About 8x Hero Academy
Alex Becker’s course is mainly focused on online lead generation through click funnels or PPC (pay per click) ads. The course shows you how to set up your own lead generation funnel (applicable to a wide variety of niches) in order to transform those skills into a successful business.
Who Is Alex Becker?
Alex Becker is an online entrepreneur and author who owns multiple businesses focusing on online niches. His first business was an SEO company he grew to $4 million a year, which he then sold it in 2019. Since then, he’s started making multiple online companies like Market Hero or Konker, and he’s been producing courses like the 8x Academy and the Black File. Additionally, he’s branded himself on Youtube as a digital business guru.
8x Hero Academy Pricing
Alex Becker’s 8x Academy course is $997, or 3 payments of $366. It’s important to note that this course is different than the 8x Academy 2.0, which is a sequel to this one but only $49/month. This payment comes with:
- Access to the 8x Academy course
- Access to the “private mastermind community”
- Facebook group of people who bought the course, mainly to discuss their businesses and other topics
- 3 Month access to Market Hero
- Email lead generation software (also made by Becker)
- Sales templates and scripts
It also offers a full money-back guarantee, claiming that you can keep the course materials with a 100% refund if you complete the entire course and take “action”, and you’re still left with satisfactory results.
You do have to meet certain undisclosed requirements in order to qualify for a refund, as Reddit user u/Sagiv1 says, “I didn’t meet the qualifications required, so it took me a short sad story(although it had some truth to it at the time)and another support member to issue a second refund request. Then like 12 hours later I got the refund and the next day my money was back.”
Is it hard to get a refund if you don’t like it? Yes. Is it possible though? Also yes.
The Academy’s Curriculum
The course is designed to be taken over 6 weeks and is broken down by focusing on one concentration a week. However, each “week” only has an hour or two worth of content and can be done in just a few short hours. It’s designed this way to leave room for you to take action. Here’s the 6 week schedule:
- Week 1- Intro. Choosing Niches & Offers
- Week 2- Building The Trap
- Week 3- Funnel Mastery
- Week 4- Advanced Copywriting
- Week 5- Organic Free Traffic
- Week 6- Paid Traffic Scaling
Choosing Niches & Offers
This section is the absolute basics of what it means to make a funnel. Becker breaks down click funnels in a simple and informative way. You can expect many basic infographics sparsely labeled. He doesn’t overcomplicate his explanations, but he does explain them fairly well. It may be slow for experienced users, as he explains the terminology (CPL, LTV) and basics for beginners. Some of the topics he covers for this week are:
- Conversion setup
- Overview of Market Hero software
- Critical points of funnels
- “Break Even Marketing”
- “Live Human Theory”
- Different customer messages
- Picking the best niche
- Consistent offer niches
- Client/consulting niches
- One big sale niches
- Creating recurring offers
- Picking affiliate offers
- Overall sales process
- Sales strategies
Building The Trap
- Opt-in pages
- Compare different opt-in pages
- Successful vs. unsuccessful pages
- “Creating Epic Bait”
- Consumable timing
- Difference effort has on consumer
- Creating opt-in
- A step-by-step tutorial on how to add images, text, and forms to create your own opt-in using Market Hero (separate software sold by Becker)
This section is the technical side of the course. He goes over what exactly an opt-in is, how to create one, and how to advertise it. Moreover, he goes into detail about the exact numbers behind a successful click funnel, like how much you should be paying per lead, or how much your cost per click should be. He offers broad percentages to apply to your own revenue stream. Some of the topics he teaches you are:
This section goes into more detail about funnels. Just like opt-ins, he goes into the overall theory about the use and benefits of funnels, and how to use them effectively. With an underlying basis, you should understand how you can utilize funnels properly for higher conversions. Some of the topics he goes over for funnels are:
Funnel Mastery
- Funnel functionality
- LTV and “Break Even”
- Different messages
- The 8x Funnel
- His “secret” on how he creates his own funnels
- Becker breaks down how he makes his conversions & structures his funnels
- One day launch
- Learn to use a sequence that creates time-sensitive offers
Advanced Copywriting
This section goes into copywriting your emails, or the exact text that you create. It’s not necessarily advanced, but it does go over the best strategies for writing successful email content. Becker explains the overall strategies for improving your emails to convert customers. “Advanced Copywriting” and “Building the Trap” contain the most value of the course, showing how to be more persuasive and sell better. Some of the content you learn includes:
- Email patterns
- Subject lines, body text, etc.
- “Scarcity emails”
- Trust selling
- Testimonials
- Linguistic conversion
- Webinar selling
- Structure your intro video
- Create an audience
Organic Free Traffic
This section goes into generating leads through various social media platforms. After all, you can’t convert if there isn’t anyone seeing your funnel. Becker goes through the overall strategies for creating leads through social media platforms. However, most of the content is general and doesn’t delve into any detail. Most of these videos don’t even give good advice, as all he teaches you to do in this section is spam your lead generator (aka blog post) on social media. Following this advice can lead to IP Bans or account suspensions, as all he does is show you how to spam your link into forums or Youtube comments. However, he doesn’t show you what happens to your account after. This section is easily the most skippable. Essentially, you learn how to post your blog link to:
- Youtube
- Skillshare
- Forums
Paid Traffic Scaling
This section goes into how to start using PPC (pay per click) ads to generate traffic towards your lead generator. Becker gives an in-depth explanation about how to structure your ad for maximum conversions. He talks about the importance of word choice, buying psychology, and retargeting ads. Step by step he shows you how to create various PPC advertisements from scratch. Some of the platforms he shows are:
- Youtube Ads
- Creating the right videos
- Picking proper keywords
- Facebook Ads
- Overall strategy
- Best converting post
- Adwords
- Google PPC ads
- Keyword research
- Successful headlines
- Scaling
- Optimizing CPC (cost per click)
- Analyzing results
Additionally, he also creates separate videos for niche-specific strategies, like webinars, lead generation, or coaching programs. This section comes with the most content, although not all of it may be applicable.
Alex Becker’s Course Quality
The course is made in an almost powerpoint presentation. You can expect it to be either a simple infographic or a screen recorded video. While not bad, it’s also nothing special. It’s no different than any Youtube tutorial, as we never see Beckers’ face, just his screen. Infographics are as complicated as what’s shown below:
Does 8x Hero Academy Deliver?
It really breaks down to one question: What are you expecting?
If you know nothing, I mean absolutely nothing about click funnels or digital marketing, and you expect a beginner course on this stuff: then yes, it does deliver in that sense. However, if you are already familiar with the basics of digital funnels, and expect to “Build A $1,000-$5,000 Per Month Business In 30-60 Days” as advertised, then prepare for disappointment; it does not do this at all. The courses promise of no investment is inherently false, as the “free organic” traffic he shows you (what is supposed to generate your startup revenue), is laughable. Additionally, Becker does not delve into the advanced strategies he marketed this course as having, as he merely shows about 5 hours worth of basic knowledge.
Can you create a $1,000 business off of what he showed you? Yes, if you have hundreds of dollars in PPC advertising funds, a pre-existing social media audience of thousands, and tens of thousands of niche-specific email leads. If you go into this with nothing, expect to come out of it with nothing as well.
Is 8x Hero Academy Worth the Money?
No, not at all. The most value presented in this course was the structure of his landing page and his copywriting formulas. However, all you need to do is go to the 8x Hero Academy sales page and take note of every sales strategy you see on the page. Seriously, just looking at the page, we learn to:
- Add a time-sensitive claim (LAST CHANCE, 24 HOURS LEFT!)
- Add a “discount” when it’s not there (Valued at $2,997, but ONLY $997!)
- Add lots of “bonuses” (Access to Market Hero, mastermind group, etc.)
- Add money-back guarantee (Let them feel reassured.)
- Add a timer that counts down for no reason
- Add testimonials in the form of screenshots (Fake? You decide.)
- Keep throwing out money terms ($14,000 in 2 months. $52k in 5 weeks.)
- Add “LAST CHANCE” anywhere and everywhere.
That’s it. All of that is a breakdown of his sales page that you can implement on your own. If you want to learn more, you could buy a book on behavioral economics, and implement any psychological sales tendencies in your own way.
TIP: Some of the best information in the course is his email template formula. However, most of Becker’s strategies are apparent in his own email advertisements. Save yourself some money and simply create a throw-away email account and subscribe to his lead generation tool. From there, break down his emails as he writes them. Take note of every aspect, from the language, layout, psychological appeals, and most importantly his headlines. By reverse-engineering his own sales campaign, you can learn his email “secrets” for yourself.
8x Hero Academy Course Alternatives
When it comes to click funnels, there is an abundant amount of alternatives to learn. Here are just a few:
- Skillshare offers many courses on various aspects of 8x Hero Academy. Some of these may be basic and useless, while others present some value. For a monthly rate of $15, you learn ALL the aspects Alex Beckers course covers and so much more, like:
- LinkedIn Learning offers more advanced education in digital marketing. You can get it for a monthly rate like Skillshare, but twice the price at $29 / month. However, LinkedIn provides more technical and advanced courses and covers the organic social media growth in much more depth. Many universities also provide a free LinkedIn Learning profile.
- Udemy sells individual courses on click funnels and landing page optimization. It even includes one free tutorial to get you started. Usually, Udemy comes with a much larger amount of information as well, and you even get a certificate of completion!
Our Final Verdict
8x Hero Academy is not worth $997, at all. His information is broad and general, and it seems as though he is selling strategies that worked for him years ago while keeping what really makes his money a secret. While it is not outright useless, it’s nowhere near the $997 that he charges. All of the information presented can be learned through simple observation or alternative courses. It seems that this entire course was a lead-generation itself to get you to use his landing page software.
Look at what he does, not what he says.
Pros
- Simple explanation- He breaks down click funnels and their fundamentals in an easily decipherable way.
- Good for beginners- This course covers all the general areas associated with lead generation.
- Access to Market Hero- You get access to Becker’s software, which is easy to use and set up your first funnel
- Good information about sales strategies (time-sensitive offers, email headlines, what “bait” to use).
Cons
- Bad social media advice- His “organic” strategies are just ways to get your IP banned.
- Beats around the bush- He gives very general and vague advice, never delving into any actual strategies that could make you money. He over-expands on information that you already know, and shorts you on the information you want to learn.
- Too expensive- Alternatives are 100x cheaper than this course (not an exaggeration), and even cover the material more in-depth.
- Forced to use Market Hero- Although a good majority of email marketers use Shopify or MailChimp, he only shows you his software, Market Hero. Wonder why?
- No Value- Overall, the course just doesn’t provide any real value. It would be an alright course if it was sold for $20, but the price is just outlandish, and it seems he takes these criticisms as a way to sell his “8x Hero Academy 2.0” course.