Is Chris Farrell Membership a Scam? An Insider Review 2018
Welcome to my Chris Farrell Membership review!
Guess what?! I've just purchased Chris Farrell Membership:
So, is Chris Farrell Membership a scam?
I'm ready to walk you through this program and give you an insider review.
Let's begin...
Chris Farrell Membership Review Summary
Product Name: Chris Farrell Membership (CFM)
Founder: Chris Farrell
Product Type: Internet Marketing Training Platform
Price: $4.95 (First 7 days), then $37/month or $297/year + $47 upsell
Best For: Beginners in Internet Marketing
Summary: Chris Farrell Membership is a highly rated platform to help beginners learn internet marketing. However, the so-called "community" is pretty inactive now and there are some really outdated contents. Also, they completely lack more advanced training.
Rating: 85/100
Recommended: Yes (But only for beginners)
Despite I recommend Chris Farrell Membership for beginners, it still falls short when compare to my #1 Recommendation (I'll explain in the review below)
More...
Since I've personally tried this program, this is just a warning that this will be a fairly long review with lots of details. The quick navigation below will help you find the information you need 🙂
Who is Chris Farrell?
Chris Farrell is one of the most successful and highly respected internet marketers today.
He started back in 2008 without any experience. Within 6 months after he got started, he had many $250 dollar days. And within 9 months, he had his first $1,000 month.
In August 2010, Chris had one more amazing accomplishment and that is he had a record of making 1 Million dollar in sales within 24 hours.
That's crazy my friend!
Given all his successes and achievements in internet marketing, he decided to give back to the society and help people who want to make money online.
That's why Chris Farrell Membership was formed.
What is Chris Farrell Membership?
Below is a video introduction by Chris about Chris Farrell Membership:
And this is my video review for Chris Farrell Membership if you prefer to watch video:
Chris Farrell Membership is a highly rated service which provides quality step-by-step training, tools and resources to help beginners get the hang of internet marketing.
CFM was voted the #1 Online Income Service for 4 consecutive years from 2011 to 2015 by IMReport Card.
That's a pretty awesome achievement, isn't it?
So, How Does CFM Really Work?
Chris Farrell Membership mainly focus on the concept of Email Marketing & Affiliate Marketing.
Chris explained in the beginning that the 3 main steps to making money online are:
- Find a profitable niche
- Build a list
- Market related products to our niche
This is basically Email Marketing + Affiliate Marketing. For those of you who you're new to this concept, take a look at this flowchart:
Firstly, you need to create a landing page/opt-in page to collect people's Email address.
After you have your landing page set up, you'll drive traffic (visitors) to that page.
Most of the time, you'll offer a FREE gift on your landing page in exchange for people's Email address.
Once you have their Email, you can follow-up with them and build relationship & trust.
Then the last step is to promote relevant (affiliate) products to your list to make money.
By the way, I use bracket for the word "affiliate" because you can either promote other people's products (affiliate products) or your own product, if you have one.
Chris summarizes this process into 3 simple steps that are easy-to-understand for beginners.
I'm Jerry!
I Created My Own 4-Figure Monthly Passive Income at just 21 Years Old!
What You Can Expect from CFM...
Upsells
#1 Chris Farrell's Exclusive Email Swipe File ($47)
Immediately after I paid for the Chris Farrell Membership, I was led to this page offering an One-Time-Offer (OTO):
Chris is offering his personal Email Swipe File to help you get a even better head-start in Email Marketing because a lot of beginners simply don't know how to craft their follow-up Emails in the first place.
However, the problem with this OTO is that prior to this stage, I had no idea that CFM is about Email Marketing. All I knew was that this is a membership with course to help me make money online.
That's why I don't see any value in this immediate upsell. I think a lot of people will just pass up this OTO.
#2 The 4 Week Fast Track Program
At the bottom of every page in the member's area, Chris is promoting this product called The 4 Week Fast Track program.
However, this program is currently closed at the time when this review is written. So I can't give you any info about it.
I guess it is a high-ticket upsell for people who want to have faster results.
5 Main Training Modules
#1 Getting Started
This first module has nothing much. It's basically an introduction by Chris and he'll talk about the 3 steps to making money which I've just explained earlier on.
Right after module 1 when Chris hasn't really go into the content, he'll be promoting his annual membership which can help you save 33% for 1 year of CFM.
You can pass it up if you're still trying the platform. I don't recommend you to upgrade at this point of time.
Just enjoy your first week of membership at $4.95 first.
#2 10 Minutes to Success
This second module is the main course. This is when things start to get more interesting and hands-on.
There are 31 videos in this module and each of them are less than 10 minutes long. That's why it's called "10 minutes to success".
Basically, after going through each video, you'll achieve something, be it big or small.
You'll learn things like:
- Finding a profitable niche
- Getting your own domain name & hosting
- Basics of using WordPress
- Creating your own Email Campaign using Aweber
- Choosing products to sell
- Traffic generation
After going through this module, you'll have your own website/landing page and Email campaign set up and ready to go.
#3 Money Making Labs
Money Making Labs consists of lessons on various topics, such as:
- Facebook Ads
- Video Marketing
- Webinar Hosting
- Creating ebooks
- Training on LeadPages & ClickFunnels
Below is a screenshot of all the lessons available in the Money Making Labs:
This module is like a library where you can learn the things you want to learn.
Not all of them may be relevant to your business so you can just choose the ones you're interested in.
#4 I Love Traffic
I Love Traffic, as its name suggests, it's a module teaching you about the various types of traffic generation and how to apply them into your business.
There are a total of 15 videos teaching things like:
- Paid Ads
- Forum Marketing
- Guest Blogging
- Video Marketing
One of the things I agree with Chris is that you don't need to master all the traffic generation methods. All you need is to master one or two and your business will prosper if you properly execute them.
However, there's one important traffic method that Chris has missed out and that is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is one of the major free traffic method because it is very targeted and effective. The only downside is that it takes a much longer time as compared to paid traffic.
#5 Webinars
Chris claimed that he will be hosting webinars regularly to cover different topics in internet marketing.
However, there are only 7 webinar recordings available in the members area.
I highly doubt that Chris has been moving on to other business and slowly abandoning Chris Farrell Membership...
Tools & Resources
To be honest, I'm pretty disappointed at the tools and resources offered in the Chris Farrell member's area.
What Chris has done is just list down some very general tool recommendations like:
- Aweber (Email Service Provider/Autoresponder)
- LeadPages (Landing Page Builder)
- Optimize Press (Website Builder)
- Microphone
- Camtasia (Screencast), etc...
These are all Chris's own affiliate links which means if you purchase anything through the links on this page, he'll earn an affiliate commission.
I'm not saying this page is totally useless. It's indeed helpful for complete beginners to know what are the recommended tools for each purpose.
But Chris doesn't have any of his own tools. All these are 3rd party tools. In my opinion, he's trying to make more money from his own affiliate commissions in this page.
3 Types of Support
Chris Farrell Membership offers 3 types of support. Let me go through the pros & cons of each type of support...
#1 Knowledge-base Support
CFM has a FAQ page that looks something like this:
However, there are absolutely no categorization within this FAQ thread. All the questions and answers are listed here without any order.
The only thing you can do is to arrange them in terms of date, number of reply, number of views. You can't categorize them into different topics which makes it very hard to find what you're looking for.
Despite having a FAQ page, this page is poorly managed.
#2 Forum Support
This is the forum that Chris always talk about regarding their CFM "community".
He claimed that they have a very helpful and active community in the form of this forum. You can connect with other members and ask questions whenever you need.
However, there are 2 main problems with this "community":
- There are no clear categorization (like the FAQ page)
- The "community" is really inactive!
Take a look at the screenshot above. Look at the pathetic number of views and reply.
That's not the end. Look at who's replying to these threads. Jeff Hope is one of the admin/moderators in CFM. He's not even a regular Chris Farrell member.
If you're looking for a REAL COMMUNITY with helpful and active members, you should really check out Wealthy Affiliate!
#3 Ticket Support
Lastly, you can submit support ticket to get help from Chris support team.
I personally think this type of support is much better than the other two. But one thing you need to know is that it's impossible to get immediate help in Chris Farrell Membership.
Even the support ticket takes time before you can get a solution or even a reply.
I believe a truly great community should have a Live Chat function where members can get immediate help.
And that is the case for Wealthy Affiliate. A 24/7 Live Chat area is available 🙂
Who is Chris Farrell Membership For?
Chris said that Chris Farrell Membership is for 2 main groups of people:
- Complete beginners who have ZERO experience in internet marketing
- People with some experience and probably have a website but they're not generating the income they want
For me, I believe it's more for the first group of people who are complete newbie but want to start an online business.
All the content are targeted towards complete beginners.
For people with some experience in internet marketing, the training might be too basic for them.
If you have some experience but you're not generating the results, you might be doing something wrong. In that case, Chris Farrell Membership may be able to help you.
However, CFM is definitely NOT for people who are looking for intermediate or advanced internet marketing training. You'll just be wasting your time and money.
Check out Wealthy Affiliate for more intermediate and advanced training.
Pros & Cons
The Good
1. Reasonable Price
Chris Farrell Membership costs $37 per month which is pretty affordable. On top of that, you can enjoy the first 7 days for $4.95.
You can even save up to 33% by paying annual fee of $297.
For the amount of value you're getting inside the member's area, the price Chris is charging is pretty reasonable.
Unlike other programs that are charging hundreds or thousands of dollars for their hype!
2. Chris is Very Sincere & Authentic
One thing I like the most about Chris Farrell is his sincerity and authenticity.
Let me explain...
We're all familiar with all the "get rich quick" hypes and all those programs that are making unrealistic claims and promises, right?
Or even those who just show off their flashy sports cars, luxurious lifestyle and mansions. To be honest, most of them are either scams or very low quality products.
Chris Farrell Membership is the very few that never show off those cars and give bold promises, just like Wealthy Affiliate.
They have no intention in creating hypes. This is the kind of program that is truly helpful.
That's not the end...
One thing that Chris surprised me is that he is extremely open about cancelling the membership.
He talked about how to cancel Chris Farrell Membership in his first welcome video. He even places the cancellation link very obvious on every single page in the member's area.
Is there any program out there that is so open about their cancellation process?
Some of them even try to hide it so that it becomes very hard to cancel. Sometimes you need to personally write Emails to them and only get a response after a few days or a week. (That's the worst case scenario)
3. Beginner-Friendly Training
There are a couple of good features about Chris Farrell Membership's training...
- All the video training are step-by-step. It's hard for you to get lost.
- Each video are kept between 3 to 10 minutes long, unlike some other training programs which have videos up to a few hours. This kind of bite-sized video training are easier to consume for most people.
- For some of the videos, there are transcriptions for people who prefer to read than watch videos.
- CFM has a couple of Done-For-You landing page templates for beginners to use straightaway.
4. A Highly Rated Program
Chris Farrell Membership is really a highly rated program. You can do a simple search on Google for "Chris Farrell Membership review".
99% of the reviews give CFM a positive rating.
CFM definitely has its own disadvantages (which I'll cover in the next section) but its advantages outweigh its disadvantages. That's why majority of the people give Chris Farrell a pretty high rating.
5. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Apart from the affordable membership cost, CFM also has a 30-Day refund policy.
So if you're a beginner in internet marketing, I believe there's no risk to give Chris Farrell Membership a try.
Recommended: This is how I create a 4-Figure Monthly Passive Incom e at 21 years old...
The Bad
1. Lack of More Advanced Materials
Just like what Chris has said, CFM is solely to help complete beginners get started in internet marketing.
After I went through the training, I can confirm with you that if you have some experience in Email Marketing & Affiliate Marketing, Chris Farrell Membership will be a waste of your time and money.
All the content are rudimentary. If you're looking for more advanced training, check out Wealthy Affiliate.
2. Some Outdated Content
Since Chris Farrell Membership has been around for almost 10 years, there are a lot of contents that are creating long time ago.
Today, it's really hard for any program to keep up to the change over the internet.
But the example below will show you just how outdated some of the training is:
WordPress version 3.5 was released back in December 2012 (Source: WordPress)
But the training in CFM is still using this version as an example. It's very outdated!
3. Chris Doesn't Offer His OWN Tools & Resources
Like I've mentioned in the Tools & Resources section, Chris Farrell Membership does not have any in-built tools. All the tools recommended by Chris are all 3rd party and require additional expenditure for sure, be it:
- Domain name
- Web hosting
- Autoresponder
- Website/page builder, etc...
Chris offers his affiliate links to all these tools so whenever you purchase anything through his link, he earns a commission.
Given the low cost of the program, it's understandable that they don't have these tools within the platform.
But I think it's still better if they can have in-built tools just like Wealthy Affiliate.
4. Small Community, Inactive Forum 🙁
Chris claimed that there are more than 23K members who have already gone through the training at CFM.
However, take a look at the screenshot below:
This is a screenshot in their member's forum.
There are only 16,169 posts, 2,053 members and a maximum of 44 people online.
I'm not sure why the numbers are so low. This shouldn't be the case for a very popular and active community.
Even after more than a day of my purchase, I'm still the newest member in the community.
That's really weird but I guess the community is not as active as before. This can indicate a sign of the decline for this program.
Is Chris Farrell Membership a Scam?
Nope, Chris Farrell Membership is definitely not a scam. Like I've said many times in this review, it's a high quality platform for beginners in internet marketing.
But it's not the best either. There are some signs showing that this program is becoming outdated and inactive, like I've explained in the cons of CFM.
Chris Farrell Membership VS Wealthy Affiliate
As you can see in my Chris Farrell Membership review, I've mentioned Wealthy Affiliate quite a number of times.
My #1 Recommendation for anyone to learn and earn from Affiliate Marketing is WA.
The reasons are simple. Take a look at this infographic: