(This post contains affiliate links, which means—at zero cost to you—I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for your support!)
Have you been kicking around the idea of creating an online course, but the very thought seems harder than reaching the summit of Mount Everest? Maybe you’re ready for the challenge but have absolutely no idea where to start. Don’t worry…Amy Porterfield’s got your back! Her Digital Course Academy (DCA) might just be your ticket to finally creating a highly profitable asset that you can leverage for years to come.
Watch this video or read the main points below where I’ll discuss:
- why you should seriously consider creating a digital course
- who Amy Porterfield is
- what Digital Course Academy (DCA) is
- what’s included in DCA
- my personal experience taking DCA (with my actual results!)
- what I liked about the program
- what I didn’t like about the program
- how to know if DCA is right for you
Why Create A Digital Course?
Before I go over the specifics of Digital Course Academy and my personal experience taking the course, let’s talk about some of the benefits of having a digital course in the first place.
Create An Asset You Can Leverage for Years
Perhaps the most important benefit of creating a course is that you’ll be creating ONE asset you can leverage for years to come, either as a core offering or to complement other offerings in your existing business.
In other words, your course can be your one-and-only offering—the cornerstone in your business that brings in a full-time income—or it can simply help boost other products or services you currently offer. For example, if you already have a coaching business, a digital course can help provide value to your ideal customers while also helping to promote your coaching services.
Stop Trading Dollars for Hours
Having a digital course is the perfect way to change your entire life by allowing you to escape the 9-5 dollars-for-hours trap. If you’re a coach, consultant, or freelancer a course will let you step away from one-on-one client work and instead have a much broader impact on a larger audience. Through a course you can share your knowledge at scale to help many more people than one-on-one efforts can accommodate.
Generate Consistent, Scalable Income
Creating a digital course gives you the power to take control over your financial life and relieve the uncertainty of where your next dollar will come from. Once you do the initial set up work, your course can provide you with a steady, scalable stream of passive income.
One huge advantage of digital courses is that, aside from periodic updates, they essentially run on autopilot. This can free up valuable time for you to spend with family, pursue personal interests, or develop new business offerings.
Who is Amy Porterfield and What is Digital Course Academy?
Amy Porterfield is an online marketing expert who has launched 8 successful digital courses to date, helping thousands of people create insanely successful 6-figure digital courses of their own…including me!
Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy is a 9-week online digital course for creators and entrepreneurs who are ready to scale their business, build their communities, and serve more of their ideal students.
Amy teaches online business owners and entrepreneurs how they can turn their knowledge and skills into a digital course that will generate consistent revenue for their business.
She uses a proven, step-by-step strategy to take her students through the entire course creation journey, including:
- strategy
- planning
- creation
- launching
- live webinars
In a nutshell, DCA teaches students how to make the ultimate shift from struggling to make money online, feeling stretched too thin, and feeling uncertain of what they should be doing to creating a profitable asset in their business—a digital course that they can launch over and over again.
What’s Included In Digital Course Academy?
There are 6 modules included in DCA that are delivered “live” over 9 weeks, with 3 “implementation weeks” built into the program. In other words, you will have time along the way to actually implement what you’re learning.
The 6 modules take students through every single part of the course creation and launch process. You’ll get:
- a step-by-step launch plan that shows you how to create and deliver a high-converting webinar presentation capable of enrolling dozens, if not hundreds, of students every time you deliver it
- the Webinar Fill-Up Formula to ensure that you never deliver your webinar to an empty room and instead get a packed house full of perfectly targeted “ready to buy” prospects
- proven marketing, sales page, and social media strategies to help you maximize your marketing efforts
- a curated assortment of templates and swipe files to help you make greater progress at a faster rate
My Personal Experience Taking Digital Course Academy (and My Results!)
So what about actual results? Like I said before, DCA has helped thousands of people go on to become 6-figure course creators, and I’m one of them.
I followed DCA step by step when I was creating my course, Low-Content Profits Academy. If you want to hear the step-by-step process I followed to create that course, check out this video.
My personal results were much greater than I ever could have dreamed of for a first launch. Using everything I learned in DCA I was able to:
- confidently create my course
- build up an email list (from ZERO subscribers, by the way)
- fill up my first 4 webinars with just over 1,000 registrants
The results? My total webinar attendance was 509 and I sold 376 units, resulting in $63,168 USD in sales. In case you’re wondering whether I used paid advertising to attract customers, I didn’t. The organic marketing methods Amy teaches are THAT good; I was able to sell those 376 units without spending a dime on ads!
Aside from a few small expenses such as:
…my results were almost all profit!
I conducted that first live launch in late 2019 and followed it with a second one early in 2020 (with similar results). I then converted my course to evergreen, which means that, rather than conduct a live launch with a limited enrollment period a couple of times a year, I created a pre-recorded webinar and members of my audience can buy my course at any time.
Low-Content Profits Academy is a highly profitable asset that essentially runs itself in the background and generates a nice stream of income. Since I opened the doors in 2019, it’s brought in over $550,000 in revenue, and I still haven’t spent a dime on ads.
It’s because of these results that I’m so passionate about introducing DCA to anyone who’s even remotely interested in creating their own digital course. It’s also why I decided to become an affiliate.
What I Like About DCA
First and foremost, I appreciate that the course is a step-by-step, start-to-finish system which includes:
- validating your idea
- pre-selling your course
- creating your course
- marketing
- selling
I also like the comprehensive tech library, which contains step-by-step tutorials for setting up all of the required tech for:
- email marketing services
- webinar platforms
- course platforms
- sales pages
- screen capture
Tech is a huge stumbling block for a lot of people, but Amy holds your hand and walks you through the whole process so you don’t feel stuck at any point.
If you do feel stuck at some point there’s plenty of support, including:
- weekly live Q&As
- a Q+A Vault
- a DCA Facebook community
I also appreciate that Amy offers lifetime access, which includes any future updates she makes to the course. I bought DCA in 2019 and I’m currently going through it a second time as I’m creating my second course. The course has been updated since my first go-round, so I’m able to take advantage of the latest course creation strategies.
What I Don’t Like About the Course
One thing that I think probably works really well for some (but not as much for me) is that the course modules are dripped out over the course of several weeks, one module per week.
There are some obvious pros to this approach. For one, delivering information in pieces rather than all at once can help mitigate the overwhelm that some people may experience. Additionally, it keeps everyone moving forward at the same pace, which really did foster a sense of community in the accompanying Facebook group.
However, because I had such a demanding schedule at the time I did end up feeling a bit lost in the dust. I had a 1-year-old at home so I had to cram in coursework around her naps. I also still had my low-content publishing business to keep up with.On top of all that, I moved while I was right in the middle of the course, so it actually took me 9 months to create and launch my own course.
I started comparing my progress with everyone else’s and feeling kind of bad about it. I think if everyone had access to the entire course at once and was working solely at their own pace I wouldn’t have felt so far behind.
Having said that, I can see the logic behind dripping out course content. If that doesn’t work for you, though, don’t give up! You can go at your own pace. That’s what I did and I still saw excellent results.
Is Digital Course Academy Right for You?
You’ll receive the most benefit from DCA if you know who your Ideal Customer is and you’ve started to build an online presence in your niche (through a website, social media, an email list, etc.).
You’ll also be a good fit if you have a REAL skill and know how to solve an urgent customer pain point or meet a desire. Remember, you don’t have to be an expert in your chosen field but you do need to know a little bit more than the students you’ll be teaching.
To go a little further, you should also have at least a general idea of your course topic. You don’t need to have it nailed down—DCA will provide you with some help in that respect—but you should at least have something in mind.
DCA isn’t a “get rich quick” program. It does take time and it does take work. If you already have some sort of income coming through the door you’re in an ideal spot. You don’t want to start from a position of financial desperation because this can lead to sloppy work and poor results.
You’re also a good fit for DCA if you can dedicate at least 5 hours a week to building your course and you’re not someone who quits the first time something goes wrong. This is going to happen. It happens to everyone, so you’ll need resilience in the face of obstacles.
Finally, DCA is for you if you’re truly excited about the possibilities that will open up for you by creating this one asset in your business.
If you want to learn more about Digital Course Academy I’d like to invite you to attend Amy’s free masterclass, How To Recession-Proof your Business with One Digital Course: 5 Strategies To Create & Launch a Profitable Digital Course From Scratch.
Inside this masterclass you’ll learn how to nail down what will sell, how to outline your course, how to build your course-ready audience, how to record your course on any budget, and why you only need one digital course to reach all of your goals, big or small.
There’s just ONE webinar left, this Sunday, which is why I released this video 3 days early. I didn’t want you to miss it, so don’t wait…sign up now! You’ll find the link to sign up in the description below this video.
You can also join my free Facebook group, Rachel’s Sandbox, to join other like-minded folks all on their own online business journeys. The link to the group is also below.
