Today, I’m going to do an in-depth breakdown of the best affiliate marketing courses in 2025.
I’ve personally gone through each course here. That means actually going through their paid content (yes, even buying the courses in some cases), and also seeing what type of activity there is inside of their coaching groups.
If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I fully endorse Affiliate Marketing as a business model (though it isn’t my top choice).
The most important piece (outside of the course content) is the mentorship and coaching. If you botch those, you’re doomed.
That being said, let’s hop in!
#5 - John Crestani, Super Affiliate System
Overall Rating
Course Length
50 Hours
Price
$997
- Gives some pre-made templates, which means a lot of the guesswork is removed and you can modify or use those templates as inspiration for your own products
- They have monthly coaching calls, which means if you hit a big roadblock, you’ll have someone helping you through it (small caveat: we weren’t able to see if it’s actually John doing the coaching, or someone on his team)
- John’s Super Affiliate System funnel is loaded with fake scarcity and unrealistic “always on” discounts telling you the sale ends today, which means he’s kinda being a dishonest person and is trying to manipulate you to make the sale
- Unrealistic earning claims ($0 to $19.7 million), which makes it hard to understand how practical it will be for you to really make money (and again, is dishonest)
- Undisclosed hidden costs, meaning after you pay that $997, you’re going to need to pay for softwares and tools to keep the train rolling (likely softwares that he gets paid for you signing up for.. Cough cough)
- Only teaches paid advertising, which means when you really want to scale your business, you’ll need to buy a separate course teaching you all about SEO for affiliate products
Overview
The Super Affiliate System (SAS) is a revamped version of John’s first course, Internet JetSet.
The course is set up to take you about 12 weeks to go through, but the information is pretty digestible, so you could get through it a lot quicker if you wanted to.
SAS focuses primarily on paid advertising traffic methods, and covers off decently well on how to pick products and offers.
As someone that has personally managed millions of dollars on ad spend, I can personally say that the idea of making hundreds of thousands of dollars spending $10/day as John claims is… unrealistic (to put it nicely).
John Crestani is a household name in affiliate marketing – he’s been featured all over, and is obviously good at selling people on affiliate marketing.
Overall, the training seems good. Like anything, if you took what he teaches and embarked on a quest of learning more through places like free Youtube videos, you’d eventually figure things out over a long enough time.
UPDATE FOR 2025:
When we first wrote this, John was higher up the list at #1 and #2 at different times. The original income claims we found were $3,000,000. He now claims nearly $20,000,000 in affiliate earnings, which doesn’t pass the “sniff test” for us. That’s why his ranking has dropped considerably.
The Bottom Line
- The focus is on ads, so you can make money more quickly if you find a winning combination of ad creative + ad copy + product (& if you have the budget to scale it)
- Scaling this type of thing to anything remotely considered “financial freedom” will require a lot of financial investment. If you hit it BIG out of the gate, you could keep rolling your profits into more ad budgets, but that is a risky game
Conclusion
I love paid traffic – heck, there’s chances you’re on this page because you clicked on an ad! So for that reason, I like what John Crestani is trying to teach. If you can get a winning formula, you can scale it up nicely.
That being said, if you aren’t sitting on $20,000+ in liquid cash to be able to invest in advertising the product while it’s hot, then I don’t think you’re going to like this program very much.
#4 - Franklin Hatchett, Savage Affiliate
Overall Rating
Course Length
31 Hours
Price
$297
- Low price offering, which means people without much to invest can at least get their toes wet and see what affiliate marketing is all about
- A lot of time spent on niche research, so that you can have better odds of hitting a winner straight out of the gate
- Has SEO & Paid Ads training, which means you’ll be able to pick the scaling path that makes most sense for your situation
- Doesn’t really go into much depth on traffic methods, which means you’ll get some fundamentals, but you’ll likely need to hit Youtube or other courses to really learn the advanced strategies and techniques
- His programs are often his own affiliate play (monetizes new students), which makes us question how much he actually makes doing what he teaches you
- The $297 price point is way too low to deliver real value to people that join, so you might find yourself having to buy upsells or other programs in the future
Overview
Franklin Hatchett’s Savage Affiliates is a similar story to John Crestani’s SAS. It used to be nearer the top of our list, but some better contenders blow him out of the water to be quite frank (tehe, see what I did there?).
Franklin Hatchett has been around the online business game for a long time. I remember taking one of his Shopify Dropshipping courses right after graduating college.
Reflecting back now, I see that he was probably an ecommerce amateur, and I was just another notch on his Shopify affiliate commissions :/
To his credit, he gives away a lot of practical / good content on his Youtube channel, which can’t be said for all the gurus out there.
His course covers a solid base of traffic methods, like:
- Running ads on Google
- Running ads on Facebook
- Ranking via organic SEO methods
Another big focus of his program is niche selection.
This is pretty great, because this is where most people f*** up affiliate marketing. They pick a niche that is too hard for them, think affiliate marketing is a scam, and then quit.
So, knowing what to avoid is a big advantage over the other courses listed above.
At a $197 price tag, I can confidently say: “at least you’re not getting outright scammed out of your money”.
The course also covers some other topics like email marketing, tracking, offers, etc.
If you’re looking for a system that’s going to make you cash in less than 12 months, this isn’t going to be it – but that doesn’t need it’s bad.
Franklin gives some good tips on getting small wins earlier on so that you can at least break even on the price you paid for his course – you’re just going to have to work at it.
Franklin Hatchett has made millions of dollars online doing affiliate marketing, so he clearly knows what he’s doing.
My online critique of what he does is that A LOT of his affiliate revenue comes from getting you to sign-up for software (with his affiliate link), just to implement the business model he’s teaching you.
My question is: how much does he actually make off of the niche fishing stores and such that he shows you in his trainings?
The Bottom Line
- At the price point he sells Savage Affiliates, definitely one of the top programs for the price
- In my personal opinion, his success seems to come from monetizing students via the affiliate links he pushes on his own students, rather than actually running successful affiliate offers in the way he teaches you
Conclusion
Savage Affiliates has better content than some courses I’ve seen @ $1,000 price points. So if you were dead set on exploring affiliate marketing and were also kinda broke, this is a good start for seeing what the business model is really about.
#3 - Morten Storgaard, Passive Income Geek
Overall Rating
Course Length
15 Hours
Price
$399/yr
- Similar to Savage Affiliates, he focuses a lot on niche selection, which means you’ll spend a lot of time figuring out what makes a good product and what doesn’t
- He has a community component, which means you can network and share ideas with other newbies
- His program is built around an over-the-shoulder live example, which means you’ll see practically what your day to day would look like
- 15 hours isn’t much time to learn any skill set to the point where you’d be an expert capable of making real money, which means you might end up needing to buy another program down the line
- PIG only has 800 members & we couldn’t find many testimonials from successful students, which means you might be a bit of a test dummy for Storgaard’s program
- His program has a yearly subscription cost, whereas others on this list give you lifetime access in addition to regular content updates
Overview
The Passive income Geek (PIG) course is a well rounded introduction to affiliate marketing. It’ll show you how to create and monetize blogs.
The course focuses on some different skills than the others in the list. It teaches display ads, email marketing, and even how to become a consultant.
In my experience, Display ads are often harder to make money from when we’re talking about your standard niches (e.g., basic physical products, etc.)
They’re good for some less-savory niches where you prey on people’s fears and insecurities to force a click on your ad… but that’s about it (again, this is just my experience).
We really liked how the program is positioned as an “over the shoulder” view of building something real and tangible – that’s actually something incredibly unique in this space, so we appreciate that Stugaard built his program this way.
We don’t like the subscription model for his program. To us that signals he has a smaller group and is trying to double-monetize every lead that comes through the door.
You could certainly make money with his program, but perhaps not as easily as with others on this list. That being said, you’ll probably get more value than from Franklin Hatchett’s or John Crestani’s programs, and you could always cancel after the first year.
The Bottom Line
- Over the shoulder live example will give you a really concrete idea of what your day might look like running this business model.
- Not a big fan of the subscription model for this program.
Conclusion
Seems to offer better material and value at the $397/yr price point than some of these other guys do at $297 or $997. If I were to be forced to pick an affiliate program out of the first 3 in this list (which by the way, I prefer this business model over Affiliate Marketing), I’d pick Passive Income Geek.
#2 - Matt Diggity, Affiliate Lab
Overall Rating
Course Length
24 Hours
Price
$997
- Matt Diggity actually runs the business model, outside of simply monetizing his own students. That means you’ll be learning from someone that actually knows what they’re doing
- No series of upsell after upsell - you get what you get when you pay the $997 fee
- Training gets updated a few times per year, which means you’ll always be up to date on meaningful changes in the ecosystem
- They have a Zero Refund policy, which means if you get in there and realize you hate it… well you’re basically out $1,000
- No ad training, which means you’re going to be locked-in to only knowing SEO tactics for growing a blog
- Doesn’t actually teach how to write your content… which means if you’re cash-strapped, you need to factor in also outsourcing all of your content (which isn’t cheaper)
Overview
The Affiliate Lab is a great intro point for anyone that is incredibly serious about being an Affiliate Marketer.
What I mean is, if you’re sitting on at least a few grand, and have the time and dedication to work on building an affiliate business over the next 2 years… this is probably one of the best places you could start.
Diggity is a big player in the SEO game, and quite frankly he knows his sh**.
His free Youtube material is a bit “leading”, in the sense that he tells you what he’s doing, but rarely goes into great detail about how.
I get it, the guy has a program to sell, but I sometimes wish I knew the details of what he was teaching!
He’s done a few polls inside his groups asking his students how much they’re making, and some people have made outrageous claims – so I’m not sure how much I trust them.
That being said, given how much I personally know about SEO, I can say he’s legitimate.
Like I said earlier in this article, I prefer the Local Lead Generation business model, which is kinda like Affiliate Marketing where you actually own the stuff you’re selling.
So while Matt may be a Superstar SEO Guru, it’s a bit like being the heartthrob lead singer of a band no one listens to 🤷.
The Bottom Line
- Matt Diggity is a legit SEOer, so you’re learning from an actual pro.
- No refunds, so if you find Affiliate Marketing actually isn’t quite for you… it’s bye-bye $1000!
Conclusion
At the end of the day, Matt Diggity seems to be a real expert. I’m not 100% sure how good of a teacher he is, but there are tons of positive testimonials online, so I’ve got to imagine he’s at least somewhat good!
#1 Gael Breton, TASS
Overall Rating
Course Length
120 Hours
Price
$1,500
- Has helpful templates & spreadsheets to follow along with, which means you won’t need to reinvent the wheel
- Detailed / Advanced topics for experienced SEOers, which means if you’re coming from another program (perhaps one of the beginner-focused ones earlier on this list), you’ll be getting some cutting edge tactics
- Generally strong reputation in online community - so rest assured others have had success with TASS
- Not beginner friendly / information overload, so if you’re fresh to online business, this may not be for you
- Zero ads training, which means (again), you’ll eventually be shelling out money for an ads program to learn how to REALLY scale
- With 13,000 students, tactics may get played out, and community might be a sea of noise
Overview
I’ll shoot it straight with you – TASS 3.0 is the talk of the town when it comes to learning SEO & Affiliate Marketing.
They teach some really good information and processes for identifying good niches, low authority competitors, and how to quantify which ones make most sense to go after.
They have a really famous student testimonial/case study where a student went into the Gardening niche and turned it into a 7-figure business!
Something I wish they’d focus on more given how important it is to really succeed is Conversion Rate Optimization. It’s one thing to get the traffic, it’s another to be able to squeeze every drop of conversions out of that traffic.
So in my humble opinion, that’s the biggest area for improvement with this program.
Again, it’s #1 on the list for a reason. If you are dead set on learning Organic affiliate methods, have maybe $20k – $30k to invest in really scaling something, and are OK failing a few times before you really win… then this is a good program for you!
The reason I say $20k – $30k investment is that, sure – you can buy his program for $1,000 or so. But you’re going to fail a few times with your first sites, you’re going to need to invest in things like buying backlinks, hiring content writers, etc etc.
I have close friends with affiliate empires, and they invested nearly $200K to get them off the ground – so just know what you’re signing up for!
The Bottom Line
- TASS 3.0 probably has the best reputation in Affiliate Marketing courses hands down. No money-gun shooting gurus or douchey lambos here!
- Definitely not super beginner friendly, so if you are new to online business, this course may not be for you.
Conclusion
If you’ve got the money to invest and really want to make it big with this business model, and are willing to buckle down and learn / challenge yourself, this is probably the best bet.
So, Is Affiliate Marketing Even Worth It?
Key Takeaways
Organic Traffic
- With huge corporate spenders focused on ranking in Google now, you need a lot of money and a seriously good system for ranking.
- It usually takes over 12 months to actually rank a niche site (before you see a single dollar)
- Once site is ranked, it becomes much more passive
- Big financial investments – my friend invested over $200,000 to rank a niche site before brining in a single dollar (and that was with insights from a cutting edge, $10,000 website ranking course)
- Key to Success: Quality content & powerful links
- Courses: Affiliate Marketing Mastery, Wealthy Affiliate
Paid Traffic
- Faster results, but you can burn money if you don’t do it right
- Semi-passive: you still need to occasionally monitor ads
- Key to Success: Great ad creative & proven funnels
- Courses: Super Affiliate System, Savage Affiliates
A Story About The Pitfalls Of Affiliate Marketing
I have two things I’d like to discuss here.
Thing #1: Empire Wipers
Google has a bad habit of dropping search engine algorithm updates that shake the world.
In 2016, they dropped two huge updates: Hummingbird & Penguin.
Before this update, you could take a fresh site and rank it in weeks using a method known as long-tail-keyword ranking.
Think about ranking for keywords like:
“What is the best way to make money online in 2025 if I have $1K to invest and live in Texas”
Vs.
“Best way to make money online”
You could rank for that longer search almost overnight!
When Google launched that update, long tail keyword ranking died overnight.
With the rise of AI and Machine Learning, Google is smart enough to know which queries match to which pages on a site – they don’t really need you to tell them like they used to!
When they made that update, entire empires that relied on Long Tail keywords were destroyed overnight.
Just imagine having an affiliate empire that’s exploding, only to have a single update bring your cash-flow to a grinding halt.
And guess what? This isn’t the first time Google has done it!
If you’re old enough to remember, back in the day, sometimes you would search things, click on the first listing in Google, and it would just be a website with tons of random links on it that happened to have your search term on there.
Google used to value backlinks super highly, and then it all changed, and again empires fell.
My brother’s friend had a 7-figure affiliate business (+ another 7 figure software he sold that had powered this business) selling water filters. He even got to go to Richard Branson’s Necker Island for a few days to talk about the business with other entrepreneurs.
After one update, both businesses VANISHED.
My point with all of this?
Google & Facebook HATE businesses that try to game organic rankings, because it means LESS people spending money on their ad platforms.
Think about it: if I could have the same result by ranking my site to the first spot on Google, then I don’t need to run ads!
And so once a year, like clockwork, they put out massive updates that destroy people that tried to game their system.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to invest 2-3 years of my time building an empire that someone can delete at the click of a button.
So my main issue on the “organic” side of affiliate marketing, is that a lot of these courses still make it a point to teach long tail keywords & other outdated methods, even though they’ve been outdated for years.
You can of course make money with the paid methods, but here’s my issue with that:
The course creators made their money with paid ads because they found a product that worked, and spent a lot of time testing to find out why it worked for that product specifically.
Every market is different, every product is different.
My point is – you can’t just take one of their templates that worked well for a dog-walking leash that you wrap around your waist, and simply apply it to a kitchen gadget for grandmas.
So, you’re going to spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel and figuring out which ads will work for your product specifically.
If they gave you their exact ad and product, the market would become inundated with the message, and it would stop working.
If you’re really fortunate, the course is going to teach you the psychology of advertising. They’re going to teach you the principles behind psychological motivation (e.g., reciprocation, commitment, social proof, authority, likeness, scarcity, etc, etc) and how to apply them to advertising.
Then you at least have enough of a footing to think for yourself and make your own ads.
Thing #2: Control
Time for another story.
A few years back, I sold women’s health products via an affiliate offer on Clickbank.
It took me MONTHS of trying & testing different ads to find something that would work.
I spent weeks testing different variations of my landing pages.
Finally, I found a formula that worked, and I was able to sell products at a profit!
Guess what happened next?
They ended the affiliate program for their product.
Just like that, months of hard work and determination vanished.
I realized in that moment that I would never pursue another business model that left so much of my fate into the hands of another.
Between the algorithm updates, the ability to have my products TAKEN from me, & everything else, it just wasn’t for me.
Don’t get me wrong – I still make over $20,000/mo online by running ads that ultimately help other people… but it’s structured in such a way that I control everything.
So, That’s Why I Stopped Affiliate Marketing
#1 – Too much trust placed in the “Empire Wipers”
#2 – Lack of control over my business
Conclusion
So, all that being said, I present you 3 options if you’re still 100% bought-in to affiliate marketing.
Option #1: If you’re OK with paying a pricier tag for better information, go with John Crestani.
Option #2: If you want to get your feet wet without fully committing, go with Franklin Hatchett.
Truth be told, Affiliate Marketing can definitely work.
I’ve personally made money with affiliate marketing.
I have friends with rather large ($200K+/mo revenue) affiliate marketing businesses.
So it works…
There’s a ton of free information out there, so what you’re really paying for with these courses is the organization of the information, & (hopefully) the coaching.
Option #3: If your goal is to reach as much as $10K/Mo, I would recommend checking out the Digital Rental Method business model.
This is the model that helps me make over $20,000/mo. It’s not 100% passive income, but’s pretty close, and it’s a legitimate way to make money by actually helping people.
You may have to talk to some actual real-life humans to hit that $10K/mo, but hey – at least you know it’ll work. Also, you can’t live your entire life hiding behind a screen.
If you haven’t read my post about Digital Rental Method, it basically means renting websites to local businesses across the country that need help growing.
So in a sense, it’s kind of like affiliate marketing, but without the downsides.
Why I Choose Digital Real Estate Over Affiliate Marketing In 2025
With Digital Real Estate, we focus on targeting niche services in local cities across the country (or the world). We’re not trying to beat out huge spenders for national keywords.
Let me show you.
You see this search term?
Colorado Springs has a population of maybe 500,000 and growing.
There are dozens of concrete companies that serve the local population.
Making this ad profitable is A LOT easier than making this one profitable:
There’s much less competition.
You’re not going up against every affiliate marketer that bought the same course as you.
Even better: you’re going up against some random guy that owns a competing concrete company that’s never run an ad in his life.
So “winning” and sending the best leads to your client is easy.
My mentor calls it “knocking out 3rd graders”.
With the Digital Rental Method, you can create around $500 – $2,500 per month semi-passively in 3-6 months.
And the cool part is that every time you make another “rental property” and “rent” it to a local business owner, that number can double.
And to be honest, 3-6 months is A LOT LONGER than most people take. Some people do it in as little as a week!
Let’s look again at my concrete ad.
See where it’s positioned? #1
The top most ad gets most of the clicks.
This is my “digital real estate” property.
This concrete site makes me $1,500/mo, and I haven’t touched it since I made it!
OK, so maybe you need to get in there for an hour once per month to make sure everything is working as expected…
No business is truly 100% “passive” as much as a guru might try to tell you it is – so that’s why I call this “semi-passive” income.
The best part is living life on my own schedule. If I want to grow the business more, I can go out and prospect more customers and build more rental properties.
If not? Hello Hawaii!
Don’t believe me?
Check out my call tracker for the concrete site:
Tell me: what concrete contractor in a small town isn’t going to pay me for sending him 56 potential jobs in a month?
Let’s low-ball it and say they close only 10% of these (actual client closes closer to 40%). If we average out to $2K per job and they close 6 of them, that’s an extra $12,000 in their pocket.
You think he’s willing to pay me a measly $1,500 if he’s making back $15,000?
Absolutely.
And with his real numbers, it’s a lot more than 6 jobs.
All you need is to pick a niche (similar to affiliate marketing), get a proven ad campaign (my mentor gives out 30 of them), and then go around the country getting 1 client per city until you’ve had your fill – pretty easy!
This business scales nicely, which is why I love it.
The best part for me? You’re helping someone put food on the table for their families, provide an education for their children, & do whatever else makes their lives just a little bit easier.
You’re really helping them.
Here’s all the reasons why digital real estate is the best:
Look, local businesses aren’t going anywhere. It’s not like an affiliate product where all of a sudden they stop selling it.
What do I do with the profits?
Build out more and more of these properties in different cities, and find someone to fill them.
You’re in complete control of how much time (& money) you choose to make.
That means you can go on vacations as you please, or do whatever else it is you would do if you only had to work a few hours per week.
And since you may be asking: “what happens if you lose that client?”
I just go find another one and forward the phone calls to them instead (just like how a landlord would go get another renter).
If you’re interested in learning more, click here to see which Digital Real Estate program I recommend most.
You won’t really find this level of coaching anywhere else. The program is lead by two founders that each bring their own high-level skills to the table.
With most programs, you’re lucky to get 1 with hopefully-high-level skills.
If you’re not afraid of working hard at a proven system, and are willing to be coached to success, then I look forward to seeing you in there!
It’ll change your life!
(just like it changed mine)
