If you're thinking about creating an online course but the prospect of doing so
feels monumental and you've got absolutely no idea where to start,
Digital Course Academy might just be your ticket to finally creating a highly
profitable asset that you can leverage for years to come.
Today I'm going to take you through exactly what Digital Course Academy covers
in its curriculum, who is going to benefit the most from what it has to offer,
what I liked about the course, what I didn't like,
and my own personal results from going through DCA as I created my own first
digital course.
Hey there,
I'm Rachel Harrison-Sund and I help online entrepreneurs make more money so they
can live more life. If that is you,
go ahead and subscribe and do hit that bell so that you can be notified every
time I post a video every Monday.
Why create a digital course in the first place? Probably most importantly,
like I mentioned at the top already,
is to create one asset that you can leverage for years to come,
either as a core offer or as a complement to other offerings in your existing
business. In other words,
your course can be your one-and-only offer--the cornerstone in your entire
business that brings in a full-time income--or it can become an additional
revenue stream in your business.
Having a digital course is the perfect way to escape the nine-to-five
dollars-for-hours trap. If you're a coach,
if you're a consultant or a freelancer,
you can step away from the one-on-one client work and create a course that can
have a much broader impact because it will allow you to share your knowledge at
scale, helping many more people than one-on-one efforts could ever accommodate.
A digital course can give you the power to take control over your financial life
and to help relieve the uncertainty of where that next dollar is coming from.
Let's talk specifically about Digital Course Academy.
Digital Course Academy was created by my online business mentor,
Amy Porterfield.
I don't think there's another person alive who's more qualified to teach how to
create a wildly successful digital course.
Amy has been in the biz for over a decade.
She's created and launched eight different courses.
Those courses together have served over 45,000 students,
many of whom have gone on to create their own widely successful six-figure
courses. I'm one of them. So what does DCA teach?
DCA teaches how online business owners and entrepreneurs can turn their
knowledge and know-how into a digital course that is going to generate
consistent revenue for their business.
It's basically a step-by-step strategy for the entire course creation journey.
From strategy to planning to creation to launching, first with live webinars.
Then it actually shows you how to shift from live launching into an evergreen
course, meaning the course is always open for enrollment. In a nutshell,
DCA builds itself as a program that teaches students how to make the 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.
Inside DCA there are six core modules that take students through every single
part of the process of turning their expertise into a profitable digital course
that their ideal customers actually want and will be excited to pay for.
It is also a step-by-step launch plan that shows students how to create and
deliver a high-converting webinar presentation capable of enrolling dozens,
if not hundreds, of students every single time they deliver it,
as well as how to fill up those webinars with qualified,
ready-to-buy ideal customers.
The course also includes proven marketing sales page and social media strategies
to help students maximize their marketing efforts,
as well as a highly curated assortment of templates and swipe files to help
core students make greater progress at a faster rate.
Amy also always includes several really valuable bonuses inside the course.
Like I said before, DCA has helped many,
many of its students to go on to become six-figure course creators themselves,
and I am one of them.
I followed DCA to a T when I was creating my course Low-Content Profits Academy.
If you want to hear the step-by-step process I took to actually create that
course, check out this video here.
My personal results were far greater than I ever could have imagined,
especially 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--and fill up my first four webinars with just over a thousand
registrants. Of that thousand,
there were 509 attendees and 376 total units sold,
resulting in $63,168 USD in sales.
Since I first opened the doors two-and-a-half years ago,
it's generated just under $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
basically anyone who's even remotely interested in starting their own digital
course, and it's why I became an affiliate.
Moving on to what I liked and what I didn't like about Digital Course Academy.
What I liked,
I really appreciated that the course is totally a step-by-step,
start-to-finish system with really not a single step left out.
From validating your idea, pre-selling, creating the course, marketing it,
selling it, webinars--everything's there.
I also really like the comprehensive tech library which contains step-by-step
tutorials for setting up all of the required tech.
Email marketing services to webinar platforms, course platforms, sales pages,
screen capture, absolutely everything.
Tech is an absolutely massive stumbling block for a lot of people,
but Amy really does take you by the hand and walk you through every single step
of that process, so it really becomes a non-issue.
I also like that there's lots of support. There's weekly live Q&As,
there's a Q&A vault of all previously answered questions that you can really
easily search, and there is a Facebook group.
The course also offers lifetime access.
I bought DCA back in 2019 and I'm currently going through it now again in
2022 as I'm creating my second course.
The course has been updated a couple of times since then,
so I know I'm getting access to the latest strategies.
So is there anything I didn't like?
One thing that I think probably worked really well for some but maybe not for me
was that the course was dripped out over the course of several weeks.
Each week there was a new module released.
It wasn't the fact that the modules were dripped out in this way that wasn't
the issue.
I think that actually can be really helpful for some people because it kind of
mitigates that overwhelm.
They're not faced with the whole thing right away and they're just getting it in
bite size chunks. Because I had such a demanding schedule,
I did end up feeling a little bit lost in the dust.
I had a one-year-old at home at the time so I was trying to cram in the
coursework around her naps.
And then I had my low-content publishing business to keep going,
and I actually moved in the middle of it all.
It actually took me nine months to create my course.
The whole course sort of was dripped out every week and then everything wrapped
at 12 weeks,
so everything that was going on in the community--it was like everyone was kind
of moving at a similar pace and I just felt like, after the first two weeks,
everyone had moved on and I was kind of stuck behind.
Having said that though,
I can see the logic behind dripping the content this way.
It does keep everyone kind of moving at a similar pace,
and even if you can't keep up, you are free to go at your own pace.
You don't have to move at the same pace as everyone else,
so it's not really an issue.
I think that was more of just what I struggled with internally at the time,
comparing myself to other people's progress.
At the end of the day it really didn't matter because I ended up getting
excellent results regardless of how long it actually took,
so that's something to really keep in mind.
It doesn't matter how long it takes you to get there.
You can work at your own pace and still experience really spectacular results.
With all of that said, how do you know if DCA is right for you?
You will benefit most from DCA if you already know who your ideal customer is,
and you've started to build a bit of an online presence on a website,
social media, email list, et cetera,
even if it's just a teeny tiny one at this point.
You'll also be a good fit if you have a real skill and know how to
solve an urgent customer pain point. Also,
it's a good idea to already have some sort of income coming through the door so
you can be patient and spend the necessary time to create your course without
fretting about when the money is going to start rolling in.
You really don't want to half-ass it simply because you're desperate to start
making money.
You're also going to need at least five hours a week to dedicate to building
your course, and you'd
better not be someone who quits the first time something goes wrong or doesn't
go according to plan. That's definitely going to happen,
so you need resilience in the face of obstacles. Finally,
you know DCA is probably for you if you're just excited about the possibilities
that creating this one asset in your business will open up for you.
On the flip side,
DCA is not for you if you don't yet even have kind of a general idea of what
skill or knowledge you could turn into an online course,
if you're unable to spend that five plus hours a week,
or if you become paralyzed by uncertainty or find it really difficult to put
time and effort into something unless you have a guaranteed outcome.
If you want to learn more about Digital Course Academy,
I want to invite you to attend Amy's free masterclass,
"How to Recession-Proof Your Business with One Digital Course:
5 Strategies to Create and Launch a Profitable Digital Course from
Scratch." Inside this masterclass you're going to 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 is literally just one webinar left--this Sunday--which is why I released
this video three days early, so that you wouldn't miss it.
Do not wait--click on that link below so that you can sign up and attend.
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 that group is also down below.
Watch this video next to learn how I built my own digital course business makes
25k a month. Once again, thank you so much for watching. If you like this video,
please hit that "Like" button. Do subscribe,
share the video with anyone you think might find it helpful, and thanks again.
See you next time.