I just checked out My Online Startup (MOS) and in this review would like to give you a review, an inside look and what I think of it.
To be honest, there’s a lot of good things to note, but also several things to also be aware of that may be considered cons to some (including myself). So let’s begin:
A summary and review of My Online Startup (MOS):
Who created My Online Startup?
Chuck Nguyen.
How much does My Online Startup cost?
It’s free to get access to a lot of “startup” training, but there are upsells, some optional, others not depending on new you are to this business, including:
- The lifetime partner program of Chuck’s which is $197.
- A done for you series of videos where you have to buy and install a blog that ranges from $10 and up.
- A promotion to The Authority Site System ($500+).
- Several recommendations for traffic generating sources like solo ads: $10-$100s.
- Video and blog tools and software ($10-$100s).
A lot of this stuff is (again) optional, but if you’re brand new and have no other alternatives, this may cost you a lot (if you decide to go through Chuck’s recommendations).
Is My Online Startup a scam?
No, it’s legitimate.
What does My Online Startup teach you?
The majority of the training is centered around creating an affiliate marketing business through blogging, YouTube, solo ads and funneling the traffic from those options to an email sign up page, collecting emails and making money that way.
There is an 8 module course with a series of lessons in certain modules to teach you this. Although one thing to note is that the free training in MOS is mostly informational.
To get deeper into it and take serious action, you would likely need to buy Chuck’s Partner program and/or buy some of his recommended tools.
My rating for My Online Startup: 3 out of 5 stars
Do I recommend My Online Startup? It’s 50/50.
The biggest benefit to MOS is that you can check out a lot of free content without ever entering a credit card in (I like this), and the training in the course is pretty good for beginner affiliate marketers and comprehensive at times.
The biggest downside in my opinion is that there are a lot of paid and expensive options to choose from on the back end, and if you’re new, this could be confusing (and expensive if it adds up).
I don’t mind recommending programs that cost money (and even in rare cases that are expensive), but I do believe that if this program were a bit more narrow in it’s approach to building an online business, I’d recommend it more (even though it is not a scam and is legitimate).
But that is my opinion and if nothing else, you can check out My Online Startup for free and see this for yourself. Do keep in mind that I’ll be offering some alternatives that I think are better than MOS shortly.
Alternatives? Yes:
My Online Startup review: An inside look of the members area
Before I show you the members area of MOS, let me say that to access it, you first need to:
- Create an account on the official My Online Startup website.
- Confirm your registration.
- Then upon confirming it, you will have access to the free course.
The free course is 8 modules long as I said before.
And now, allow me to summarize each module of My Online Startup for you so you know what you’re getting:
First, there is a prelude section:
Prelude: Getting Started.
Before you access the 8 modules, it’s recommended you start with this section. Here you get a 7 minute welcome video from Chuck that shows you how to proceed (join his Facebook Community, take a look at his partner program, then begin the training).
Module 1: The Game Plan.
Here you have an overview video of what Chuck is going to teach you to make money online, which in essence is affiliate marketing. You’ll get a basic tour of the way Chuck helps you set up an online business this way.
Module 2: Success Mindset.
This section has 7 videos on mindset training to help you feel and visualize being successful. I used to take mindset videos with a grain of salt, but lately I have become much more open about this stuff, so the content here is pretty good.
Module 3: Affiliate Marketing
Here Chuck shows you the basics of affiliate marketing and the summary is that you get 5 videos and content talking about niche selection (he does talk about evergreen niches), picking 1 product to promote and more.
Some stuff I agree with Chuck here, and overall, it’s pretty good training. But I have my own way of teaching affiliate marketing that I think is a bit simpler.
Module 4: Lead Generation.
For those who are new, lead generation means getting people interested in your product/offer (leads). Here you learn about email marketing which is the most common form of lead generation for affiliate marketing, although there are other popular methods out there.
You get 6 videos here teaching you the basics of it.
Module 5: Authority Platform.
Here you get 7 videos on building an authority blog to promote affiliate products on. The content is pretty good, and you get information on writing affiliate product reviews, samples of how it looks and should look and more.
I happen to have a lot of content on blogging and affiliate marketing myself you can also check out for free. Here are some recommended articles:
Module 6: YouTube marketing.
6 videos are provided on basics of creating YouTube videos, YouTube affiliate marketing, getting more views on your YouTube videos and building a subscriber base, more leads to funnel back to your site and more.
I’ve included 2 links to articles I’ve written (with videos) on the subject because I also do a lot of affiliate marketing on YouTube personally and can vouch that it works. I agree with a lot of stuff Chuck shows here, but I do also share different strategies too.
Module 7: Forum Marketing.
Chuck lost me a little bit here.
There’s only 1 video shown in this section and it’s basically you promoting make money online products on the Warrior Forum website, a page I rarely visit anymore, but basically an example would be you going to this site and in your profile sharing an affiliate link to Chuck’s partner program (which you can make money off).
I’m not a fan of forum marketing of any sort, because very often it can be seem as spam if you’re not careful.
Module 8: Targeted solo ads.
This was another module where I wasn’t a big fan of the stuff I saw. It’s 3 videos showing you the following:
- The basics of solo ads.
- Using Udimi as a solo ad source.
- Using Traffic4me.com as a solo ad source.
I’m not a fan of any solo ad marketing, because it’s expensive and a lot of the leads in terms of quality are things you have no control over. It basically comes down to “can you trust the solo ad provider?” and in rare cases is this true. Normally though, solo ads are notorious for low quality traffic so I stay away from them.
Important additional stuff in My Online Startup to note:
There is a done for you section of the free course which pitches 2 things:
1) How to set up a blog (the website, the hosting, the plugins, ect…) and does require certain things for you to buy, but there are set up videos and tutorials provided.
2) Training on building up a blog to get visitors and see success which is actually a pitch to get Authority Hackers The Authority Site System, which is $500+. I happen to like that program, but it is a high cost on top other stuff you might need in order to take action.
The thing I like here (sort of) is that Chuck recommends pretty legitimate stuff, especially the Authority Site System, but on the flip side, this is pretty expensive.
Conclusions on My Online Startup:
Basically I’m going to repeat what I said above (but in more detail):
This program has lots of good, free material you can check out to draw your own conclusions, but overall, a lot of what I personally saw in the free course was mostly informational and while I did like a lot of the content, I disagreed with other stuff (like forum marketing and solo ads).
Overall, I do believe that this program is legitimate and you can succeed at affiliate marketing with it, but a HUGE part of your success comes from either upgrading to Chuck’s lifetime partner program (requires you be a Clickbank affiliate) and promoting it and/or buying one or more of Chuck’s recommendations to get started and while much of those recommendations are legitimate, there’s a bit too much to choose from and it can get very expensive quickly.
Alternatives: Why Wealthy Affiliate is the best choice in my opinion.
Wealthy Affiliate in my opinion is the best affiliate marketing training program for beginners and one of the many reasons why is this:
1) It’s also free to try, but unlike My Online Startup, the training has more action related steps and you do get tools included to actually do this, including 1 website. So you’ll accomplish and do more from the free training in WA vs My Online Startup.
2) You can also save tons of money because while Wealthy Affiliate does have an upgraded membership ($49/month), you get many tools that save you tons of money included in your membership, including websites, hosting and a ton of other stuff.
3) There’s also massive support and a ton of expert help in Wealthy Affiliate, including from me, a top expert in this community who helps his referrals (I do promote this program).
4) Finally, the program is much more narrowly focused on building an affiliate business and then giving you other options later on (first niche blogging, then YouTube, and more) .
This is better in my opinion for someone whose lost and getting started and needs 1 direction to go that works and has limitless potential for success. Wealthy Affiliate has that. Oh and the website set up part in Wealthy Affiliate is a TON easier than in MOS.
There’s actually a lot more to say, but overall I think Wealthy Affiliate would be a better choice if you’re on the fence about it or MOS. I’m not denying MOS works and I have a bit of confidence in it, but not enough to give it a full recommendation.
It’s a legit program, but you have some other alternatives to work with if you want to know what else is out there. Thanks for reading this My Online Startup review!