Ivan Mana’s Affiliate Marketing Mastery Review: 4 Major Affiliate Marketing Problems & Alternatives |IPPEI

Updated On 2023-04-05

Affiliate Marketing Mastery is a three-step ladder course by Ivan Mana that teaches the entire affiliate marketing process from choosing the right product to creating effective campaigns and tracking results. This course primarily focuses on using paid traffic sources like Bing, Google, and Facebook Ads, which may not be suitable for beginners.

Affiliate marketing is difficult, while paid traffic can bring quick success in affiliate marketing, there’s no guarantee of success, and many affiliates end up losing money in this strategy. Some affiliates opt for free traffic sources, like building an audience on social media platforms or creating a high-traffic blog, but this requires a significant investment of time and effort. But, with affiliate marketing, you can start your business with little to zero start-up investment.

In my experience, affiliate marketing as taught by Affiliate Marketing Mastery is like Fortnite’s Battle Royale, which is an arena so crowded that everyone drops into the same handful of hot zones, forcing expensive gear, ruthless optimization, and luck to survive the match. The constant fight for visibility mirrors how affiliate marketers compete for the same keywords, audiences, and offers, where one wrong move and a well-funded rival takes your spot. The dependency on external traffic sources is like Twitter’s trending feed, where opaque signals and sudden policy shifts decide who gets seen, and today’s viral post can vanish tomorrow with a single algorithm tweak. That dependency means your income isn’t truly yours but it’s borrowed from platforms that can cut your reach without warning.

In this Affiliate Marketing Mastery review, we’ll explore the course content, pricing, and main challenges of affiliate marketing in 2025. And toward the end, we’ll compare affiliate marketing with local lead generation, which is a more predictable, scalable, and sustainable way to build passive income without relying on paid ads or algorithm volatility.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing Mastery?

Pros

Ivan Mana is an experienced and successful entrepreneur reaching 6-figure.
All courses of Ivan Mana come with a refund policy and exclusive group.
Ivan Mana is active in uploading ad tutorials on his YouTube channel.
He offers a lot of free resources such as pdf guides and video tutorials.

Cons

Affiliate Marketing Mastery course comes with a price that is almost $2000.
The course focuses on paid traffic, which many can’t afford to spend on ads.
Affiliate Marketing Mastery doesn’t offer a payment plan, you need to pay it all in.

Price: Affiliate Marketing Mastery masterclass costs $1997.

Refund Policy: Ivan Mana offers 30-day money guaranteed, but you shouldn’t have taken over 20% of the course.

Origin: Affiliate Marketing Mastery starts in 2021.

Reputation: Ivan Mana has over 91.9K subscribers on YouTube and already garnered 5,975,843 views today.

What Are the 4 Major Problems In Affiliate Marketing?

1. Competition is at a new level

The competition in affiliate marketing has become fierce, with 900,000 affiliates in Amazon alone. ShareASale also has over 700,000 active affiliates, while ClickBank which Ivan Mana uses in his course, has over 100,000. The search interest in this business model keeps growing by over 233% from 2015 to 2021. It makes it difficult for newcomers to find their space and stand out from established affiliates.

2. Commission-based

Affiliate marketing relies on commission-based earnings, so affiliates only earn money when they generate sales. This makes it critical to choose the right products and merchants to promote and to develop effective strategies to drive traffic and convert leads into sales.

3. Generating Traffic

Generating traffic is crucial for affiliate marketing success, but it’s challenging to attract potential customers to your website or landing page. Paid traffic sources, such as Bing, Google, and Facebook Ads, can be effective but may require a significant investment, while free traffic sources, such as social media platforms or high-traffic blogs, may require more time and effort.

4. Dependence on Merchants

Affiliates are heavily reliant on the merchant’s business decisions and practices, which can affect their success. It’s important to partner with reputable and established businesses that provide excellent customer service, reliable payment terms, and fair commission structures. Affiliates should also have a backup plan in case the merchant ends their affiliate program or changes their terms and conditions.

What Do You Get With Affiliate Marketing Mastery?

With Affiliate Marketing Mastery, you will get lifetime access to a 9-hour course containing 60 training modules, a free and exclusive 14-day Unbounce trial and then 20% off for the first 3 months or an entire year, a free 14-day ClickMagick trial, a free 30-day GetResponse trial, Namecheap domains and get access to Affiliate Marketing Mastery exclusive community.

Affiliate Marketing Mastery Course

Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Section 3 - Let’s Get Started
Section 4 - Let’s Move On
Section 5 - Let’s Finish Strong
Section 6 - More Case Studies
Section 7 - Account Suspension Tips
Section 8 - Conclusion and List of All the Tools & Software Used In the Course

Works with any affiliate network

In this program, Ivan Mana uses Clickbank to set up real campaigns, but these strategies deliver excellent results on any affiliate platform you prefer.

Community & Support

Affiliate Marketing Mastery is an exclusive group to get all your questions answered, no matter where you are in the class. Get personal responses from Ivan, and tips and insights from other members.

What Is Ivan Mana’s Affiliate Marketing Mastery Three-Step Ladder?

Step 1: First clicks fast

Step 1 of the ladder system covers selecting products that consumers are interested in clicking. You’ll learn how to create ads that are unique and stand out from the competition, as well as how to interpret your results to refine your approach before scaling up.

Modules in Step 1 include:

Analyze winning products on affiliate networks using their resources, rules, and regulations as a guide.
Ivan’s four criteria for selecting successful products.
Comparing demand vs competition, and why high competition is actually best when starting out.
Paid ads pay back. Uncover what to invest and when.
Create your first professional-level paid ad in less than 60 minutes.
One tool you need to ace your keyword research, and how to get the best from it.
Why you cannot succeed in affiliate marketing without tracking ads, and how to set up solid tracking.
How to optimize your winning campaign and scale.
When and how to fine-tune your campaign to that, it keeps returning.

Step 2: Build audience and authority

In Step 2 of the ladder system, you’ll learn how to create a landing page and set up tracking. This allows you to guide visitors through your website before directing them to the affiliate offer.

Modules in Step 2 include:

Why are we building a landing page?
Building out our landing page.
Mobile-optimizing our page.
Setting up our custom domain.
Setting up tracking for our new page.
Editing our Microsoft Ads campaign.
Setting up a Google Ads campaign.
Setting up sales tracking with Google Ads.
How to make your ads & landing page more relevant.
5 landing page optimization tips to help boost your conversions.
Microsoft Ads case study.
Google Ads case study.

Step 3: Build a long-term business

In step 3 of the ladder system, you learn how to build a long-term business by adding an email list to your landing page so that you can collect leads and always have access to an engaged audience.

**Modules in Step 3 include:**

Why are we adding an email opt-in?
Adding the email opt-in to our page.
Creating a Thank You page.
Setting up opt-in tracking.
Setting up custom email.
Adding the email to autoresponder software.
Creating an email autoresponder sequence.
Setting up email tracking.
Integrating landing page with an autoresponder.
Setting up Microsoft Ads conversion tracking.
Setting up Google Ads option conversion tracking.
How much can you afford to pay per lead & click?

What Are Ivan Mana’s Other Courses?

Google Ads Mastery ($149)

The Google Ads Mastery Masterclass teaches you how to create effective Google ads. You will learn how to create search campaigns and six other types of Google paid ads, research and select targeted keywords, and perform split testing.

The course is suitable for beginners and provides detailed explanations for each step of the process. By enrolling, you’ll get access to an exclusive group where you can ask questions, troubleshoot your campaign, and get direct feedback and guidance from the instructor.

Course Content:
Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Before we get started
Section 3 - Creating your first campaign
Section 4 - Keywords
Section 5 - A few other important things to mention
Section 6 - Negative keywords
Section 7 - Ad extensions
Section 8 - Conversion tracking
Section 9 - Other google ads options
Section 10 - Other ad formats & things to know
Section 11-Case studies
Section 12 -Bonus resources

Google Ads Retargeting Masterclass ($149)

The Google Ads Retargeting Masterclass is the ultimate guide to mastering a revenue-generating ads strategy. By taking this course, you’ll discover how to turn cold prospects into hot leads who are ready to buy through the use of highly relevant ads.

You’ll also learn how to supercharge your display and search ads to reach millions of potential customers. The course provides you with the knowledge and skills to overcome the biggest hurdle of Google retargeting, which is attracting visitors.

Course Content:
Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Create a google ads account
Section 3 - Google Analytics
Section 4 - Google tag manager
Section 5 - Conversion tracking
Section 6 - Setting up remarketing tags
Section 7 - The “secret” engaged audiences you can’t create with just Google ads
Section 8 - Creating audiences
Section 9 - Creating remarketing ads
Section 10 -Bonus resources

Facebook Ads Masterclass ($149)

The Facebook Ads masterclass is a comprehensive course that teaches you through the entire process, from setting up a business account to designing your page and creating ads that get more eyes on your page. To succeed with Facebook Advertising and drive more traffic to your website, then this course is a must-have. With almost 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides an incredible opportunity to attract new clients to your business.

The course covers everything you need to know to get started, including how to track campaigns, and set up unbeatable campaigns, ad sets, and ads. You’ll also learn how to choose ads that deliver maximum returns and scale your best-performing ads through split testing. In addition, you’ll get access to an exclusive group where you can ask questions and get personalized feedback from Ivan Mana.

Course Content:
Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Creating our first ad account
Section 3 - creating our Facebook Page
Section 4 - Conversion tracking
Section 5 - Creating our Facebook Campaigns
Section 6 - Audience insight tool
Section 7 - 2 Interest targeting approaches
Section 8 - Other campaigns/ad types
Section 9 - Bonus resources

Facebook Ads Retargeting Masterclass ($149)

The Facebook Ads Retargeting course solves your lead-to-sale conversion problem. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create winning retargeting ads that save you money and deliver more clicks. The course covers a 7-step checklist for creating the best retargeting campaigns, how to create targeted messaging for every interaction with a potential customer, and what to test, analyze, and edit to scale winning ad campaigns and grow your income fast.

The course is designed for beginners and provides a complete guide to mastering Facebook Ad retargeting. By enrolling, you’ll learn everything you need to know to create effective ads that reach the right people again and again.

Course Content:
Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Conversion tracking
Section 3 - Creating our audiences
Section 4 - Lookalike audiences
Section 5 - Running retargeting campaigns
Section 6 - Analyzing our data & scaling winning campaigns
Section 7 - Other resources to help you improve your online marketing
Section 8 - Conclusion

Microsoft (Bing) Ads Masterclass ($149)

With 12 billion monthly searches on Bing.com, this untapped market could help you increase your revenue, especially if you’re already running ads on other platforms. Microsoft (Bing) Ads masterclass tutorial makes it easy for you to complete your first Microsoft ads campaign. You’ll learn how to identify the best keywords, match types, and bids for your business so that your ads can be triggered successfully and shown to millions.

Additionally, the course covers ad auction, rank, and quality score, which can help you pay half of what your competitors pay per click. The masterclass also provides secret tricks for improving your ads with extensions, targeting, and tracking, so that you can get the most out of your campaigns.

Course Content:
Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Before we get started
Section 3 - Creating your first campaign
Section 4 - Keywords
Section 5 - Negative keywords
Section 6 - Ad extensions
Section 7 - Other targeting options
Section 8 - Conversion tracking
Section 9 - Other useful Microsoft ads tools
Section 10 - How to analyze & segment your data
Section 11 - Other cool ad formats & things to know
Section 13 - Case studies
Section 14 - Conclusion & tools to help you improve your online marketing

Conversion Tracking Masterclass ($149)

The Conversion Tracking Masterclass is a highly recommended course for those looking to improve their online marketing skills. Priced at $149, the course covers all the essential aspects of conversion tracking, including tracking your entire sales funnel, identifying and fixing issues, and running extra tracking tests to tweak campaigns.

The course uses ClickMagick as the primary tracking tool and teaches you how to nurture your prospects to win more sales. The course emphasizes the importance of tracking and provides simple explanations of concepts such as tracking links, pixels, and terminologies like click IDs and Sub-IDs.

Course Content
Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Tracking links
Section 3 - Other link features
Section 4 - Tracking pixels
Section 5 - Running ads with tracking links
Section 6 - Clickmagick campaigns
Section 7 - Running ads with campaigns
Section 8 - Postback urls explained

Who Is Ivan Mana?

Ivan Mana is the owner and founder of Ivan Mana Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in Commerce. Ivan was also the president and founder of the UTM Chess Club, where he organized a team of executives to represent the Club by maintaining control of financing, advertising, and club events. He won the Rookie Club of the Year award for being active, organized, impactful, and known by the community. Additionally, he won third place in Canada in the under 1800 section in the Canadian University Chess Championship (CUCC).

On January 1st, 2017, Ivan searched “What is affiliate marketing?” on Google and was hooked when he finally made his first sale after months of work. Ivan worked hard educating himself by watching hundreds of tutorials, taking dozens of courses, and testing different campaigns, offers, and copywriting until he blew up with sales. Today, Ivan makes over $3500 every week from affiliate campaigns. His channel has vast engagement and followers and currently has 91.9K subscribers.

Is Affiliate Marketing Mastery Worth It?

Affiliate Marketing Mastery may not be worth it for beginners who are on a tight budget. While the program offers comprehensive training on affiliate marketing , there are more affordable alternatives available that offer similar training. The program focuses heavily on paid traffic sources, which may not be suitable for everyone, especially those who don’t have the budget to cover the initial losses that most campaigns experience.

Is affiliate marketing worth it in 2025? Ivan Mana can help you succeed in 2025 given that he is an experienced affiliate marketer and he will teach you the exact strategy he uses to earn 6-figure in this business. But the high cost of the program may not be justifiable for everyone. Additionally, you can learn affiliate marketing for free given that there is a lot of information available on the internet that covers affiliate marketing.

Is Affiliate Marketing A Pyramid Scheme?

No, affiliate marketing is not a pyramid scheme. In a pyramid scheme, members earn money solely by recruiting new members, and there are no actual products or services being sold. In affiliate marketing, affiliates earn a commission for promoting and selling legitimate products or services to their audience. The commission is based on the sales they generate, not on the recruitment of new members. There’s a huge difference between affiliate marketing and pyramid scheme.

Who Is Affiliate Marketing Mastery For?

Affiliate Marketing Mastery is for marketers who already have basic knowledge of traffic generation and advertising. Beginners may find the technical setup overwhelming, especially when dealing with ad platforms, conversion tracking, and campaign scaling.

Final Verdict: Is Affiliate Marketing Mastery Worth It For Beginners?

Affiliate Marketing Mastery is not worth it for beginners because it’s expensive, ad-dependent, and high risk upfront. The course is well-structured and Ivan Mana knows the space, but the focus on paid traffic makes it hard to profit without a strong budget and technical setup. For those new to online business or seeking long-term passive income, the risk-reward ratio is too steep.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Compare to Local Lead Generation?

Affiliate marketing depends on paid traffic, external platforms, and thin commissions, while local lead generation builds owned assets that generate recurring income from ranked websites.

Comparing affiliate marketing to local lead generation is like Survivor’s cutthroat elimination rounds versus the Harry Potter series’ evergreen world. Survivor’s every-episode scramble for immunity, fleeting alliances, and sudden outings. It reflects affiliate marketing’s hyper-competitive landscape where you’re constantly launching, testing funnels, and outbidding rivals just to keep traffic and conversions. The Harry Potter series spun books, films, streaming, and merchandise that keep earning long after release. It mirrors local lead generation, where ranked sites steadily generate leads with little daily effort.

Affiliate Marketing Mastery teaches performance-based strategies using Google, Bing, and Facebook ads—but your profits rely on platform policies, ad costs, and third-party offers. With local lead gen, you control the entire funnel and collect consistent payments from local clients, not commissions from vendors.

Why Is Local Lead Generation the Best Way to Build Passive Income in 2025?

Local lead generation is the best way to build passive income in 2025 because it produces stable revenue from websites you control, without relying on ad networks or affiliate terms. Instead of chasing clicks and optimizing ad spend, you rank simple service-based sites on Google and rent out the leads. There’s no commission split, no tracking scripts to manage, and no dependency on merchant reliability.

One of my clients is Pasadena Elite Concrete Solutions, 2849 East Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91107, 626-628-1311, https://pasadenaeliteconcrete.com/. 5 of my leads closed for $44,100 in 1 month, and I earned $4,410 from 10% commissions.

If you want to escape the volatility of performance marketing, local lead generation offers the most scalable and controllable path to long-term digital income.