Introduced to me through a Facebook Ad called Residual Payments, I discovered a system called the Digital Payments Revolution by David and Patricia Carlin. They have over 20 years of experience in making money in the online world, so they created this Digital Payments course that gives away all of the personal strategies the power couple uses to bring in millions of dollars worth of commissions.
I would like to congratulate you on the big brain move of researching The Digital Payments Revolution before giving away $37. It is important to understand whether or not a make-money promise is legit or a scam before giving away your hard-earned money.
And while it is unfortunate, there are many scams in this space of wealth promises. It is important to keep this in mind.
So, our goal here today on this post on Safe Money Makers is to help you decide for yourself if The Digital Payments Revolution is worth it or not.
The Premise of the product:
-Name: The Digital Payments Revolution
-Owners: David and Patricia Carlin
-Summary: A mini-course that is designed as a sales funnel to teach you all about the Merchant Processing business model, while also promoting their coaching services and other products.
-Opportunity Cost: $37 + $17 upsell + $47 upsell + $197 upsell + one-on-one coaching upsell that potentially costs $5000+
-Pros: You get to learn about a new passive income business model.
-Cons: Pre-curser course with a upsell block.
-Our rating: 1.5/5
-Is it a scam or is it legit: It’s legit, but in my opinion, uses shade scarcity sales tactics and the business model isn’t as great as what this course makes it out to be.
-Is this course David Nelly approved? No
What is The Digital Payments Revolution?
If you read this carefully, you will see that this course is more of an introduction to The Digital Payment business model. The first 5 modules of Meet The Carlins to Practical Simple Methods don’t show you how to set up a Digital Payments business or become successful with one.
They simply give you the beginning information of how it all works.
Then the “3 simple steps” course is their upselling module.
It’s where they offer you their $200 course, and their 1 on 1 coaching that costs thousands of dollars.
So, in other words, they offer a cheap introductory course, and on their sales page, you won’t know about the upsells until after you pay for the introductory course, which then, inside of the course, is where they will upsell you their more expensive courses as well as their 1 on 1 mentorship classes.
So keeping this in mind, you should be deciding that you for sure want to take the merchant providing a business model to make your money.
If you don’t want to make money with a merchant-providing model, you can also take a look at how to make money with the following options.
- Affiliate Marketing (my most recommended business model
- Multi-Level-Marketing
The one shining light I can bring to this program is that they do offer a 30-day refund policy.
So the attention fight is on your impressionism. You can get through the course before 30 days, you’ll be offered their upsells, and the fight in your mind will be to decide if the information you received was worth it or not and if the mini-course was enough for you to earn their trust.
If you were not impressed enough by their mini-course and did not find value in their presentation, I’d pull the plug and get your money back instead of handing over more of your money.
How the Merchant Credit Card Processing Business Model Works:
As a merchant, you are going to be offering businesses better and cheaper card processing technology, and better customer service compared to your competition.
You are a middleman party that is a negotiator between banking institutions and the business looking to sell to their customers.
Get the business to take the credit card processor that you are personally baking, and say hello to a small percentage commission of the sale of those drunks at the bar who put their credit card in your processor.
If you fall into the hype of easy money and a low-stress business lifestyle that you’d find with something like Affiliate Marketing or Shopify success, you might not like the Merchant Processing business.
Being a Merchant Card Processor requires a high amount of social skills, salesmanship, and the ability to navigate high-pressure situations.
You have to build a background in this business and become an established authority in the Merchant business.
It’s not one of those things where you can do all the work on your computer from home.
You are going out in person to start-up businesses to promote and sell yourself to these potential clients, and telling them why they should be your clients.
If I am being completely honest, this course isn’t for me. I am a lazy slob. I don’t like people, and I don’t want to have my phone tapped to my ear to be available to clients and potential clients 24/7.
That’s why I chose to make my money through the affiliate marketing business model.
I simply write articles through my websites each in different niches that I enjoy, and I don’t have to answer to anyone.
I simply put my headphones in, put on some lofi hip-hop beats, write content, and get paid.
You can read all about how it works here!
But if you are a real go-getter, a smooth talker, and a good salesman, you could be the Saul Goodman of the Merchant Processing world.
“That’s speedy card processing for you!”
Another thing you might want to keep in mind is that this would be a hard passive income stream to build if you already have a full-time job. It could almost be impossible.
This is a very wheeling and dealing heavy business model. Unless you have a job in which you can be on the phone during work hours, you are going to have a tough time making yourself available as needed for your clients.
So in my opinion, this isn’t a viable business model. It is not something you can start small with and slowly build up as you are also working your main job for 40 + hours a week.
You also don’t get location and time freedom with this business model. You can’t do this while going on a vacation, and you also constantly have to stay in communication with your clients as your business starts to grow.
Course Outline:
Each course module has a video for you to watch and after the video, you will be presented a short quiz which you can use to test if you understood the material in the video.
Module 1: What To Expect
Exactly as it sounds, it’s a two-minute-long video created to get you excited about the opportunity of Merchant Processing.
Module 2: Meet your Instructors
Overview of David and Patricia Carlin and all of their successful businesses, plus they go over their expertise in Merchant services and sell to you why they are suitable to be your instructors.
Module 3: What is Credit Card Processing
As it sounds, you get an in-depth explanation of how credit cards are processed through banks. It explains the process of how a merchant sends a request to authorize payment to their payment processor. The payment processor then submits the payment to the cardholder’s bank. All of this and more will be explained in this third module, including how you can benefit from a business standpoint by receiving payments by being the primary merchant for any kind of business that requires any form of digital payments (credit/debit card processing)
Module 4: Why this is a lucrative business
You will be shown the potential revenue streams that you can earn through Merchant Processing. It’s a big hype part of the mini-course.
Module 5: Real residual income
Shows you how you can earn residual income on autopilot, and they flex on you by showing you how they have a client of over 15 years that still pays them to this day. They also do an MLM vs Real Residual Income comparison. Not really sure why, but I would guess that MLM scams were pretty popular when this course was made, so perhaps they did it to set you straight.
Module 6: The size and scope of this opportunity
More hype that emphasizes how much money you can make inside of the Merchant Processing business space.
Module 7: Who is a potential customer
The Carlin’s emphasized hard that anyone can be a potential customer in this module. The reason is that our society as a whole is moving away from having cash on hand and using cards and other forms of digital payments such as Google Pay and Pay Pal.
Every brick and motor business uses credit card processing for payments and digital payments are essentially mandatory for any kind of E-commerce business.
Module 8: Getting your first account
Goes over the process of how to land your first client.
Module 9: Your next steps
Time to make that judgment call. You must sign up to take a call from a sales agent to book a 1 on 1 mentorship with the Carlins.
So, if the first 8 modules made you believe that you have a life calling to become a professional Merchant Processor and that the Carlins are the ones to mentor you to your future success, you have now reached the point of taking that next step towards success.
Do keep in mind however that this mentorship will potentially cost you thousands of dollars.
Outside the mini-course, The Digital Marketing Playbook Upsell $47-$77:
If you got invested in any of the scarcity marketing tactics that come from this course, you may have purchased the Digital Marketing Playbook for $47. It can move up to $79 dollars if you wait. The Digital Marketing Playbook pretty much re-iterates everything you learned about Merchant Services from the mini-course.
However, some new things of value that they did add are marketing tools and templates you can use to reach out to new potential clients with powerful sales templates, enticing graphic designs created to trigger those buying psychological itches in potential clients,
In addition, you will also receive a posting calendar. What this posting calendar does is have a list of scheduling strategies that will help you figure out when to post/reach out to clients, and keep your momentum building in your Merchant Processing career.
Becoming A Highly Paid Agent Upsell $197:
In my opinion, this upsell is pretty much necessary to truly become a Merchant Processor. The reason why is that all of the information you would get in the mini-course, as well as the Digital Marketing Playbook, is essentially useless if you don’t have the information provided in the “becoming a highly paid agent” course.
Here’s why:
None of the other lesser expensive courses show you all of the technical details of how to set up your business. They don’t show you how to set up your credit card processor through the banks, how to compare credit card processing providers, or how to get your merchant account approved.
It’s like being sent out into the battlefield without a rifle if you don’t have this course.
Is The Digital Payments Course A Scam?
The Digital Payments course is not a scam. They teach things that do in theory work, and with hard work and dedication, you can definitely build a passive income stream through the coaching and suggestions provided with the Digital Payments System.
They do however have some scummy tactics in my opinion, I find them to be quite distasteful.
False Scarcity Tactics:
“For a limited time, we will be offering this huge discount on our course”
Now, I’m going to let the timer run out, we will see if the course will suddenly get more expensive…
6 minutes and 32 seconds later
And the price is still $37
I don’t know about you, but if I was going to invest in a personal mentor, I would not appreciate my mentor pushing me with fake scarcity sales tactics. It makes me feel like these guys are trying to insult my intelligence, and in fact, I am quite offended by this to be perfectly honest.
Not to mention the desperate buy now buy now buy now that this kind of tactic screams at your face.
Final Verdict:
The Digital Payments Revolution is a good but not great course that in my opinion, serves as a sales funnel that you pay for to get you to buy more expensive courses provided by David and Patricia Carlin. I truly do not feel that the $37 dollar course is even necessary for you to get an introduction to the Merchant Processing world.
If you look on YouTube, you can easily find just as much information about getting introduced into merchant processing for free, I just looked, and this guy CCSalesPro has great content regarding this business model.
I also feel that this course over glorifies the Merchant Processing model and that they do not do a good job at providing you the context necessary to teach you how hard it actually is to have success inside of this business model.
Yes, you can potentially make a lot of money, but to get to that passive income point, it is going to take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
You will have some unexpected grey hairs in your head by the time you reach your passive income point of the business.
They make it seem that you can just collect checks and work from home with this business model, but the reality is that you will be doing a lot of communication with your clients, and when things go wrong, that’s a lot of calls to your bank.
You’re negotiating lower prices between your vendors too, if the price is too high for your services and you have to pay the bank more money, you might not net a profit providing your processing to a business.
Remember, you are the middle man, you get to handle the problems of the clients on one side, and the owners of the processing on the other side.
That’s why I say this would be a very hard business to start as a side hustle when you are already working 40 hours a week. You would have to practically have your phone attached to your ear.
And if you have a boss that doesn’t allow phone usage in the workplace(like most jobs)..well good luck
Pros:
✅The course introduces you to a business model that has a lot of potential.
✅The evidence supports that this business model will be sustainable long term. Everyone buys things with a digital payment method every single day and cash is becoming less and less popular.
Cons:
❌While this is a profitable business model, it’s profitable for the select few who have the tenacity to get through all of the hardships that come with the stresses of this business model. Not a lot of people have the time and freedom to commit to this kind of business model as they would have in a much more stressless business model like affiliate marketing.
❌False Scarcity Sales Tactics make me feel like this course assumes that I am unintelligent. I don’t appreciate the Warrior Plus style of marketing.
❌You’re basically purchasing a sales funnel to their coaching. Nothing that this course teaches is even useable if you don’t know how to set up your merchant account which is taught in the “Becoming A Highly Paid Agent” upsell course.
The Digital Payments Revolution gets a…
1.5/5
The Digital Payments Revolotion
David Nelly does not approve!
An alternative:
Listen, here is the real honest truth about building passive income streams. No matter what avenue you try to achieve success in acquiring passive income, it is going to be incredibly hard no matter what it is.
However, the best way to go about it is through affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is creating a YouTube channel or Website and creating content for a niche, or an audience of people who have a specific interest in a certain market of products. The premise of affiliate marketing is to help your audience gain knowledge on specific products or certain topics.
Over time, you gain authority and expertise within the niche you have chosen, and as you gain authority, you gain trust. Then, you break into product reviews, recommending services/products that will help out your audience.
You direct your audience to the product that you recommend via an affiliate link, and if your customers click on that affiliate link that brings them to the product, your tracking ID gets enabled in their browser, a technology that communicates to the vendor that you sent the customer to their product. As a result of this, you will receive a commission.
For some inspiration, take a look at this blog post I created that explains how you can make thousands of dollars each month in the hunting niche.
In order to do affiliate marketing properly, you need the best tools on the market, the best training on the market, and the only place you’re going to find that is Wealthy Affiliate.
And that concludes today’s review. I hope that you have gained a little more insight on whether Dubli Network Limited is something for you or not, as well as some education on how to make money online, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments below!
-David Nelly
David Nelly's goal is to set you up with the right pathway to entering the world of making money online!
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