Who Is Duston McGroarty
Duston McGroarty isn't that well known of an affiliate marketer but he does offer a lot of different courses on his website.
Overall there's 10 courses and they revolve around affiliate marketing, funnels and traffic generation.
From his website it's clear Duston focuses primarily on paid traffic and not free, SEO traffic.
If you look at his stats on Alexa you'll see search traffic only makes up 37% of his traffic:
His content is mostly case studies which are then advertised on social media and other paid traffic sources.
This is all part of Duston's funnel and it's meant to just get your email address so you can eventually buy a course.
Automated Affiliate Secrets Overview
This course is broken up into 3 lessons and the delivery of the course material is through 3 separate webinars.
Here's an overview of each lesson.
Lesson 1
Lesson 1 is a 2 hour and 45 minute webinar.
This section is mostly about niche selection and niche research. It's clear right away that you will be learning paid traffic techniques from Facebook and Google.
Basically you'll be building a funnel where you get emails and send out emails to walk your potential customers through a buying process.
This is where the "automated" part comes in. You'll make your emails ahead of time and they get sent out automatically.
Keep in mind there's nothing automated about this strategy of making money. You might not be typing out individual emails everyday but there's a lot of work in running paid traffic.
In fact, I've found it's one of the most stressful ways to make money.
In this section you'll learn how to create and research audiences. You'll be looking at age, sex, hobbies and more.
Lastly, you'll be directed to create a Clickfunnels account where you'll get Duston's funnel for "free."
The reason I put free in quotes is Clickfunnels costs around $97 per month to sign up for and Duston gets a commission on that.
Lesson 2
This is another webinar and this time it's 2 hours long.
This section is broken into a few different parts like identifying problems your audience may have, additional information on research, keeping everything legal and being advertising compliant and goes over paid traffic pricing.
This section isn't as important as the first and you can pretty much find all this information online for free.
Lesson 3
This section is more about selling and "buyer psychology."
This is where you'll learn how to get potential customers to click your call to action.
Lesson 3 is definitely important and this is the section where you'll basically learn how to provide value and close the deal.
Here's My Main Issues With This Course
Overall this isn't a terrible course but there's also a lot to not like here.
This course is WAY too expensive
There are courses out there that will give you 10X the training and cost half as much as this course.
If you're going to charge almost $500 for a course you have to provide a ton of value and be very comprehensive.
At the end of the day this about 6 hours of training and it's done through pre-recorded webinars.
This is a $99 course max, not almost $500.
Only paid traffic is mentioned
Affiliate marketing is great because basically anyone can get into it and can be done for almost free..
If you learn SEO traffic and free traffic.
The problem here is only paid traffic is taught and you'll need money for that. Paid traffic can be hard to succeed with so you need a lot of money to start with.
Honestly, if you can't afford to lose $5,000 I wouldn't even bother with paid traffic.
Money can go quick in advertising campaigns and there's a learning curve.
No long term coaching
Making money online is often sold as something that's easy.
Some marketers claim you can make thousands a day with just three clicks and no experience and money.
But that's almost never the case. Affiliate marketing takes discipline, effort and most people need a couple years before they start making serious money.
One of the most important factors for success online is to have a mentor and people you can ask questions to if you're stuck.
You don't get that here.
All you get is the 3 webinars and I just don't think that's going be enough.
There's Things I Like However
Even though I think the training is WAY overpriced there's somethings I like:
Duston does what he teaches
It's clear from going through Duston's website he's teaching exactly what he's doing.
His website is almost entirely paid traffic and his content is all part of his larger funnel.
The only this is Duston never really gives proof he's making money here so take what he says with a grain of salt.
Final Thoughts On Automated Affiliate Secrets
Overall I find this course interesting and I've seen this kind of strategy taught before. I do believe people have success with it.
My main issue here is the price of the course.
I just can't see how this course could possibly be $497. You can find funnel training from successful affiliate marketers for completely free on Youtube or Google.
I understand that having everything in one place can make things easier to learn but this course is not worth $497.
My other main issue is this is only paid traffic which is harder than Duston lets on.
I actually wouldn't try paid traffic unless you are already making money online from free traffic sources or have a lot of money you can spend.
If you have a couple hundred to spend don't bother on paid ads. You can easily burn through that in a few days and get zero results.
Here's A Better Opportunity
The problem with Automated Affiliate Secrets is it's one dimensional.
If you want to see the very best affiliate marketing training where you learn about every aspect of affiliate marketing, check out Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate is where I learned how to make money online and since joining I've made more money online than ever before in my life.
In fact, I've been able to quit my job to work full time online because of Wealthy Affiliate.
The best part? It's free to try!
To learn more, click below: