If you’re looking for the best affiliate marketing training programs online, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available. Affiliate marketing training programs, tutorials, eBooks, and websites abound. However, not many are very useful to the novice affiliate marketer, for many reasons.

First of all, affiliate marketing is an incredibly competitive industry and there is a lot to learn. An eBook or affiliate marketing program can only scratch the surface of what you need to know and will usually lead you to buy more “recommended” products. These are sales diagrams, embedded within the pages of so-called training manuals. For example, imagine you just bought an ebook that promises to teach you everything you need to know to make a fortune on Squidoo. You’ll probably come across a lot of industry terms you don’t understand, like “keyword optimization” or “niche marketing.” Naturally, the book would not be designed to teach you these vital skills, since niche marketing is not the subject of the book. However, once you realize how important it is to understand these concepts, the ebook author will be more than happy to “recommend” a great product that will teach you everything you need to know. Of course, the link to the author’s affiliate site is embedded on the pages for your shopping convenience, and before you know it, you’ll be buying a product that claims to teach you how to succeed in these areas. So that of course will lead you to something else, which will try to sell you something else. This can get extremely confusing, daunting, and expensive.

Many times people join an affiliate program thinking they can build a website or blog fast and the sales will increase. This is certainly not the case. To be successful as an affiliate marketer, you need to learn how the industry works, including: how to choose a product and niche, the different types of affiliate marketing, how to do market and keyword research, how to create a blog or site , search engine optimization, the importance of relevance, tracking your ads and much more. The idea that an eBook or training program can teach you all of this is ridiculous. Also, the industry is changing so fast that most affiliate marketing training programs are out of date even before they are released.

So what is the solution? The best affiliate marketing training programs available are set up as online affiliate marketing schools. These schools provide various types of continuing education tools such as: courses, e-books, audio and video files, tutorials, one-on-one coaching, and more. One such school, which is actually an online affiliate marketing university, provides its members with all the necessary tools of the trade, including: pre-built websites, free website builder and hosting, keyword analysis tool , competitive spyware, fast article writing. software, complete niche research information and PLR articles within the chosen niche (saves affiliate hundreds of hours on research and data analysis), and more. These schools also include a members’ forum, where successful affiliate gurus offer free support and guidance and enjoy helping others succeed, and are willing to give advice, answer questions, provide suggestions, etc. This type of support is invaluable and is typically not available through public affiliate forums that are inundated with users simply trying to sell something.

Certainly the best affiliate marketing training programs are not stand-alone programs, eBooks, or courses. There is simply a lot to learn to be successful in the field than what can be gained from these types of products. There are membership websites available, which teach and include everything the affiliate needs to be successful. These membership sites are very affordable and will help you get the edge you need in this competitive yet lucrative industry.