123 Affiliate Marketing Review: Pat Flynn Course Worth Getting?

Chances are you know who Pat Flynn is, but may not know much about his course called 123 Affiliate Marketing. Today I'm going to review this course to see if it's a good fit for you. 

It's not a new course and has been around for a while but apparently does get updates - I would hope! 

It's not cheap either. What's the price? It will set you back $699. That's a big chunk of change for someone that is just starting out with limited resources.

About Pat Flynn

You're probably aware of Pat Flynn from his blog - smartpassiveincome.com. I have a lot of respect for the guy as he's clearly legit (appears so anyway!) and does offer a lot of value on his site. 

What separates him from a lot of others is the fact that he shares his income reports right on his site. A quick whois search will show you that he started the site way back in 2008 and since then has banked over 3.5 million from affiliate commissions.

I first heard of the guy because I found out he was a huge promoter of Bluehost where he makes a lot of his income from. It's crazy how much he makes from them!

Pat is active on Youtube where he shares a variety of topics including how to drive passive income. He's the author of other courses such as "Start From Scratch" where he teaches how to find a winning business idea, "Build Your Brand", "Power-Up Podcasting" and more.

Anyway, enough about Pat Flynn...

Let's Dive Into the 123 Affiliate Marketing Review

As you know, the course costs $699. It's hosted on the Teachable platform so whatever device you have, you'll be able to view the content with clarity and ease.

One thing you need to understand is that this course is NOT for beginners, Don't believe me? Check out the sales page where he explicitly says how he's going to give you tools you need for the market that you're already in.

Most of my readers are just getting started and not even in a market actively promoting. So chances are, this course is not for you. But don't despair, I have some great alternatives for you noobs.

The Modules

Here are the course modules and what you can expect to learn:

• Welcome, Students!
• What You Need to Know Before You Begin
• Step 1: Choose the Right Product
• Step 2: Passive Promotional Strategies
• Step 3: Active Promotional Strategies
• The Affiliate Marketing Recipe Book

The course starts off with a video introduction from Pat with your typical welcome and introductory topics. You'll also have access to the course downloads.

In the "What you need to know before you begin" section, you'll get a video on affiliate marketing 101, some mandatory rules for your long term success and how to use the course.

Step 1: Choosing the Right Product

You'll get 9 videos in this section outlining topics like what kind of products work best, how to choose a "focus" product, explaining affiliate links (how to use, where to get, etc - basic stuff).

You'll also learn how to deal with the affiliate companies and what to do before you promote.

This section confused me a little because although Pat says this course is for people that are already in a market but then teaches some basic "what is an affiliate link" stuff? 

You probably know this crap already which you can be found with a quick Google search! WTF lol.

Step 2: Passive Promotional Strategies

Here you'll get an explanation of what exactly this is. There's some more basic stuff on how to add links. 

Then you're going to learn how to set up your most profitable page along with conversion strategies on that page. You'll also get an example of a high performing page and how you should model your own.

There's also a section on email autoresponders. As a sidenote, Pat says you should already have an email list of at least 500 people. Don't have that? Then don't buy this course because it's not going to help you!

Step 3: Active Promotional Strategies

In this section you'll learn what active promotional strategies are.  Essentially you're going to learn about tools and how to create demo's showing people how to use a particular product, documentation on step-by-step processes, how to interview the creator of a product & email broadcasting.

Does this stuff sound interesting to you? Maybe for some but a lot of this just seems too much "out there."

The Affiliate Marketing Recipe Book

Here you're going to get PDF's on flows for following a sequence of events that need to take place for promotions. 

Things like books, software and online courses are included. The process is the same that Pat uses in his promotions.

The Most Shocking Revelation

Now, I don't know about you, but i've never really seen any paid ads from Pat Flynn promoting his stuff. 

That's because most of Pat's traffic comes from organic search. He's placed very well in the search engines.  Just check out his organic traffic per month. That's a lot of visits to his site that he gets for free!

Why doesn't he teach how to get traffic like this to his site in his course? It's completely absent. So, no SEO training for you. I find it odd that he doesn't teach you how to build up your site/blog like his. Shouldn't this be the focus of his training?

I imagine a lot of people would like to learn how he makes all that money right? It's from organic search, folks - not the methods he teaches in his course. Well, maybe some, but i'd say 90% is organic. 

Final Thoughts on the Course

Much respect to Pat Flynn and what he has accomplished but unless you already know SEO, have an email list and an active business, this course is NOT going to help you.

If you feel discouraged, don't be. 

I've bought and evaluated maybe over $20K worth in courses over the last 12 years. I've seen many great and terrible courses. Some are scams, while some are just fantastic.

One course that comes in mind is Savage Affiliates. This course teaches everything from SEO, paid ads, sales funnels, social media marketing and much more. 

It's the only affiliate marketing course I can recommend right now and it's MUCH less than Pat Flynn's course.

It's also backed by a 30 day money back guarantee (you can't lose) so if I were you, i'd get on this right now and start your affiliate business once you're done the training. It's a lot - so take a lot of notes.

Read my updated review on Savage Affiliates to learn more.

Two other great options if you want to do affiliate marketing with focus on building websites and using SEO (search engine optimization) for free, organic traffic is The Authority Site System and Affiliate Lab.

Both of these courses come from marketers that are reputable and have proven results. I highly advise you to check out my reviews of both from the links above. I'm a member of both of these courses and have greatly improved my affiliate marketing business by incorporating the strategies I learned from them.