53: “Online Courses Are Dead”? What’s Actually Dying—And What’s Next (Doors Open)

Amy Porterfield just discontinued Digital Course Academy—and the internet has thoughts. But here's what I think: online courses aren't dead. What's dying is the low-touch, "here's your login, good luck" model. In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I'm pulling back the curtain on why I think DCA closed, what the future of online education actually looks like, and how I've built my own programs (like The Visual Edit) to prioritize real support, accountability, and results. If you've ever felt burned by a course you bought or you're wondering how to create offers that actually help people succeed, this one's for you.

*Check out the full show notes for this episode HERE.

Things I cover inside this episode:

• Why Amy Porterfield really discontinued DCA—and the transparency piece that was missing from her announcement
• The difference between low-touch courses that flop and high-touch programs that get results (hint: it's all about support and accountability)
• How I structure The Visual Edit for a 70%+ completion rate—including weekly calls, personalized feedback, and community accountability
• Why my Black Friday course sale brought in $22,500 with zero built-in support (and what that says about trust and community)
• The exact elements that make online programs work in 2026: capped enrollment, hands-on coaching, and leadership (not just lectures)

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

• Episode 49: Interview with The Visual Edit alumni, Emily—hear exactly how hands-on support transformed her business and confidence
• The Visual Edit DOORS ARE OPEN—my 6-week high-touch experience for creating a cohesive visual identity (doors open now with $300 off extended. Capped at 30 women! Doors close Friday, Feb 6th.
• MISSED This Round of TVE? Hop on the waitlist for the next round!

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Transcript

Emily Connors 0:00

the other reason that low touch models really struggle is, you know, without that community energy and a leader who's like present in the process, the motivation seriously tanks. That's just the fact of it. So, no online courses aren't dead, but the bars moved, the standard has changed, and now, you know, like support that you can feel and transparency from the leader that you can trust. Is what's gonna win. Today I'm sharing something that's been buzzing in our little corner of the internet. Amy Porterfield Discontinuing Digital Course Academy. AKA D. C-A-A-K-A. The go-to course for how to make an online course. And what does that say about the state of online courses? and today I'm gonna pull back the curtain on the visual edit one of my online courses, programs. I like to call it an experience, honestly, it's not just a, it's a whole experience, but because the door's open today, and I want you to know exactly why this program is built the way it is, why I've had so much success financially and results wise for my students with my online courses. And honestly it all ties beautifully, with where I think online education is headed and what consumers need to be successful. So, quick note before we dive in. Everything I'm about to share about Digital Course Academy is my opinion. Based on public information, based on feedback from you guys, my community, and my dms, based on my own personal experience as a student of hers back in the fall of 2020. And I'll be clear where I'm speculating and, and why. Cool. Cool. all right. That's just my little disclaimer, how to throw that in there. So our industry is having a moment for sure. Anyone who has an online business, right? So, Amy p as I like to call her, announced she's Sunset, DCA, on her podcast. This was a few weeks ago, but by the time you listen to this, it's probably like a month or a little bit more ago. And if you've been online for more than five minutes, you know, DCA has been a pillar program for a very long time. I'm not mad about the pivot, like we all pivot. I mean that, that is like the definition of entrepreneurship. Like we can pivot and, and we do because a lot of us are multi-passionate and. Industry changes and we need to kind of keep up with it, right? And kind of change with it and be able to read the room. So my gripe with Amy P is the way that it was presented as the reason behind her why. So on her podcast. She shared that after her final launch, which was last fall of 2025, she hopped on a zoom with her team, which I believe is quite large. And she just knew, right? She just knew that's what she said. And listen, like you know me if you know me, I'm big on intuition. I actually am like a very big proponent of listening to your gut and, and you know, following your intuition. And I've made several. Life and business decisions based on my intuition. But I also think there was a clear monetary motivation at play, and I really wish that had been shared. More, or I was gonna say more plainly, but just shared in general. Just, just shared instead of just like, I just knew it was it and you know, now I'm gonna go on and help women who make six figures and, and that's what her plan is. Okay. So I heard from an insider who's in this world and works for one of these big dogs. Uh, you know, big marketing dogs that Amy P's last launch brought in millions less than previous years. not just like, oh, like 1 million. Like, like millions. So she's not hitting the mark. Okay. And listen, that happens. You know, markets change, offers need, you know, reconfiguring, retooling, whatever My disappointment was that it, it wasn't named right. Transparency is one of my brand values. It is so important to me to be transparent with my audience, because I think I'm a few steps a, a ahead of a lot of people in my audience, and I feel that I owe it to you. Uh, to be transparent about if I'm gonna make a ginormous business move like that, I'm gonna tell you why. And it's not just gonna be, I hopped on a Zoom and I just knew like it's gonna be more tangible things, right? And again, I'm not a big business values person. Like I don't spend a lot of time on that. But if I were, a transparency would be a hundred percent on my list. And when I talked about this whole thing, this whole saga Amy Gate, in my stories, the overwhelming feedback from you was. I took it and it didn't really work for me or I got, you know, I got little to absolutely no support from anybody behind the scenes. or Amy had grown to a point where I unfollowed her a few years ago because she just felt completely unrelatable. So those were like the main themes. But then you wanted to know for me, like two things. Are online courses dead? What do I think? And. Is AI playing a role? so, and I'm gonna answer that, don't worry, but here's my honest, honest opinion. I do not believe that online courses are dying. I, I really don't like at all. What I think is dying is, the way that Amy was promoting'em through her webinars where she, you know, teaches you some free stuff for like 45 minutes and, or maybe 30, maybe less, and then goes into an full on pitch of her program and listen, she's a. Phenomenal marketer and a phenomenal seller. She, she got me, that's how she got me. I was on a webinar and I had brought my husband to make him watch it with me'cause I knew I wanted to buy it. And she sold us like it was no one's business. In fact, my husband wasn't even thinking of making an online course and then he decided to make one after watching it with me. So he signed up, obviously like one account and just both did it. So. What I think is dying is the low touch one to thousands ratio. No personal feedback, no hands-on support. I think that enough people have been burned, and I've talked about this in previous episodes by enough. Crappy creators out there, that there's a lot of mistrust and or they've now caught onto, Hey, I've bought 10 online courses and I haven't completed one of'em, so clearly this is not gonna work for me anymore. Right? So no online courses are not dead. but I think that transparency and support are like the new course standard. It's not a bonus. Right. It, it literally is the standard. and again, let's go back to those questions. Are online courses over, no. I'm saying no. They're not dead. What's dying is the passive, Hey, here's a login. Good luck to you approach. And And even that, I argue, some people high me still have luck with, I ran a Black Friday sale in, uh, 2025 and I made$22,500 on one single instant Access online course with zero support. It, it baked into it, right? Like it's just literally like an online course that you can log into and you consume it on your own time.$2,500 is, is not a drop in the bucket. I was hoping for five and I wanna do an episode more about how I approached the sale and why I think it was so successful. But that's closer to Black Friday for sure. so why low touch online course model struggle is because there's no accountability loop. You know, that like, hey, we're starting on this day, we're ending on this day. We've got a community, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. the personalization is completely minimal or non-existent. you're gonna do your best. You're hopefully gonna purchase a course that is well made and gives a lot of examples and templates and is gonna get you from point A to point B, but there's no one to really say, Hey, what do you think of this? You know, the leader, and the distance between like, watch this. And I implemented this and got a result is too big to cross for most people alone. That's me. I bought an online course on how to start a YouTube channel last year, and do you know how many lessons I've gotten through? Two outta like 50, and I just can't get myself to do it. I have so many other things that I need to do, and I'm really atrocious at blocking out time to do something like that. So I haven't done a darn thing. And frankly, um, the other reason that low touch models really struggle is, you know, without that community energy and a leader who's like present in the process, the motivation seriously tanks. That's just the fact of it. So, no online courses aren't dead, but the bars moved, the standard has changed, and now, you know, like support that you can feel and transparency from the leader that you can trust. Is what's gonna win. So why do I think my Black Friday online course sale worked? I've just built a phenomenal community and I've, I've worked so hard to gain that know, like, and trust from them. And so, if you've ever bought anything from me before, you knew that this course was going to be full of support and information, and I think they went for it. I just think people trusted me. And they went for it. And they knew that if you had a problem or you needed to like ask me something, you would get to me. You know, you are not getting to Amy PI mean, I was in her course. No one talks to Amy P and that was tough because we were, you know, thrown thousands of us thrown into a Facebook page where we would ask questions and like we were trying to answer each other's questions when none of us even knew what the hell we were doing. You know what I mean? Like we really needed the leaders. To, to help guide us, but there really weren't any. So it was like a blind leading the blind. so what does support look like in an online course? In my world, I wanna share how I design my online courses for my students to get outcomes. And results, not just access. And this is how I've always run my live programs. I call them programs. Like to me, I don't know, a course is something you buy and you have no support. A program is like more robust And like I said, this round of the visual edit, hi, door's open today. Uh, I'm calling in an experience.'cause I actually had one of my past students DM me and say. This is not a course, it's not even a program. It's a full on experience. And I was like, Hmm, I kind of love that. Thank you so much. I'm gonna take it. So in the visual edit, I cap enrollment. So I think this is really important. I think it shows the people signing up. Yes, it's an investment, but also yes, you're one of very few women. I, myself am in there and I always have one co-coach. And this round, I'm probably gonna have two. and that's not because I wanna do less at all. It's actually because my two co-coach who I trust more than anything and have done this with me before, are both in busy, stages, either business wise or personally. So they both kind of feel like they would feel better if they were both there to support me, and I totally respect that. So 30 women, I, I cap it at a certain number that I know that I can help. Without freaking out or not being able to get to everybody. Okay. So if I took more than that, it would be hard and I'd be working probably more than I want to and I'd be pretty stressed. so I've done this many times. I've done 40, I've done 45, I've done 25 Thirty's my sweet spot. So these women are loved. I get to know every single one of them. I get to know their businesses. I get to know, what they're trying to achieve. I know their offers, like I know it. And, that feels really good to me. I don't want someone to just be like a, a, a number, you know? And the next thing that I do is that I host, uh, weekly calls. So how I structure my online programs is one of two ways. Either I'm teaching live on a Monday or Tuesday for an hour, and then you get to digest that and, and work on homework. We'll get to that in a minute. And then we do a live q and a on like a Thursday. Another hour long q and a come with questions, submit questions if you can't come, or I prerecord everything that gets released on a Sunday or a Monday. It takes about an hour to get through. They do that, and then we have a live call on Thursday, again, q and a, so that works really well. I, I don't know the, the homework part, the weekly homework is tied to what we've learned that week, and I'm telling you, if you do the homework, you move the needle forward in your business. Hands down. If you do the homework, you submit it into our community. So there's also a community layer that's open 24 7. It's just us in there. It's, there's threads per week and you post your homework per week. And me or my two coaches are weighing in on your homework. and you know, when you're in there and you start seeing like, oh, two women posted their homework. Oh, seven women posted their homework. I'm telling you something about that accountability. Really makes people, and this is the other reason I ca I cap it at 30 women, the feedback is extensive. It is a loom recording, most likely going through what you've provided or shared, or it is an extensive reply written out. and the visual edit, it tends to be on loom because. A lot of visual stuff and I like to just go through it. And I'm not a writer. my one co-coach is more of a writer, so she actually prefers to kind of write it out and, you know, it just depends on kind of who gets to. Your stuff first. I've run this particular program, the visual edit, uh, six times. And uh, the current version has evolved a lot over the last four years, and I consistently see about a 70% completion rate, if not higher. And that's high. You guys, I'm proud of that number and not because completion is the only metric, but because completion usually correlates to. I got real world results that I can feel and use, and that's huge. You can build any curriculum. The difference is whether your people feel led and supported. And honestly, I'm not in there as just a teacher, like I'm in there as a leader. I'm in there as a teammate. Sometimes I even do the course with you. In fact, this round of the visual edit, I'm like. I need to do this too. and the first round of the messaging edit, which was last fall, the whole time, I was thinking, oh my God, I need to do, like, I, I know that sounds ridiculous, but I need to do this. so I'm in there, I'm in there with you I'm in the comments. I'm in your Canva designs. I'm fixing your designs. I am in your post saying, okay, this version is close, but let's tweak this, this, and that. Like. I'm all hands on, right? And leadership is gonna be like that passive content every time. So the market changed. And so I changed, two years ago I had a 12 week program called the Insta Canva Collective. And where it was all together, it was the visuals and the messaging because everyone was doing signature courses. Everyone was doing 10 to 12 week courses, right? Everything in the kitchen sink kind of version of their, what they had to teach 12 weeks. Super comprehensive, very long, amazing in theory. But the market shifted and what I was hearing from my people was. This is too long. I, I want results faster or I need the messaging part and not the visuals. Or I need the visuals and not the messaging. And so I separated them, which is funny'cause that's, that's how it started. I literally had the one and then the other. And then I put them together, and now I'm taking them apart again. So now I'm doing like six week high touch experiences to get you out of the learning mode and into implementation with me right there besides you. So here's how it actually feels inside the visual edit. There's the weekly teaching, there's the weekly q and as. There are clear weekly assignments with step-by-step workflows and templates, and anything I can provide to you to make it feel easier, and, and I do. there's personalized feedback on every single thing that you post inside of our community. You'll always hear from one of us, whether that's on a loom recording or it's written out. so that your work improves real time and often we're actually just doing the work for you. and then there's the accountability factor. So I offer accountability buddies. This is something that Amy did in DCA, I loved it. she gave us a spreadsheet and she said, put your name on here and find someone to pair up with. And add in that layer of accountability. And I'm telling you, this works like a freaking charm. if you're getting on a call every week with someone and they're going through the same thing as you, and you told them you were gonna finish X, Y, Z, and they said the same, you better believe I'm showing up to that call and I have it done because I'm a people pleaser and I don't like to let people down and I'm competitive. So what you walk away with at the end of the visual edit, the end of our six weeks is a, a cohesive. A visual identity that looks like you and feels so good, it's gonna boost your confidence and reduce the time it takes to design things like you don't even know, uh, a super organized Canva. That's not like a hot mess. I'm talking, our homepage is optimized. We have folders, we have pinned designs, we have, uh, reusable templates. Okay. That we're designing together. Together, we're doing that. And, then again, the, yeah, the reusable template bank, like carousels, reel covers, uh, promotional type content, whatever you need. We're doing it inside. We're also gonna go over how to make reels. We're also gonna go over how to create carousels just right within Instagram. Right. Like that cool. That trend where it's like a picture and like text on top. I'm gonna teach you everything I know about reels and everything I know about carousels. And then we're gonna dive into what it looks like to batch ahead and a really great tracking, system so that you can do more of what's working and not reinvent the wheel. So again, it's not like a portal and hear, good luck. TTYL. It's leadership. I'm in the community with you. I'm on calls every week and I love this course so much. I'm telling you, it is just, it's just powerful. I know it is.'cause again, I've run it six times and the feedback I get. It gets better and better every time if you need a little proof. I did an episode a couple episodes ago, episode 49, my interview with a past alumni, Emily, and, you can go listen to that right after this. I'll link it in the show notes, but you can hear exactly what changed for her and how the hands-on support really got her from point A to point B. Okay? I know this industry can feel noisy. I know it can feel disappointing. I'm a bit disappointed in what I've seen from some of the women that I feel like I kind of grew up on listening to when growing my business. but the answer's not to burn it all down. In fact, I saw somebody post a real saying, online courses were dead, and I wanted to reach out and be like. Like, why are you saying that? Like, it is just not true. Like, but you'll, you, if you guys wanna find someone saying something on the internet, no matter what it is, you're gonna find it. So if you're looking for proof that online courses are dead, you'll see those reels. If you're looking for proof that they're not, hopefully you come across me. the answer's just to build it differently, to be honest about what's working and what isn't and why you're changing it and how you're updating it. And like Then show up for your people with real practical support. Online courses aren't dead low touch. A hundred percent is dead. And if you've been craving a space where you're actually led and not just lectured to, I would love to see you inside the visual edit. there's the$300 discount for the first 48 hours only. That means that ends on Wednesday morning at 6:00 AM and yeah, the doors are open. If decision fatigue is the reason you're not showing up and posting to grow your business, the visual edit is going to replace that fatigue with structure. Direction and a super repeatable plan. All right, my friend. Thank you for listening. If this episode sparks something in you, share it with another solopreneur who's been burned maybe by a passive course, or wants to hear that online courses aren't dead or just needs to hear that support actually does still exist in our industry. go queue up episode 49 for that Past client convo, and it's a really great companion to this episode. Okay, I'll see you on the inside. I hope you're one of 30, or I'll just see you next week.