Brutally Honest Experience of Digital Wealth Academy After 2 Years

Starting my business changed my life. Selling Digital Wealth Academy didn’t.

So before you buy another course that you don’t need, let me share with you my honest experience of DWA and how it impacted my life.

Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links

What is the Digital Wealth Academy Course?

DIGITAL WEALTH ACADEMY is purported to be the #1 fastest growing digital marketing course with over 137k members.

It’s a self-paced digital marketing program that teaches you how to build a brand, create income streams, and set up systems to earn money passively.

With DWA, you’re not just learning digital marketing – you’re gaining access to multiple ways to earn online and build a profitable, scalable business.

The marketing material says this is for you if you want to learn how earning online income works – whether that’s through digital products, affiliate marketing, or building a personal brand – and you want a step-by-step foundation that makes sense, even if you’re starting from scratch.

Inside Digital Wealth Academy, you get structured training, ready-to-use resources, and a clear roadmap for creating income online – plus access to a global community so you’re never building alone.

While it’s not a single PDF, it is a product you can add to your online store. Once you have access to the modules, go to the Classroom tab and then DWA Affiliate Program which walks you through how to get set up and start earning 85% commission. And this is its biggest temptation. The ability to make your money back! All $497 of it (That’s their pitch. It’s not a guarantee, and it’s not a typical experience).

The goal of Digital Wealth Academy is to teach you how to create a profitable business online.

What the Sales Page Doesn’t Tell You (But I Will) 🚩

I joined Digital Wealth Academy (DWA) on September 25, 2024, because I only wanted to know one thing: how to sell a digital product I’d already spent 6 months creating.

I found it the way most people find these courses now. Through Instagram, through someone whose content I’d been watching and consuming for years, so the trust was already there before I ever saw a sales page.

That timing seemed perfect for me.

Rather than spend another month watching YouTube videos and piecing together myself how to sell my digital product I could buy a course that gave me step-by-step instructions.

DWA was mid-transition when I joined, moving away from a Master Resell Rights (MRR) model toward an affiliate one. I didn’t know what MRR was at the time, I had to do some research, and it sounded much like an MLM type of thing (it wasn’t, but it sounded like it). So I was happy when I heard it was changing.

My understanding is the change came from MRR laws in some countries, including mine, plus a problem with fake accounts reselling access to DWA for next to nothing. But I’m not 100% certain on this. It’s just what I’ve heard.

$497 was on the lower end of what I’ve paid for courses in the past. I’ve spent upwards of $1700 on one course before, and that’s not including what I’ve spent on my degree which is in the 5-figures (and was an utter waste of money and I’m still paying for it).

I am happy to pay for an online course only if I’m clear on what I will gain from it before purchase.

What’s inside DWA?

Over 40 modules, but some listings by affiliates show between 80 to 150+ which I thought was weird. Turns out those extra modules are a repeat of the main 40 but seems to be in different languages.

Here’s a complete Module list as of 26th Sept 2026:

1. Mindset
2. DWA Affiliate Program
3. Setup Your Store
4. The Creators Playbook
5. The Pre-Launch
6. Your Creator DNA
7. Building Trust with Your Audience
8. Get The Sale
9. Structured Life Structured Business
10. She Goes Viral
11. Navigating Instagram
12. Selling on TikTok Live
13. She Codes with Claude
14. Cinematic AI
15. UGC
16. Get the Brand Deals
17. Affiliate Marketing
18. Everything AI
19. ChatGPT for Business
20. Canva Essentials
21. Full Business Automations
22. Email Marketing
23. The Affiliate Shop
24. Legally Protect Your Business
25. Financial Literacy 101
26. Pinterest Module
27. Blending Two Businesses
28. Men’s Branding Essentials
29. Recorded Training Calls
30. Everything TikTok Shop
31. Dropshipping Module
32. Monetize with Amazon
33. Monetize as a Social Media Manager
34. The Art of Influence
35. How to Create + Sell Your Own Digital Products
36. Get Found Build Trust & Get Paid
37. PLR/MRR Vault
38. Run Your First Ad
39. Faceless Marketing
40. The Content Studio
41. Men’s Digital Marketing

I noticed there seems to be some discrepancies with the module titles as the PLR/MRR Vault, as an example, only contains 7 PLR Digital Products you can resell for 100% profit, not MRR. Perhaps they forgot to update the module title when they updated the course?

Modules I skipped, because I already had them covered:

• Canva Essentials (I’ve been using Canva since 2018)
• Affiliate Marketing (I’ve been using affiliates since 2020)
• Faceless Marketing (I’ve been there, got the t-shirt and moved on)
• PLR Vault (I already had my own products)
• Get the Brand Deals (I’ve been working with brands since 2022)

Modules I didn’t know I needed until I checked them out:

• She Goes Viral
• Blending Two Businesses
• Pinterest Module
• Financial Literacy 101
• Legally Protect Your Business

That’s the real value of a course this size. You go in for one thing and you leave with 5 you didn’t know you needed.

The 3 Things That Got My Goat 🐐

Sometimes these courses can seem too good to be true. I’m always looking for the holes, and you have to if you’re gonna spend a silly amount of money on something. This is what bothered me after I purchased:

Spam in the community. Every post I left in the forum brought a wave of DMs, most of them bots, from people trying to sell me something else. The scary part wasn’t the amount of messages, it was how legit some of them looked at first.

This has mostly cleared up now since the move to the affiliate model, and since DWA added a member levelling system, only level 9 members and above can utilize DMs now.

Live streams I never see live. They were part of the original sales pitch, and I’ve never once caught one live, mostly because of the time difference. There’s a Recording Vault, so I can catch up on them. It’s just a shame the live version was never really live for me.

I hardly ever saw Rachell Medero (the course creator). Beyond the introduction to the course, every other module is taught by another creator and/or staff of Rachell (I have no idea). Some of these speakers are pitching their own products and courses, affiliates, and social profiles. They were nowhere on the sales page!

How Being A DWA Affiliate Impacted My Business

I thought I was buying a course that would help me expand my business. And if I had never talked about the course, never shared my affiliate link, I would have gained exactly that.

But instead I almost lost everything.

I made one video on my gaming channel about how building an online business changed my life. And one of the reasons I was able to grow my business was because of what I’d learned inside DWA.

The video wasn’t a pitch, it was supposed to be my story (and the script took me several weeks to write). But I mentioned that I took a course and linked it in the description. That’s how affiliate marketing works. I’ve done it before so thought nothing of it.

That video then reached over a million people (I usually averaged 400 to 600 views), and unfortunately for me, it got taken out of context and I had to take the video down for awhile. I moved it to my members only section on YouTube but people actually emailed me to complain about that too (becuase they wanted to watch it 🙄 there’s no winning).

Deleting it wasn’t an option. That would be like saying I did something wrong, when I hadn’t.

But as with any viral piece of content it has a lasting impact. Mine was negative, and one of the reasons I hate virality.

I’ve had people call me a scammer, an mlmer, and much worse. Influencers in my niche warned people to stay away from me. I was blocked by “friends”.

But for every hate comment I also got some of the nicest feedback I’ve ever received. It’s easy to focus on the negative when you go viral. People thanking me for sharing my experience meant the world to me. I am nothing but always honest.

Never have I had a problem with an affiliate like this before. And the funny thing is, there’s nothing wrong with the course! It does what it says – it teaches you how to start an online business from scratch, if that’s what you want.

My gaming channel was probably not the best place to promote it. I realise that. But nobody is gonna stop me from helping other people make money online. That’s why I started this separate blog 🎉

Would I Buy It Again?

Yes.

Because 2 years later, I’m still using what I learned, discovering new modules and enjoying being a part of the community. I can’t say that about the other courses I’ve bought.

There will always be people who buy courses like Digital Wealth Academy because they want to sell it on, not learn from it. If that’s you, don’t join.

A lot of bad reviews I’ve seen are from people who bought the course from someone selling access to the old MRR modal (which no longer receives updates) for $20 on Etsy, or other marketplaces, and expected to make money selling it on themselves at full price. Only to find out the course is now affiliate and they can’t get a personalized link (becuase they didn’t pay full price!).

That’s not how you start an online business. You can’t buy stolen property or steal someones business and sell it on. Be it a digital product, course, or even a whole website.

That’s how you get yourself a strongly worded email from a lawyer and potentially a massive fine for selling stolen goods.

If you’re wondering how much I made as an affiliate, it’s less than 4-figures. Which for a course that costs $497 and pays out 85% of that back to you as an affiliate adds up to 2 sales. Not exactly millions, but there are people who make more from it and others who’ve not made anything. There’s no guarantee.

Where did I go wrong? I didn’t build my whole brand around selling someone else’s product.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing’s stopping you if you want to start a faceless Instagram and promote DWA, but remember, Rachell can pull the plug at any time, you don’t own the course, just access to it.

I made my money back plus gained a little extra. But I gained more than money – I gained knowledge and connections I didn’t have before I joined. I learnt who my friends really are and who will stand by me. Weirdly, buying this course taught me a lot more about myself than just how to grow an online business.

And isn’t that the whole point of taking any course?

DWA is still growing. It’s just relaunched to version 4.0, and the Skool community sits at 137k members as I write this. If you want to join you can use my Digital Wealth Academy Affiliate Link. But do your own research and decide for yourself if it’s right for you.

You can add it to your suite of products you sell or just sell it on it’s own.

But read the disclaimers, read the good and bad reviews, and if you do consider DWA remember it is just one of many ways you can make money online. It’s up to you to decide which ones work best for you. Nobody else can tell you that.

And there’s a free version of this course. It’s called YouTube, trial, and a lot of error.

Or if you just want to learn how to make your first digital product, I teach that in my Digital Product Playbook.