It was my intention to do a review every week and give you some insights from the classes without giving away the class's contents. A few weeks into the classes, I realized a weekly comment wasn't going to cut it. I just didn't feel I could articulate it in weekly sound bites. So, I've waited until the last class to give some more information.
Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp is taught by James Martell, and let me say that it is a good class for the very new to Affiliate Marketing. If you don't know how to make web pages, if you don't know how to do web hosting, if you're not a good writer or good at making graphics ... then, this is the class for you.
James shows his students how to do all of these things and how to find the people who do it, if you don't. He showed his students some tools that make it possible for a complete newbie to step into the publishing world on the Internet.
For me it was the distinction that James made clear, that he is teaching "publishing" and not "web design" that really drove home the difference between James and myself. James is a web publisher, who has learned some skills about web design through the years. I am a webmaster and a web publisher, so for me some of what James had to say would not equate to my world-view on Affiliate Marketing ... but makes perfect sense in his world.
Affiliate Bootcamp had a heavy emphasis on Google ads with some affiliate programs tossed in. I had hoped there would have been more on the affiliate program side of things, but maybe that's left for an advanced class someday. Datafeeds were explained only in so much as to what one does on your website, not how to actually do it. I definately see this as advanced information that would have been too much for this group of students.
One of the best things James did was to help these newbies understand how to make quality websites that would also convert fairly well. For most of those people, that information was worth the price of admission.
Although I was good in class and kept my mouth shut, I deeply disagreed with James on the topic of SEO. James teaches his students not to have anything to do with SEO, and that means that if they need a writer, they are to find someone who writes without SEO in mind. I don't think there are enough words for me to use to express how much I disagree with that, but considering that I was in a class with mostly newbies ... I'll just express my difference of opinion on that one here.
James, if you read this ... please chime in and explain why. If I understand your logic, it's basically that a well written article will do the trick without the SEO considerations; what to speak of a room filled with newbies that would only be confused by the whole SEO game.
James gave these newbies a lot of resources to go get tools and content, again that alone was worth the price of admission because he saved them years of finding out this stuff the hard way.
The classroom environment James uses is state-of-the-art and very user friendly. I do wish James had allowed us to chat more before and after classes. I also wish we could have sent each other private messages. He had all those features turned off. It could have been a great opportunity for networking of services and cross-links, but it didn't happen. Shame.
Did James reveal all his tricks? Did he reveal all the good stuff? No, I'm sure he didn't. The advanced Affiliate Marketing knowledge is still something that's yet to peek out from the safe hold. Not too many super affiliates are going to reveal how they do their thing.
James knows far more than what he shared, but his Affiliate Bootcamp is a solid series of classes for the base beginner. I will recommend it and I'm glad I went through it myself. It was a good review and good for me to see how green the new guys really are.
James Martell's
Affiliate Marketers Handbook
James Martell's
Affiliate Buzz
Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp
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