Today, we’re going to take a look at The Arbor Academy by Chad Kimball. Is this course legitimate? Find out in this The Arbor Academy review.
Many people are surely used to the 9-5 day job as their primary method to earn a living. And to be fair, there’s nothing really wrong with it.
However, a growing number of people are realizing that this daily grind isn’t really for them. It could be due to several factors like work stress, health concerns, or simply because it’s not suitable for them.
But the situation right now is quite tough. The current pandemic has left some people with little choice. Because if they resign, they might have a harder time finding a new one.
Or so they thought.
Thankfully, the internet has presented us with a good number of opportunities to earn money. Far more than you may have thought.
But one should still be vigilant when being presented with a moneymaking opportunity. Because some of them are actually scams in disguise.
And this is what this The Arbor Academy review is for.
In this review, we’re going to see what The Arbor Academy is, and what it can offer for you. More importantly, we’re going to help you find out if this business model is not only legit or not, but also if this will also work for you.
So before you decide to invest in this program, make sure to read this The Arbor Academy review first.
And while you’re here reading this The Arbor Academy review, why don’t you check out my #1 recommendation to making money online after reviewing 300+ online companies, apps, and courses.
What Is The Arbor Academy?
The Arbor Academy is an online course that teaches users how you can set up their own online business and thus, make money online. It’s one of those online courses that help you set up your own lead generation digital agency as your business model.
The lead generation business model can be a bit confusing for some. But the overall idea is actually very simple.
In lead generation, you make money by generating leads (AKA customers) for small businesses. The idea is that you build a simple website (your “digital real estate), let it rank on Google according to the relevant keywords, and then “sell” the leads you get to small and local businesses.
It’s equivalent to allowing some local business to rent your lot space for them to set up. Because they realize your lot has high traffic (lots of people passing by).
You can make money for this because business owners (especially small ones) are willing to pay you for marketing their business. And it’s because of a few important reasons.
- Business owners don’t know much about how to market themselves.
- And even if they do, they simply won’t have the time to prepare the needed marketing materials. Instead, they would be focusing on running the business itself.
However, there’s a good reason why 61% of marketers point out that lead generation is one of their biggest challenges. And that’s because, SEO is technically like going to war.
You’re going to have to compete with other lead generation businesses using the same method. This is for getting that sweet No. 1 spot on the relevant keyword.
Also Read: Why I would never recommend the “Rent Digital Assets” business model.
The Man Behind The Arbor Academy
Chad Kimball is the creator of The Arbor Academy online course.

There’s really no significant information about him available online. All that we know so far is that before, he was also an ordinary employee, just like you and me before.
However, after being forced to quit his job due to a very hostile work environment (on his account, his former boss would verbally abuse his employees), he started to become a digital entrepreneur as a way to make money.
Since then, he claims to have been making about 2 million dollars from 2018 to 2020. All thanks to the lead generation business model using Google Maps. Which is what he’s going to teach in this course.
As a testament to the effectiveness of his business model, his own daughter, Bethany-Anne, also claims to the same business methods to earn his own 5-figure income, as stated in this video advertisement.
Want a better alternative? Check out this business model that has helped 6,000+ people.
How Does The Arbor Academy Work?
The business model that The Arbor Academy is going to teach here, involves using lead generation to find potential customers (“leads” at this point), and sell them to local businesses.
In order to achieve that, it can be broken down into a few steps.
First Step: Local Keyword Research
The first step you need to do here is to do your keyword research. As you’re going to focus on local businesses, you’re going to need to rank for keywords that correspond to a local business
For example, ranking for “burger chains” is going to be almost impossible, as it’s a general keyword. But you may have better success in ranking if you opt for more localized keywords, like “California burger chains”, or even more specific keywords.
The Arbor Academy will teach you a basic understanding of Google’s local ranking algorithms. Here, you’ll learn to conduct proper local keyword researches, and why keywords do or do not return local results.
Second Step: Building A Website
The next step is, of course, building your own website. It’s also known as building your own digital real estate.
Obviously, you’re going to need a website for you to collect the leads. But more importantly, the website you’re going to build should contain the contact details of the local business that’s your client.
Third Step: Building A Google Maps Listing
In this step, you’re now going to use Google My Business for your local business client.
Google My Business is a feature by Google where you can build a listing for any local business that you wish. To simplify it, it’s basically similar to yellow pages, but it’s more than just a business phone directory.
For this reason, The Arbor Academy will teach you how to use and optimize your Google My Business listing to rank your local business website. This in turn will allow you to collect more leads.
At this point, you’re going to need to learn things like white head reviews, white head backlinks, and changing bad review snippets.
Fourth Step: Engaging Local Business Owners
Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to find local business clients who are interested in availing of your services.
This part will require several things like cold-calling, cold-emailing, and the like. It can be a bit hard if one is introverted, but it’s still doable.
For this reason, The Arbor Academy will not only teach you what to say during these “cold” conversations, but will additionally provide scripts to help you out with your conversation.
Fifth Step: Price Negotiation
After you’ve convinced the client to avail of your lead generation business, it’s now time for both you and the client to negotiate and agree on the price of your services.
The Arbor Academy shows you the process of developing a pricing structure that earns for both the customer and you. You can charge a monthly fee or a flat rate commission per sale. This is entirely up to you.
There’s actually one final step in a lead generation business: Scaling it to meet the demand. Interestingly, it seems to not be covered in this online course.
But basically, it’s all about possible outsourcing of your business once you’re earning enough, for a truly passive income.
Overall, The Arbor Academy shares a lot in common with Bad Ass Marketers and Job Killing, in that they all teach on how you can set up a lead generation business using a digital real estate (website), and using SEO methods to drive organic traffic in it.
The only bad point is that they make it sound so easy for you to generate a large amount of income when they use their business model. Which is only partially true.
Because a big drawback about relying on SEO and organic traffic is that, despite relying on local keywords, you may still have a very hard time ranking for them. Depending on your chosen niche, you’re going to have a lot more competitors vying for that #1 rank in search engines.
For this reason, it might be much better to look for a business opportunity that teaches you the same thing, but instead relies on a much more reliable method to drive traffic. Such as paid Google Ads or Facebook Ads.
Want a better alternative? Check out this business model that has helped 6,000+ people.
What’s Inside The Arbor Academy?
Once you sign up with The Arbor Academy, you can now access the course material inside it.
The following is the list of all the educational materials that you can access.
- Introduction and Overview
- White Hat Techniques
- Google Local Ranking Algorithm
- Website Authority and The Local Algorithm
- How to Create Content
- Backlinking Resources
- Local Keyword Research
- Keywords for Category
- What Keywords Return Local Results and Why They Don’t
- Have questions?
- Need help? Get phone support!
- Local Knowledge Panel changes
- Google’s Local Pack
- Local prospecting with Mechanical Turk
- Ranking Outside Your Locale
- Make sure you keep multiple locations safe
- Pidgeon Update
- Google My Business Guidelines
- Optimize and Create Your GMB
- How to Set up a My Business Page
- Local VS Brand Pages
- Basic Places Page Optimization
- Reviewing is Important
- White Hat Reviews
- Google Make Starts Available
- GMB Posts
- Listing Attributes
- How to Change Bad Review Snippets
- Show Social Media Icons
- Reinstatement of a Disabled Listing
- Your website can now include local structured data
- Google Trusted Photographer
- Courting Authority Reviewers
- Citations
- Citations: What? Why? & How
- White Hat Backlinks
- Listings on Local Websites
- Facebook Pages
- Copy Competitor Citations
- Citations using Image Sharing Websites
- Wikipedia Citations
- You can use your building/office/home to get additional Citations
- Testimonial Citations and Sponsorship
- Citations using Known
- Whitespark and Get List Citation Tools
- After an Address Change, Fixing Citations
- Local Guides Program
- Opportunities for Local Guides
- Secret Levels of Local Guides
- Update on Major Local Guides Points
- How to Modify Your Own Maps Edits Using Local Guides
- How to Choose The Right Address
- Getting A Phone Number
- Set Up Your Listings
- Press Releases
- Intro and Overall Strategies
- Algorithm for Yelp Ranking
- Scrape Box
- Selling Leads
- Was I Slapped?
- Important Information – Google and Service Area Businesses/ LeadGen
- Hostnine Reseller Hosting
- Optimize for Local Keywords
- Direct Mail Prospecting
- Software
The Arbor Academy: Pricing
As you can see from its sales page, The Arbor Academy doesn’t really disclose the price of their course at first. You must first book a call with an agent for you to know the actual price of the course.
Some have reported that The Arbor Academy initially costs around $6,800 to enroll. But many have also claimed that they’re able to negotiate the price down to $1,000.
Why are they doing that, you ask? It’s a clever sales tactic to get the most money from you. They start high and let you work your way down. Therefore, any offer from you at this point is already a good offer.
Regardless of the price you successfully negotiated, the course is still quite expensive. And this still doesn’t include some of the other costs that you’ll need to set up your own lead generation business.
Which can include website hosting, email autoresponders, Google My Business subscription, and others.
Will You Recommend The Arbor Academy?
Despite the legitimacy of the lead generation business model as a good way to earn money online, I have to say that I find it rather hard on recommending this course.
Because there’s a really good reason why most internet marketers have given up on generating organic traffic. SEO is at this point is really a tough nut to crack nowadays.
Not only do you have to deal with ever-changing algorithms in order to keep your site ranked on top, but you also have to deal with intense competition from fellow internet marketers.
As my mentor has said to me once, “SEO is War”. You literally have to grit your teeth and work very hard in order to consistently rank your website.
Another thing to take note of is the mentor. Chad Kimball doesn’t really have any good credentials to make himself truly legit. We don’t even know exactly how he got rich. It could either be by mastering the methods he included in this course, or by sales from the course itself.
And if the chief mentor himself doesn’t have any solid credentials to back up his claim, then how can he provide good value to this course?
But one of the most compelling reasons for me to not recommend this course, is through this Reddit post.

Basically, the Reddit poster shared his experience when he tried to enroll in the course. He noted that the coach he came in contact with “was very obnoxious, pushy and unprofessional, and 5 mins into the call chided me for “not preparing” for the call and for not being able to make a snap on the spot decision to hand over $5,000.”
Of course, we can summarily dismiss the incident as an isolated case, and other people’s experiences may be more pleasant than this. But there could be more untold cases like this whenever one wishes to enroll in the course, so it’s still something to take note of.
The Arbor Academy Review: Final Thoughts
Before I end this The Arbor Academy review, I would like to share a few more insights that might help.
Whatever online business you want to set up, you would inevitably face some tough competition. Yes, the business model of lead generation is quite awesome. But you also have to ask yourself.
If any mentor like Chad Kimball, or even someone like Joshua T. Osborne claims that you can get rich quick with their business model, then many of their students would probably be driving expensive cars or living in expensive houses now, right?
But in reality, it’s still not. Let me be clear. Lead generation is legit and effective. But it’s not something that can make you rich quickly, and you need to have a solid education foundation to achieve great results.
Therefore, what you need are some good educational materials first to give you the necessary knowledge, skills, and especially the proper mindset to hopefully succeed in any business venture
Moreover, you need to get your money’s worth with that online course. Seeing as it’s also going to be part of your investment.
For this reason alone, The Arbor Academy is a course that’s simply not worth its price for me. It would be good if they’re at least transparent with their price, but they’re not.
While I don’t see any reason to consider The Arbor Academy as a scam course, they also don’t give me any reason to trust my money with them, either.
Fortunately, I’m also here to offer you my personal recommendation for this, especially if you want a more effective course about lead generation.
If you want to find out more about it, keep on reading beyond this The Arbor Academy review
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