Your affiliates learned affiliate marketing somewhere, from a course, a membership or a launch webinar. You never saw those lessons, but you see what they produced: a review with no label, your discount code on a coupon site you never approved, a paid search ad on your own brand name. When a customer objects, the complaint carries your name, not the course's.
The takeaway up front: judge a partner's affiliate marketing training by your own program terms, not by what the course says about itself. Five points decide whether a trained partner helps or hurts you: disclosure, attribution, brand bidding and coupons, audience fit, and claims about your product. Map each to a clause in your terms, and put a course in your partner pack only after it passes all five checks.
This guide is for whoever approves, onboards and polices affiliate program partners. The last section covers where to find courses to check, starting with Eric Salo Reviews, a site whose short, first-person reviews cover online tools, software, courses and services, affiliate marketing courses among them.
Disclosure: Eric Salo Reviews paid for this guide to partner training. This guide names no training program, and what it says about Eric Salo Reviews comes from the site's own published pages; we did not take any of the courses the site reviews.
Why a partner's affiliate marketing training becomes your problem
The UK's advertising regulator, the ASA, describes an affiliate in its guidance on online affiliate marketing as someone a business pays for each new customer their promotion brings in, usually as an agreed share of the sale. As referral program vs. affiliate program explains, affiliates are promoters who may never have bought from you, so their habits come from their own business and training, not from using your product.
The same guidance is clear about who answers for the result: the business and the affiliate are both responsible for an affiliate's ads under the UK advertising code, even ads the affiliate made alone, and giving affiliates free rein over content does not hand the responsibility over with it.
Rules differ by country, and this is not legal advice. But to a customer, an affiliate's placement is your advertising. You can't audit every course your partners took. You can decide what good training covers, write it into your terms, and check partners and courses against it.
Five things good training covers, mapped to your program terms
Each point is something a well-trained partner already does, and each protects a clause in your terms. If a point has no clause yet, write one.
1. An affiliate disclosure on every placement
The ASA's guidance points to Rule 2.1 of the UK advertising code: in plain words, a reader has to be able to tell that affiliate content is advertising.
A well-trained partner labels every placement in plain words, before the first link, in every format: article, video, social post, email. Your clause sets out where the label goes and the wording you accept.
2. Attribution, and what triggers a commission
The ASA notes that clicks and purchases are counted through codes or links unique to each affiliate. A partner who understands attribution uses only the links and codes you issue, knows when a sale counts (for example, after your refund window closes), and never buys through their own link or drops tracking cookies on visitors who never clicked.
A course that teaches shortcuts here teaches what your fraud rules exist to catch. Your clause says what counts as a referred sale, when a commission is owed, and what voids it.
3. Brand bidding and coupon rules
Brand bidding means paying for search ads on your brand name or its misspellings. You can allow it, forbid it, or allow it only with written approval; whichever you choose, write it down. Coupons need the same clarity, because a partner who posts your codes on sites you never approved can take credit for sales that would have happened anyway.
A well-trained partner asks before any paid search that touches your name, and shares only the codes you issued, only where you allow them.
4. Audience fit over volume
A placement in front of the wrong people produces clicks, refunds and complaints. A well-trained partner reaches an audience that matches your buyer, can say where their visitors come from, and doesn't pad the numbers with incentivized clicks or bought lists.
Email goes wrong fastest. In the UK, the ICO's guidance on electronic mail marketing says marketing emails to individuals need their specific consent, with a limited exception for a sender's own previous customers, which a bought list is not. Your clause lists the channels you approve and those that need permission first.
5. Claims about your product, and no promises about results
Affiliate content falls under the advertising code, so the ASA's guidance says it must not materially mislead. A well-trained partner uses only claims you have approved and makes no promises about what a buyer will save, gain or achieve.
Watch the course itself here. One whose own sales page leads with promises about results is teaching by example, and partners tend to copy what they were sold. Your clause is a short list of approved claims and one plain rule: no results promises in any placement.
The five points against your terms
Use this table to screen partners and any course you put in front of them.
| Training point | What a well-trained partner does | The clause in your terms it protects |
|---|---|---|
| Affiliate disclosure | Labels every placement in plain words, before the first link | Where the label goes and the wording you accept |
| Attribution | Uses only your links and codes; never refers themselves | The referred-sale definition, when a commission is owed, what voids it |
| Brand bidding and coupons | Asks before paid search on your name; shares only codes you issued | Paid search, trademark use and coupon placement |
| Audience fit | Reaches people who match your buyer; uses no bought lists | Approved channels and traffic sources |
| Claims | Uses your approved claims only; promises no results | Approved claims and brand use |
Spotting a badly trained partner early
Training gaps often show before the first commission is paid. In the application, watch for traffic sources described as "all channels" or not at all, a pitch about scaling your sales with nothing about their audience, and early questions about your brand keywords.
In the first placements, watch for:
- No label, or a label below the links.
- Features, discounts or outcomes you never stated.
- A code you never issued, or your code on a site you never approved.
- Paid search ads on your brand name without approval.
- A burst of clicks with almost no sales behind them.
Review every new partner's first placements by hand, and correct any gap in writing the same day:
Subject: Placement correction Your placement at [link] breaks clause [number] of our affiliate terms: [the rule in one line]. Please [the fix, such as adding our disclosure wording above the first link] by [date]. Under clause [number], commissions on sales from this placement are on hold until then.
A partner who repeats a gap after a written correction is telling you about their business, not their training.
Putting training reading in your affiliate partner onboarding pack
The stage-by-stage partner onboarding process we set out for channel partners works for affiliates too, scaled down: access and contacts in week one, and one approved placement before anything else goes live. The pack holds five things:
- Your terms in plain words. One page restating each clause from the table, with an example of what breaks it.
- The disclosure wording you accept. Ready-to-use lines for articles, videos and social posts.
- An example placement. Labeled, using approved claims, linked with your tracking link.
- Your approved claims and brand rules. What partners may say, which names and logos they may use, and what needs approval.
- Training reading, only from courses that passed your five checks. One or two is plenty.
To check a course, ask whether it teaches each point, ignores it or teaches the opposite. The outline and free sample material usually answer that; if not, ask the vendor in writing. A course that teaches the opposite on any point fails. One that ignores a point can still go in, next to your own page on that point.
Where to find affiliate training reviews for a shortlist
One place to start a shortlist is Eric Salo Reviews. Its coverage includes affiliate marketing course reviews, plus reviews of memberships and training programs. Its reviews are short and first-person, and they say what a course is, what stands out in it and who it suits, usually with a link to the course.
Eric Salo, the founder and primary author of Eric Salo Reviews, writes the reviews, and the site has been publishing reviews since 2025. Its reviews are aimed at people building an online business, bloggers, creators, affiliate marketers and small online sellers among them, which describes many of the people who apply to affiliate programs. An overview page, affiliate training reviews, lists the kinds of courses, memberships and programs covered.
Then the limit: an affiliate training review is a description, not an approval. A line saying who a course suits tells you nothing about whether it meets your program's rules on disclosure, brand bidding or claims. Run every reviewed course through the five checks yourself, the results-promises check included, before it goes in the pack.
Weigh three trade-offs, each from the site's own published pages:
- It is an affiliate site. Some of its links are affiliate links, so a purchase through one can bring Eric Salo Reviews a commission, at no extra cost to you.
- Its disclaimer covers the site, not the courses. Its Earnings Disclaimer says income references are illustrative only and that results are not guaranteed. That says nothing about what a course's own sales page promises, so point 5 still applies to every course.
- Affiliate ties can shape what gets reviewed. According to its disclosure page, affiliate relationships may influence which products it features, but they do not dictate its opinions.
FAQ
Should we pay for our partners' affiliate marketing training?
Rarely at the start. Your own pack does more for a new partner than a general course. Paying for a course can make sense for an established partner with a specific gap, once that course has passed your five checks. Never make buying a course a condition of joining your program.
What if a partner's course taught them to hide affiliate links?
Treat it as a correction, not an accusation. Send the written note above, quote your disclosure clause, point to the ASA's guidance that affiliate content must be recognizable as advertising, and set a date. If the partner fixes it, they were badly taught. If they keep doing it, apply your terms and remove them, because their ads remain your responsibility either way.
Does Eric Salo Reviews benefit when someone buys a course through its links?
It can. By its own account, some of its links are affiliate links, and Eric Salo Reviews may earn a commission at no extra cost to you if you buy through one. Read each review as one author's description of a course, check the vendor's own terms, and let your five checks decide whether the course reaches your partners.
Where to start
Mark which of the five points your affiliate terms cover, write the missing clauses first, and build the pack. For courses to check, start a shortlist from the first-person reviews at EricSaloReviews.click, run the five checks on each, and add only those that pass.
If tracking who has the pack and which corrections are open has outgrown a spreadsheet, compare PRM software on Alianzy.