As has long been the case, most programs I come across that are supposed to help you make money online turn out to be low quality if not total garbage. But that’s not the case with My Online Startup which I found to be really good, even though there are still some issues with it in my opinion. Anyway, I’ll share all the details with you in this review.
Who am I? My name is Dominic and I do affiliate marketing mostly with websites, YouTube, Microsoft Ads, Facebook Ads and email marketing. I’ve been in this business for over 6 years and I know the kind of methods that work and those that don’t.
Most people out there who teach affiliate marketing to people don’t teach it properly and that’s a huge reason why so many fail at this business.
My Online Startup is similar in some respects to the program I currently use and that is still at the top of my recommended list.
So, let’s see what this program claims and what we can expect to get from it.
My Online Startup Overview and Rating:
Product: My Online Startup
Creator: Chuck Nguyen
Type: Structured training on affiliate marketing
Price: Free but you’ll need a budget to apply the training plus he will try to upsell you to his Partnership program
Pros: Good quality free training overall. Students are succeeding. Not over hyped.
Cons: Among other traffic generation methods, it teaches solo ads which tend to be expensive and poor quality. The training is geared towards promoting the same program.
Recommended? Yes, there is a lot of value in the free course and most methods taught in it are legit, though there is still room for improvement in my opinion.
My Rating For My Online Startup: 3.8 out of 5 Stars
What Is My Online Startup?
Created by a successful internet marketer, My Online Startup is a free, fairly comprehensive training course teaching you affiliate marketing over the stretch of 8 modules and 25 lessons.
It provides a great introduction to affiliate marketing, covering things like creating a blog, a YouTube channel, capturing leads for email marketing campaigns and making money through promotions on your site, channel and via your email list.
But it’s likely that you won’t make money as a beginner with just the free starter training because it is largely informational. But that’s where a promotion to his Lifetime Partnership Program comes in. To take serious action, you would probably need to buy this. However, it is still possible, if you know what you’re doing, to make money by applying what is taught in the free lessons.
Chuck also does a good job of presenting the training. It’s clear and not too difficult or confusing to follow.
Who is Chuck Nguyen?
Chuck Nguyen is a guy in Melbourne, Australia who set out to make money online but like most people who try this, he failed for a long time. He also wasted a lot of money but with persistence, he did eventually learn a method that worked for him.
Once he started making good money with affiliate marketing, he decided to put together his own course that would teach people how to follow the strategies he uses to make money online.
Chuck also has a successful YouTube channel with a following of 11.8K as of August 2023 but he hasn’t uploaded any new content for 5 years.
How Much Does it Cost to Follow the Training?
The core training is free but here’s the costs that you can expect to come with this program:
- Website domain and hosting – approx. $20 per year and $15 per month
- The Partnership program – $49/month or go yearly and save
- Solo ad traffic (not recommended by the way) – from $50-$1,000s
- Email autoresponder – about $19/month for lowest paid package
- Promotion to Authority Site System – $500 and upwards
With every serious online business, there are going to be costs, investments and that’s an ongoing thing. You just need to be wise with your budget and aware of your current knowledge and skill level before spending money on marketing resources.
Here’s What You Get Inside My Online Startup
Let’s cover the actual course content so that you have a good idea of what you’re getting if you decide to signup to My Online Startup.
The course is made up of 38 videos and this content is 2 and a quarter hours long.
Introduction
Chuck welcomes you to the training and shows you how to get familiar with the member’s area. You also get access to the member’s Facebook group.
1. The Game Plan
This module will give you an overview of what you’ll be learning which is how to make money online with affiliate marketing the way Chuck does it himself.
2. The Mindset for Success
Here you’ll get 7 video lessons on cultivating the right mindset for success in online business. Working online means being your own boss and being an entrepreneur. This comes with its own mindset. Chuck teaches you how to set realistic goals, identify you big ‘why’ and other productivity hacks you can use to maximise your output.
3. Affiliate Marketing
These lessons are a fairly deep dive into affiliate marketing where you will be shown in detail what it is, how to find a suitable and profitable niche and what products within that niche you should promote to get the most commissions.
Personally, and as a side note here, I wouldn’t go for a niche that doesn’t interest me even though it may be popular and profitable. I would also stay clear of promoting ‘any old thing’ as an affiliate marketer. In the long run it helps your reputation to be honest and ethical in your marketing business.
4. Lead Generation
You get 6 lessons on email marketing that are actually very good. They are clear. They give you an overview of how it works and then go into detail and provide a step-by-step guide for how to produce lead magnets to attract people to give you their email so that they can be added to your email list.
Chuck stresses that most success in online business is going to be tied to your email list. And there is that saying, ‘the money is in the list.’
5. Authority Platfrom
This is where you’ll get 7 lessons on setting up a website which really is foundational to any successful online business.
As said above, there are so many affiliate marketing teachers who don’t teach the process properly and what many of these bad teachers have in common is that they tell people you don’t need a website and that making money online is easy and can be done fast, even if you’re a beginner.
But Chuck tells people that one of the best ways to generate traffic is through a website that gets ranked in search engines and he’s absolutely right. This is the best way to drive traffic to your online business.
6. YouTube Marketing
In this module, you’ll get 6 lessons on the importance of using YouTube to your advantage and how powerful it is for increasing your visibility online.
Chuck shows you how to manage all the key elements of YouTube from using a good camera to editing and creating engaging titles and video thumbnails. It’s a great resource for anyone who isn’t experienced with how to use the largest video platform to their advantage.
Related: 3 Ways to Make Money with YouTube as an Affiliate
7. Leveraging Forums
This is a single video lesson where Chuck advises going on to an online forum called Warrior Forum and use it as a means to draw traffic to your business.
This strategy can work. For example, affiliates often use Quora where they answer questions and leave links. But it is also said to be very time consuming and just not the best option out there for generating traffic. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this but if you do, you need to learn to provide as much value as possible and not be ‘that spammer’ whom everyone hates.
8. Solo Ads
In this last section of the training which consists of 4 videos, Chuck recommends buying solo ads as a quick way to get traffic. One site he recommends in particular where you can find solo ad vendors is Udemy.
Trust me, I’ve used solo ads myself and I’ve bought solo ads from Udemy and many other places and the truth is that solo ads are notoriously bad quality and probably the worst possible traffic on the internet. So I think it’s a shame that this is part of the course in My Online Startup.
Who is My Online Startup For?
Anyone who wants to learn how to make money online with affiliate marketing can benefit from My Online Startup. It’s beginner friendly so it is for those who are new to affiliate marketing but those with some experience can also potentially learn something new.
It can also be for anyone who is looking to start a side-hustle to make extra money. Affiliate marketing can be a means of generating a side income as well as becoming your entire business. If you really want to go all the way, you may need more that simply what is offered in Chuck free course. In fact, that’s how he makes money, by telling students that the free course isn’t all they need and that they should go for his Partnership Program and join Authority Hacker, both of which require paid subscriptions.
Is My Online Startup a Scam?
There’s nothing in this program whatsoever that would make me call it a scam. Chuck teaches legitimate affiliate marketing that does work but that also takes time and dedication.
But with any make money online opportunity, you should always be on your guard since this industry is riddled with scams and low quality programs.
Related: Get-Rich-Quick Schemes and Scams: How to Avoid Them
My Online Startup: The Good & the Bad and What I Really Think
This kind of program is great if you are careful with your money and get value from the free training.
But you can quickly end up spending a lot of money.
My advice would be to forget about the upsells and concentrate on creating a blog possibly a YouTube channel as well in a niche of your choice.
Buying solo ads and other expensive courses isn’t something I would recommend despite what Chuck says in My Online Startup. I also wouldn’t bother with forum marketing but you’re welcome to try it.
I think you can’t beat building a digital asset in the form of a blog and YouTube channel.
As an online entrepreneur, my experience and that of so many others tells me that it’s never good to have too much on your plate at one time or to be constantly looking for that magic button that will make you money.
Concentrate on one strategy at a time and master that. For example, content creation.
Ideally, you want to have a mixture of organic and paid traffic coming into your business. But paid traffic shouldn’t be the main focus in my opinion. It also shouldn’t be the strategy you employ FIRST like so many poor losers do who want to make money overnight but are too lazy to get good at creating content that can rank in Google, YouTube and other search engines.
You want to learn something reliable that will bring in traffic naturally without you having to ‘pay for every click.’ Instead, earn the clicks by putting the work in. Then, when that is starting to take off, consider reinvesting some of your earnings into paid ads.
Avoid solo ads. They don’t work. At least, it’s difficult to at a good ROI. Most people don’t succeed with solo ads. The traffic is usually rubbish and not worth paying for.
If you’re going to go down the paid route, use Microsoft ads and learn it properly before doing something stupid like getting your account banned or blowing your ad spend on a poorly made ad that doesn’t convert.
If you want to learn all this stuff properly, you can check out Wealthy Affiliate.
So far, it is still my top recommended platform for learning the best ways to do affiliate marketing without you needing to pay huge sums of money.
I hope you’ve got something useful from this review of My Online Startup. Always feel free to leave a comment down below.
