While searching for some affiliate marketing training program the other day, I came across an ad called Daily Cash Siphon. I thought the name sounded a bit scammish, but I was curious to know what’s inside. So I swiped my credit card and brought you this review. A program with a one time fee – is it worth the money? Let’s find out.
Daily Cash Siphon at a Glance
From the very beginning, it obvious that DCS is part of the Clickbank merchant network. Just like many reviews before, I usually take their products with a pinch of salt because sometimes, they aren’t worth as much as their values – just like what I discovered with the super hyped Clickbank University.
This program claims to teach you how to make money through affiliate marketing and it’s created by a guy named Chris Parker. Further investigation couldn’t reveal any more details/images about this person, but you can hear his voice later in the videos. As far as ownership is concerned, that’s all we know.
Inside DCS, there are 10 main topics that will walk you through finding a profitable niche, creating a blog and getting traffic to your affiliate offers. The joining fee costs $37 per time (after reducing from $67) and is entirely video-based and self-paced. Even though it’s not stated on the main site, the course is apparently linked to other programs as you would soon find out.
The Good Stuff
I am usually perplexed when reviewing Clickbank products because they tend to bring me all over the page and made me guess the authenticity of their programs. So I am surprised that this one doesn’t. In fact, it was very clear from the beginning what their training is all about.
1 – Each topic has several lessons delivered in small-bite sizes video tutorials, ranging between 5 to 15 minutes long. They are straight to the point and Chris actually shows the step-by-step in doing things.
Here are the exact topics that you’ll be learning from some 60 videos.
- Introduction to DCS (2 Lessons)
- Blogging Basics (3 Lessons)
- Setting Up a Blog (4 Lessons)
- WordPress Set-Up (10 Lessons)
- Blog Content (10 Lessons)
- Affiliate Commissions (6 Lessons)
- Promoting Your Site (11 Lessons)
- Tweaking Your WordPress Design (5 Lessons)
- QuickFire Daily Cash Method (5 Lessons > I’ll explain later what this actually is)
- Outsourcing (4 Lessons)
2 – What’s even more impressive is that each topic comes with its own set of action-based tasks. That means you don’t just watch the videos, you also learn to implement. This is crucial to the validity of many digital products out there because lead-by-action is what gives them added-values and produce desired results.
3 -After you’ve completed all the video tutorials, there’s a set of the task list that guides you from zero experience to generating traffic within 30 days. For me, that’s a viable timeline and it’s certainly something achievable (not exaggerated) if you put the knowledge into an action plan.
4 –Chris also recommends using self-hosted WordPress and gives you a fairly good detail on how to set it all up, from buying a domain to installing plugins for affiliate marketing. So if you are totally new to this subject matter, that topic is worth checking out.
5 – Another thing I like is the emphasis on creating content to drive traffic. Unlike other trainers who usually brush through the topic and get you started straight on paid advertisement technique, Chris actually shows the different methods (although I don’t necessarily agree to all of them) in boosting traffic through keyword research and value-rich articles.
The Not-So-Good Stuff
For those who aren’t familiar with the promotional tactic of digital products, especially from Clickbank, here’s what you need to know. They have fantastic copywriting that will attract you to click the buy button.
1 – On their sales page, for example, they make the entire process sound very easy because apparently, you don’t need to spend a lot of time yet still able to earn good money consistently. Here’s what they have to say about their own program.
2 – And then, while signing up, you’ll be offered a fully equipped done-for-you website that comes with free hosting and a domain. This first upsell is called the Daily Cash Website and it sells for $197.
If you are not interested, just click to move on, but you’ll see the same product offer again on the next page. This time, they downsell the price to free for 7 days before charging you $17 per month.
Are you seeing the trend here? Guess what, it’s not over yet because they still have one more product to offer. Upsell number 2 is called Daily Traffic Siphon and apparently, it contains the blueprint – or rather the secret – that you can copy to get targeted website traffic. This life-changing money potential only costs $97.
If you’ve signed up for all, you have officially paid $300+ for programs that you know nothing about, just the mere facts that they come with some free stuff and look somewhat promising. See what I mean? That’s what ‘good copywriting’ can make you do.
3 – Now, if you are looking to promote this product as an affiliate, you might also be attracted to their lucrative commission at 75%. However, when dug deeper, it appears that the sales conversion of this product isn’t that great after all.
Gravity score is a good indicator that tells us whether something inside Clickbank is worth promoting or not. The higher the score, the better the profit earning. With DCS, the current gravity score only stands at 26.5 while more successful products have hit over 100. So clearly, this product isn’t a big money-making idea.
With all the upselling tactics, I could see why that is the case.
4 – When it comes to the training videos, the thing that I am not comfortable with is the fact that the player has limited control functions. The only thing it allows us to pause – you can’t playback or forward as wished so that’s a bit annoying.
As for community engagement, this is probably the most inactive membership site that I’ve ever seen. On its Facebook page, there are only 4 likes and 4 followers. No postings or discussion whatsoever. A reflect of its legitimacy? I am starting to guess so.
What You Should Avoid Doing
On its promo page, DCS claims that they have been in the industry for some 10 years and have trained a lot of successful people. While I may not have that much of an experience, I do my due diligence in keeping up-to-date with sound online marketing practice and here are the things that I tend to stay away from.
1 – Ready Made Websites – There are two groups for this – the professionally-build-for-you type of package and the done-for-you type of package. The first one is for serious entrepreneurs who have the budget to buy a website, but not the time to build. They know exactly what type of niche and future direction they are heading so that’s cool.
The second one is basically the cheaper option that tends to attract a lot of beginners – just like the first upsell product by DCS. Unfortunately, it also means that they will most likely come with cheaper services and features that have limited opportunities to scale for the long term.
If I don’t know who is building it or they let some program spit out a nice-looking website, I wouldn’t invest my money in it. It’s just too risky and unreliable.
2 – Article Marketing – One of Chris’s marketing methods that I disagree with is article marketing. Yes, it probably worked some 10 years ago for building backlinks, but submitting content to article directories has loose its merit since the recent Google updates.
They don’t tend to rank very well on the search engines nowadays as shown in my review on Hubpages here and worse, your site could potentially be penalized for doing so. A totally outdated technique and I wouldn’t recommend it.
3 – Solo Ads – Another marketing tactic that is somewhat legal, but I am totally not fond of it. What happens in solo ads is that you are buying email lists from other web owners within your niche and promoting your offers to those audiences.
Number one – these people never subscribed to your site in the first place so getting repeated emails from you would make YOU look like a spammer. Number two – email list that converts well for one web owner doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work well for you too. Number three – it costs money to buy those lists and you need to do test campaigns to see what works.
This is a highly advanced technique and they aren’t suitable for beginners.
4 – Outsourcing Content – Not everyone has the time to write consistently, I get it. That’s why we hire freelancers to get the job done. But good content that can drive traffic isn’t something that I would get people from Fiverr or iWriter to do, as recommended by DCS.
These are cheap freelancing marketplaces and when it comes to working quality, you really can’t expect much. I’ve tried iWriter before and actually had to redo the article all over again so I wasn’t really happy about that.
Is Daily Cash Siphon Worth Your Time?
To learn affiliate marketing in bite-size tutorials (minus the upselling), the one-time fee isn’t too bad, in my opinion. 90% of what is being taught is relevant, although they aren’t rocket science. The other 10% is what you should avoid doing. However, if you are diligent enough to research online, you can gather all this information for free.
As far as training is concerned, the stuff is there – they are just not superb in quality though.
Many reviews published before this tend to call DCS a scam due to its exaggerated copywriting, but I have to admit, those elements are very minimal while doing this review. Maybe they have done some makeover earlier this year and if that’s the case, then it’s probably a vital step to improving on their gravity score.
Hey, if you are really looking to make money with affiliate programs, here’s a better platform that you should try. It has a plethora of training (with new ones being added regularly), web hosting and a great community of entrepreneurs to boot.
Have something to ask or add to this review? Just leave them in the comment section below.
The description from DCS alone raises so many red flags. I have fallen for several programs like this. It sounds like their training can be found literally anywhere on the internet. Clickbank is an awesome marketplace, but some of their products are pretty crappy. I wouldn’t recommend this too due to the low gravity score.
Thanks for a fine, in-depth article. Once again, exposing yet another site where it is much more possible to throw yet another sizable lump of cash down the endless hole that is the Internet.
I too get attracted to the endless stream of assured get-rich-quick-ads. As soon as I see the up-sell, quickly followed by the down-sell of the same product, I am out the door.
Scammy schemes usually claims that you can make a lot of money fast, but I noticed no such thing with Daily Cash Siphon. They seem to be quite realistic about the outcome of the program. The only thing that bothers me is the way they set up the sales funnel with multiple up-sells, just to get people to buy their stuff. That’s a bit annoying.
The world is now a global village hence everyone wants to earn a living making money online. Some will make money and some will defraud. The way I see it, Daily Cash Siphon is still worth the risk because it does have a tangible product to offer.
If it sounds too good to be true then its probably not true. There are several thousands, if not millions of such sites on the social media which I have come to realized that the influx of people scouring the internet space for income alternatives has made it possible for scam sites to keep raising in numbers on a daily basis.
Daily Cash Siphon might not be a scam at first glance, but its cons outweighs its pros which am not comfortable about.
You’re right. The name – Siphon – sounds really dodgy. It is very clear from the review that there are some good points, but not enough to overcome DCS’s shortcomings. There are certainly better programs out there for making money online.
Hi Cathy,
You mentioned that gravity score in Clickbank is a good indicator for determining whether a product is good or not. In your opinion, what is a good minimal gravity score to consider?
You also mentioned about using solos ads in your article. Do you have any recommendation for this? I would like to give it a try.
Gravity score basically tells you how many affiliates have made sales within a 12 week period. A minimum of 30 is a good benchmark to start with. As for solo ads, I am not a big advocate for the reasons mentioned in the review. If you are curious anyway, you may try Udimi which is a premium marketplace for solo ads.
In the flood of online business opportunities, it can be confusing what’s good and what’s not. The concept with Daily Cash Siphon seems okay – there are many lessons to take, but you can end up paying for a lot irrelevant products. There are too many cons so I will think twice before joining this type of program.
This is eye opening indeed! I just read an article that was highly fond of solo ads – in fact that was the number one way they made money. I thought it all sounded pretty straight forward, but after reading your review about it, I am much more keen on being authentic and finding my target audience through hard work instead of buying their attention/clicks.
My main objective here is to create long term traffic so I will keep writing about my experiences and hopefully reach out to more like minded people.