If you’re interested in making some money online, you might have stumbled upon Charlie Brandt’s 100k Academy. But with so many scams out there, it’s hard to know if this program is the real deal. Lucky for you, I’ve made it my mission to help people find legit money-making opportunities online. And that’s why I’m here to give you the inside scoop on 100k Academy.
Now, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not affiliated with Charlie Brandt in any way. So you can trust that my review is 100% unbiased. I’ve spent the past week digging deep into this program, so I can tell you everything you need to know before you decide to invest your hard-earned cash.
But before we get into the nitty-gritty of 100k Academy, I want to share a little bit about my background. Over the years, I’ve tried my fair share of online money-making programs and software. And I’ve reviewed a lot of them too. So, I’d like to think I know what to look for in a good program.
In this review, I’ll cover everything from the program’s pros and cons to its pricing and customer support. And, of course, I’ll give you my honest opinion on whether or not it’s worth your time and money.
And if it’s not, don’t worry – I’ll share an alternative program that’s helped me make a full-time passive income online.
Table of Contents
What is 100k Academy?
Charlie Brandt’s 100k Academy, also known as 100k Launch And Scale, is an eCommerce course designed to help you break into the world of eCommerce and build a profitable store.
The course covers topics such as market research, niche selection, product sourcing, and social media advertising. The program consists of 17 modules, which are well-structured and easy to follow, with plenty of examples and case studies to illustrate the concepts.
The course emphasizes real-world results and provides tips and tricks for optimizing your store and ads to maximize your ROI.
While the price tag may be steep, 100k Academy is a comprehensive, well-designed course that provides plenty of actionable tips and strategies for those willing to invest their time and money into it.
- Learn more about how to start an eCommerce business.
Who is Charlie Brandt?
Charlie Brandt is a digital marketing and eCommerce expert based in California. His success story is pretty typical – going from homeless and penniless to earning six-figure profits.
Although his website is still under construction, he claims to have gone from a debt of $20,000 to earning millions of dollars through his brand in just ten months.
Apart from this, not much is known about his background or personal life. However, he has a YouTube channel that he created in September last year and has already gained over 33k subscribers in just a few months. This is quite impressive, considering most YouTubers struggle to reach 5k in a year.
Charlie’s YouTube videos are informative and comprehensive, showcasing his expertise in the field. This could be the reason for his growing subscriber base. In addition to his YouTube channel, he also uses social media platforms like Instagram.
Recommendation: Here’s The Best Alternative
How is the training structured?
Module 1: Introduction to 100K Academy and Charlie’s Store
The first module is an introduction to 100K Academy and Charlie’s store. This module will provide you with an overview of what you can expect from the course and some mindset preparation.
Module 2: Product Research
Module 2 will help you develop a good understanding of what makes a good niche and which products to sell. You’ll learn about various research strategies and tools that will assist you in identifying profitable products.
Module 3: Store Set-Up
In Module 3, you’ll learn how to set up your store on Shopify, one of the most popular dropshipping platforms. You’ll follow Charlie as he creates his store and learn which essential apps to use.
Module 4: Technical Setup
Module 4 is focused on helping you set up your Merchant Center. This will enable your products to appear on Google, increasing their visibility and potential for sales.
Module 5: Copy MY 10k Per Day Landing Page
Learn how to set up a landing page that generates maximum conversions with 12 comprehensive videos. This module covers everything from scratch to mobile optimization, including:
- Analyzing Charlie’s landing page
- Building a landing page from scratch
- Adding social proof
- Incorporating logos
- Choosing different color schemes
- Optimizing for mobile devices
- Increasing page speed, and more.
Module 6: Phase 1 – The 10k Launch
Your first step in setting up ads is covered in this module. You’ll receive training on creating a Google Ad account, setting up Google Shopping, and installing Facebook Pixel.
Module 7: The 10k Growth
Learn about suppliers, SEO, and demographic targeting in this section. These topics will help you grow your business and increase revenue.
Module 8 to 10: Google Shopping
Maximize your sales by learning how to use Google Shopping effectively. These modules teach you conversion tricks and how to get the most out of this platform.
Module 11 to 17: Facebook Ads
The final module focuses on Facebook advertising. You’ll learn about:
- Checking Facebook’s policies
- Setting up your target audience
- Creating product videos that sell
- Setting up a profitable ad campaign
- Creating enticing thumbnails
- Optimizing successful campaigns
- Knowing when to end unsuccessful campaigns
- Scaling your campaigns to increase profits.
Facebook Group And Future Updates
When you sign up for the course, you get two extra goodies: access to a private Facebook group and any updates that come in the future.
The Facebook group is a great place to meet other students and ask questions. As a beginner, you’re bound to have plenty of them!
Charlie also uses the group to host live streams and share more resources.
Plus, since this is the second version of the course, there are bound to be updates and improvements down the line.
How much does 100k Academy cost?
The 100K Academy course costs $797, which is quite expensive but not the priciest option out there. However, I’ve taken other courses that I believe are better even though I’ve paid half the amount for them.
The refund policy for this course has many restrictions. You can only get a refund within 30 days and if you meet certain requirements. These requirements include viewing less than 60% of the course, following specific criteria for product research and launch, and seeking help from coaches. In my opinion, this kind of refund policy isn’t very fair.
Recommendation: Here’s The Best Alternative
Praise for 100k Academy
1. Good traffic training
If you want to make money in eCommerce, you need traffic. The traffic training in 100k Academy is helpful because it covers the most important sources of traffic, even though it has some limitations. It mainly focuses on Facebook, Google Ads, and Google Shopping.
Criticism of 100k Academy
1. Lack of email marketing training
Email marketing is important for ecommerce sales. 100k Academy needs to improve their training in this area since it doesn’t account for the recommended 30% of sales.
2. Poor refund policy
Refund policies can be complicated. If you don’t have one, that’s okay. However, it’s frustrating when a course requires you to do a lot of things just to get a refund.
This course has a 30-day refund policy, but it has some conditions:
- You need to talk to a coach for help.
- You need to meet specific criteria.
- You must have only viewed 60 percent of the online course.
Is 100K Academy legit?
100k Academy is a legit program. Charlie Brandt seems to know what he’s talking about when it comes to eCommerce. You can definitely learn some basics from his program. However, the real question is whether or not you can actually make money from it.
In my opinion, the training provided in Charlie Brandt’s course is just average. There are no unique or special strategies covered, which could make it difficult to stand out in a crowded market. Additionally, there’s no guarantee that you will make your money back.
It’s also worth noting that Charlie Brandt seems to make most of his money from selling his online courses, rather than his eCommerce store. He spends a lot of time promoting his course, which could indicate that he’s more focused on selling the dream of success, rather than providing concrete strategies for achieving it.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Charlie Brandt doesn’t necessarily tell you about the difficulties of eCommerce. After all, he’s trying to sell you his course. If you’re new to the world of online business, it’s important to understand the challenges you may face.
Recommendation: Here’s The Best Alternative
4 Challenges of eCommerce
1. High Financial Risk
One of the biggest cons of eCommerce is the high financial risk. To sell your products, you need to advertise them, and Facebook ads can be quite expensive. In fact, Facebook ad costs have been increasing year on year, which can eat away at your profits. It can take weeks or even months to break even, and you might not even see a profit for a while. This financial risk can be too high for some people to take.
2. Pricey and Difficult Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are crucial for eCommerce stores, but they can be both pricey and difficult. According to Forbes, Facebook saw an increase in ad costs of 90% year on year. This can be quite expensive, especially for small businesses.
Additionally, the learning curve for Facebook ads can be quite steep, and the algorithm changes frequently. This means that you need to invest a lot of time and money to learn and test Facebook ads. If you don’t have experience, you risk violating Facebook’s strict policies and getting your ad account banned.
3. Customer Support
In eCommerce, you need to spend a lot of time communicating with suppliers and dealing with customer service. If your customer has any issues with the product, you need to wait for your supplier to help you.
If your supplier is not helpful, you might have to bear the loss yourself. This can lead to poor customer service, and ultimately, no returning customers. Additionally, you risk getting chargebacks, which can result in your payment gateway being shut down.
4. Product Research
To keep making money in eCommerce, you always need to find new products to sell. This can be quite time-consuming, as most products have a short lifespan.
Many competitors will steal your product and create better ads or increase their budgets on Facebook ads to outbid you. This means that you need to keep finding new replacements to keep generating cash flow. eCommerce is not a passive business model, and it requires a lot of work to keep your income stable.
Is there a better way to make money online?
If you really want to make a stable and secure stream of passive income, I would suggest you starting an affiliate marketing business.
Affiliate marketing is perfect for anyone who is new to online business.
In fact, of all the online business models I’ve tried, affiliate marketing is the easiest and most rewarding so far.
In affiliate marketing, you can actually run your business almost with zero cost and achieve a steady and sustainable passive income to pay for your bills. You don’t need any initial capital and can even do it as a side hustle.
And if you really want to learn affiliate marketing and build a business from scratch, I’d recommend you to get started with the most reputable platform for affiliate marketing: Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate is an all-in-one platform for building your affiliate marketing business from scratch. It offers you a free account (including a free website) with comprehensive training on SEO (free traffic methods), which enables you to get started with affiliate marketing right away without paying a penny.
But How Much Can You Earn with Wealthy Affiliate?
A 21-year old student from Wealthy Affiliate was able to earn $7,395 in just 1 week, which means he made more than $1k a day…all while using free traffic methods.
For more information, you can check out my full review of Wealthy Affiliate.
Where to Join Wealthy Affiliate?
Wealthy Affiliate has a very simple pricing scheme. It has free and premium membership.
If you want to feel about Wealthy Affiliate, you can sign up for the free starter membership here (no credit card required). You can select to be a free member with no time limit.
And as a starter member, you can get instant access to the community, live chat, over 500 training modules, 2 classrooms, networking, commenting, 1 free website, access to the keyword tool.
You can enjoy all these values without paying a penny.
So I strongly recommend you to register a free account and see it yourself.
Recommendation: Here’s The Best Alternative
Jeff Smith, Founder of High Income Source, is an online business coach with a BBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania. His online business coaching program is so popular that more than 100 students have benefited and started successful online businesses under his guidance.
Jeff started dabbling in online business while he was in college, where he began with dropshipping. After college, Jeff worked at a marketing agency and freelanced as a writer. His breakthrough came when he realized the potential of blogging, leading to a $100,000 sale of a dog-focused website. His expertise includes SEO, affiliate marketing, Amazon FBA, blogging and dropshipping.
I wish I’d read your review before buying 100k academy. It took me a lot of money to run Facebook ads. While I did get some sales, they didn’t cover the ad spending. I will create a free account on wealthy affiliate and see if that works.