David Sharpe has over a decade of experience as a digital marketer and has generated over $250 million in revenue. He went from being a high school dropout to co-founding 3 multi-million dollar companies, which include The Empower Network and Legendary Marketer. To date, David has helped over 500,000 entrepreneurs start and grow their online business.
This David Sharpe review will uncover if his online marketing programs teach you a high income skill that will put you on the path to earning a long-term passive income each month or not. Also, I'll compare and contrast affiliate marketing with local lead generation to see which business model has the best passive income potential.
David Sharpe Pros & Cons
Pros
Companies like Forbes and Entrepreneur.com have featured David in their articles.
David has made over 9-figures in sales online
David is an expert affiliate marketer who shares his knowledge and that of other digital entrepreneurs in his program
Thousands of students have become successful because of David's training
Cons
Affiliate marketing can make you money, but it won't be something you can predict month to month.
It's getting more expensive to run paid ads when promoting products on social media
Legendary Marketer comes with too many expensive upsells
Who is David Sharpe?
David Sharpe is the CEO and co-founder of Legendary Marketer. He is from St. Petersburg, Florida and attended Clearwater High School. While in school, he got involved with drugs and alcohol. When he was in 9th grade, he dropped out. At age 16, he became a father. For over a decade, David battled with drug and alcohol addiction and was homeless at one point. In 2008, at 24 years old, he got clean from drugs and alcohol, slept on his dad's couch and worked in construction to make ends meet.
David eventually discovered internet marketing, and he began seeking mentors. He bought online courses and coaching programs from successful digital entrepreneurs. In only 7 years, he had changed his life by starting The Empower Network with his partner David Cross. Together, they did over $150 million in sales.
David has now traveled all around the world making millions of dollars from affiliate marketing, his online programs, and live events.
On the David Sharpe YouTube channel, he has over 27.2K subscribers and often posts content, which includes interviews with other online entrepreneurs who are getting significant results with their online businesses.
What is The Dave Sharpe Show podcast?
The Dave Sharpe Show podcast is podcast David Sharpe started on September 2, 2019. The purpose of this podcast was to share free advice about online marketing and sales. His last episode was on March 16, 2020. You can access his podcast on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify.
David Sharpe Net Worth
David Sharpe has an estimated net worth of $200 million dollars if you consider all the coaching and digital products he's sold, but also the cars and houses he bought for his parents and for himself. This shouldn't be too far off, as we know he's generated over $250 million in sales with the 3 companies he co-founded.
What is Legendary Marketer?
Legendary Marketer is an online education platform that David Sharpe founded in 2017. His goal was to provide online courses, coaching, and live mastermind events for people looking to make money online. The Legendary Marketer products teach you several ways to make money online such as with affiliate marketing and creating a digital product. They even give you the chance to join their affiliate program. This is like what the Wealthy Affiliate program offers. You also learn how to increase the number of subscribers on your YouTube channel, how to create an online course, how to become an online consultant, and more. They offer 7 online training programs and one in person mastermind event called the Legendary Marketer Mastermind live event.
Is Legendary Marketer a pyramid scheme?
Legendary Marketer is not a pyramid scheme because they teach actual skills in their digital products and live event. They do have many upsells from one program to the next, but it is not a pyramid scheme. If it was, they wouldn't have all the positive testimonials they do on their sales page. Those testimonials are a testament to the Legendary Marketer worth.
What are the Legendary Marketer products or services?
The Legendary Marketer products or services are:
15 Day Business Builder Challenge is a training on how to get your business set up in 15 days. When you're done with the 15 day business challenge, there are upsells to their higher ticket programs.
Andre Wisdom of Wisdom Speaks is an affiliate marketer, blogger, and former student of David Sharpe. He joined the 15-Day Business Builder Challenge and makes over $13,000 monthly, besides his one-on-one coaching calls worth $500. Moreover, Andre is an affiliate marketer of David’s online course.
Legendary Marketers Club is what they call the "Netflix of marketing" training. This high ticket product is a subscription that gives you access to a library of training videos and resources on everything you need to start and scale your online business. There are also live coaching calls hosted each week for Q&A.
Affiliate Marketing Business Blueprint is a course that teaches you how to get started with affiliate marketing. They show you how to find profitable products and how to generate sales by using a sales funnel.
The Digital Products Business Blueprint will help you turn your knowledge and skills into a digital product/online course you can sell. They help you with your business plan and coach you each step of the way.
The Coaching and Consulting Business Blueprint is a training course that will teach you how to become a coach or consultant who works on a monthly retainer or contract basis and services clients through Zoom or Skype.
In the Events and Masterminds Business Blueprint, they show you how you can make money by planning and hosting live masterminds.
Read my Legendary Marketer review for more details on the platform Dave Sharpe co-founded.
What was the Empower Network?
The Empower Network was a multi-level marketing (MLM) company that helped business owners make money online with their blogging system. David Sharpe founded the company in 2011 with his partner, David Wood. The Empower Network hosted one of the largest blogging communities and publishing platforms. In 2017, though, they filed for bankruptcy, and David Sharpe focused all of his efforts on the Legendary Marketer platform.
Why the Empower Network shutdown
The Empower Network shutdown because of an accounting error, according to co-founder David Cross. From 2011 to 2013, because of bad accounting, they were paying more commissions than they had money. They took the company from doing $7 million in sales to doing $300K in sales and still had to pay back money to their members. Eventually, the Empower Network had no money, and they had to go bankrupt.
David Sharpe Positive Reviews
Kevin Harrington is the original Shark from the hit TV show "Shark Tank". He collaborated with David Sharpe and partnered with him because David had already built an over $200 million dollar business. Kevin wanted to make sure he was working with the best entrepreneurs in the business. He spoke highly of David as an online marketer in his video testimonial.
Jeff Dingman shared his testimonial on the Legendary Marketer sales page. He highly recommended David Sharpe and his mentorship because he of how David shows he cares about all of his students. Jeff said that David's approach is unique and that if you want to take your business to the next level, signing on to work with David was the way to go.
None of the Legendary Marketer students shared how much their financial situation changed for the better in any of their video testimonials, which leaves the question: how much money are David Sharpe's students actually making after taking his courses?
Many of David's positive reviews end up being his affiliates.
David Sharpe Negative Reviews
On The No Boss Life YouTube channel, this YouTuber mentioned a few downsides of joining Legendary Marketer. She said that Legendary Marketer is good at enticing people with a well-crafted funnel but once you get into the training, they only teach you basic information. According to her, each upsell is overpriced and leaves you with much to desire. Also, they make it so that most of the money you earn is from promoting their program. She also said that the coaching is mediocre and they keep upselling you to higher ticket programs.
On Reddit, another person said that as a Legendary Marketer affiliate, you only get paid your commissions once every six months.
They also stated that many members share how much they make in the forum. But their "so-called" success is questionable, being that many of those members had joined Legendary Marketer only two weeks prior to posting. It seems odd that they reach such high income levels so soon after joining.
Overall, you won't find any seriously negative reviews about David Sharpe.
Is David Sharpe a scam?
David Sharpe is not a scam because he has made over $250 million in sales online while helping over a half a million people become financially free with affiliate marketing. Some of the biggest names in the world of business also work with him because he has proven that he is a legit internet entrepreneur. To see what he's currently talking about, you can tune in to his YouTube channel since he hasn't uploaded an episode on his podcast for almost 3 years.
Is affiliate marketing still profitable in 2024?
Affiliate marketing is still profitable in 2024 because, according to Statista, the affiliate marketing industry will be worth over $8.3 billion this year. Also, it has a low barrier to entry because of the low startup costs. As long as you can do a good job promoting other companies' products by creating profitable social media ads, and sales funnels, you'll make money with affiliate marketing. Just know that the income you make with affiliate marketing will not be predictable each month because you don't own any digital assets.
My Final Thoughts on David Sharpe
David Sharpe has made hundreds of millions of dollars teaching affiliate marketing, but the Legendary Marketer program feels like an MLM. David Sharpe is legit, but affiliate marketing isn't the best online business model for beginners because generating traffic is difficult.
To succeed with affiliate marketing, you need to rank organically for global search terms. The problem with that is that there are thousands of affiliate marketers from all around the world trying to rank for the same keywords you are. This is an enormous challenge if you're creating a blog. You can create a YouTube channel, but you've got to publish content often, which is time-consuming.
Paid advertising is another way to generate traffic, but it is getting more expensive with each passing year. Meta's CPM has gone up 61% each year the past few years. Google's CPM has gone up 75% and the CPM on Tik Tok has risen 185% each year. The trend is that paid traffic with social media ads will continue to get more expensive. Most affiliate marketers don't stand a chance in this business model unless they promote offers and use landing pages that use unreasonable hype to entice people to take action. If they aren't being deceptive in their marketing, they won't make much money.
The biggest issue with affiliate marketing is that you are not in control of your business because you don't own any assets. You are promoting someone else's business instead of yours. This is why your affiliate commission is low and controlled by the company whose products you're promoting. Also, if they decide to stop selling a product, you won't make anymore commission and you'll have to end all of your campaigns.
Another downside to not being in control in the affiliate marketing business model is that a company can change their affiliate links. When this happens, you then have to go through and replace any affiliate links you've placed in your marketing content. This can take some time and if you don't realize you need to replace your links, it can be costly.
Local lead generation is a better business model than affiliate marketing, here's why...
With local lead generation, you are in control of your business because you own your lead generation sites. They are your digital properties and assets, which means no one is going to fire you.
How much money you make will depend on your ability to rank your sites at the top of the search results in the city and niche of your choosing. If you can do that, all you need to do is choose who you send the leads to and how much they have to pay you each month for exclusive leads.
This tree care site is generating leads for a local contractor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who pays me $2,000 every month on autopilot.
Ever since I built this site over 7 years ago, it has paid me $2,000 passively. All I had to do was take a few hours to build the site and a few weeks to rank it after doing my due diligence on the market. The same goes for my over 50 lead generation sites that I've ranked and rented.
The control you have in this business model can allow you to live a life of financial freedom that you just don't get with other online business models like affiliate marketing.
Over 7400 students have signed on to learn how to create and build up their digital real estate portfolio and work every day to rank and rent them.
To learn how you can earn a predictable income each month while taking control of your business and income, check out the local lead generation training program.
