Becoming an Affiliate Manager

Believe it or not as long as this post is -- what I'm about to write is actually brief. I won't even come close to providing the list of concerns I have had.

1. It has been very hard to get them to keep the agreements they made and some of them (even though in writing) were never kept period.

2. The actual online component of the training was not very new -- though the video pitch touted it as hot off the press -- newest offering. Instead it is a re-purposed affiliate management course that was previously sold for 1995.00. The content was pretty good but mostly common sense. I completed it in four days without difficulty scoring around 92 percent. That's not really saying I'm particularly smart -- just that the course was not that hard.

3. There are 8 webinars a couple of which had some great content. The others ranged in quality from ok to dubious. It was like pulling teeth to get my hands on those webinars. The certainly were not delivered during the "12 week training period" and it took many phone calls and broken promises on lurns part to finally see the last few.

4. The coaching was provided by a decent guy who clearly makes his living online but has never been an affiliate manager. Not his fault because he was hired to basically ask questions about the webinars to see if you understood them. I did and 1/2 way through the coaching he said I knew the material cold and was ready to be introduced to clients -- in his opinion. He called and told my contact and my contact said he'd get right on that. This was back in late March. Still hasn't happened.

5. It says in the contract that they make no representation of the quality of leads they'll provide. Believe them. I can fully understand why they have that clause in there. The pdf they finally sent me after weeks of promises of something I'd really be pleased with was a few links to job search sites and some specific 5 to 7 dollar per hour odesk listings. This was most definitely not from any pool of Lurns existing clients waiting for graduates to hire.

Why would anyone pay 20,000.00 to a company for leads that are the result of a web search my 10 year old nephew could have done?

Frankly I think this accertified program is just a cheap knockoff (albeit expensive) of Jeff Walkers Product Launch Manager training idea. While I believe Jeff really does have a bunch of warm clients to match up with his students -- based on my personal experience with this course and dealing with lurn I don't believe the situation is likely to be as noble with them.

Here is the philosophy I had with my IS (information systems) business. If I was not going to perform 100 percent for everyone and had to break commitments because I was so busy -- I'd procrastinate getting quotes out to prospects who were not yet customers instead of making my existing customers suffer. When the new prospect complained I'd apologize and explain that I'd rather they were offended with me, not having invested money, than offending an existing client who already had. That they they could vote with their feet and neither of us would have lost much love compared to what happens when I don't follow through with someone who's already paid his/her money and can't just go elsewhere so easily.

My impression is that Anik may have the opposite philosophy. Based on my experience with Lurn I think its a fair assessment (at least in my case) to say he's more focused on getting the next launch out of the gate than making sure he's done the job he promised to customers who've already paid.