If you follow affiliate marketing, John Chow’s blog, or Shoemoney’s blog you have probably heard of the Top Affiliate Challenge. The Top Affiliate Challenge is an online reality show that takes 12 internet marketers, divides them into 3 teams, and then it is up to the teams to make money promoting real affiliate products. Each team is led by a guru, Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker, John Chow, and Ken McArthur make up the 3 guru’s. There are some pretty interesting contestants like Jonathan Van Clute and Ian Fernando. After watching the first 2 episodes I am not really impressed at all, honestly it’s more of a joke.

Production
When I first starting watching the first episode I thought I was watching something from 1995, the intro is horrible and the graphics look so dated. Watching the first episode you can blatantly see where they cut scenes and it just looks so unprofessional. And it’s not like it happens once or even twice during the show it happens all the time! It’s so bad that in episode 2 John Chow is talking about his blog and they cut him off at the end! I’ve seen video bloggers put together better videos than this! Also the quality of the uploaded video is just horrible. I guess that is because they are using Google Video to host the videos. They should have used a service like BitGravity to serve high quality video.

The Host
Well at least they picked an attractive host, but besides that she really does not bring anything. You can really tell that she is just reading from a script, not much emotion or anything. And in some scenes in episode 2 you can see that she is reading from the script on the floor! When I saw that I just laughed. No wonder they have to cut the video so much.

The Content
Now this is actually the only good part of the show. Watching the teams devise ways to make money with affiliate marketing, although through the first 2 shows they really do not show you how they do it or really give you any insight. I do like the battles going on between the teams and how determined some of the contestants are. It is a good opportunity for them to learn and make money at the same time. I have talked to some of the contestants and they say the show is really a joke, but they are enjoying the experience.

Hopefully the next few episodes will be better, but I don’t expect much on the production side of things. Here are the first 2 episodes…