Digital Experts Academy Review: $19,999 membership
There is no information on the Digital Experts Academy website indicating who owns or runs the business.
On Digital Experts Academy’s “about” page, the company simply states:
Founded by a group of young Internet entrepreneurs who have been cashing in on the Digital Gold Rush over the last five years, DEA’s ultimate goal is to help its members become financially self sufficient as digital entrepreneurs in the new economy.
Meanwhile Digital Experts Academy’s website domain was registered on the 13th of August 2012, however the domain registration information is set to private.
If you click “promote” on the Digital Experts Academy website, the company redirects you to join something called “The Six Figure Mentors”:
In what appears to be a similar vein to Digital Experts Academy,
The SFM provides a state-of-the-art comprehensive direct marketing solution complete with the tools, training, coaching and community required to launch and grow a successful business.
Unlike Digital Experts Academy however, The Six Figure Mentors’ “About Us” page is a little more forthcoming with information on who’s running things:
In 2010 Internet entrepreneur Stuart Ross started the concept of forming an online community and training organisation to leverage the exact business model that enabled him to quit his job and build a multiple six figure income business his very first year online.
This community and training company is now known as The Six Figure Mentors (The SFM) and focuses on helping people generate more income, improve lifestyle and create more freedom by tapping into the power of the Internet.
The Six Figure Mentors is a membership site that sells membership for $297 upfront and $97 a month thereafter.
On a marketing video on The Six Figure Mentor website Stuart Ross refers to himself as a co-founder of both The Six Figure Mentors and Digital Experts Academy.
I couldn’t see any information about the other co-founder(s) anywhere else on The Six Figure Mentors website. The “SFM Team” page on The Six Figure Mentors website simply has a picture displaying “coming soon” on it:
Why this information is not openly disclosed on the Digital Experts Academy website is not known.
Read on for a full review of the Digital Experts Academy MLM business opportunity.
The Digital Experts Academy Product Line
We looked at everything someone starting from scratch would require to successfully transition to being a full time digital marketer, and beyond.
Based on that, we created four levels of membership designed to take you from being an opportunity seeker all the way to being a digital expert.
Each level was specifically designed to graduate the member to the next phase of self-reliance by teaching a new set of marketing, leadership and entrepreneurial skill-sets.
As above, there are no retailable products or services within the Digital Experts Academy opportunity. Digital Experts Academy affiliates join the company and then sell membership to the company itself to new affiliates.
There are four levels of membership within the company, ranging from $2499 to $19999. All four levels of membership appear to be yearly recurring.
- Silver ($2,499) – “e-learning” course
- Gold ($4,999) – 12 month coaching program and 3 day bootcamp
- Platinum ($9,999) – 3 day workshop, “professional website” with social media profiles and brand building training
- Black ($19,999) – ticket to an annual “mastermind retreat”
Note that Black membership requires Platinum membership as a pre-requisite.
Digital Experts Academy claims their memberships will take an affiliate who buys them ‘from an opportunity seeker all the way to digital expert‘.
The Digital Experts Academy Compensation Plan
With no retailable products or services, the Digital Experts Academy compensation plan revolves around the sale of memberships to newly recruited and existing affiliates.
Commissions are paid out at a rate of 40% of the sale price of the membership to the affiliate making the sale, and 10% to their upline.
Note that in order to receive commissions Digital Experts Academy affiliates must be “qualified”.
Affiliates must qualify for each level of membership within Digital Experts Academy and can do so by either purchasing the memberships themselves or selling them to five recruited affiliates.
Note that affiliates who opt for the second option will receive no commissions until their 6th sale.
Joining Digital Experts Academy
Affiliate membership to Digital Experts Academy is $99 a year.
Affiliate membership to The Six Figure Mentors is a prerequisite for Digital Experts Academy, which is an additional $297 upfront and $97 a month recurring.
According to a marketing video on the Six Figure Mentors website, apparently there’s also a $19.95 fee just to apply for membership to the company.
Conclusion
The era of “big ticket” MLM opportunities running into the tens of thousands of dollars has died down considerably over the past couple of years but there are still a few of them around.
Digital Experts Academy is one such example and provides affiliates the chance to sell four tiers of membership at a hefty price.
Despite having an option for affiliates to pass up five sales, the obvious idea is for affiliates to buy into the membership levels themselves.
Why?
When you’re trying to sell memberships that run into the thousands of dollars to people, they’re naturally going to want to hear a personal testimonial on the benefits of the various Digital Experts Academy memberships available.
If an affiliate is unable to afford the membership they’re trying to sell, that hardly plays into the “we’ll make you a succesful digital expert” sales pitch.
Selling expensive memberships designed to ‘help you live the life of your dreams‘ is hard enough as it is, let alone when your prospects know that you yourself can’t afford them.
And it’s going to be harder still when you tell them they have to sign up as a Six Figure Mentor first, pay an application fee, be interviewed, pay $297 and only then be able to join Digital Experts Academy.
Using a combination of “attraction marketing”, exclusivity under the guise of “protecting their exclusive membership group”, what you effectively wind up with is a membership driven opportunity that requires a constant influx of new recruits to continue.
You join Digital Experts Academy, either buy into the membership levels yourself to qualify for commissions or sell it to 5 new affiliates, who then also must do the same.
What does membership entitle you to? Training that ultimately is to be used to better market the income opportunity itself to prospective affiliates.
Typically trouble starts in high ticket MLM companies when those at the bottom are unable to recruit new affiliates to buy into the lower rungs of the membership options. When this happens they stop paying their fees and the effect trickles up.
The word “refund” does not appear anywhere on the publicly available sections of the Digital Experts Academy website, which is a red flag to take note of.
The Six Figure Mentors website mentions it in their “membership agreement”:
1.2. To be eligible for a refund, you must notify us, and our support desk with your request and reason for canceling.
But doesn’t go into any explicit detail. With 50% of membership fees paid out as commissions to other affiliates, I imagine the refunds process isn’t all that straight forward.
A $19.95 fee for just applying for membership? Sign me up! [/sarcasm]
Oh oh oh but it’s totally refundable if you don’t sign up! (why charge it in the first place then???)
Common tactic, picking a name that has common acronyms / abbreviations with a well known entity. 😉
They are looking for people willing to pay, willing to accept all sorts of fees. Application fee is a method to sort people into two different groups, and allow only those willing to pay without questions to go through.
The method works well on specific personality types, e.g. some people will feel “smart” when they’re paying the first initial fees, “doing MORE than average people to find an opportunity that really works”. It will also make them feel they deserve it, they were smart enough to find it and were qualified enough to be accepted.
CCPro/WMI had many of them, and DEA/SFM is basically a copy of the same idea.
The application fee tests “if you are really serious about making money”. It separates the true believers from the “maybes”. It’s “foot in door” compliance tactic.
“Foot in the door” technique = correct
“If you are really serious” are how THEY will explain it, the ones using methods like that. In reality it will sort of personality types rather than serious/tire kickers.
Some people will get more motivated when they meet a few obstacles and are able to come through, when they actively have to DO something to get what they want. They will probably respond positively to a $19.95 application fee, a written application and an interview. They will probably respond positively to the other obstacles too, e.g. the high price.
They will assume that the opportunity really is “worth” something, and is only available for the few “qualified”.
They are a SPECIFIC type of “true believers”. They usually already have a specific set of ideas, and are looking for opportunities offering them similar ideas. Or it’s actually more like a “world view” than “ideas”.
The correct definition is probably “strong believers” rather than “true believers” for some of them. Or maybe “Ferrous Cranus” is the right definition. 🙂
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/ferouscranus.htm
The description in my previous post was based on an actual person, one I tried to discuss an opportunity with a couple of years ago. 🙂
For some people, the leader(s) of the company they’re currently in will be the ONLY “reliable authority”, more reliable than even a court. They will eventually accept the shutdown of a company, but they will believe it has been shut down unlawfully, or because of some misunderstandings.
Cult behavior. Only the leader and his/her belief system can be trusted. This is basically thought Control, part of Steven Hassan’s “BITE” model.
http://www.freedomofmind.com/Info/BITE/bitemodel.php
This is copro pro u automatic millionaire pro elite all over again with Stuart Ross instead of Aaron parkinson teamed up with Jay Kubassek.
I have just been looking through their whole presence online. They are even mimicking empower network with their own version called digitalbloggers. So I short it’s copro reinvented meets empower with an English flavour.
Their silver package for 2 and a half grand looks just like the courses offered in pro u. I remember when they came out and couldn’t believe it was just the type of naff customer service training you get in sales &IT Service roles.
So transparent, they are even using banners that say Entrepreneurs Wanted. Going thru. Digitalbloggers I saw some old faces . All I can say is don’t buy the black or platinum because it is not worth it.
Ku basses,s track record is sleazy. I was directly under him in prou , he was my “marketing partner”. All I can say is good luck cancelling your credit card number in the back office….I had to cancel my credit card to get them to stop charging after I cancelled my membership to this blatant f u c k I n rip off!
Stuart Ross is a scam artist and knows nothing about marketing online.
Stuart Ross is affiliated with Jay Kubassek the Co founder of Carbon Copy Pro, ProU and now Digital Experts Academy and would like to caution people about falling into the marketing platform they promote.
They target anyone interested in making money. Unfortunately they won’t tell you that they are only interested in big spenders.
I was one of those people who did invest my money into your six figure company called ProU and the the company promotes being the Co founder promoting themselves as a company that is a mentorship based company and that when you invest the money and time you will profit.
I did my research before entering into the MLM company which they also promote as direct sales company. I did not know anything about Internet marketing and I had hopes that I could make a living at this profit industry with the help of a mentor.
I had 7 days after I invested my money to pull out of the project and gain my money back if I didn’t think it was appropriate for me, but I stayed with it for 3 months trying to figure out how the process worked and each month adding more money to the bank account of the company.
I was unable to contact the people who claimed to be my mentors. After numerous attempts to contact (Justin Wolff), the person who initialIy contacted me and with each attempt of namjng contact with him coming up with nothing, I started searching in my profile pages and found out that the Co founder Jay Kubbassek was in fact my mentor. A change I had not been told about.
After numerous attempts to contact you and again with no response I felt I was left hanging. I decided to leave the company before all my funds were depleted.
I contacted the company to discontinue my membership and they shut down my account without even finding out why I wanted out and in the end I received no product in my hands since everything is done online and I was out $20,000.00 with no explanation of why they dropped ball.
If you promote yourself as a mentor based company you should follow through with you claim. I was also under the impression I would have the product in a hard copy so that I could refer back to it without being online.
If I had product in my hands in the end then I might feel that the business deal had been complete. But since they have my money and my product I feel that they have reneiged on the business deal and that their claims are false and that the business should be shut down due to false claims.
years ago I also was looking for a six figure income and bought the CCpro and a few other programs which cost me a lot of money, but without being able to sell it to other people interested in these topics, you’re left behind.
Thanks god I finally found my “golden goose” without being forces to scam others.
I agree with everyone else here who has said that this is a scam.
I did CarbonCopyPro way back when and actually believed it was legitimate for a while. Then I saw that no one was making money with it other than 4 – 5 top guys (out of thousands).
It’s a giant scam and these fuckfaces should be ashamed of themselves for stealing thousands from thousands of people.
Now that CCPro failed they started essentially the same business under the same name. Fuck these asssholes.
A lot of scum bags doing multi level marketing for pyramid sales. Only 1 % of all members will manage to cover their costs, let alone make any money.
However its all based on greed and self confidence, so ready for you suckers.
Two inline ads here for “andychenlifestyle (dot) com” caught my eye with a rather non sequitur image of a large warehouse/distribution center surrounded by semi trailers. Um, OK.
“Build your own online business. Secondary or passive income.”
Passive income? This I gotta check out. Invoking stealth mode, I visited the site. It reeked of MLM, and upon further clicking, I learn it’s Six-Figure Mentors(!). Rather ironic. I didn’t even know they were still kicking.
Contextual ads + personalized ads dictates what ads are shown.
By all means report scams on Adsense to Google.
I know it’s automated; I just thought it was an amusing juxtaposition (not that those are all that rare with Adsense). Mostly, I was surprised SFM was still trolling for victims.