I actually first came across Alex Becker at a conference that I was fortunate enough to attend a few years back. He talked about not being able to scale his first online marketing business past $20-30k/mo.
Unfortunately, this is a common theme when you’re running a client-based business and working for other business owners.
For every client or business owner you bring on board, the workload increases along with your income level. Everyone loves the idea of adding income until they realize they can’t handle the amount of work with their small team of 2 or 3 anymore.
Eventually he directed his business efforts toward software development and launching products which elevated his income from $20-30k to $100k/mo. Alex noticed that selling digital products was a lot easier to scale because once you sell the product, that’s it. Game over.
Every single one of us would love to collect a check and not have to provide labor intensive work after. Collect the check and be done with it. Beautiful.
And that leads us to his model of selling multiple courses online. “How to’s” and coaching programs for many different models.
The amount of digital products that Alex has on the market today is staggering. And absolutely the most out of any digital marketing whiz. He has an array of well-made videos that drive paid traffic to his products which leads to an abundance of people to sell his products to.
I think it’s fair to say that the two most well known courses that he offers are built around the shopify eCom dropship and SEO models. So the real question ends up being if these are the two most well-known, then which of the two is better?
This becomes a double-edged sword. When you offer an abundance of courses and products it can be seen from two different angles. On one hand, you have plenty of things to offer potential and existing students/clients. On the other hand, when you spread your attention across a multitude of courses/products it becomes a lot harder to maintain a high quality across those.
There are a few things that we will go into further detail on in this article:
- We will dive into a handful of Alex’s products
- Pit them against each other and make comparisons
- Talk about how they match up against my favorite online model (local lead generation)
Reviewing H-Com 2020 Program
This is Alex’s known program that aims to teach students everything they need to know about the eCom drop shipping business model.
Drop shipping has become so popular over the last couple of years so of course there are many other courses out there around this same concept.
The unique thing that Becker offers is the fact that he packages this course with his own tracking software, Market Hero (more on that later). I like that he tries to offer some extra value by coupling these two.
To be honest, I do have mixed feelings about the drop ship model. I’ve experienced the highs it can bring as well as the very real lows. A sprinkle of success mixed in with quite a bit of… well, let’s call it failure because I don’t like to be Mr. Negativity.
I’ve always been in love with the online business world. In fact, I had already established a reliable stream of passive income with my local lead gen biz before I decided to get into eCommerce. I was simply looking for a way to diversify my online portfolio.
After some time spent in the drop ship model, I decided it was time to redirect all of the time I was spending doing labor intensive work with drop shipping back into my local biz.
There are a few different aspects of the drop ship model that stand out to me as things that I don’t like. One of these is the fact that you have to drive paid traffic. Utilizing Facebook ads can be very difficult at times. It takes a lot of time to master the detailed targeting system that the FB ads platform employs. Couple this with rising FB ad costs and all of a sudden you have some things that are eating into your profit margins.
This was a very hard pill for me to swallow since I had been making great money by utilizing FREE traffic. Obviously, when you’re able to leverage free traffic it leads to profit margins that are damn near 100%. Come on now, how good does that sound?
Another glaring issue with the drop ship model is the fact that the amount of work required to run it will go up considerably as you scale the business. This requires you to bring on more members to your team which will also eat into your profit margins.
Customer service issues simply put it over the top for me. I don’t want to deal with an abundance of customer complaints and product returns when I’m focused on scaling a business to a level that I want to be at.
Don’t be fooled, eCom drop shipping is not as easy to scale as many people are led to believe.
Reviewing Source Wave University
Ah, now we get into a major segment of my local lead gen world. But before we talk about how it differs, let’s dive into Alex’s SEO course.
Source Wave is an SEO course that was developed by Alex Becker and a couple of others including Stephen Floyd and Gregory Ortiz.
OMG Machines, a course created by Stephen, is the reason I first stumbled upon Floyd’s work.
In a nut shell this course is designed to help you bring more SEO clients into your agency/business. When you do this you’re basically getting paid to rank the client’s site for them. My question is, why wouldn’t you rank your own site and pay yourself for it (more on that later)?
If you dig into Source Wave’s case studies you’ll find many instances where students are bringing in clients paying them $1k-2k/mo. That sounds great and all but if you know anything about SEO then you’ll know the real question is, how long are they able to keep these clients?
Ah, the cold hard truth… SEO clients only work with you for about 6 months on average. The question is why?
- Marketers promise results that they can’t produce
- The client feels that the marketer is no different than anyone else and they choose to work with another agency
- The client believes you’ve gotten all the results you can deliver and decides to let you go
- Most marketers don’t set the correct level of expectations and the client gets tired of waiting because they don’t understand SEO takes a lot of time (depending on the competition)
Another issue with the SEO model is the ongoing and consistent workload. A lot like drop shipping, as you scale your SEO business the amount of work you have to get done will go up as well.
These are some of the main reasons that I don’t offer SEO services anymore. It’s just not worth the amount of work it takes to obtain and maintain a client account.
I continue to build my local lead generation biz model because I own the assets that I am trying to rank. Click here for more info.
Not ranking assets for someone else and then they cut me off when they feel I’ve served and fixed the issue they had.
It’s extremely important to remember, the beauty of my model are that these sites are mine. They are assets. Virtual real estate baby. I am the landlord and my clients are the tenants. If they don’t want to pay their rent for my leads, then I simply go find another tenant (business owner). BEAUTIFUL.
When you build these assets and own them, you continue to get paid for work that you put in one, two, four, or five years ago. Whenever it is that you took the time to build it.
And yes, I do continue to get paid from sites that I haven’t touched in years.
That’s why I know that our lead gen coaching program is better than Source Wave’s SEO program in 2019.
Reviewing Market Hero
Market Hero is a software that Alex developed to employ in his own business. It’s a lead and conversion tracker that he says will increase your eCommerce drop shipping sales. On top of that it can also do email marketing.
This is not an absolute must for you to be successful with this business model, however it is a do-it-all program if you’re getting into eCommerce. There are a handful of useful things it has going for it.
My favorite feature of Market Hero is the fact that it automates calculations and tells you the value of each lead. It may not help much at first but once your site starts driving sales this would be a fantastic tool to use.
Yes, these calculations can be figured out manually but it is a complete pain in the ass to continuously fill in Excel spreadsheets or Google sheets. Especially when you consider the fact that you’ll be tracking your FB ad sales versus your email marketing sales.
As you could imagine things can get pretty complicated when all those numbers start flying around. Market Hero really eases that pain.
Reviewing the Black File
I would say that this is the most useful “side tool” that Alex offers for a beginner starting a business in the online space. With this, Alex hands you ad examples and landing pages that he has used himself.
Having someone else’s work to go off of can be an advantage when you’re a beginner.
In all honesty, I think the Black File should be included with Alex’s coaching program. It would be nice if he offered this immense value into the programs for no extra cost.
If you’re getting into the drop shipping model then this tool is for you. It’s here and available for people who need to drive paid traffic to a store. Make sure you utilize this if you’re doing so.
Alex is essentially holding your hand and showing you the way to ad creation and funnel creation. The purpose of this is to provide you the “templates” to be used on a huge scale. Things that you can duplicate repeatedly across many different niches.
Reviewing Hero Consulting Accelerator
In this training, Jason W shares some unique and valuable strategies on how to do email marketing campaigns effectively and efficiently.
While I personally don’t like email marketing, this can be useful for those who have established a certain skill that they’re able to offer someone. Something that leads to high income like the lead gen biz.
Reviewing 8X Hero Academy
More email marketing. And more. And more. Let’s move on.
So Are Becker and His Courses Scams? Nah.
There’s one thing that I’ve learned along the way of becoming a successful entrepreneur. When you have haters, you know you’re doing something right.
Okay but for real, just because some people give his courses bad reviews doesn’t mean Alex is a scam artist. People tend to get sensitive and blame others for their own failures.
I’ve just defended Alex against scam accusations, however it doesn’t mean I’m going to jump on what he offers. I definitely think people can see success by using it but it does have it’s flaws.
IMO some of his programs are just disorganized and all over the place when you take the price into consideration. For example, the many webinars where he simply brings in another expert to teach new tactics and discuss strategies.
I’m not saying he doesn’t have good stuff, he does. It just feels like it could be better and bring more value for all of the upsells and costs for new courses and products.
If he was offering top notch programs across the board then it wouldn’t be an issue but there are a few programs being upsold that I would consider a lower quality.
Let’s discuss a few sales tactics. Tricky webinar funnels. He claims that these are live webinars when they clearly aren’t. Also, “buy my program tactics today before it’s gone forever.”
Here’s another big issue I have. There are plenty of gurus and whiz’s out there of different programs that contact Alex in hopes that they can promote themselves by using Alex’s massive audience. What does this mean?
Products, programs and courses are being promoted through Becker’s audience that he hasn’t even used himself.
His students and followers trust him as the expert. They buy said programs. It’s up to the students to educate themselves on what they’re buying.
There are positives and negatives to everything but all-in-all Alex’s flagship courses are completely solid. Those being the drop ship and SEO courses. He is a great entrepreneur and his students can learn many things from him.
I’m simply saying that I’ve tried these models and they weren’t for me. I’ve found much more success with less long-term work.
In Conclusion
If you’re adamant about joining one of Alex’s programs then I would suggest the SEO course.
Although, I may be a bit biased because the use of SEO has led me to the massive success I’ve seen using the lead generation model.
My concern is the constant addition of new products and programs. It sounds great but it has it’s negatives.
New content is needed in doses. When most people get into online business models they have shiny object syndrome.
There are so many gurus out there, every time a beginner sees something or someone new they think that it’s the answer to their struggles. Sometimes you need to put your head down, work your ass off, and overcome the adversity by becoming an expert in what you do.
You don’t need a new model/product every week when you’re just looking to find the best online model to start your entrepreneurial endeavor.
Find a model that makes sense to you. Commit to it. Work your ass off. Work your ass off some more. And more. Then you will see the results you desire.
You need to understand that you won’t see results you desire until you bring the necessary value to the marketplace that is required for those results. The only way to do this is to become an expert in your field.
You will face issues. You will stumble. And you’ll fall down. Running a successful online business is all about being able to pick yourself up and make sure that exact issue never causes you to fall again. As an entrepreneur, you’re a problem solver.
Find what inspires you. Once you have your “why” and you combine that with an expertise in one or two high income skills. Now you’ve unlocked the door my friend. Open the flood gates.
This expertise for me was my lead gen biz model. When I went through this program I was working from 9am to 630pm Monday thru Friday. It sucked.
Three months later I quit my day job and committed myself to my lead generation business full time. Going through this coaching program changed my life. I have a skill that not many other people have and that’s why my clients are willing to pay me hundreds and thousands of dollars every month, repeatedly.
Now I make my own schedule everyday.
I choose when I want to take vacations and I don’t need anyone’s approval.
I work from my laptop no matter what city or state I’m in that day.
This pool site is just one example of an asset that pays me month after month.
I love my life. I love my freedom. I love the skills I’ve acquired. But get this… I love Monday mornings because I get to wake up and give myself a raise!