​Welcome to my Awol Academy Review!
In this article, I am going to reveal you the truth about this popular Internet marketing training system.
There has been lots of confusion around this system and thousands of people are asking online, "Is Awol Academy a scam?"
I will answer that and all the other questions in this brutally honest review. Are you ready? Let's have a look!
NOTE: By reading this review, you may save +$10,000 of your money!
Awol Academy Review - Quick Summary
Product Name: Awol Academy (Before known as "Project Awol")
Founders: Keala Kanae and Kameron George
Product Type: Internet Marketing Training.
Price: From $99 to upsells all the way up to more than $10,000
Best for: Rich people who don't mind paying extra for an expensive training.
Summary: Awol Academy is not a scam. Their training teaches you some valuable tips and ideas for making money online. However, they have tons of upsells which makes the program extremely expensive unless you're already a millionaire.
Recommended? Not really. There are better options available.
​
My Awol Video Review
Before you dive into my article, I want to give you an opportunity to take a look at my informative and helpful Awol review on YouTube.
I am sure you'll enjoy. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me and I will be always happy to help you out!
What Is Awol Academy?
Awol Academy says on their homepage that "It's the world's most comprehensive Internet marketing training platform".
Their claim is of course very bold but at least it describes right away the purpose of their product. Awol Academy is created to teach you how to do Internet marketing and in the other words how to make money online.
During the years, we have reviewed hundreds of Internet marketing training platforms on YourOnlineRevenue.com so we have a good experience on how this kind of programs usually work.
In the next chapter, I will reveal you the "ugly" truth about Awol that they may not like you to know.
How Does Awol Work?
The Awol Academy sells a number of products that are called:
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- PRO ACADEMY ($99)
- Internet Income Explained ($49)
- ​INBOX ACADEMY ($299)
- CONVERSION ACADEMY ($997)
- TRAFFIC ACADEMY ($997)
- MASTERS ACADEMY ($3,497)
- Awol Elite ($9,997)
The idea is that you start with the first one which is Pro Academy and it only costs $99.
If you are from a Western country, you know that $99 isn't very much money and almost anyone can afford a training/online business tool for that price.
However, when you have finished Awol's Pro Academy course, they are trying to sell you the next system.
Then the next system.
Then another system....
Etc.
And finally the last product which is called Awol Elite. The cost of Awol Elite is around $10,000. Sometimes it costs a bit less but still the price is way over $7,000.
They of course allow you to promote the system for other people in order to earn commissions and your money back. Awol pays a big fat 60% commission for most of their products to affiliates. A big part of their training concentrates on how you could promote their program which brings me a bit pyramid scheme-ish feeling.
Is Awol Academy a Scam?
Do you already recognize what happens to somebody who follows the Awol training diligently?
He will first buy the training for $99 and think that this is it. However, he will face tons of upsells and eventually end up paying around $10,000 for a single product.
If he goes through the whole training, the cost of all products that he needs to buy will be almost $20,000.
I don't know about you, but in my ears $20,000 just for these tools sound quite a lot because I know that you could get them for way cheaper price in better places.
That being said, Awol Academy is not a blatant scam because they are showing already that their products are expensive. In addition, they provide some value inside the training even though it's highly overpriced.
Awol founders know that this kind of upselling strategy is a highly profitable business for them. The downside is that it will eat most customers alive. The founders will be laying on the beach with big stacks of money while most customers will just end up wasting lots of money.
Similar Products to Awol:
Over the years, there have been several similar training programs and Internet marketing tools like Awol.
They work with an idea that they initially give you the first product for free or for just $1. Then they have tons of upsells all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars. Some of those systems have already went to bankruptcy, officials have put them down or FTC (Federal Trade Commissions) attacked them while some systems are still active online.
Let me present you a few examples of similar systems like Awol.
- MOBE​
In the USA, many individuals have been the victims of the MOBE system. They offer you free events, trials and other incentives to get started.
In an event or in a free trial they try to sell you an online business system that costs around $500.
If you buy it and go through their lessons, the next step is to buy their another system that costs already some thousands of dollars. Their goal is to move you up to their ladder so you would end up paying tens of thousands of dollars for their information products.
Many people claim that the main focus in the MOBE system is just to teach you how you could promote MOBE for other people and earn commissions.
In the other words, you pay a huge amount of money and then try to sell the same system for others trying to make your money back. For me it feels like a pyramid scheme-ish system.
Below you can see my MOBE review on YouTube. I am a bit sympathetic towards their video but now I think that I could use more harsh words of MOBE because I have truly realized how their system works.
One Internet marketer tried to lure me to Digital Altitude in 2017. I went through their free training and considered upgrading to higher levels.
I made several calls with my Digital Altitude "coach" who tried to sell me the upper levels of the system. I realized that he was rather a salesperson than a coach. The same applies to MOBE coaches by the way.
However, I made a very diligent research and spent endless hours finding out whether Digital Altitude would be worth joining or not. I figured out that it's a pyramid scheme-ish system and created the following video:
In Spring 2018 Digital Altitude was attacked by FTC because they had made a total consumer injury exceeding $14,000,000.
These two systems (MOBE and Digital Altitude) are very similar. Actually, MOBE sued Digital Altitude claiming that DA is using their business. Digital Altitude collapsed afterwards because it was a pyramid scheme so we can pretty much assume what will happen to MOBE in the future.
Some people could claim that AWOL falls into the same category with MOBE and Digital Altitude. I think it's still slightly better than those two programs because their marketing is a bit more open and they don't charge $30,000 per single product.
#1 Internet Marketing Training
My #1 recommended Internet marketing training is called Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate Homepage. Click the Picture to Get Started.
It's an online business community with more than 1,300,000 members and now it's growing faster than ever before. WA has a step-by-step training that has taken me and thousands of other individuals worldwide from complete beginners into full-time online entrepreneurs.
Wealthy Affiliate doesn't only provide a great training but it also provides tons of tools that help you to make more money online including:
7-Day Make Money Online Email Course
Learn SIMPLE steps to make a LIFE-CHANGING INCOME online. I will help you hand-by-hand!
- Top-notch keyword tool
- Weekly webinars from Jay Neill (+10 years of experience of Internet marketing)
- Domain hosting up to 50 websites
- Networking with successful online entrepreneurs
- My 1-on-1 support
- And more!
When you join Wealthy Affiliate, I will send you a personal welcome message and I will help you to succeed. You can ask me anything you need and I will surely come up to you with an answer.
You can also connect with Kyle & Carson (the founders of Wealthy Affiliate) who are multi-millionaires because of the Internet marketing. Then there are tons of other helpful people taking you hand by hand to your online success.
You quickly notice that Wealthy Affiliate is a very helpful community where you will always get answers to all your questions. You can get started on Wealthy Affiliate here or read my full WA review here.
Awol Reviews And Testimonials
When researching new products, I always take a look also what other people are saying about it. That gives me even a more comprehensive perspective and helps me to provide you always the best information on the Internet.
I found out that it's pretty hard to find other Awol testimonials than those that are created by the Awol team and promoted on their own channels. Compare to Wealthy Affiliate that has hundreds of positive reviews from the customers all over the Internet.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to find lots of negative reviews of Awol.
Many people are criticizing the system because of its high price and a bit shady marketing strategy (upsell strategy that I explained you before).
Personally, I think this is a bad sign:
- Hard to find positive testimonials on Awol customers' website/social media.
- Easy to find negative Awol reviews written by experienced online entrepreneurs.
Awol Academy on BBB
Awol is BBB (Better Business Bureau) accredited since 06/29/2017 with the B rating. You can find there several positive and negative reviews as well. The following one made me think even more that Awol sounds to use the same strategy like MOBE and Digital Altitude that I described above.
This review by Christine convinced me that Awol is a similar scheme like MOBE and Digital Altitude.
Awol vs Wealthy Affiliate
Let me make a few comparisons between my #1 recommended online business training (Wealthy Affiliate) and Awol.
- Pricing
Awol has tons of upsells all the way up to more than $15,000. Christine explained in her review above that she needed to take 2 credit card loans to buy all Awol products and still she didn't get the full picture on how things work there.
Wealthy Affiliate provides a free and a premium membership. I started out for the first 2 months with the free membership until I upgraded to the premium.
The premium membership costs only $19 for the first month and afterwards it's $359/year (less than $1 per day) or $49/month. After the first month of premium I upgraded to the yearly plan and now I am paying less than $1 for the WA premium membership.
WA has 0 upsells and the price hasn't risen even once during the last 12 years. Isn't that awesome?
- Training
Christine explained in her review that she always needed to buy new products from Awol but still everything seemed unclear. The coaches were actually salespersons who tried to sell her always another product.
Wealthy Affiliate, on the other hand, provides a step-by-step training that is proven to work. Thousands of online entrepreneurs have taken the steps that WA teaches and are nowadays making a full-time income online. Some of them make $10,000/month or even more.
You can right away have a glimpse of how Wealthy Affiliate works. They offer 10 + 10 lessons for completely free. Take the first lesson here to understand how you can make money online.
- Community
Awol is still a relatively new online business training their community/forum isn't that large.
Wealthy Affiliate consists of more than 1,300,000 people where you can connect with successful online entrepreneurs directly and personally. You will always get answers to all your questions.
In my opinion, WA beats Awol in all of these aspects.
Conclusion - Is Awol Academy Worth It?
Personally, I can't recommend Awol Academy.
Numerous similar systems have gone to bankruptcy over the years and some of them have been closed by FTC (Federal Trade Commission).
Awol Academy surely shares some helpful and valuable tips for online marketing but in my personal opinion their products are way overpriced.
You will find better training and tools for a much cheaper price on Wealthy Affiliate. Click the picture below to see and learn how WA training has taken me and numerous other people from complete beginners into full-time online entrepreneurs.
If I can do it, you can do it.
​What kind of experiences do you have with Awol or similar high ticket online business systems?
Have you already learned to make money online like I do?
Let me know in the comments below!
If you have any questions, just leave a comment below and I will be more than happy to help you out.
I agree with you that the expensive training price of joining up in Awol is not really the best since we’ve got better alternatives out there. I mean that the training packages is not meant for those looking to make money since you have to pay as high as 10,000 dollars for the ultimate course known as elite. This is not the best training program as long as I am concerned.
Yeah, these courses are really designed to make the founder rich.
Many talented and skillful Internet marketers sells similar courses for 100 times lower prices. Of course, the founder of Awol becomes rich with this kind of strategy but in my opinion it’s not the most fair strategy.
It is not the best strategy in my opinion as well since one could get to learn some of these courses spending a lesser amount. However, we have no power to convince the owner to reduce the price, but we can decide to get a fair package elsewhere.
Yes. We can at least “vote with our feet” and also share the message to other people to make an influence.
I really laughed hard at “vote with our feet”. Honestly, there are some people out there that are falling into the trap of expensive courses on a daily basis and that is the reason I am always grateful when I learn new ways of doing things on your site as well as the sites that we should visit or stay away from.
“Best for: Rich people who don’t mind paying extra for an expensive training.”
That’s a tough one to swallow, not necessarily for myself but I can imagine how it might burn to read that from the perspective of people who don’t fit the MVC profile or ideal target avatar.
It’s hard not to inevitably walk right into a ponzi scheme of any sort these days. Things are a game to so many people.
Yeah. Actually, Awol and many other similar companies are mainly targeting people who are struggling to make money online. They are supposed to offer a helping hand.
However, their training costs are so huge that it’s crazy.
It is actually a very profitable business for the founder of this program. He sells some info course for $10,000. Imagine when he has got 100 customers, he has already made a million. Not bad, huh?
On the other hand, I think it’s a bit unethical system. The founder would obviously disagree with me because he wants to make a lot of money and wouldn’t like that I share my own opinion about it.
I’m not affiliated with them in any way and personally, I find AWOL’s rates really impractical. But I’d like to look at it this way: maybe AWOL is just targeting a certain niche and that’s actually a great marketing strategy for some businesses. Name the price, focus on a niche, then everything else will follow. Admit it or not, there are good-quality paid courses out there that are worthy of anybody’s investment.
It’s interesting that you look it that way. Maybe I should become an Awol affiliate to make money by promoting their products 😀
But I think that my conscience doesn’t let me do that right now because I feel that their strategy is not the most honest one.
I have never heard of Awol Academy and how that I heard of it, am I willing to join a course with Awol Academy? My answer is NO. Even though there is a wide gap between the fees structures (starting from $99-$10K),the reviewer has well said about this program, a program for rich people who do not mind paying extra for training.
If I want to learn somthing I always go to Alision, where courses are free.
I haven’t personally used Alison but it seems like a great place. Probably I’ll use it in the future. I’ve used Udemy which is also a great place for a cheap training. For affiliate marketing and making money online, Wealthy Affiliate has been the most helpful training for me.
I believe that Awol Academy is not a scam. Maybe it’s too expensive for me, but I definitely know it’s worth the money. After the course and the acquired knowledge at the academy, I believe that I would quickly recover the money invested. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to deal with internet marketing and have enough money for the academy. And it cannot be a scam as long as you get courses and training for the money you give.
Wow, really? Did you take Awol Academy training yourself? I guess you are one of their affiliates then.
I’m not at the Awol Academy training, as I said it’s a lot of money for me. I just wrote my opinion and what I heard from other people. If I had that money, I would probably afford something like that. Before I decide on anything in my life, I like to hear other opinions about it and based on that I make the conclusions.
I see. My honest opinion is that you can get a better training than Awol for 10x cheaper price online.
And I’m aware of that. When I decide to seriously deal with internet marketing, I will find some cheaper training. I know a lot and learned online, but knowledge can always be improved even more.
That’s great. 🙂
Well really that is all you can do, but it is nice to be able to have others take that leap and then see what they can report and offer any insight. I too wish that I could just try it all for myself, and maybe someday but certainly not at the moment.
@Lost93 I completely agree with you on this, on determining if Awol is a scam or not, what they offer is courses on internet marketing strategy and training. And when one gets lessons which he or she pays for, that definitely isn’t a scam in any way. Maybe the fees are too much but I do believe that those the lessons are important to would gladly pay for it.
Thanks for the great commentary. I agree with you Awol Academy sounds and looks like a complete scam. I have also not heard much about Awol. A good system warns you in advance of the cost and tells you that the system is not for people struggling financially or to make money. This kind of system takes advantage of vulnerable people and offers very little in return.
You’re right. On the other hand, Awol tells most of their prices beforehand… They just market it in a way that anyone could earn lots of money fast which is not the reality.
I believe that no knowledge is a waste, so as Awol Academy offers more information on internet marketing strategy it’s good for those who can afford it. But looking at myself in my current financial status, I wouldn’t consider myself rich enough to take on Awol Academy internet marketing training but for those who can afford it, I believe there is nothing wrong with getting extra knowledge.
Yeah that’s a good point. Awol is just very expensive and therefore not recommended for most people.
This expensive nature of Awol is only cutting off most people who would have been interested in joining it but since it’s reserved to the high and the mighty rich class, maybe they aren’t looking for more members. This is a at least what I have come up with to be the reason why they stick with offering expensive services.
Yeah that’s also a good point. However, I guess that the most people who join the program are poor and desperately looking for ways to make money online and they just end up spending lots of money on this course.
It’s true what you said about poor people or those with average income earnings, who are looking for possibilities of making money online that mostly try out so many of these options. If they are lucky, they would succeed but most times they are just not and end up losing the little one they had.
Yeah. I think one of the main reasons is that they just give up too early. Many rich people have succeeded in some businesses previously so they know what it takes to succeed. Poor people, on the other hand, may not have similar experiences which can bring doubt to their mind. Gladly anyone can change their life by taking massive action towards their dreams.