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Welcome to our definitive Part-Time YouTuber Academy review.
This is a YouTube course by Ali Abdaal, a doctor-turned-entrepreneur. My team and I spent several hours researching the training – and Ali himself – to see if it lives up to the hype.
(Have you taken this course? Add your rating!)
If you’re eager to learn…
Then you’ve come to the right place.
Hey, I’m Niall Doherty.
I quit my last 9-to-5 job back in 2010.
Since then, I’ve earned my living online in various ways. Revenue for my latest business is at $1+ million and counting.
I’m on a mission to accurately rate and review all the best YouTube courses. My team and I are spending many hours investigating these courses and getting feedback from real students.
All that to say: we know a thing or two about YouTube and making money online.
The course aims to help you monetize your YouTube channel by consistently uploading quality content for your selected niche. At first glance, it’s pretty simple, as it only requires you to post consistently…
In practice, this is a very challenging task. It usually takes months – if not years – to become profitable on YouTube. And even if you put forth the effort, there is no guarantee that you will succeed.
Part-Time YouTuber Academy is cohort-based. Its doors only open to students several times per year. Our research suggests that this happens 3-4 times each year.
This approach apparently gives both Ali and his guest teachers a chance to focus on every student individually. The coaches promise to give members feedback for each video they make during the course, helping them hone their skills as the course progresses.
Here is Ali’s announcement of the sixth cohort…
Ali tends to emphasize that this is a good course for “anyone who wants to take YouTube seriously”.
Despite the promises made on the sales page, we’ve seen some former students arguing that the course works best for people who have already published a lot of videos.
As one student wrote:
“the course’s examples and advice are most easily applied by intermediate YouTubers (which I’d defined as YouTubers with, say, 50-150 videos and 2,000 to 100,000 subs).”
– Marc Koenig, Inside Ali Abdaal’s Part-Time YouTube Academy
Marc also noted that the course is a bit too focused on finding one’s own niche early on. That alone makes the course more suitable for somewhat experienced YouTube content creators. While finding a niche is indeed crucial, it can take a while.
It is also argued that new YouTubers shouldn’t worry about analytics early on, as that would likely just confuse and discourage them.
For the most part, yes.
Ali Abdaal’s success story is rather unique. He was a doctor before deciding to focus full-time on YouTube. The decision was met with a certain amount of criticism.
Chances are you’ll even bump into comments calling him a capitalist because of the switch. Others occasionally call him out for his overemphasis of “toxic productivity”…
However, the praise for Ali on YouTube far outweighs the criticism.
He now has more than three million subscribers on YouTube, so he’s apparently doing lots of things right. With such a big online presence, we’re inclined to believe that, as far as Part-Time YouTuber Academy goes, he walks his talk.
There may be more competition now than ever on YouTube, but Ali’s cohort-based system works around that. In theory, it should help him adjust the course to current trends in the event of anything changing drastically.
A quick skim of the sales page reveals many success stories.
However, many of those success stories avoid talking about results, only praising the course and its overall influence on them instead. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but we’d like to see some numbers. Reviews that do mention them, unfortunately, aren’t that recent, but at least the success can easily be measured on YouTube.
Just keep in mind that the course is still fairly new, and Ali does say that it usually takes 2+ years to break through on YouTube…
It’s good to see many students sharing their before and after transformations, increasing the odds of the course being legit. The jump in quality of their videos becomes apparent as soon as you put their old and new work together.
Overall, while I’d like to see more clear success stories for Part-Time YouTuber Academy, I’ve seen enough to believe the course serves students well if they can put in the work consistently.
The price may discourage new YouTubers considering joining the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. While I believe that you’re getting solid bang for your buck whichever tier you go for, many may still consider the course to be expensive.
Cohort members are divided into three tiers:
During my research, I didn’t find any legit discount or coupon code for Part-Time YouTuber Academy.
But there is a scholarship option…
Part-Time YouTuber Academy does offer refunds, but they are action-based…
“We want the investment in this course to be an absolute no-brainer for you. So, if you watch the video lessons, submit a video for feedback each week, and still don’t find the course useful, drop us an email and we’ll happily refund your full payment within 60 days of the start of the course.”
The good thing here is that the length of the refund period is considerably longer than the course itself. You have the time to complete the course, and even play around afterwards.
But you need to do the work before requesting a refund. As the same sales page promptly repeats…
“However, please note that the money-back guarantee only applies if you actually do the work and complete the assignments. If you don’t do the work, you won’t get any value from the course, and you’ll have taken a place away from someone else.”
This is a live course that lasts five weeks. There are two live sessions per week, and every week, the team covers a certain aspect of the journey to having a big YouTube presence.
Just the name of each week tells you a lot about them…
This amounts to more than 20 hours of primary training material.
When you finish the course, you’ll stay part of the PTYA community, even with the lowest tier. The amount of bonus material tends to depend on your tier, but you get many benefits with each of them.
This is a live course, meaning all lessons will be presented to you in video form. All videos go straight to the point, yet hold a lot of value.
Just keep in mind that, if you already have a big YouTube presence, the beginning lessons may bore you…
“Again for most new to YouTube, this is all fantastic stuff – but for me honestly, it was around this week where I started wondering whether this was a good investment for me since it was fantastic information for those new to YouTube, but wasn’t anything that new to me.”
– Pete Matheson, Ali Abdaals’ Part-Time YouTuber Academy – A Review
Here are a few things to like about Part-Time YouTuber Academy…
A few things to be wary of regarding Part-Time YouTuber Academy…
If you already have a bunch of videos and some subscribers – and you can afford the entry fee – you will likely find this course worthwhile.
But if you have no experience whatsoever, or are an established YouTuber already, you may be disappointed by certain sections of the course.
Just don’t forget that, should you decide to join PTYA, you will need to take YouTube very seriously if you want to succeed.
We’re on a mission to find the best “make money online” course, based on real student feedback and our extensive research.
Here’s our top 5…
This was my second experience taking a cohort-based course online, and I was impressed. There is a lot of useful information presented in an accessible way.
The course is very practical. Also, having a deadline to upload a video each week and very quick feedback is invaluable. It has transformed my YouTube channel and will likely help me turn it into a valuable asset.
The course is expensive, but I feel it was worth it for me. I have an existing online business so do not intend to make money from YouTube, but rather use it as a way to increase my reach and get leads.