decided to check out the Affiliate X sales page.

Nothing new about the approach, all the things you come to expect from one of these, “oh but I am not a Guru, just a regular guy” gurus with all these millions they have made. The promises to make instant income to the tune of hundreds if not thousands of dollars a day is fairly typical and the sales page does sound very convincing.

A new trend I am seeing emerge is the “I am changing my career from affiliate marketer so now it’s your turn, as I am into software now…” approach.

This attempts to convince people that “oh he has had his share and now it is my turn” type of psychology but if you look behind the scenes you will discover what is really going on.

Let me explain it this way, if these guys can convince you that they have stepped out of the way, and have allowed you as the next guy to come in on their coat tails, especially if they can fast track you there with some software, then you would be convinced right? Maybe or maybe not. But I can tell you what, it is a lot easier to get money out of your pocket on a regular basis if you are on what these guys call a “continuity program”, that is they are continuing to charge you each month, which in this case is what happens with Affiliate X.

So if all this looks like it is stacked in the favour of Mr Chris X then you may be wondering why I would be looking at it in the first place. Good question.

I run my own SEO company, (search engine optimization for the uninitialed, which incidentally is what you need if you are to get into the affiliate game) and one of the promises on the sales page for Affiliate X was the lure of getting all of Chris X’s trade secrets wound up in his software package that takes the hard work or guess work out of the equation and all of this is with “Free Traffic”.

I was inquizitive at this point to see if his software generated SEO traffic for me, as when it comes to traffic there is no such thing as “Free Traffic”. Sure you will turn up in the Google organic results but they are no means free. Yes Google sponsored links “Adwords” ads cost you money each time someone clicks on the ad while the organic side does not. But to get you site to rank highly in the top 3 spots or even just anywhere on the front page, is by no means free at all.

SEO is hard work no questions about it. Long hard work, and this is with all the software assistance you can get your hands on. So when he makes such a claim I am skeptical at best and outraged at worst. So what did I do next?

I Bought Affiliate X and then….

Then I decided that I had to buy a copy and see for myself what this was made up of.

Once inside you will notice the “tone” is a whole lot less pushy and Chris does a pretty good job of explaining what his program is all about, which is more than a lot of these guys do. So many times I have bought someones product to find myself lost in volumes of manuscripts or pages of confusing instructions. So well done on the layout, pretty good, but something a lot more sinister lies behind the slick facade.

The most crucial bit of research you need to do when preparing your affiliate campaigns, has to do with “Keyword Research”. Get the keywords wrong and your entire prospect of making money is dismantled. It’s a bit like picking up an incorrect map and heading off in the wrong direction to only find out your are lost when it is too late. (You need to have two things: Google Keyword Tool and Market Samurai, one is free the other is a one time cost but worth every last penny you will pay for it. period)

Your keywords are the absolute pinnacle of your success foundations. Sure there is work to be done once you get the right keywords but get them wrong and it does not matter what you do with poor planning and you are toast.

SO it comes as a big shock to find that for the very top rated of the Top 100 Clickbank products, the top keyword was one that would get you just one click a day IF and only you were at the top of Google, No#1 ranked for the keyword. My video above explains in detail how I did my keyword research and came up with the numbers using the indispensible tools of Google Keyword Tool and Market Samurai.

To me this is a major warning sign that Chris has gotten this program way wrong. Worthy notion but a miserable failure in my books if after all the backlinking efforts (and believe me they are considerable for this keyword, “maverick moneymakers review”) that you were to get just one click. With the average sale or conversion rate of just 1% or 1 in a hundred, you would be there for a very long time expecting your seo efforts to bring in just $30 commission. At one click a day, that would be over 3 months to make a single sale.

I am a professional seo expert and I run my own search engine optimization company, HeliumSEO.com and this is how I know what I do about how much a waste of time and money Affiliate X is. To the uninitiated it all sounds so good, and looks just great. So what about all those “other” reviews claiming how great this product is? Where do they come from? Well no surprises here, people will tell you anything to make a sale, get used to that in this industry.

Incidently this is why I do so well with people who join my blogs, I tell it how it is. No bs, just the truth.

So if Affiliate X is no good, then is there a way to find out about affiliate marketing without getting burnt?

The answer is yes…

Now if you are somewhat advanced or intermediate with your knowledge of affiliate marketing and are struggling to get over the hump to quit your day job income, then you simple must try to join up with James Schramko.

James started out as a super successful luxury car marketer, ($300k per year) who left it all behind to do affiliate marketing full time. He only did this when he had equaled his day job pay packet, so he knows exactly what he is doing in this game. His teaching is advanced, so not the best place to start. And well he only takes on people who have been recommended by a friend to his Super Fast Results forum. Even with an invite it is join the waiting list to see if a spot comes up to be allowed to get in.

He charges $97 bucks a month, so you need to be advanced enough to be able to put his techniques into practice straight away to make your investment worthwhile. He does offer a trial of just $39 for the first 30 days so you can check out whether or not it is for you. You can decide if his training is what you are after.

In my membership time with James which was for about 6 months I was able to hone my skills on several income streams that will pay for my membership 10 x over, and then some. I am no longer a member as my skills have enabled me to work on the internet full time now, so if you join you’re not going to be there forever. There are however so many professionals in this forum, it is awesome and I apologize in advance if you can’t get it. James keeps the numbers to a limit to enable full attention to his existing members. One of the cool things with his forum is that they have Mastermind meetings in many of the major cities around the world, so that you can meet up to network with other like minded affiliate marketers.

Bottom line: Stay well clear of Affilate X, not worth it although it looks the part, there are far better ways to get there than this half baked piece of software. Also just one tip from James has seen me make $80k per year in one part of my business that I was overlooking the potential. So for me the answer is clear, skip Affiliate X and most of the other scams out and get yourself to a group of folks who can help you to tell the difference between a phony/fake and the real deal.