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I am going to provide you with a real honest review of Online Trading Academy (OTA). This is based on my experience of attending the introduction of OTA on Dec 3, 2016.
Before I get into my review, I want to tell you the reason why I decided to attend the introduction course offered by OTA.
I am involved with internet marketing. When I received OTA’s offer on my Facebook wall, it caught my attention. Being that I am always looking for other streams of income, I took a look into this and signed up for the course about 10 days before the day of the event.
I received 2 reminder calls from their office in Irvine. The calls were their way of making sure that I was going to attend the event. They also asked me if I knew anyone else that was interested in learning how to trade. I did not so I attended the seminar / sales pitch alone in Woodland Hills, CA.
Oh….during the phone calls from the representative at their Irvine office, I was told that I would receive a tablet for attending….more on that later……
So I show up on a Saturday morning for the event. The first thing I noticed is the location was in a very nice building. Once I got inside, I signed in at the front desk and was told to have a seat in the lobby until the class began.
Since it was early in the morning, it was pretty nice that they had hot food out. It was early and I had not eaten breakfast, so that was perfect timing. I remember that they had eggs, bacon, and potatoes. I have to say, the food was not bad at all. …… Or maybe I was hungry as hell because my stomach was empty.
After a quick bite to eat and waiting in the lobby for about 15 mins, a gentleman came out and introduced himself as the instructor to about 8 of us waiting in the lobby.
The first red flag for me was when the instructor started a conversation with one of the people that would be attending the class. I overheard the instructor asking a very young girl questions. Questions such as:
• Why do you want to learn about day trading?
• What do you do for a living?
• How much money do you have to invest?
Noticed that I wrote “the first red flag for me….” in the last paragraph. I wrote that because the girl that he asked these questions to was 16 years old, and she was there with her mother. It almost felt like he just needed warm bodies in the class
More importantly, being that I had a past career in pharmaceutical sales for many years, I knew these types of questions were qualifying questions. This automatically told me two things about what I signed up for.
1. There was going to be a sales pitch with the class (which was expected)
2. The total cost of entry was not going to be cheap. (later on how much they want out of you to learn this stuff…geez)
The instructor then came to me as I was sitting in the lobby and asked me similar questions as well.
Shortly after, we were moved into the classroom. The classroom felt like I was back in college in a computer lab.
I counted the people that attended this class, and with the people that showed up about 5 mins late, there was a total of 17 people in the session.
The instructor began the session with asking questions similar to the ones that he asked us when we were in the lobby. He also went into telling us that he was going to share information with us that we had never heard before.
Being that 90% of us were new to this online trading thing, everything we were about to hear was going to be new to us.
Basically, we were given a 101 on day trading. The information that was provided was information that someone could find online or from reading a book on the subject matter. What was interesting is he told us OTA has a patent on their online strategy for day trading.
The whole session was about 3 hours and 30 mins long. Again, the information we got there was nothing that anyone of us could not have found doing a Google search.
I would say that out of 3 plus hours of the “learning session”, about 1 hour was actually teaching, and the rest was just a big sales pitch.
Being that I am into online marketing, I quickly noticed that the class was put into a sales funnel.
The sales funnel began when the students in the class seen OTA’s ad to attend the class. For me, I received their Ad on Facebook. The sales funnel looks something like this.
• Facebook ad or another ad on a website (Low Barrier of entry or no cost)
• Class / information session to get your interest and emotions going to make in an impulse buy.
• Asking us for a low payment at the end of the session (gets someone comfortable with purchasing something usually at a low coast with more offers to come at a higher cost)
I noticed this sale funnel after the first offer, and decided that based on some of the flags I was noticing (More red flags that I noticed coming in a few) and what was being explained in the session, that OTA was not for me.
If you do not know what a sales funnel is, you can get more information from the youtube video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYEr6zxSZAI
Moving right along………
After the class was completed, the sales pressure became more intense. Another gentleman came into the room and told us that if we wanted to attend their 3-day course, we had to sign up today. There were no options as far as days to attend except what they provided.
What is funny is that during the whole learning session, the instructor told us they had a three-day course, and the cost was $500. He must have said this about 2-3 times during the 3 hours and 30 mins he had us in his class.
Then comes the classic decrease in price. He goes on to tell us that we will not have to pay $500 for the 3-day course, but the price is now magically $179 or it might have been $150. I forget the exact price, but it was one hundred and something.
The reason for the decrease in price according to the instructor was due to a relationship they had with one of the companies that they use for their online charts to watch the stocks.
At this point, everything about this session was becoming a comedy show to me.
Some other RED FLAGS:
At the start of the meeting, a student that had some experience with day trading asked the instructor what type of credentials he had in order to be able to teach this course.
The instructor quickly avoided the question and gave a quick answer that he would get to that question later. When he did get to it later, which was at the end of the class. He told us that he was a student at OTA just like us, but he also worked for OTA and the information that he provided to us was information that he learned while being a student.
Earlier I mentioned that another gentleman came in the room to tell us about the 3-day class for $179. Well, I decided to play with this guy just a bit. I said to him “ you have us in a marketing funnel.” His response was “ let’s talk about this outside.”
Because the class was just about over, that is exactly what we did, we talked about this outside the class. When I had him alone, I brought up the marketing funnel and I told him I needed to know exactly how much everything was going to cost.
My question was answered with the question of “ How much do you want it to cost?” He then said let me get my manager, and I said I just need the totally cost. During this whole conversation, he was completely defensive and started getting pissed that I was asking these types of questions.
I then said to him; “ The days you have the 3-day course going on, I will be out of town on a business trip. Is there another 3-day blocks that you have available?” His answer was “ If this 3-day class is important to you, you will have to get here.”
At this point, I quickly knew that the instructor was a paid employee of the company and that he and the class instructor are both just sales people trying to get as many people in the class as possible.
Now, do I think someone can go to this class and do well with online trading? I would say yes. But the majority of people that pay big money for this class are not going to do well. I also think that this company does not teach anything that could not be found from another company or professional trader. And of course, I know for any teaching there is going to be a cost.
I found it through research that the totally cost of everything is about $25K. Come on Man! That is a lot of money for many people. That is why it is important to know what you are getting into and to ask questions. Because once you get caught in the marketing funnel and start paying money at different stages of the funnel, it is going to be hard to get out. I can promise you that this company is not going to refund you your money back for payments at a stage that has been completed.
Remember me talking about the offer of the tablet for attending the class. Well, I did get a tablet, but I had to ask for it and it was a very cheaply made tablet. I would not even give my three-year-old this tablet for fear of being a cheap skate.
BTW, I don’t have a three-year-old.
If you are reading this, you probably received an email or saw an ad from OTA. It is my guess that you also probably starting doing a Google search to see if this company (OTA) is legit or not. Lastly, you are probably looking to earn extra money or even replace your income. Well, there are many different ways of doing this without spending $25K.
One is through marketing online. Below is a solid reference where you can learn how to earn money to replace or supplement your current income. And it is free to low start up:
In conclusion, I am not saying that OTA is bad. Honestly, I could not tell you because I really don’t know. With me not having gone through the entire course, I could not tell you what you get after paying your $25K.
What I can tell you is that I got more than one bad vibe from attending the OTA free course. Also, when someone gets upset when I ask legit questions about a program and they give me the runaround…I am out.
Lastly, do an OTA Review Google search where people talk about the program. See what they have to say about their experience of OTA. Oh and don’t go to OTA website testimonials ….you know their reference are all going to be good and positive there.
I hope this helps someone before they decided to break the bank using Online Trading Academy.