How This 18-Hour Free Course Generates $200k a Month in Affiliate Commissions
How to become a millionaire without selling anything.
Free content can be literal gold.
Creating content online and monetizing it with affiliate links is nothing new. Quite the opposite, it’s one of the most popular ways to make money online.
Yet, most people are doing it wrong.
That’s not the case with Jordan Bown. He doubled down on content creation and is generating around $200k monthly.
Here’s how.
The free online course
Would you give away an 18-hour course for free?
Jordan created a dropshipping course and uploaded it to YouTube. At the moment, the course has 1.8 million views. But the crazy thing is that it was uploaded only two months ago.
The course is comprehensive and teaches how to start dropshipping.
He aimed to create the number 1 free course on the topic. And I think he succeeded. The free course covers:
- the basics of dropshipping
- two case studies ($770k Store and $2m Store)
- niches and products
- suppliers and fulfillment
- legal aspects
- AI
- content creation
- ads
- payments
- and much more
All of that took the creator one full year to make, and the value of all of this is crazy high.
But making an 18-hour course is not enough to get millions of views.
Jordan used short-form content to drive traffic to his dropshipping course. And he is doing this at an incredible rate. In a recent podcast, he mentioned he and his team run multiple Instagram accounts. He also uses TikTok and YouTube shorts.
So, his traffic comes from multiple sources, not just organic on YouTube.
Reasons to make it free
Here’s why Jordan decided to share the course for free
- Paid courses have a bad reputation.
Just search YouTube, and you will find people revealing various scams. And some are related to people selling courses and sharing fake income screenshots.
2. A paid course requires more work but won’t necessarily make more money.
It’s easier to launch a free course. You can make it work by yourself or with a smaller team. You don’t need to hire salespeople.
3. Increases brand awareness
Giving away valuable content provides a lot of exposure for your personal brand.
4. Acts as a powerful lead magnet
Jordan collects email addresses and promotes his community. He also has a paid community, which he upsells.
The monetization strategy
How the free course generates $200k a month.
To have a successful dropshipping store, you need many software.
Here’s some example:
- Shopify
- Shopify themes and apps
- Autods
- Ipostal
- Email service providers
- Canva
Jordan placed all of those affiliate links in the video description.
In total, the YouTube video description has 18 affiliate links, but Shopify is the main earner.
Shopify pays a flat fee for anyone who signs up and pays for their subscription. They have various payment plans, so the affiliate commission varies. But that commission is recurring, and that adds up to a lot of money per month.
Another income source is YouTube ads. It’s hard to estimate how much that is, but it’s substantial.
How to copy this strategy
You won’t be able to copy it exactly because you’ll need a lot of experience and a team.
But overall, the strategy is simple.
It comes down to three key things:
- have expertise in a field
- find a tool that has an affiliate program
- create a free course sharing your expertise and promote the affiliate program
Will this work for any niche? Not really.
There must be a good affiliate tool you can promote. Preferably more than one. Without that, it’s hard to justify going the free route.
Also, if you want to take a look at the course, here it is:
Want to become a high-income blogger? Click here to get my free course.
