In my never-ending quest to find the best digital marketing courses on the internet, I bought both Simply Passive and Roadmap to Riches. In this article, I’m going to be giving you a thorough review so you can make the best choice for you between Simply Passive vs. Roadmap 3.0.
Both courses recently underwent updates as of March 2024, and one of the courses provided an insane amount of value and new content for free, while the other course decided to undercut it’s current students and not actually update the course but launch a new membership that was not free and also did not include the master resell rights license, which was a big selling point of the course. (I’ll give you a hint, it was Simply Passive). However, it’s not all doom and gloom! And we’ll cover it all in this article.
I’ll dive into each course separately and then compare them to each other. If you decide to purchase either course through my links, I’m including tons of bonuses that each include master resell rights so you can get multiple ready-to-sell products and have a quicker path to success – but more on that later!
Roadmap 3.0 Review
Let’s start with the Roadmap to Riches course, because this is the very first MRR course I ever purchased.
I got in on the Roadmap to Riches course when it was just freshly Roadmap 2.0. I purchased in January 2024, and the course had just been updated in the fall of 2023.
Originally launched in February 2023, this course went viral over the past year on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and it made some total beginners very wealthy.
The reason I purchased it is because I was looking for a digital marketing course that I felt good about promoting to my followers who wanted to follow in my footsteps and get started with digital marketing. I’ve tried promoting other courses in the past but never really felt good about their content, and I was on a quest to find one I felt really aligned with.
And the Roadmap course really fit the bill for me. When I purchased Roadmap 2.0, I was blown away by the amount of information in the course.
They just released Roadmap 3.0 on February 28th and I am honestly surprised to say it’s even better than before. You can read my initial thoughts on the Roadmap to Riches course here. I made over $60k in just over 4 months thanks to The Roadmap – but I love both courses so I will keep this review as unbiased as possible.
Disclaimer: I do not promise that you will have the same results that I have, or any results at all. I don’t know how serious you are or how hard you’ll work! My results are due to my own hard work, and I don’t make any income guarantees for yourself or anyone else.
Roadmap 3.0 Course Content
I filmed a video walkthrough of the Roadmap course, but we’ll also cover it here.
The Roadmap 3.0 has over 330 videos and over 30 hours of training on everything related to creating, starting, and running an online business.
It’s separated into five stages:
- Stage one: Your Foundation (picking a niche, identifying your target audience, etc)
- Stage two: Your Automation (business automation, funnels, and email marketing using Stan Store and Systeme.io)
- Stage three: Driving Your Traffic (creating content, affiliate marketing, using Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more)
- Stage four: Build Your Offer (brainstorming product ideas, how to pick one, how to price your product, how to create digital products, creating ebooks and guides, creating digital courses, using canva, and so much more)
- Stage five: Scale with Customer Service (The importance of customer service, lifetime customer value, and more)
Each of these stages contains multiple modules that truly takes you through creating a business from scratch, step-by-step.
I believe this course is ideal for beginners who want help along every single step of the way. The community aspect of the Roadmap course is incredibly helpful, too.
The Roadmap Community
The Roadmap community is an online forum where all students can post and comment for troubleshooting, getting help with things, coming up with new ideas, sharing their wins, connecting together, and much more.
The course creators continuously over-deliver on their promises. To date, they have released two comprehensive course updates for 100% free and have not tried to upsell anything to anyone.
They have made the course the best digital marketing course on the market today (in my opinion as someone who has taken multiple dozens of courses over the past 8 years) and they’ve included Master Resell Rights so they’re not even making a profit on the sales anymore… AND they’re including updates for free. That is BONKERS if you ask me but it’s so valuable to the community! You can tell they truly care about student success.
With that being said, let’s cover Simply Passive.
Simply Passive Review
Let’s start with the good: Simply Passive IS a good course with good information, point blank.
It teaches you a very specific thing in a very short amount of time: how to grow an Instagram following and an engaged Instagram account and how to create digital products to sell on your Instagram account.
For what it is, it’s very detailed when it comes to figuring out your niche and target audience, and it also has great inspirational information which I believe is SO necessary for anyone trying to grow online.
But here’s my beef with Simply Passive.
PS I still love the course and I still do recommend it, but with a Caveat.
At the beginning of February, the Simply Passive course creators started teasing an update. For reference, the MRR community was abuzz with excitement because The Roadmap creators said they were releasing an update in February, too.
So in early Feb, the Simply Passive creators announced they were ALSO making an update.
Simply Passive members assumed this meant it was an update to the course and making it better, although the creators never divulged what the update was.
The Simply Passive “Update”
Fast forward to the end of Feb, the creators came out and launched a NEW program called Your Story Matters. It teaches more in depth tactics on storytelling and has a bit more content… but here’s the catch. Actually there are SEVERAL catches here. And not good ones.
It costs extra money to buy YSM. It does not come with Master Resell Rights, but you can be an affiliate. You can only be an affiliate if you buy it.
And the cherry on top?
It also includes Simply Passive.
SO essentially, anyone who was hoping to buy Simply Passive and resell it has been crapped on – because now the creators have another course that they INCLUDE Simply Passive in but they have taken away resell rights for the new course.
They have since come out and said that you can still buy the original Simply Passive and resell it with MRR, but you can’t do that with the new course bundle.
Not only that, they were including updates to their bundle version of Simply Passive including Faceless Marketing, but they weren’t going to include it in the old Simply Passive.
Oh, and they decided to take away the Simply Passive Facebook Group with over 13,000 members.
So yeah… A shitstorm if you ask me.
It’s honestly really sad because I loved Simply Passive and thought it was an EXCELLENT starting point for total beginners who just wanted a short and simple course on Instagram and Digital Product creation.
What’s Inside Simply Passive – Course Modules
Simply Passive teaches you how to choose your niche, how to set up your branding, how to put together your messaging, how to reach your target audience, and how to create and sell digital products online.
However, this course is much shorter than Roadmap 3.0, so it doesn’t go as in-depth as the Roadmap on almost all modules.
Where this course truly differs is the Faceless Marketing modules. Simply Passive has a Faceless Marketing module that tells you more about branding a Faceless account, but this is only focused on Instagram. But for many people IG is the place they want to be, and the info in this course is great!
Simply Passive Vs. Roadmap 3.0
If you’re still undecided about Simply Passive vs. Roadmap to Riches, let’s get down to the brass tacks.
Simply Passive vs. Roadmap 3.0 Length
Let’s start with the obvious – Simply Passive only took me a few hours to get through. It is not a long course by any means.
The Roadmap 2.0 took me 2 straight weeks of watching a couple hours a day. Roadmap 3.0 is even bigger and I haven’t finished all the modules yet.
Roadmap 3.0 vs. Simply Passive – Course Content
Next, let’s look at the course content.
Roadmap 3.0 is a comprehensive digital marketing course that covers every social media platform, blogging, and more. It teaches you how to create an entire online business – not just how to grow an IG and sell digital products on it.
If you’re looking for a full-fledged digital marketing course and a huge community, I highly recommend the Roadmap.
Simply Passive is a short, sweet, and simple course that’s straight to the point and teaches you how to do social media marketing on Instagram to grow a following and sell digital products. Nothing more, nothing less.
Although the course creators “update” has left a very bad taste in my mouth, it doesn’t negate the fact that the course itself is amazing. It teaches what it promises to teach and it’s very inspiring. However, I do personally feel unsure about the future of Simply Passive because of the major U-Turn the creators took, so I don’t actively promote it on my social media.
You can still buy it from me and get all my bonuses, I just don’t recommend it in my social media content. Get Simply Passive and all my bonuses here.
Simply Passive vs. Roadmap 3.0 – The Creators
The Roadmap course was created by Hannah and Zach Pippins, a couple who have experience running small businesses and a couple who is very down to earth. They have shown over the past year that they are dedicated to making The Roadmap the best course that it can be and that they will never upsell or upcharge you for updates.
Simply Passive was created by two women, Kristen and Sheila. These creators grew their platforms and income on Instagram, so it makes sense that this course is all about Instagram. However, they definitely do have their bottom line in mind and seem to care less about maintaining their original course and more about growing and expanding into different opportunities now and in the future.
They have even come out and said that maintaining the Simply Passive Facebook community was just too much for them so they turned off the ability to post – only they can post and group members can comment. For reference, their FB community has around 13k members, The Roadmap community has almost 40k and is still going strong.
I don’t dislike the Simply Passive creators – I want to make that clear. I just dislike this recent turn of events.
Which Is Best For You?
Only you can decide which of these master resell rights courses is best for you. Maybe you’re like me and you want both of them! That’s totally okay too.
For longevity and sustainability sake, I believe The Roadmap is the best choice for almost everyone, simply because I don’t know how long Simply Passive will be around. I don’t trust that the creators want to keep it up anymore – because they weren’t making a profit from it. From a business standpoint, I get it. But it’s a yikes from me.
Simply Passive and what it teaches is still great. There’s a lot of learning that can be done from that course. But I don’t feel responsible telling people “Yeah! Get Simply Passive! It’s gonna pan out great!” when I actually feel very unsure about that myself.
If there ever comes a time where the course creators stop maintaining Simply Passive, I will edit this post and remove all links to the course. But for now, I still do believe it’s a good course. Just be wary of the latest news.
The Roadmap 3.0 is still going strong and I have good reason to believe it will continue to do so, and I think it’s a great investment whether or not you also purchase Simply Passive.
