What’s Acadium?
Acadium is a platform where you can find and hire marketing talent on a budget.
You can do this using either of their three products:
1) Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships was Acadium’s first product.
This is a platform that connects startups with marketing students for 3-month apprenticeships.
If you’re running a startup, you would probably benefit from some marketing and sales help. But you probably can’t afford to spend lots of resources hiring a growth expert.
Acadium aims to provide a solution to this problem. They allow businesses to hire marketers at approximately $4/hour, saving your business resources, while allowing it to grow.
$4/hour may sound extremely low. But the thing is that both parties are getting some benefits - more on that below.
In this article, I’ll be focusing mainly on Acadium Apprenticeships.
2) Tasks
This is a platform where you can post simple marketing tasks your business needs to get done, and emerging marketers (mainly marketing students) will work on them.
You don’t have to compensate these marketers economically. Instead, you have to provide helpful feedback and guidance on the work they delivered.
3) Freelance
This is a platform where you can find marketing freelancers or full-time hires.
You tell Acadium your needs and they will match you with one of their vetted marketers, who have hourly rates starting at $15.
What's GenM?
A few years ago, Acadium wasn't called Acadium. It was GenM.
Due to lots of changes made in their functionality and pricing, the company decided to re-brand as Acadium and re-built their website. In this re-brand, the company did also solved many of the issues and complaints made by customers that GenM used to have.
If this short explanation of what Acadium is was enough, here is a $50 discount for you. If not, go ahead reading ;)
How does Acadium Apprenticeships Work?
As Acadium is a two-sided platform, it works differently for businesses and students.
For Businesses
The first thing you do as an entrepreneur/business that wants to start using Acadium is to visit their website and create an account as a “Mentor”.
You’ll first be asked whether you’ll be using Apprenticeships or Freelance. If you select the second, you’ll be connected with Acadium’s team for a call.
If you select Apprenticeships, you’ll be redirected to the product’s homepage. There, you won’t be able to do much, unless you purchase the Apprenticeships subscription.
You can, however, set up your profile. It’s important to make your profile interesting and attractive. Otherwise, students won’t be interested in your business and apprenticeship proposal.
Once your profile is done, you can book an onboarding call with Acadium’s team or directly choose and purchase your plan. I’ll talk about pricing later on.
Once you’ve got the Apprenticeships subscription, you will to submit an “Apprentice Request”, explaining what type of marketing help you’re looking for.
In just 1-5 business days, Acadium’s team will match you with one of their vetted marketers who they think fits the best the marketing channels you need help with, your personality, your business, and your timezone.
Once you approve the marketer, your apprenticeship starts. It lasts 3 months and the marketer will work on your business 10 hours per week (which brings up a total of 120 hours).
It’s important to note that when you start an apprenticeship, you commit to giving the apprentice 1-2 hours of mentoring per week. If this isn’t something you’re willing to do, you might prefer to use Acadium’s Freelance product.
How Much does Acadium Cost?
Acadium has two plans based on the payment frequency:
- Acadium Quarterly: $499/quarter. You get access to 1 apprenticeship at a time.
- Acadium Annual: $1,999/year. You get access to 2 apprenticeships at a time.
The annual plan is the best valued one.
Both plans include access to the Tasks and Freelance products, though the costs of hiring a freelancer is not included in the subscription pricing.

Acadium Discount Code
We've recently partnered with Acadium to give Failory's users an exclusive $50 discount on the platform. Instead of paying $499 or $1,999, you can get the quarter plan for $449 and the annual plan for $1949. Get the discount here!
Shoot me an email at nico@failory.com if there’s anything I can help you with or if you have any questions related to Acadium.
What Kind of Work Can Apprentices Do?
Acadium allows you to hire apprentices to do the following types of work:
- Social media
- Content marketing
- SEO
- Brand creation
- Paid advertising
- Email marketing
- Marketing analytics
- eCommerce
- Market research
- Mobile marketing
- Website design
- Search advertising
- Display marketing
- Viral marketing
- Graphic design
- Marketing automation
- Public relations
As you can see, there are lots of different categories and, if you can’t find the one you are looking for in the list above, that’s not a problem. You can actually hire the intern to carry out any marketing-related task, as long as there’s an apprentice that’s interested in it.
Social media, SEO, and content are among the categories in which most apprentices want to work.
But, does this list really mean that you can hire apprentices for all of those types of work?
Well, I’ve personally hired apprentices to work on social networks, analytics, SEO, and content creation (more about this before), so I haven’t tried all of the possible types of work.
However, considering my experience with the apprentices, I would say you won’t be able to get high-quality work in all of those categories. Here’s my opinion about the type of work you can and can’t find:
- Social media: You won’t have big problems. There are thousands of apprentices interested in social media growth so you will probably find someone that fits and can do a great job in a matter of days.
- Content marketing: Lots of apprentices want to write content and some of them have previous experience on blogs/news/other media. Acadium can be a great alternative if you’re looking to hire a content writer.
- SEO: From my experience, it was quite hard to find interns able to carry out SEO campaigns. You won’t find someone you can tell to help raise the SERP ranking of a specific page of your website and he/she will do it. You will, instead, need to give him/her specific tasks to do, such as, write a guest post, or look for competitors’ backlinks, etc.
- Paid advertising: I personally wouldn’t recommend you to try it. I have no doubts you can find an apprentice that has done some previous work with paid advertising and can give you a hand. But you need to know that your money can be lost without much ROI.
- Email marketing: It can definitely work, especially if you need the apprentice to write weekly newsletters or interact with your email subscribers.
What Happens if There Are Any Conflicts with the Apprentice?
So you’ve decided what will the apprentice work on and were matched with great fit. But, problems can always occur. In fact, my first apprenticeship needed to be canceled (more about this below).
You can easily cancel the apprenticeship and open a new request to be matched with a new marketer.
Don't forget about the $50 off code! Instead of $499/$1999, you'll get one access for $449/$1949. Shoot me an email if you have any kind of questions or need help with the tool.
For Apprentices
Okay, but what would the apprentice gain from working for only $4/hour?
Well, in fact, the apprentice works for $0/hour. The subscription payment is kept by Acadium and used to keep the platform alive and continue adding new features.
When students join Acadium (for free), they have access to a series of digital marketing courses. Are they any good? I haven’t personally checked them out, but I asked my apprentices and they told me they were fine.
I estimate they give you an idea about the topic so that, if you are interested in that aspect of digital marketing, you can learn more in-depth on your own.
Apart from getting access to these courses, they enter the database, and businesses can find and hire them for apprenticeship opportunities. This allows them to build up their resume and gain experience. Who knows if this apprenticeship doesn't lead to a part-time and then full-time job position?
Finally, a third benefit that an apprentice may get a few years after working on the platform is to find a freelance project or even a full-time job through Acadium Freelance.
If you are an apprentice, you can join the platform using this link.