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Full editorial research report
Affiliate Marketing / Online Business · Beginner · English
There is a real product sold by a real, currently registered New Zealand company with a named director, published contact details, a full legal stack and mainstream payment processors, and no report anywhere in the sources checked of a buyer paying and receiving nothing. The 2.7/5 result is not a fraud finding — it is the "buy only if you know exactly what you are getting and why" band, and what you would be getting is a broad, cheap, genuinely delivered 2019 course. The one reviewer who paid for it and earns nothing on it calls it "a solid entry point if you’re just getting started"; the price is $197 one-time with no subscription, no order bump and no upsell funnel. What holds it down is that the content has not been substantively revised since 2019 while still being sold with "Lifetime Updates"; that the sales page and checkout bill $1,394 for a private community and weekly Q&A sessions whose current status the seller states nowhere and which three reviewers report were withdrawn; and that the written refund policy makes joining that same community a mandatory, seller-checked condition of getting your money back. The contrary case is on this page too and should be weighed: one reviewer who earns commission on the course says the group is active with over 6,200 members, and an account posting as the seller says a no-questions-asked refund policy has been in force for two years — neither statement appearing anywhere on the seller's own pages for this course. And the one buyer who tested the guarantee posted his complaint in 2025 but dates his purchase to "over 3 years ago", so his refusal describes the seller's handling around 2022 rather than today, and does not contradict the seller's account of a later policy change. Our own stance stays "we would not buy this", and the reasons are set out below — but 2.7 is a recommendation and not an accusation. A beginner who reads this page, wants a broad cheap orientation, treats the SEO and paid-traffic modules as history and can afford to lose $197 is making an informed choice rather than a mistake.
Last checked · Evidence is labeled by source type and freshness.
The seller is identifiable and verifiable in a public company register, the checkout is live, and the product is documented as delivered by every first-hand reviewer including hostile ones. That does not make the current offer's representations accurate. Treat the purchase as effectively non-refundable and the time-sensitive modules as historical background.
Quick verdict
Savage Affiliates is an affiliate-marketing course sold today for $197 or $297 USD one-time, verified at its live checkout. It is a real product from a registered New Zealand company, but its content dates to 2019, its price has not moved since, and the community and weekly Q&A sessions it still charges for are reported by multiple independent reviewers to have been shut down — including in the refund policy, which requires joining that community before a refund will be granted.
Rating methodology
The entire current commercial offer was verified from primary sources on 2026-08-12 — sales page, both checkouts read at the plan-object level, the full legal stack, the seller's own 64-page sitemap walked, the creator's own site and the New Zealand Companies Register. Confidence is not higher because not one of the thirteen third-party reviews assessed is an unconflicted first-hand account; because the only unconflicted buyer account found anywhere is a single Reddit commenter, which is a data point and not a base rate; because savageaffiliates.com and ecomelites.com are excluded from the Wayback Machine, so historical sales copy cannot be audited; because no Trustpilot profile exists; and because the single most decision-relevant question — whether the Facebook group required for a refund still exists and works — is contested by sources pulling in opposite directions and cannot be settled without purchasing. Two gaps are recorded here rather than scored, because not finding something is uncertainty and not a demerit: no dated, attributable student outcome after 2021 was located, and no first-hand account of a refund requested within the last three years was located in either direction. Both sit in the Unknowns below and neither is charged to a criterion.
Weighted total: 2.700, rounded to one decimal as 2.7/5. Read the rating methodology.
Course record
A self-paced, pre-recorded video course teaching affiliate marketing end to end: niche selection, site and funnel building, email marketing, then monetisation through ClickBank, Amazon Associates and ClickFunnels, followed by SEO, paid traffic and free traffic. Two tiers are sold — Standard at $197 and Super at $297, the latter adding a ClickFunnels affiliate academy, done-for-you funnels and launch-jacking and web-hosting blueprints. Both tiers are advertised with "Instant Access & Lifetime Updates". The last substantive content revision evidenced anywhere is the 2019 "Savage Affiliates 2.0" release.
Creator and marketing persona. The registered seller is Ecom Elites Limited, whose sole director and 100% shareholder is recorded as Roy Allan Vieviorka.
Source: sa-official, creator-site, nz-companies-registerCurrent official syllabus
These headings and descriptions are taken from the current official sales page, fetched 2026-08-12. The course was not purchased, so the lessons behind them were not inspected. No official lesson count, runtime or last-updated date is published anywhere; third-party counts range from "100+" to "220+" and cannot be reconciled.
Fit
Absolute beginners who want a cheap, broad, single-package orientation to how affiliate marketing works and can afford to lose $197 outright.
People who will treat every SEO, paid-traffic and link-building lesson as historical background rather than current instruction.
Not a fit for anyone relying on the refund, anyone who needs current paid-traffic or link-building tactics, or anyone who needs mentorship, community or responsive support.
Price is unambiguous and verifiable at a live checkout: $197 or $297 USD, one-time, in a single plan.
No dark patterns at checkout — no order bumps, no post-purchase upsell funnel, no forced continuity, no countdown timer and no inflated enrolment claims.
The seller is a named, currently registered New Zealand company with a director on the public record and a 2026 annual return filed.
A complete legal stack is published, including an explicit earnings disclaimer and a testimonial disclosure conceding that testimonial results are "the exception and not the rule".
The sales page carries an unusual consumer-protective warning telling people in financial hardship not to buy and not to take a loan for the product.
The syllabus is concrete and broad, covering multiple affiliate networks plus both paid and organic traffic, and delivery of the product is corroborated by every first-hand reviewer including hostile ones.
The one reviewer who says he bought it and earns nothing from it recommends it, in the same review this page quotes against the course: "Final Thoughts: It’s Not Magic—But It’s Solid as Hell… a solid entry point if you’re just getting started", crediting "Beginner-focused, step-by-step training" and telling readers to "Buy it if you… Prefer a one-time fee over monthly charges". He sells a competing programme, so praising this one runs against his own commercial interest — which under this report's own weighting rule makes it a strong signal, not a weak one.
No substantive content update is evidenced since 2019, while the price has not moved either.
The refund policy requires joining a private Facebook group that three reviewers report is shut and that a buyer who says he is still a member describes as "not active now", which would make the guarantee hard or impossible to satisfy as written.
Refund eligibility also requires watching at least 50% of the training and emailing proof, so a buyer who quickly recognises the material is stale has disqualified themselves.
A buyer on Reddit reports requesting a refund inside 30 days after following the instructions and being refused a full refund, describing the exchange as "rather unpleasant, rude actually". He posted it in 2025 but dates the purchase himself to "over 3 years ago", so it describes the seller's handling in or before roughly 2022. It is one account, and the seller disputes it in the same thread.
The checkout bills $1,394 of "value" for weekly Q&A sessions and a Private Inner Circle that the same reviewers report were withdrawn.
The headline credential — "Featured as one of the top Affiliate Experts in the world by Entrepreneur Magazine" — is not supported by its only traceable source, which mentions affiliate marketing nowhere and now returns HTTP 404.
The advertised "Normally $497! 60% OFF!" reference price is not evidenced as ever having been charged. Scope of that claim: every dated third-party source from 2019 to 2026 shows $197, and all seven differently-named duplicates of the sales page in the seller's own sitemap carry the same table today. The seller's inventory does contain a discount — but in the other direction, a live /instant-discount/ page offering "$157 One Time", whose buy buttons 404.
Of the three results items reproduced below, only two are student testimonials at all: the third is the seller narrating a student's result in his own voice, as are all three blocks on the sales page under the heading "Entrepreneurs Getting Results". Neither named testimonial carries a handle, profile link or date, and no verifiable student outcome after 2021 was found in the thirteen third-party reviews assessed or on Reddit.
The Terms of Use specify New Zealand governing law and Atlanta, Georgia arbitration in the same document, and contain no refund clause at all.
Risk review
Live ThriveCart checkouts with prices readable in the product plan objects and an "All prices in USD" footnote.
Seller named on-site as Ecom Elites Limited and independently confirmed in the New Zealand Companies Register as registered and currently compliant.
Mainstream payment rails — Stripe and PayPal — both live at the checkout, on a domain the registry record shows was registered in December 2017 and is paid forward to December 2027.
Published postal address, telephone number and support email, plus Terms, Privacy, Refund, Earnings Disclaimer, Testimonial Disclosure, Trademark and GDPR pages.
No report of a buyer paying and receiving nothing, and no chargeback pattern, was found in any source searched; no Trustpilot or BBB profile exists for savageaffiliates.com, ecomelites.com or franklinhatchett.com. One first-hand billing complaint does exist and is not glossed here: a Reddit buyer reports being refused a full refund inside the 30-day window. He posted it in 2025, but dates the purchase himself to "over 3 years ago", which places the refusal in or before roughly 2022.
The refund policy's stated anti-piracy rationale is substantiated — the course is genuinely and widely pirated.
The sales page's guarantee blurb differs between its desktop and mobile versions: the desktop variant ends "Terms are at bottom of page", while the mobile variant adds "This is an action based refund policy, action needs to be taken." Neither states the four proof conditions on the refund page.
Three independent reviewers report the private Facebook community is shut or inactive while the page still says "I’m in the Facebook group daily replying to questions." None of the three earns commission on this course — all three promote a competing programme — so this is convergence between sources with rival incentives, not an against-interest admission. The one reviewer who does earn commission on the course says the opposite: "There are well over 6,200 members in the Facebook group. The group is active with questions being answered daily." That passage carries no date or screenshot and appears to be unrevised 2020 text in a page updated in 2026, which is why it is weighted low rather than ignored.
The refund policy governing this course has been unchanged since January 2021 and demands four emailed proofs, while the same seller's current product, sold from the same support address, advertises "This is a no questions asked refund policy" — and an account posting as the seller says on Reddit that Savage Affiliates has had one "for 2 years". Nothing on this course's own pages says any such thing, so a buyer reading only what the seller publishes for this course still faces the four proof conditions. The one located buyer who tested the guarantee reports being refused, but he dates that purchase to "over 3 years ago" — i.e. in or before roughly 2022 — which is earlier than the claimed policy change, so his account is not evidence that the claim is false.
One first-hand reviewer reports emailing support and receiving no reply after a week; a second describes the support email as unresponsive.
The creator's own website does not mention this course anywhere. Its three links point to a different product, and the offer he actively promotes is a separate $27 "Faceless Online System" at franklinhatchett.com/startnow/, while his bio still advertises him as founder of a product he shut down in June 2026.
Legal pages carry an effective date of 1 January 2020 and the published postal address contains an unfilled "undefined" template placeholder.
Requested through a browser rather than an API, the Wayback Machine returns HTTP 403 for this domain and for ecomelites.com with the body "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.", while the creator's own franklinhatchett.com returns HTTP 200 and a real 2020 capture, and robots.txt permits archiving. So the mechanism is an exclusion, reproducibly. Who requested it is not published and no accusation is made; the effect is that historical sales claims for the two revenue-taking domains are not publicly auditable.
Beyond the purchase price, a beginner needs hosting, an autoresponder, funnel software and an ad budget — third-party estimated at roughly $300 a month — none of which is disclosed on the sales page.
Terms
Every tier, discount and plan the seller publishes, in one place. The analysis underneath is ours.
Checked on · prices in USD
| Tier | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $197 | The full course, sold with “Instant Access & Lifetime Updates” |
| Super | $297 | Adds a ClickFunnels affiliate academy, done-for-you funnels, launch-jacking and hosting blueprints |
What the price is charged for is only partly confirmable. The checkout's own sidebar bills $1,394 of the offer's stated value to “Weekly Videos Including Updates & Q&A Sessions ($697 Value)” and a “Private Inner Circle Where You Can Chat To Successful Members! ($697)” — two things whose current status the seller states nowhere and which three reviewers report were withdrawn. The discount routes carry a cost of their own: the refund policy excludes coupon purchases entirely, so a buyer who uses the checkout's coupon field to pay less gives up the 30-day guarantee in exchange.
Six dated third-party reviews put the list price at $197 in July 2019 and at $197/$297 continuously through April 2026, so the list price has not moved in seven years, and the advertised "Normally $497/$697" is not evidenced as ever having been charged. That is scoped to what was actually walked, and it is not the same as saying no discount has ever existed. The seller's own sitemap was enumerated (64 pages, all listed, the material ones opened): seven differently-named copies of the sales page all carry $197/$297, but /instant-discount/ is live today and advertises "$157 One Time — Special Weekend Pricing" behind a "Weekend Special instant 20% OFF!" button, though both of its buy buttons now 404 at a retired Teachable checkout. Separately, the opener of the 2021 Reddit thread reports being offered this course and Ecom Elites "both plus some bonuses for only 97$". So bundle and promotional discounting has existed even though the standalone list price has not changed. None of this could be checked against archived captures, because both revenue-taking domains are excluded from the Wayback Machine.
Both tiers re-read on 2026-08-12 directly from the live ThriveCart checkouts' own plan objects.
Homepage testimonials
These are seller-selected user posts and screenshots, not a representative sample. We preserve the visible wording and label what was and was not independently verified.
“I can't recommend Franklin's products enough! After taking his course it helped me understand affiliate marketing better and how to use it in my Instagram business. Since enrolling I've gone from $0 to making my first commission and growing. growing! All of this is thanks to what I learn inside Franklin's online training and taking action. This training opened me up to a new online world!”
Verbatim from the current sales page, headed "Frank, I Went From Zero - First Commission!..." and credited "Brent James | Top Student". No handle, profile link or date is shown beside it. A 2020 review dates this same testimonial to at least August 2019 — roughly seven years old and still presented as current — and reports that this person's income came from a social media marketing agency rather than affiliate marketing.
View source ↗“This is the highest converting funnel that I've ever seen and I get about 2 - 5 sign often! Currently I have 67 active members with recurring revenue. I get all of this through FREE traffic. All I did was promote Franklin Hatchett's funnel.”
Verbatim from the current sales page, headed "This program is life changing...." and credited "Shan | Top Student". No surname, handle, profile link or date is shown, so it is not independently verifiable. The seller's own testimonial disclosure states such results are "the exception and not the rule".
View source ↗“Jono has followed my training in the past and it's helped him scale his online affiliate business! He took the time out to post in my group saying thanks! Jono now has a business that brings him in commission on a regular basis Currently at the time of writing this, Jono has done quite well with affiliate marketing.”
This is not a student quote. It is the seller narrating a student's result in his own voice under the heading "Jono Getting Commissions With Us", reproduced verbatim to show how the page's results section is constructed. All three "Entrepreneurs Getting Results" blocks are written this way — this one, "Commissions While At Work!" ("This student was surprised when she made her first commission…") and "One of Our Top Students Shan!" ("Shan jumped into this training and took action!…") — and the page adds "Please Note: Due to personal student privacy we do not disclose their earnings", so no dollar outcome is claimed or checkable.
View source ↗Evidence
Facts, claims, reports, analysis, and unknowns are deliberately kept separate.
Both ThriveCart checkouts were live on 2026-08-12 and returned $197.00 and $297.00 USD one-time plans with no order bumps, no upsell funnel, no trial and no instalment option, while the sales page published eleven named curriculum sections, two named testimonials, a 30-day money-back blurb and a refund policy imposing four proof-gated conditions.
Sources: Savage Affiliates — live ThriveCart checkout, Standard tier · Savage Affiliates — official sales page · 2 further sources recorded in the research fileDated third-party reviews from July 2019 onward record the list price as $197 (and $297 for Super) continuously to 2026, and document the 2019 "Savage Affiliates 2.0" module structure as the last substantive revision. The seller's own archived-in-place landing pages complicate the picture: a live /instant-discount/ page still advertises "$157 One Time" behind dead 2020 checkout links, and a 2021 Reddit post reports a $97 two-course bundle. This history rests on dated secondary sources and stale first-party pages rather than archived captures, because savageaffiliates.com and ecomelites.com are excluded from the Wayback Machine (HTTP 403) while the creator's own domain archives normally.
Sources: Reddit r/DigitalMarketing — "Franklin Hatchett's Savage Affiliates and Ecom Elites courses Review" · 4 further sources recorded in the research file"Featured as one of the top Affiliate Experts in the world by Entrepreneur Magazine", "I'm in the Facebook group daily replying to questions", "Special Pricing Normally $497! 60% OFF!", "Instant Access & Lifetime Updates" and the checkout's $1,394 of value assigned to weekly Q&A sessions and a Private Inner Circle are all seller representations. The Entrepreneur claim is unsupported by entrepreneur.com itself: its on-site search for the creator's name returns a generic editorial feed with no Franklin Hatchett item in it, and the only traceable historical mention now returns HTTP 404.
Sources: Savage Affiliates — official sales page · Savage Affiliates — live ThriveCart checkout, Standard tier · 1 further source recorded in the research fileThree independent reviewers — Commission Academy, Work From Your Laptop and Side Hustles Database — report that the private Facebook community and weekly Q&A sessions have been shut down or gone inactive, that the support email went unanswered for over a week, and that no up-to-date student success stories tied to the course could be found. None of the three earns commission on this course; all three promote a competing programme, so this is convergence between rivals rather than admission against interest. The one reviewer who does earn commission on the course contradicts them, writing that the group has "well over 6,200 members" and is "active with questions being answered daily" — a passage that appears unrevised since 2020 — while conceding, genuinely against his own interest, that the Web 2.0 backlinking, blog-commenting and paid-traffic material is outdated. Cutting the other way inside the same set of sources, the buyer at Work From Your Laptop — who paid for the course, earns nothing on it and sells a rival programme — concludes "It’s Not Magic—But It’s Solid as Hell… a solid entry point if you’re just getting started" and tells readers to "Buy it if you… Prefer a one-time fee over monthly charges"; because that praise runs against his own commercial interest it is weighted heavily, and his review's round-up is explicitly split into "Savage Affiliate Positive Reviews" and "Savage Affiliate Complaints" halves. Separately, a Reddit buyer with no disclosed interest either way reports being refused a full refund inside the 30-day window and describes the original private group, of which he says he is still a member, as "not active now". His comments were posted in 2025; the group observation is current to July 2025, but he dates the purchase and the refund refusal himself to "over 3 years ago", i.e. in or before roughly 2022.
Sources: Commission Academy — "Savage Affiliates Review 2025: Now Dangerously Outdated" · Work From Your Laptop — "Savage Affiliates Review: Is Franklin Hatchett's Course Worth It?" · Reddit r/DigitalMarketing — "Franklin Hatchett's Savage Affiliates and Ecom Elites courses Review" · 2 further sources recorded in the research fileThe seller-level trust signals are good and the offer-level signals are weaker: a compliant registered company with clean checkout mechanics is selling a 2019 product at its 2019 price, its own checkout still bills $1,394 for a community and weekly Q&A whose status it never states, and the refund gate turns on joining that same community. Set against that, the product is delivered, the price is one-time and low, and the one buyer who paid and earns nothing on it recommends it to beginners. That mix, not any evidence of fraud, is what produces the 2.7/5 — the "weak, buy only if you know exactly what you are getting and why" band rather than the bottom one.
Sources: Savage Affiliates — live ThriveCart checkout, Standard tier · Commission Academy — "Savage Affiliates Review 2025: Now Dangerously Outdated" · 3 further sources recorded in the research fileWhether the Facebook group required for a refund still exists and works, whether refunds are granted in practice today, the total lesson count and runtime, the relationship between the "Franklin Hatchett" persona and the registered director, and any post-2021 verifiable student outcome all remain unresolved. Reddit was reachable and was searched — it yielded one buyer thread, quoted on this page, which is a data point and not a sample. No Trustpilot profile exists for any related domain, both revenue-taking domains are excluded from the Wayback Machine, and the course was not purchased.
Sources: Reddit r/DigitalMarketing — "Franklin Hatchett's Savage Affiliates and Ecom Elites courses Review" · 4 further sources recorded in the research fileUnresolved
Whether the private Facebook group required by refund condition three still exists and is usable. The evidence is genuinely contested and is set out here rather than resolved. Three reviewers say it is shut — but all three promote competing programmes and none earns commission on this course. The one reviewer who does earn commission on this course says the opposite, that there are "well over 6,200 members in the Facebook group" and that it is "active with questions being answered daily"; that passage carries no date or screenshot and appears to be unrevised 2020 text inside a 2026 update, so it is weighted low, but it exists and is cited on this page. A Reddit buyer who says he is still a member of the original group describes it as "not active now", with the seller's last post there an apology for his absence. The seller's own /fb-group/ page, live but last modified in 2019, records a migration from an "old private group" to a "new private group". Private groups are not publicly enumerable and the linked group could not be opened without a Facebook login, so this cannot be settled without purchasing.
Whether refunds are granted in practice today. Every strand is thin, and the dates matter more than they first appear. One buyer posted a refusal complaint on 5 February 2025, but in a follow-up he dates the purchase himself to "over 3 years ago", so the refusal he describes happened in or before roughly mid-2022; February 2025 is when he wrote about it, not when it happened. An account posting as the seller replied on 10 May 2025: "We have a no questions asked refund policy now and have done for 2 years" — i.e. from about 2023, which would post-date the refusal rather than contradict it, so these two accounts are chronologically compatible and neither refutes the other. A course affiliate says the seller has been "a little lax on the refund policy"; a 2020 investigation found "zero reports" of refund trouble at that time; and the written policy on this course's own site is unchanged since January 2021 and still demands four proofs. That leaves no located first-hand account of a refund requested at any point in the last three years, in either direction. Not resolvable without purchasing. Whether the support email is monitored at all is likewise unresolved.
Total lesson count and course runtime. No official figure is published anywhere on the sales page or either checkout; third-party counts range from "100+" to "220+" videos and cannot be reconciled. The only runtime figure located is a third-party estimate of "at least 30 hours of video" from 2020.
Whether "Franklin Hatchett" is a trade name for the registered director Roy Allan Vieviorka. No public source connecting the two names was found; operating under a trade name is lawful and common, and this is recorded as unresolved rather than as a concern.
Whether any broader body of buyer accounts exists. Reddit is reachable and was searched in a browser — where the JSON API returns HTTP 403, the rendered site returns full results — and it holds exactly one substantive buyer thread, quoted on this page, alongside pirate-resale posts. No Trustpilot profile exists for savageaffiliates.com, ecomelites.com or franklinhatchett.com, and targeted forum searches surfaced no member threads. One account is not a base rate, and no larger sample was found.
Historical sales copy and price claims, because savageaffiliates.com and ecomelites.com are excluded from the Wayback Machine — HTTP 403, "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine." — despite a permissive robots.txt.
Any dated, attributable, independently observable student outcome after 2021. Scope of that search: all thirteen third-party reviews assessed were read for dated results; Reddit was searched at both post and comment level; and the query "Savage Affiliates" student results 2026 success story was re-run on 2026-08-13. It returned only the same review set, whose most recent finding on the question is Side Hustles Database's own — "As of 2025, I couldn’t find any convincing, up-to-date student success stories directly tied to Savage Affiliates". The two named testimonials on the sales page carry no date; one of them is independently dated to at least August 2019. Not finding an outcome is not evidence that none exists, and it is not scored against the course.
Next options
These alternatives are descriptive only. We have not researched or rated them here.
ClickBank, Amazon Associates and ClickFunnels all publish current free documentation for their affiliate programmes, which is more current than 2019 course video and costs nothing.
If paid traffic or link building is the goal, prefer a course that publishes a visible update log and a refund policy you can actually exercise. This report does not endorse a specific substitute.
13 · Buyer checklist
Questions
No, and it should not be called one. The seller is a currently registered New Zealand company with a named director, published contact details and mainstream payment processors, and no report was found anywhere of a buyer paying and receiving nothing. The problems are that the content has not been substantively updated since 2019 and that the page still bills for support that independent reviewers say was withdrawn.
$197 USD for the Standard tier or $297 USD for the Super tier, both one-time payments with no instalment plan, no subscription and no order bumps. Both figures were read directly from the live ThriveCart checkouts on 2026-08-12, where the footnote reads "All prices in USD".
There is no evidence it is. Every dated source from July 2019 to April 2026 records the price as $197 (or $297 for Super), and the checkout shows no countdown or quantity limit. It functions as a permanent reference price rather than a discount.
Only by proving all four conditions by email within 30 days: logging in at least once, watching at least 50% of the training, joining the private Facebook group, and starting a live site, channel, blog or funnel. Coupon purchases are excluded outright. Three independent reviewers report the Facebook group no longer exists, which would make the third condition impossible to satisfy. There is a contrary claim and it belongs here: an account posting as the seller says on Reddit that a no-questions-asked policy has been in force since about 2023, and that same wording does appear on the seller's current, different product page — but it appears nowhere on this course's own pages, and the one located buyer who tested the guarantee dates his purchase to before the claimed change. Plan on the written policy, which is what you can actually hold the seller to: treat the purchase as non-refundable.
No substantive content update is evidenced after 2019. The sales video dates to 2022, the footer reads "Copyright 2020", the legal pages carry a 2020 effective date and the refund policy has been unchanged since January 2021. The creator's own website does not mention the course at all and promotes a different $27 offer.
Because the course was sold with its own affiliate programme, most reviews that rank for it are written by people paid to sell it, and many of the negative ones exist to redirect readers into a competing paid offer. Of thirteen third-party reviews assessed, none was an unconflicted first-hand account. The findings weighted most heavily here are the ones reviewers made against their own commercial interest.
Source registry
sa-checkout-standardSupports: Checkout is live and returns the product plan object "BEST VALUE: One-time payment ($197.00)" with "price":"197.00" and "currency":"USD". The order summary reads "Savage Affiliates $197" with the footnote "All prices in USD". No order bump ("bump_price":0, "bumps":[]), no post-purchase funnel ("funnel":false), no trial, no instalment plan and "quantity":"unlimited". Credit card (Stripe) and PayPal are both offered, tax is "exclusive", and a coupon field is present. The sidebar value stack bills "Weekly Videos Including Updates & Q&A Sessions ($697 Value)" and "Private Inner Circle Where You Can Chat To Successful Members! ($697)".
Limitations: No payment was made and no card details were entered, so the post-purchase experience, delivery and refund handling were not observed. A working checkout proves the offer can be bought, not that what it bills for is delivered.
sa-officialSupports: Displayed pricing table ($197 Standard, $297 Super, both "One Time"), the permanent "Special Pricing Normally $497! 60% OFF!" reference price, all eleven named curriculum sections, the Super-tier extras, both named testimonials verbatim, the "30 Day Money Back Period" blurb, the support promise "I’m in the Facebook group daily replying to questions" (the page uses a typographic apostrophe), the "Featured as one of the top Affiliate Experts in the world by Entrepreneur Magazine" claim, the financial-hardship warning, the closed referral programme and the footer "Copyright 2020".
Limitations: Seller-authored marketing. Its claims are recorded as claims. Page JSON-LD gives datePublished 2019-03-29 and dateModified 2025-07-09, so the page has been edited more recently than its content or copyright line suggests.
commission-academySupports: A first-hand account reporting that the private Facebook group has been shut "for 2 years or more", that the refund conditions are therefore unsatisfiable, that "There is a support email address but I emailed them a week ago and I’m still waiting for a reply", that "Not a single lesson has been updated since 2019", and a costed tooling table (Bluehost, GetResponse, ClickFunnels, Ahrefs) resolving to "set aside a budget of at least $300 a month plus however much you want to put into Facebook, YouTube and Google ads".
Limitations: High conflict of interest: the publisher runs a competing free affiliate-training platform and writes "it’s exactly what we teach for free at Commission Academy". Its critical findings are weighted only where they converge with sources that profit from selling this course.
workfromyourlaptopSupports: The only located account by someone who says he paid for the course and earns nothing from it: "I bought it. I went through it." It cuts both ways and both halves are reproduced here. Its published conclusion is favourable — under the heading "Final Thoughts: It’s Not Magic—But It’s Solid as Hell" it writes "Savage Affiliates isn’t the most advanced or up-to-date course in 2025, but it’s a solid entry point if you’re just getting started. It gives you practical steps, a decent foundation, and enough direction to build real momentum—so long as you stay consistent." Under "Should You Buy Savage Affiliates?" it lists "Buy it if you: Want a no-nonsense, beginner-to-intermediate course · Learn well from video walkthroughs and screen shares · Are willing to put in work over 3–6 months · Prefer a one-time fee over monthly charges", and its bottom-line summary credits "One-time payment, lifetime access. You won’t get hit with monthly fees—$197 or $297 unlocks the full course for life, including updates.", "Beginner-focused, step-by-step training." and "Multiple traffic strategies included." In the same voice, under the heading "The Facebook Group Is Gone", it states that "There used to be a private Savage Affiliates community on Facebook, but it’s no longer active"; that "The course feels rooted in what worked from 2017–2022"; and that "The Web 2.0 backlinking tactics? Pass. The paid ad strategies could definitely use a refresh to match today’s algorithm changes." Its "Skip it if you" list ends with "Need active community coaching and feedback".
Limitations: Promotes Wealthy Affiliate, a competing programme, through affiliate links; its author bio reads "An Expert Trainer at Wealthy Affiliate since 2020". It does not earn commission on Savage Affiliates — its only outbound link to the course is a plain, unmonetised https://savageaffiliates.com/ — and that cuts in both directions, which is why both halves of it are quoted above. Its criticism is competitor-motivated and is discounted accordingly; its recommendation of a product it earns nothing on, while selling a rival, runs against its own commercial interest and is weighted more heavily under this report's own rule. It also reproduces other publications' reviews in a labelled round-up headed "What Other Users Are Saying About Savage Affiliates", which is explicitly split into a "Savage Affiliate Positive Reviews" half and a "Savage Affiliate Complaints" half, so the round-up cuts both ways too; nothing from it is attributed to this publication anywhere in this report, and the one item drawn from it — the "As of 2025…" success-stories sentence — originates with Side Hustles Database and is cited to it. Note too that its own wording is that the group is "no longer active", which is a weaker claim than shut down. Its byline reads "May 15 2025" with "Last updated on May 28, 2026".
reddit-buyer-threadSupports: The only unconflicted first-hand buyer account located anywhere in this research: no affiliate link, no competing product, a member of the public answering a stranger's question. Every date below is the date a comment was POSTED, read from the thread's own <time datetime> attributes; the buyer dates the purchase itself separately and much earlier, and that distinction matters to how the thread reads. Posted 2025-02-05, u/federationx7: "I purchased the Savage Affiliates course, as there was a 'Money back guarantee' within 30 days or something. Within that 30 days after following the instructions i decided the course wasn't what i was looking for so requested my money back. They refused to give me all my money back even after their ads said that they would within that time period. Consider yourself warned." An account posting as the seller, u/SoftCheeseBurger, replies on 2025-05-10: "Its Franklin here, this person most likely purchased from someone illegally selling our course. We have a no questions asked refund policy now and have done for 2 years. We also haven't even run ads for like 3 years." The buyer answers on 2025-07-11 that he bought direct — "I bought this course directly from your Savage Affiliates site as i had previously bought your dropshipping course (which i did not request a refund for)" — and, in the same comment, dates the purchase himself: "Yes i did purchase this course over 3 years ago, and still have a screenshot of that ad that said I could get a refund for 'ANY REASON' within 30 days, 'RISK FREE'." (Nested double quotes in the comment are rendered here as single quotes, as elsewhere on this page; no other character is changed.) Measured from a comment posted on 2025-07-11, that places the purchase and the refusal in or before mid-2022 — consistent with the seller's "We also haven't even run ads for like 3 years" in the same thread, and with the complaint being about an ad. On that chronology the two accounts do not conflict: a refusal around 2022 predates the "no questions asked… for 2 years" policy the seller says began around 2023. The buyer adds that he "requested a refund within the 30 days and was met with resistance requesting various bits of evidence that i followed all the actions required", that he supplied it, that "i did not get all my money back", and that "the exchange was rather unpleasant, rude actually". His 2025-07-11 reply is also the only first-hand statement located from someone with actual access to the disputed community, and that observation is current to 2025 rather than to the purchase: "I am still in fact part of the original Savage Affiliates Private Facebook group for members that officially bought the course, which i can see is not active now. The latest message from you there was an apology for your absense due to personal issues". Separately, the 2021 thread opener reports being offered this course and Ecom Elites "both plus some bonuses for only 97$".
Limitations: Pseudonymous on both sides. No receipt, advertisement screenshot or email is published in the thread — the buyer offers to produce them and does not. His own dating is approximate — "over 3 years ago" — so the refusal is placed in or before mid-2022 rather than on a known date, and it therefore describes the seller's refund handling then, not now. The u/SoftCheeseBurger account is not verified as the seller beyond its own assertion and is quoted strictly as a claim, though its "no questions asked" wording matches the seller's current product page verbatim. Comment timestamps were read from the page's own metadata rather than its relative labels. One buyer's experience is not a base rate, and it is the only such account found.