There are two types of teachers online:
- Ethical teachers with quality courses and affordable support options
- Manipulative marketers trying to grab as much money as they can
If you haven’t opted into a lot of free courses and email lists, you may not have seen this. But the norm in the online teaching industry is a bit seedy. After a while, it seems like everybody is promoting the same people over and over again in hyped up after hyped up launch. Each of these courses moves a few people forward a bit, but never makes the big difference in your life or business that they promised or implied in the hype.
Teachers: I invite you to show us your students’ results and prove me wrong.
As someone who has bought infoproducts from $300 – $2,000, joined membership groups and even attended some live events, I can tell you that I’m disgruntled with the way a lot of gurus conduct themselves.
Here’s the worst of what I’ve seen:
- Gurus showing off fancy cars in their videos
- Products that cost $2,000
- Coaches that charge $10,000 per month
- Programs that give you four weeks of material and then the teachers disappear unless you opt to pay one of these super high monthly fees
- Teachers who promote each others’ programs without knowing the quality of the material ahead of time
Is That Really Your Ferrari, Or Did You Just Rent It?
The only way I find it believable is if you show me other really expensive stuff you own. There’s only one guy who does this that I’ve ever believed actually owned the car he was driving.
And it doesn’t matter- this is symptomatic of the biggest problem in this space.
The teachers that talk about results usually are appealing to people who are vulnerable to the Get Rich Quick mentality.
It’s a shame that we often have to choose between academic types that don’t talk about results and guys who want to get rich while you max out yet another credit card.
High Priced Products
Yes, this is the fastest way to get rich IF you can reach 50,000 people with your offer, but most people can’t do that. You might be able to do that if you play the JV game that requires you to promote the bigger guys first. And yes, you often have to promote it without knowing how good it is. It’s call brown-nosing… something I’ve never been good at.
Most businesses will not pay $2,000 for an infoproduct. They might pay that for onsite training. They might pay $500. They might spend thousands sending employees to a conference. And there’s a reason why conferences choose keynoters who work at big, famous companies. They want to make sure the investment is worth it.
The people who pay for these $2,000 products are entrepreneurs and Get Rick Quick addicts.
I don’t know how gurus that do this get repeat customers. Some of their students may succeed enough to buy more courses, but there’s a noticeable lack of gurus talking about students who get results. It seems more likely that their customers have maxed out credit cards and/or a spouse with a real job.
So if you want to help real businesses, you have to charge less money.
You Should Be Available to Your Students
The JV System Is Broken
After we put out FanReach, I approached the idea of Joint Ventures with some excitement. We had a quality course, our students were getting results, and we were prepared to give affiliates a great commission on sales.
The first guy I approached referred me to his COO, who handles Joint Ventures. He tried to direct me to a video series they had created for their prospective partners. Then he asked me which of the guy’s things I wanted to promote. I said, “No I think you have it backward- I have something really cool I thought he would like to promote.” Well that didn’t work out… turns out the norm is that you have to promote these guys’ programs to get noticed before they’ll promote yours. And again, you may not know the quality of that product before you promote it, if it’s launch hype time.
All of this seems needlessly complicated and manipulative. It’s not about the customers.
- If you have a great course, give me access and if I agree, I will promote it to my list. If it sucks, forget it- I’m not going to destroy my relationship with my list for you.
- If I have a great course that helps people, you should be excited to promote it, thus helping your customers and making some money in the process.
Good vs. Evil in The Online Marketing World
I’ve been an Internet Marketing consultant for 12 years. I’m a Facebook expert. I’ve written a top-selling Facebook marketing book that’s not self-published. I do keynote speaking for big companies. I’ve seen all sides of this space, and I’ve taken some of these courses. With all that, what I realized is that there are a lot of people out there trying to make a buck, often at the expense of their customers.
There are very few people who are creating quality content that helps students get results, and who actually care about their students.
I have run into a few people who are more ethically motivated though, so my hope is that I can network with them and promote a more ethical way to do online education.
What do you think?