Another week another course, this time it’s Jonathan Smith who has a relatively small following on Instagram and Youtube, who claims to have made over 10 million dollars through drop shipping. His promotion tactics for the course involve showing screenshots of his Shopify account from the previous year..
We’ve seen this before in many courses prior to eCom Titans. A screenshot of a Shopify dashboard gives no indication of the money actually available after expenses. While an industry average might be 20%, we have no idea and this could even be in the negatives.
There is of course the usual Instagram photos next to nice cars, boats, you know the stuff we all dream of. To get there though you’ll need to spend $1997 up front for a relatively short course alongside group training. For those that don’t buy before Saturday 23rd the price will be going up another stack.
The upsell on the checkout page is 2 x 1 hour of group training with Jonathan. Yes, not even 1-2-1, group training and that amounts to $997.
So you’re talking $4000 for an e-commerce course.
This is probably one of the most expensive courses to get a feature on this blog.
Million Dollar Mistake
Jonathan seems to live a life of travel, fast cars and uploading Facebook Ad manager screenshots alongside Shopify dashboards to IG. These never show the URL or the date, time of date and regularly feature huge numbers.
I found one post posted early February 2019 showing the dashboard of a store from March 2018. um?
It didn’t take long to find the store of this screenshot Jonathan uploaded, that’s the problem when you file for a trademark, your address gets plastered online. One of his first stores was called, Affinity Find and was run under Clear Creek Marketing & Sales LLC in Poulsbo.
The Wall Street Journal did a post about this site last year, which now has over 350 1 star ratings on Trustpilot and 97 official complaints with the Better Business Bureau. It’s rare to be categorized as ‘F’ on the BBB which is usually given to companies who are the worst.
Until late last year Affinity Find was running ads, they had over 700,000 followers and then disappeared off Facebook. It’s unclear who made that call but it’s unlikely it was Facebook. Maybe the endless refund requests caught up with them.
There is a module in the course titled, ‘My Multi-Million Dollar Mistake‘ which is clearly about this store.
Now Jonathan recommends local suppliers and that would be a good idea.
There is clearly money to be made selling from Aliexpress but clothing is a big mistake:
- Chinese sizing is about 5 times smaller than USA sizing
- Products are cheap and nasty
- They shrink when you wash them
- They smell like a chemical factory
- The average return rate on clothing is 35% so how will you handle that process?
You need to find products that rarely break or get returned. An example might be a household gadget.
eCom Titans Course
The main selling point about the course that keeps popping up is the 4 million dollar product that we get access too.
The hype is definitely in this product rather than the actual content which includes eight modules that look just like every other course on the market.
These include:
- Store setup and optimization
- Installing automation apps
- Product and niche research
- Copyrighting and testing
- Product testing
- Scaling methods
- Retargeting ads
- Team building
- Fulfillment
- Mindset videos.
I don’t know about you but why would you share your winning product and ad set for a measly $3k if you’re making 4 million dollars off a that product?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
If you’ve read my other reviews on similar case studies, I’d say either:
- The product is saturated and dead
- It no longer works
- There are a million copy cats already copying the success
- It’s easier to make money telling others how to do it.
Would I spend $2,997 for eCom Titans?
No. There are courses on the market that cost $197-$497 that offer far more value.
Given what I’ve seen so far, I’m not going to buy this course and even review it. $2997 is a LOT of money for a review.
Money Back Guarantee
There is no mention of a money back guarantee or refund policy. The terms and conditions page, privacy policy and disclaimer pages don’t work and the checkout page looks incomplete. Maybe these will be added during the initial launch which occurs after the 23rd February.
I’d say there is no refunds unless you can prove the course didn’t work for you.
Final Verdict
Jonathan clearly made a million dollar mistake with Affinity Find and he may well be on the home-run now making millions of dollars. Unfortunately there is simply no evidence of actually doing that aside from sharing some screenshots which we all know are easily faked.
I don’t buy into the 4 million dollar hype and think selling a $2,997 course which looks pretty standard compared with courses such as eCom Elites is not right.
You do get access to an eCom Titans VIP Facebook group which currently has 18 other members at the time of print.
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Last Updated on February 19, 2019 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.