I Learned Digital Marketing From Amy Porterfield. Here’s What Her Critics Get Wrong.

5 lessons from Digital Course Academy that changed how I build, market, and sell online.

Not getting results? It might not be the program. Take ownership in creating your own success.

“I am old and have learned to read the writing on the walls of businesses and sometimes the writing is in the blood of those who followed bad advice.”

That was the first line of an article I came across the other day on Medium criticizing New York Times Best Selling Author of “2 Weeks Notice” because she was closing the doors of her multi-8 figure “Digital Course Academy”.

The article goes on to imply that Amy Porterfield was the leader of a ‘dolled up multi-level marketing racketeer’ that ‘supposedly’ made millions off the backs of unsuspecting victims by luring them into the promise of building wealth by also building courses.

And then it came….

and for full disclosure, I never took any of her programs

Sure, everyone has their right to an opinion, but to critique Amy like this is the same as doing a review on something you’ve never used.

Major credibility red flag right there.

Amy Porterfield was a mentor to me having participated in not just Digital Course Academy (DCA) but her Momentum Mastermind. I also had the opportunity to present inside of her mastermind two times.

One of the best experiences in my journey was interviewing Amy on my podcast in 2023, a true dream come true.

Me and Amy Porterfield on my Podcast “High Value Skills”

As someone who was an actual student of Amy I can say without a shadow of a doubt that her content on marketing was some of the best I’ve ever learned.

Aside from the quality of her programs, I felt that she was very transparent about results and did a great job of explaining the risks of starting a course and what it takes to be successful.

Thousands of her students went on to create 5, 6 and 7 figure courses.

Because of Amy’s guidance, I was able to launch my own 6 figure course, Leveraging LinkedIn.

The most incredible part about my journey is I was able to launch my first iteration of that course before even finishing DCA using a strategy she taught (which I will share below).

Some of the most valuable lessons that I have learned from Amy carry on far past creating online courses and I use them today in many other aspects of my business.

Don’t Be A Victim

It doesn’t matter how good the quality of your content is, there will always be those who don’t succeed and then blame the teacher for their own lack of results.

For every successful course creator that Amy helped, there will be 10x the time of people who didn’t succeed.

Most of them don’t say a thing because they know they didn’t do the work.

They bought the course and watched 3 of the 8 modules, never went to a work shop or even wrote out a course outline.

But then there will also be a select few who never did the work and blame her for their lack of results.

There will also be those that ‘tried’ and didn’t succeed because they couldn’t find a topic that was sticky enough to be successful.

This isn’t an ‘Amy Porterfield’ thing, there just are people out there that will always find a way to prove that something doesn’t work instead of finding at least one thing they can use to improve their skills.

I see this often as a coach and consultant for a Fortune 100 company — there will be 10% of sales reps that take my knowledge and make something great with it.

80% of people listen and take a thing or two and get some results here and there.

And then there are a small few that are literally coming up with reasons why a strategy won’t work without even trying it.

Even if they did ‘try’, they won’t get results because their mind is already made up on why they will fail.

Don’t be a victim. Be the type of person who holds yourself to higher standards and be responsible for your own success (or lack of).

Now that is out of the way, let me share with you some of the most important lessons I learned from Amy Porterfield that you can use in your online business (even if you aren’t building a course).

Lesson 1 — Validate Your Offer Before You Create It

Earlier in this lesson I mentioned that I had actually launched my own course just a few weeks into taking Amy’s Digital Course Academy.

In her program she taught what’s called a ‘Founding Member Launch’ which was incredibly simple, but bold.

The strategy is that you let your audience know you are launching a ‘beta’ or ‘founding members’ version of your offer in which you pre-sell the offer before you even create it.

You basically give your audience a discounted price on the offer in exchange for valuable feedback and testimonials and you build it along the way.

The reason I say ‘offer’ instead of ‘course’ is because this same strategy can be used for any type of product, even a physical one.

Another good way to describe this strategy is like what Kickstarter does when they pre-sell a physical product before it is created.

If someone will pay you for a product you haven’t created, you know you have a potentially successful offer before you put any time and energy into it.

And if you can’t pre-sell it, then you might want to rethink the offer itself, your audience or how you are marketing it.

It isn’t even about having to pre-sell it; the bigger lesson is finding a way to validate the idea before putting time into it to make sure it is something that people will buy.

Infographic: The Founding Member Launch is one of many ways to validate an offer.

Lesson 2 — Build Your Email List

Many successful digital marketers including Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, Russell Brunson and Stu McLaren talk about using a ‘lead magnet’ or ‘lead generator’ to start building an ‘email list’.

The short version of this is being able to exchange something of value such as a training, PDF, template, cheat sheet, etc. to your audience in exchange for their email.

The purpose of this is to divert traffic from platforms or social media to a private ‘contact list’ that you own and can utilize in the future to market your offers directly to them.

Lead magnets are a great way to get your audience to ‘self identify’ that they want to learn more about your topic and a micro-commitment which helps you sell to them later.

Many of these successful digital marketers will say their biggest mistake was not starting an email list earlier.

Luckily I did listen to their advice and started my own email list early on that I was able to monetize over and over.

In a previous article I talked about how I made $8171 from sending out six emails.

[embed]How I Made $8171 By Sending Out 6 Emails While creators fight over courses and eBooks, one overlooked passive income strategy quietly generated thousands with…medium.com

The reason I was able to do this was because I had a list of 4000 subscribers to my email list.

Lesson 3 — Presenting To A Live Audience

On of the most powerful things I’ve learned from Amy was to launch my online course by doing a ‘webinar’.

In Amy’s DCA strategy, she encourages her students to launch their courses by hosting a live webinar on the topic of their course where you add value by sharing 3 of the top concepts in your course, then selling your course to anyone who wants to continue learning from you.

Doing a webinar for the first time is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the process, but one that creates a lot of growth.

It’s downright scary for most people to get onto a live Zoom call and present to and audience, then pitch your offer.

I’m so grateful that I learned how to present and it has paid dividends to me in the years to come.

By going through this process it gave me the confidence to do many live trainings after that and get comfortable with it.

A few weeks ago I had the honor of joining the president of my company for a ‘mid year rally’ in front of 700 viewers.

That is something I would have never had the courage to do before working with Amy Porterfield.

Lesson 4 — The Power Of Story Telling

The game has changed. Stop selling information, start selling transformation.

I’ve been talking about this a lot lately but people no longer buy ‘information’ because it is no longer a scarce resource.

People can find information anywhere these days, and even more so with AI.

If you are trying to sell information, you don’t have a solid offer.

People don’t buy a product, they buy the emotion or a feeling that is attached to buying that product.

Knowledge combined with lived experience is a strategy, and that is something you can sell.

Amy was great at using story telling as part of her marketing and also gave me several powerful story telling frameworks that I still use today.

Stories create emotion and inspiration, they make your content or teaching relatable and sticky.

Lesson 5 — Creating Urgency To Drive Sales

In late 2019, I started to listen to Amy’s podcast and learn about online courses.

I went to her website because I wanted to buy her Digital Course Academy but all I could find was a ‘wait list’.

It turns out that her course (which as I mentioned has generated multi-8 figures in revenue) was only for sale for a 7 to 10 day launch window every year.

Until I went through DCA, I couldn’t understand why you could only purchase it one time a year and in that window.

Later on I found out that because it was only offered during that window, it drove urgency to purchase the course because it wasn’t always available.

When it comes to higher ticket offers (anything over $1000), people have a tendency to ‘think about it’ instead of taking action.

A launch window is one of many marketing strategies that drives urgency/scarcity — and that amplifies sales.

When something is always available, there really isn’t a need to get it ‘right now’.

Urgency/scarcity tactics can come across or be shady but that has more to do with the person selling it and how they do it.

I felt Amy did this in a very authentic way but of course some people will call foul on these strategies as a whole because they don’t understand why it works.

You could also look at this as good time management. In the case of Amy, she had a ‘4 seasons’ approach to her business.

Each part of her year was dedicated to a different part of her business.

Some of the year was down time, another part was growing her list, another part was prepping for her course and another part was launching and teaching it.

The Real Reason Why Amy Stopped Digital Course Academy

Only Amy knows the real motivation but publicly she said that it was just time to sunset the course and move onto other things.

Why someone gets accused of being shady because she wants to move on to other things is beyond me. I think her explanation is valid and any business that survives 8+ years is an accomplishment.

To leave something on a high note shows sophistication and restraint, as opposed to riding things out and trying to squeeze every last dollar out of it until there are no buyers left.

I do think that the ‘golden age’ of online courses may have passed, but maybe not, I still see a lot of successful courses out there.

The online course world may have become oversaturated, but what isn’t these days?

Building An Online Business Isn’t A Walk In The Park

One thing that frustrates me is this idea of getting rich quickly online through courses, digital products, communities or being an influencer.

Anyone promising quick results is suspect — and the only reason these people exist is there are also people who buy into that and want the quick and easy path.

Amy Porterfield’s path follows the same journey as almost everyone else — it was a decade in the making.

Amy’s first course was launched in 2010 and she made $247 dollars.

But she kept going, she kept iterating, she got so much better and what you don’t see is the years of frustration and self defeat.

My first course made around 10x what Amy did on her first launch and that is because of what she taught me.

She also taught me that the first 3 launches were to ‘go through the process’ rather than just making money.

What I experienced from Amy was far from shady and she’s equipped me with life long skills that go so much further than just creating a course.

But you wouldn’t know that if you never bought one of her products.

Simon

If you are new to the Digital Marketing world, I invite you to grab my **Digital Marketing Playbook** — a 117 page guide to beginner to advanced marketing strategies.

It’s the guide I wish I would have had when I first started.

Keep Learning —

• Previous Article: Can’t Think Of A Side Hustle? Start Writing
• Next Article: Coming Soon
• Find Me On Substack: Freedom Is The New Flex