Digital Course Academy Review – Is it Worth It?

Build a community and have an indelible impact while enjoying more income in 2022

I took the plunge with Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy because one of my aims for my copywriting business, was to be able to develop multiple income streams.

I was interested in developing online courses to supplement my 1:1 client income. Amy offered a proven way of developing this exact asset for my business, that I can launch again and again. A new semi-passive income stream for me

I’m so glad I made the investment! 

DCA helps you to CREATE and LAUNCH your course

I did a lot of research, so much online trawling for the program that was the right fit. After much consideration, and admittedly good timing on Amy’s part, I signed up to Digital Course Academy.  

I’ve written this to help you navigate the huge amounts of information out there! 

 I give my honest opinion of the online course she offers and my experience of going through the course, creating and launching my course – step in Digital Course Academy.

This site contains affiliate links to products. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. This doesn’t affect the price you pay. Know that I only promote products that I know, use, like, and trust.

What is a digital course?

A digital course is basically an educational program that you can access from a site online. For my digital course, I use Membervault as a platform for my students. 

What is Digital Course Academy by Amy Porterfield?

In Amy’s words: 

‘Digital Course Academy helps online business owners and entrepreneurs turn their knowledge and know-how into a digital course that will generate consistent revenue for their business’

Amy Porterfield 

Basically, the course helps you create a digital course from start to finish so you can offer what you know to more and more people. This way you make way more money from your business 

Not got long to read? 

In Summary

Creating a digital course:

 🧁Helps you reach so many more people than you would with your 1:1 sessions. 

🧁Gives you another income stream in your business that can be life-changing 

🧁Is a semi-passive way of making money. 

🧁Can be a passive way of making money too (if you have a create a self-study course or set the course to evergreen) 

Digital Course Academy is the best online course for creating and launching your online digital course(in my humble opinion)

✨The course will pay for itself many, many times!

Digital Course Academy will help you with these questions

How do I pick a course name? 

What topic could my digital course be about? 

How do I know that people want my course? 

How do I price my digital course? 

How do I launch or promote a digital course in 2022? 

What tech do I need to build a digital course?  

High level overview -Digital Course Academy 

Digital Course Academy is basically a program that helps you create a profitable course that makes a major impact on your ideal community. The bonus for you is that you get to serve more people, while building your income to freedom-making levels. 

Amy Porterfield, the program creator, is a super successful digital marketer. She is also author of the awesome podcast Marketing Made Easy 

Over the last 13 years, she’s created and launched 8 successful digital courses to date and serves over 45,000 students. 

The brilliant thing about Amy is that she is so easy to learn from. She’s so patient, and guides you step-by-step through so you don’t get stuck. 

The course covers everything from coming up with a course idea, validating it to launching it via a live webinar launch. After that it also gives you the steps to sell a course passively via an evergreen email funnel. 

Here’s a quick overview of what’s inside DCA: 

• 6 Implementation Modules showing you everything you need to do to turn your expertise into a profitable digital course that your audience truly wants.
• A complete, step-by-step launch plan showing you how to create and deliver a high-converting webinar presentation that ethically (and authentically) enrolls dozens, if not hundreds of students, every time  you deliver it.
• The Webinar Fill-Up Formula to make sure you never deliver to an empty room again, and instead get a packed house full of “ready to buy” prospects.
• Next-level email marketing, sales page, and social media strategies to amplify your results and get up to 3x the enrollments. 

I couldn’t believe how hands on Digital Course Academy was. There were so many easy to understand tutorials, presented in different formats for different learners. Personally I prefer videos, but there were also audios, and PDF versions.  

What does Digital Course Academy cover? 

Module 1: The 7 Key Decisions

Module 1 is all about making the key decisions for your course. It’s about your vision for the topic, the name, nailing down your ideal community and what they need. 

Pricing your course, and deciding on the tech you have the budget for is also part of this module. 

Module 2: Preselling and Validating Your Course

Module 2 goes into how important it is to check and make sure your digital course will help your ideal community. This can be the difference between making $$$ and not. 

Amy has a proven system for how to approach it and she makes it very easy to dive into. She gives you step-by-step guidance and worksheets to help you validate your course. 

Module 3: The Art of Outlining Your Course 

In Module 3 you will be fully supported in how to outline your digital course and drill down on where you need to provide extra resources like pdf support docs for your students. 

Amy’s secret sauce as she says, is her way of outlining her programs. Outlining in this way ensures that your course is doable and actionable for your students. 

Module 4: The Digital Course Sales Blueprint 

In Module 4, Amy walks you through how to create an irresistible offer that really speaks to your audience.  From there she shows you step by step how to explain what you offer on your sales page, so your audience are excited to buy. 

She shows you how to overcome your audience’s objections, answer their questions clearly and finally convince them that your course is the one they need to solve their problem. 

She provides a proven framework to help you on your way to success!

Even though I’m a copywriter, I got so much from this module – fresh ideas on how to present and order a sales page. 

Module 5: The Profitable Webinar Framework 

Amy first guides you through her proven roadmap to webinar success. Not only that but she also helps with how to write it, present it, map out webinar dates, setup a highly converting webinar registration page, fill up your webinar and set your launch targets. 

In my opinion, this module is worth the full amount I paid for the course. Amy shares everything she does on her 7 figure launches so you have the benefit of her experience. 

Module 6: Creating Your Email Sequence 

Within this module, Amy guides you through all the steps to create highly converting sequences of emails. 

She helps you craft: 

• A pre-webinar email sequence to remind people gently to attend your webinar
• A post-webinar sequence to remind them of the great content you have shared and boost your course enrollments. 
• A sales booster sequence that can be sent out to the rest of your email list and boost your sales further. 
• A customer onboarding sequence which will help ease students in to your course experience. 

Module 7: Recording Your Course Content

In 2021, this module was separate, but will be included as part of the 6 new modules for 2022. I’ll include further details, when they’re confirmed and released.

Amy makes this easy and helps you navigate through the overwhelming choice of recording kit out there. She suggests 3 levels of recording styles and encourages you to choose the style that is right for you. 

She also helps you understand how you can deliver your course so it is most impactful for your students. 

BONUS: The Webinar Fill-Up Framework 

Amy has a method that you can easily implement, so you never have to feel like you are teaching your thing to one or two students. It’s easy to follow and she gives you a simple framework to use when using her fill-up plan. 

Tech Library

This is chock full of really clear tutorials for example on how to use key tech when delivering and recording a webinar, using and setting up an email service provider so you make more money from your courses. 

The tutorials will take you through basic level skills to mastery of each tool, so don’t worry if you’re not that techy! 

Some of the tutorials within the tech library : 

• Organizing your assets and documents 
• Kajabi tutorials – how to upload and deliver freebies 
• Kajabi – email marketing tutorials 
• Kajabi – site based membership tutorials 
• Kajabi sales page tutorial 
• Live webinar tutorials 
• Searchie membership site tutorial 
• Convertkit email marketing tutorials 
• Using Zoom to deliver your course live 

Resources

All the resources within Digital Course Academy have been carefully tested out first and judged to be successful. But Amy tries not to overwhelm you with resources – it’s minimal and just contains the key tools you need for success. 

Resource list:

• Document creation and asset management 
• Email service provider 
• Kajabi templates 
• Scheduling course calls
• Live video – Facebook and Instagram 
• Design 
• Stock photography 
• Personality assessments 
• Course recording 
• Digital course legal training and resource 
• Email examples and templates
• Email countdown timer 
• Slide deck creation 
• Webinar platform
• Live launch troubleshooting 
• Podcast resources 

Q&A Vault

This is my favorite go-to section before I ask a question to the DCA facebook group. It’s so easy to find the answers to key questions, because they are fully searchable via the search bar. Also they are organized by module too, underneath. 

Program Bonuses

Coming soon 

Why choose Digital Course Academy?

Amy Porterfield has over 12 years of experience in creating and delivering successful digital courses. She cut her teeth with Ted Robbins so knows everything there is to know about copywriting. Here are the personal reasons I had and the reasons why I have no hesitation in recommending Digital Course Academy.

Why I love and recommend Digital Course Academy 

It’s taught by an expert

 Any course is an investment for your business isn’t it. It made sense to me to make that investment with someone who I know can prove her success time and time again. Someone who had real figures, but then also had tonnes of testimonials of people actually quoting what profit they had made with their own online courses. I felt that if I was going to make such a big investment in my business, I needed to know it was a proven roadmap before I invested. If that makes sense. 

DCA includes high-quality videos, audio-files, transcripts, and worksheets

I don’t know about you but I have different preferences when learning. Sometimes I want to listen, sometimes I want to sit at my computer and watch a tutorial on the big screen. Sometimes I want the first run of a new idea playing to me in my car. Amy provides so many different styles of resources, so you can do just that. It was ideal for me as I was on a time budget. 

The course is set up so you don’t get stuck and you can go at your own pace

I knew that I was gonna come up against things that were challenging. Launching a course is hard – right. Amy’s Facebook group and tutorial videos were brilliant at guiding me through the tough parts. I found mostly that if I scheduled my time out, I didn’t get stuck with most of the course. 

The tech stuff is made so much easier

Okay so linking Demio to Convertkit with Zapier – woah – hang on one sweet minute. What? The tech level can be tricky to set up your course, but Amy’s tutorials were gold. 

Some parts I needed to check out with the Fbook group, but I even had one lovely lady Brenda reach out with a loom video, to help me through. So the community I would say is one of the best parts of this course.

You can network with amazing people on the same journey.

I have really enjoyed this experience this year – not only of creating multiple online courses, but meeting new, inspiring people. So entrepreneurs who are in for a second time, having launched before, but love the community and want to help. 

I’ve enjoyed helping other people with their copy and their sales page message. Just sharing wins and blowing off steam when things get tough. There’s always someone there with a kind word to say. Someone to cheer you on – 

Who Digital Course Academy was built for

Digital Course Academy serves budding online business owners as well as

more seasoned entrepreneurs who are looking to scale.

If you are an established expert

You have an audience already and an email list ( it doesn’t need to be huge!) 

You might have been getting some traction by blogging or maybe you’ve launched a podcast already, or over on Youtube. 

But you want to make enough money like I did so that you can make your business a full-time gig. You really want to make it work, so that you have more time to do what you enjoy in life. 

If you have an established business on or offline 

So like me, your business might already generating revenue, but you want to add a new stream of income to the mix of things. Maybe you already have a following and a small email list and you are keen to apply what you know to create a digital course. 

First I felt I wanted to help other copywriters set up their websites, as this is something they really struggle with. ( I have these skills from my blogging background)

 Now I am reusing DCA, time and time again to create courses for clients who don’t have the budget to work with me 1:1 on copywriting projects. So like a DIY copywriting mini-course school. 

If you’ve played the freelance or client game long enough 

You’re at the stage where you’re constantly booked out with clients. You have opportunities coming at you from all angles. But it just isn’t sustainable for you to carry on like this – you’re burning out and you need a long-term solution. You want to move out of the pain and take action. Maybe you’re thinking that a digital course could be a solution but you’re not sure how to. 

One of my clients is a nutrition coach and she decided to take DCA because of this situation. She is in the process of building out her course, so she can stop the running around she does from one client to the next. The tech tutorials made it way easier for her as one of her fears was not understanding the tech. 

If you’ve already created a course but you’re not sure you did it right 

Digital Course Academy offers an easy to follow proven framework that will help you fill in the gaps and get real results. 

Curious about how to sell your course using a webinar?

 Want to put it on evergreen eventually? 

Amy covers that too, in step-by-step detail. 

Digital Course Academy isn’t for you if…

This is really important to talk about – I so believe in being transparent and one of the values I uphold fiercely is to sell with integrity. So it’s important to speak with you about who this course is not for. 

You’re still nailing down your business offer

It’s really important that you do this first, and get this up and running BEFORE you take DCA. You know then what helps your clients get results, and how you can help them on their journeys. You will have some testimonials that you can use when it comes to selling your first course. 

You are on a tight budget 

No-one wants to see you go into financial difficulty, take too big a risk, or jump into debt to do this course. I wouldn’t be comfortable recommending you take any investment at this price point if you haven’t got a way of paying for it that is manageable. 

Maybe make a plan to save an amount of money each month, towards a business freedom idea that you have. When an opportunity comes along, that you have researched fully and aligns with you, you can jump on it. 

You need to establish an audience 

DCA is possible to do with a small audience but the results won’t be as good as if you had an already engaged, medium sized audience. Amy recommends having at least 250-300 subscribers on your list. She goes through how to nurture them so they are excited to buy, and does cover the basics of list building, but it’s not the focus of the course.

Also you want to be able to attract at least 100 people to 3 webinars for example. If you have a tiny audience, or starting from ground zero, my recommendation would be to focus for a few months on building your audience and then the next step after that would be building and offering an online course. 

Lisa Johnson has a great course called Fabulous Foundations, or check out Amy’s List Building Society. 

You have a successful course already 

To me, if you already have a successful course, then you can create a standard operating procedure on how you did this and just repeat with other course offerings. I would not be investing another $2000 into a program that may not teach you much more than you already know. 

You want to make easy money passively

To be honest – trying to get rich quickly from this kind of course won’t work. 

Back up – this is not the course for you as it is based on a launch formula, which is semi-passive. You have to put in the work to get the results. So this is by no means a course to develop passive income. It is to help you create a business asset that will make you more money. But you will have to warm up your audience, engage with them and launch your course.

If you are looking to develop passive income streams check out Lisa Johnson’s One to Many instead. This course is also NOT a get-rich-quick scheme but covers elements of setting up profitable passive income streams. 

FAQs Digital Course Academy 

What does Digital Course Academy cost?

There are 2 price options offered forDigital Course Academy in 2021 were: 

• Option 1: Full Pay = $1,997
• Option 2: 6-Pay = $387/month ($2,322 Total)

I will update this for 2022 as soon as I confirm this. 

Does it matter which niche I’m in when taking Digital Course Academy?

Nope – I’ve seen so many niches be successful using DCA. 

When does Digital Course Academy start in 2022?

I will be back to confirm this when the dates are officially announced, but in 2021 Amy launched in September for DCA. 

How long do I have access to the DCA course content?

There’s a lifetime access guarantee with DCA. You will always have access to the course you invested in, so you can put it to work, over and over. 

What level of support can I get after the 12 weeks of DCA are over?

After the 12-week course support is over, the DCA facebook group was archived and I was given the opportunity to join Amy’s paid membership called Momentum. I found this incredibly useful, as it spurred me on to get my course launched for the first time! 

What is Amy Porterfield’s refund policy for Digital Course Academy? 

Amy says that provided you show her you’ve done the work, and it isn’t working for you, you have 14 days in which you can claim a full refund.

Digital Course Academy – your next steps and is it worth it?

That’s the sum of information and thoughts I have for you on Digital Course Academy – any changes for 2022 I will post in here, when the time comes around.

In short the answer is yes – Digital Course Academy is worth every single dollar.

Take me, who hasn’t got the largest email list on earth, or audience for that matter. I have been successful with this course.

No – it’s not for everyone, but if you vibed with Amy and if the course details sounded like what you’ve been looking for, it will help you create and launch your online course successfully, if you do the work.

Amy showed up for me. She’ll show up and deliver for you too.