Running safe checks
Checking the course page…
This can take a few seconds. We’re checking only publicly observable website signals.
Running safe checks
Checking the course page…
This can take a few seconds. We’re checking only publicly observable website signals.
Full editorial research report
Amazon KDP / Book marketing / Paid advertising · Beginner to early intermediate · English
This is a genuine free course, not a trailer for one. Thirty items across six parts are listed by name before you enrol, they cover the whole job from opening an Amazon Marketing Services account to fixing campaigns that are losing money, and they come from Dave Chesson plus a co-instructor whose bio on the page says she spent nearly a decade at Amazon building out the ads program for books. The student record is unusually checkable for a free product: the creator's Thinkific hosting publishes 2,155 individual named reviews in its page markup, and parsing all of them on 2026-08-13 gives 2,017 five-star through to one zero-star — a 4.9 average with its own dissent visible inside it. Two things a reader should weigh. First, the course is a funnel, and the page does not say so: Chesson told Course Method in 2022 that it works as a lead magnet for Kindlepreneur's email list, that it seeds sales of his Publisher Rocket software, and that affiliates earn 50% on Rocket purchases originating from it. The lessons demonstrate that software; an indie author who took the course reports the manual keyword method is taught alongside it. Second, Amazon's ads console changes faster than the videos do — the seller's own review wall carries students writing "Good but Outdated" and "Excellent course ... but needs updating", and neither hosting stamps individual lessons with a revision date. With nothing to pay and no refund to chase, what is at risk is your time and, once you start advertising, your own ad budget.
Last checked · Evidence is labeled by source type and freshness.
Legitimate and delivered: the course is live on two of the creator's own platforms, free at both, with its full syllabus and thousands of named reviews published before enrollment. The reservations are staleness and undisclosed incentive — dated interface footage flagged by students in the seller's own reviews, and a lead-magnet-plus-software funnel explained in an interview rather than on the page.
Quick verdict
Dave Chesson's Amazon Advertisements For Books Course is a free, self-paced video course teaching Amazon ads for self-published books — six parts and 30 named items (21 videos, six notes pages, three quizzes), sold as a 5-day plan and co-taught by Janet Margot, whose bio on the sales page says she spent nearly a decade at Amazon building out its ads program for books. Checked 2026-08-13 it is live and free on both of its hostings, Podia and the creator's Thinkific school, where the page markup publishes 2,155 named reviews averaging 4.9. It is also a funnel: Chesson has said publicly that the course feeds Kindlepreneur's email list and sells his Publisher Rocket software, which the lessons demonstrate. Students in the seller's own reviews flag that parts of the Amazon interface shown are out of date.
Rating methodology
Price, availability, the full lesson list, both instructor bios, the enrollment flow and the review corpus were all read directly from the seller's live pages on 2026-08-13, and the 2,155-review distribution was computed from the Thinkific page's own structured markup rather than taken on trust. The business model is documented in Chesson's own published interview. What is weaker is outside evidence: sweeps on 2026-08-13 surfaced one independent firsthand author write-up and no editorial review of the course by a publication with no commercial tie to Kindlepreneur, so measured advertising outcomes for typical students remain unestablished.
Weighted total: 4.380, rounded to one decimal as 4.4/5. Read the rating methodology.
Course record
A free video course on advertising books through Amazon Marketing Services, hosted on Podia at davechesson.podia.com and mirrored on the creator's Thinkific school as "Amazon Book Ads 2.0 [UPDATED]". Enrollment is one free checkout step — the button reads "ENROLL FOR FREE" — and no card is requested. The Podia product record lists 30 items across six parts: 21 video lessons, a notes-and-resources page per part, and three quizzes (Parts 1, 2 and 4). The sales page frames it as a 5-day plan and pitches it against paid competitors with the line "Similar courses are selling right now for over $600. But you can join our 5-day Amazon Ads 2.0 course absolutely FREE." Dave Chesson presents; Janet Margot appears through the course, in her words, "to share insights on complex topics".
Instructor; founder of Kindlepreneur and Publisher Rocket
Source: aabc-podia-sales, aabc-kindlepreneur-hub, aabc-coursemethod-interviewGuest instructor; states she built out Amazon's ads program for books
Source: aabc-podia-sales, aabc-kindlepreneur-hubPublished syllabus
Every lesson title below is taken from the table of contents the seller publishes on the Podia sales page, read on 2026-08-13. It is visible before enrollment, so a reader can check this list against the source without signing up. This research did not sit through the videos, so the topics are what the titles promise rather than what was verified on screen.
Fit
Self-published KDP authors with at least one book live who have never run an Amazon ad and want a free, structured start.
Authors who have run ads badly, lost money and want the vocabulary — relevance, bids, negative keywords, ACOS — before spending more.
Anyone weighing a paid Amazon-ads course who wants to see how much of it is available for nothing first.
Less suited to advertisers already running profitable campaigns at scale: four-star reviewers ask for depth the course does not go to, including Kindle Unlimited page-read economics.
Free at both official hostings, checked 2026-08-13, with no card requested at enrollment.
The complete 30-item syllabus is published before you sign up, lesson titles and all.
Co-taught by Janet Margot, whose bio on the page states she spent nearly a decade at Amazon building out the ads program for books.
2,155 named reviews are published in the Thinkific page's own markup, averaging 4.9 — a corpus a reader can parse rather than a badge.
Covers the failure case explicitly, including a lesson titled "What to do when your ads fail and how to fix them".
A notes-and-resources page for every part, plus quizzes on Parts 1, 2 and 4, accompany the 21 videos.
An independent indie author reports the manual keyword method is taught alongside the paid software.
Parts of the Amazon interface shown are out of date; two four-star reviewers on the seller's own wall titled their reviews "Good but Outdated" and "Excellent course ... but needs updating".
Neither hosting publishes a per-lesson revision date, so a student cannot tell which videos are current.
The lessons demonstrate the instructor's own paid software, Publisher Rocket — a three-star reviewer asks whether the course is "an extended scoop to promote Publisher Rocket".
The sales page never states that enrollment feeds an email list or that affiliates earn 50% on Rocket sales originating from the course.
Several reviewers found the pace too fast to follow while setting up campaigns.
All 2,155 reviews sit on seller-run platforms; reviewer identities are self-declared and undated in the markup.
Every review this research read is about the teaching, not about audited advertising returns.
You still need a published KDP book and your own ad budget before any of it can be applied.
Risk review
Price, syllabus, instructor bios and reviews are all visible before enrollment on the public sales page.
Two named, publicly identifiable instructors, one with a linked professional site.
The course is served free from two of the creator's own platforms, so a reader can check the price twice independently.
The seller's own review surface publishes critical reviews alongside praise, including two-star and zero-star entries.
The strongest claim on the sales page is a price comparison rather than an earnings guarantee.
Chesson has publicly described the course's commercial purpose in an on-the-record interview.
The funnel is disclosed off-page: the email-list capture, the Publisher Rocket seeding and the 50% affiliate commission all come from a 2022 interview, not from the sales page.
"Similar courses are selling right now for over $600" names no competing course, so the comparison cannot be checked.
The "1,000+" review figure on the Podia page is the seller's own count with no methodology shown, and it does not match the 2,155 figure on the Thinkific hosting.
Requesting the Podia /buy URL with curl on 2026-08-13 redirected to the site root instead of rendering a payment form, so the enrollment step itself was not exercised by this research.
The course teaches spending real money on Amazon ads; nothing in the free syllabus caps what a beginner can lose.
Terms
Every tier, discount and plan the seller publishes, in one place. The analysis underneath is ours.
Checked on · prices in USD
The price is zero and it was confirmed twice on 2026-08-13, on both of the seller's own hostings: the Podia product record reads "prices":{"0":"Free"} under a button that says "ENROLL FOR FREE", and the Thinkific page's enrollment button reads "Enroll For Free". No tier, upgrade or paid version of this course was found on either hosting. What the reader pays instead is an email address — Chesson has said publicly that Kindlepreneur uses the free course as a lead magnet, "which by signing up, we get their email" — and attention to Publisher Rocket, his paid keyword software, which the lessons demonstrate and which affiliates earn 50% on when a Rocket sale originates from this course. The seller's own comparison, "Similar courses are selling right now for over $600", names no competitor and cannot be verified; students make their own comparisons on the review wall, where Bob Keaton writes "Back in November I paid $300 for a course covering the same topic. This course is as good, if not better." The real budget line for a student is not the course at all but Amazon ad spend, which the course teaches you to commit and does not cap.
Free throughout the archived record available to this research. Wayback's CDX index returns HTTP 200 snapshots of the Podia sales page from 13 July 2024 through 19 May 2026, and no snapshot in that range shows a charge for this course. The material has also been free on the creator's Thinkific school, where Chesson described it as a free course in a March 2022 interview.
Price and availability re-checked 2026-08-13 by fetching both hostings and reading their published product records and enrollment buttons.
Homepage testimonials
These are seller-selected user posts and screenshots, not a representative sample. We preserve the visible wording and label what was and was not independently verified.
“I would have paid for this course, it is so well constructed and informative. Thanks Dave!”
Quoted verbatim from the review block on the seller's own Podia sales page, headed "Reviews" / "1,000+", read 2026-08-13. Seller-selected and seller-hosted; the reviewer's identity and enrollment were not independently verified.
View source ↗“I already had some basic experience with AMS Ads - not a lot - about six months' worth and found the course very helpful. I highly recommend it for those considering AMS.”
Quoted verbatim from the same seller-hosted Podia review block, read 2026-08-13, including its dash spacing. Seller-selected and unaudited.
View source ↗“Lot's of good information. Almost too much detail for a beginner (which I am), but really comprehensive.”
Quoted verbatim from the same seller-hosted Podia review block, read 2026-08-13, including its "Lot's" apostrophe. A qualified endorsement rather than a rave, and it appears on the Thinkific hosting as a four-star review titled "Overall great course so far".
View source ↗“I am a new independent author about to step into the world of Amazon ad campaigns. I learned a lot from this course, which gave me confidence to develop an AMS strategy and build my first series of campaigns for my book The Fiction Police.”
Quoted verbatim from the same seller-hosted Podia review block, read 2026-08-13. It reports confidence and intent, not results — no campaign outcome is claimed or verified.
View source ↗“Currently (2023) Amazon offers three types of ads, not two”
Quoted verbatim from the Product JSON-LD embedded in the creator's Thinkific course page, read 2026-08-13. A four-star review titled "Good but Outdated" — included so the adverse case on this page rests on the seller's own review corpus, not on inference.
View source ↗Evidence
Facts, claims, reports, analysis, and unknowns are deliberately kept separate.
Read 2026-08-13 on the seller's own live pages: the Podia product record for this course reads "prices":{"0":"Free"} and "includedItems":"30 Lessons" under a button reading "ENROLL FOR FREE"; the full six-part table of contents is published lesson by lesson before enrollment; and the creator's Thinkific hosting of the same course serves it with an "Enroll For Free" button. Both pages returned HTTP 200.
Sources: Amazon Advertisements For Books Course — official sales page (Podia) · Amazon Book Ads 2.0 [UPDATED] — Kindlepreneur's Thinkific course pageThe Thinkific page publishes 2,155 individual named reviews in its Product JSON-LD. Parsing all of them on 2026-08-13 gives 2,017 five-star, 125 four-star, ten three-star, two two-star and one zero-star, for the declared 4.9 average. The four- and three-star band is where the substantive criticism sits: dated interface footage, pace, and unease about the Publisher Rocket segments.
Sources: Amazon Book Ads 2.0 [UPDATED] — Kindlepreneur's Thinkific course page"Similar courses are selling right now for over $600", the "1,000+" review count on the Podia page, the "[UPDATED]" and "2.0" labels, and Chesson's statement that he has consulted on Amazon Ads for authors including Ted Dekker, Pat Flynn and Jeff Goins are all seller representations from the seller's own pages. None was independently audited by this research.
Sources: Amazon Advertisements For Books Course — official sales page (Podia) · Amazon Book Ads 2.0 [UPDATED] — Kindlepreneur's Thinkific course page · 1 further source recorded in the research fileA free, complete, well-reviewed course whose commercial purpose is documented — lead capture for Kindlepreneur's email list plus demonstration of the instructor's paid Publisher Rocket software, with a 50% affiliate commission attached — but documented in a 2022 interview rather than on the sales page. With no price to recover, the buyer risk transfers entirely to acting on dated screens with a real Amazon ad budget, which is what holds the rating below the top band rather than any doubt about delivery.
Sources: Course Method — How Dave Chesson Created a Free Amazon Book Ads Course and Got Over 37,000 Subscribers · Amazon Advertisements For Books Course — official sales page (Podia) · Amazon Book Ads 2.0 [UPDATED] — Kindlepreneur's Thinkific course page · Eliza Stopps — Amazon Ads for Your Books as an Indie AuthorWayback's CDX index returns HTTP 200 snapshots of the Podia sales page from 13 July 2024 through 19 May 2026; no snapshot checked in that range shows a charge for this course, and Chesson described it as free in a March 2022 interview. The price has been zero across the record available here.
Sources: Amazon Advertisements For Books Course — official sales page (Podia) · Course Method — How Dave Chesson Created a Free Amazon Book Ads Course and Got Over 37,000 SubscribersCurrent enrollment, per-lesson revision dates, whether students' campaigns became profitable, and how the Podia "1,000+" count relates to Thinkific's 2,155 are all unestablished — the seller publishes none of them, and searches on 2026-08-13 for independent editorial coverage of this course surfaced one indie-author firsthand write-up and no review by a publication with no commercial tie to Kindlepreneur.
Sources: Amazon Advertisements For Books Course — official sales page (Podia) · Amazon Book Ads 2.0 [UPDATED] — Kindlepreneur's Thinkific course page · Eliza Stopps — Amazon Ads for Your Books as an Indie AuthorUnresolved
How many people have enrolled today. Course Method's March 2022 interview headline says "Over 37,000 Subscribers" and Chesson said there were "730 5-star reviews" then; no current enrollment figure is published on either hosting.
When each lesson was last re-recorded — neither hosting stamps individual videos with a revision date.
Whether students' ad campaigns actually became profitable: every review read here reports on the teaching, not on audited returns.
How the seller's "1,000+" review count on Podia relates to the 2,155 reviews published on the Thinkific hosting.
Whether the reviews on either platform are moderated before publication, and on what basis.
What the seller's "over $600" comparison refers to; no competing course is named.
Next options
These alternatives are descriptive only. We have not researched or rated them here.
Listed on the same Podia storefront at $179 for 45 lessons on 2026-08-13. A different, broader product from the same creator — named here for price context only, and not rated by this report.
View current company site ↗Amazon publishes free documentation and training for its advertising products, and it is the authority on the interface this course shows. Useful specifically for the gap students flag: checking screens that have changed since the videos were recorded.
If you need coaching, campaign review or accountability, this course does not offer any — it is self-paced with no support tier. Whatever you compare, read the refund term before the syllabus.
13 · Buyer checklist
Questions
Yes. Checked 2026-08-13 on both official hostings: the Podia sales page's product record reads "prices":{"0":"Free"} under a button reading "ENROLL FOR FREE", and the creator's Thinkific page for the same course reads "Enroll For Free". No card is requested — an email address and an account are.
Six parts and 30 items in total: 21 video lessons, a notes-and-resources page for each of the six parts, and three quizzes (Parts 1, 2 and 4). The syllabus runs from opening an Amazon Marketing Services account and reading the ads dashboard, through relevance, keyword and product targeting and ad copy, to bid adjustment, refreshing campaigns and a lesson titled "What to do when your ads fail and how to fix them".
Checkable rather than asserted. The creator's Thinkific hosting publishes all 2,155 individual reviews inside its page markup, with author names and star values. Parsing every one of them on 2026-08-13 gives 2,017 five-star, 125 four-star, ten three-star, two two-star and one zero-star — a 4.9 average that includes its own critics. They all sit on seller-run platforms, though, and reviewer identities are self-declared.
It is a funnel, and the sales page does not say so. Chesson told Course Method in a March 2022 interview that Kindlepreneur uses the course as a lead magnet, "which by signing up, we get their email", that he expected people would "naturally purchase my software as well", and that affiliates earn 50% on Publisher Rocket purchases originating from the free course. The lessons demonstrate that software. An independent indie author who took the course writes that "the course does promote using this keyword finding tool" but adds "in the course, they teach you how to find keywords manually, if you would rather do that".
Partly, according to students on the seller's own review wall. Bill Ade's four-star review is titled "Good but Outdated" and reads "Currently (2023) Amazon offers three types of ads, not two"; Jim Bruce's, titled "Excellent course ... but needs updating", notes "…the Product Display Ads have been phased out" and mentions new fields including negative keywords. The seller labels the current version "2.0" and "[UPDATED]" and the Kindlepreneur hub page carried an "Updated Jul 14, 2026" stamp on 2026-08-13, but no per-lesson revision date is published, so keep the live Amazon console open beside the videos.
Not according to an independent author who took it. Eliza Stopps, who states she is "not affiliated with Kindlepreneur at all", writes that "the course does promote using this keyword finding tool" and that "You don't have use it and in the course, they teach you how to find keywords manually, if you would rather do that". Publisher Rocket is the instructor's own paid product.
There is nothing to refund — the course is free and no charge is made. Neither hosting publishes a refund or guarantee policy for it; searching the rendered Podia sales page for "refund" returned 0 hits on 2026-08-13.
Source registry
aabc-podia-salesSupports: The seller's own product page, fetched and parsed on 2026-08-13. Its embedded product record carries `"prices":{"0":"Free"}` and `"includedItems":"30 Lessons"`; the checkout button reads "ENROLL FOR FREE" and points at /amazon-advertisements-for-books-course/buy?offer_id=414205; the body copy states "Similar courses are selling right now for over $600. But you can join our 5-day Amazon Ads 2.0 course absolutely FREE." The same page lists the six-part table of contents lesson by lesson, both instructor bios, and a review block headed "Reviews" / "1,000+" / "See what other students are saying!" carrying named student reviews, five of which are quoted verbatim on this page.
Limitations: Seller-controlled. The review block is a curated selection the seller chose and can edit, the "1,000+" figure is the seller's own count with no methodology, and the "over $600" comparison names no competing course. Requesting the /buy URL with curl on 2026-08-13 followed a redirect back to the site root rather than rendering a payment form, so the enrollment form itself was not exercised.
aabc-thinkific-mirrorSupports: The same course hosted on the creator's own Thinkific school, HTTP 200 on 2026-08-13. Its Product JSON-LD block declares `"aggregateRating":{"ratingValue":"4.9","reviewCount":2155}` and embeds all 2,155 individual reviews with author names, titles and star values; the enrollment button reads "Enroll For Free" and links to /cart/add_product/103360?price_id=103374. Parsing every embedded review gives the full distribution: 2,017 at five stars, 125 at four, ten at three, two at two and one at zero.
Limitations: Also seller-controlled, and the JSON-LD is emitted by Thinkific from reviews left inside the school — reviewer identities are self-declared and unverified, and the course cannot be reviewed there without enrolling. The reviews carry no dates in the markup, so the distribution above cannot be split by year.
aabc-coursemethod-interviewSupports: A published Q&A in which Chesson explains the commercial logic himself: "I hedged that if I made the course free, not only would people spread it and build our name brand, but people would naturally purchase my software as well, considering they just saw how effective and time saving it is." He also states "Currently, the course has 730 5-star reviews", that Kindlepreneur uses "the free course as a lead magnet for the website, which by signing up, we get their email", and that a Publisher Rocket affiliate link points at the free course so affiliates earn 50% on any Rocket purchase within a year. The article's stat line reads "Free course contributes to over $250k a year in extra revenue".
Limitations: Last updated 8 March 2022, so every figure in it is a 2022 figure and none of them was independently audited — the numbers are Chesson's own, given to an interviewer. Course Method discloses that its content is reader-supported and monetized through affiliate links.
aabc-elizastopps-reviewSupports: An indie author's account of taking the course and acting on it. She writes that she "enjoyed completing this course on Amazon Ads" and that "It is free and informative and I watched this course and followed the step-by-step process when I created my first Amazon advertising campaign". On the software question she notes that "the course does promote using this keyword finding tool" while adding "You don’t have use it and in the course, they teach you how to find keywords manually, if you would rather do that", and she states she is "not affiliated with Kindlepreneur at all".
Limitations: A single author's blog post, dated to her 2022 campaign work. It reports her experience of the material, not measured advertising outcomes, and it is one voice rather than a sample.