Episode Transcript
Speaker0: Hey, what's going on? Welcome to The Doug Show. I'm Doug Cunnington, and in this episode, I'm going to be talking about online courses and are these things really a scam or what? And then I'm going to have a bit of a reflection. Am I a scammer? Was I a scammer? I'm not currently a scammer. I can confidently say that, but I'll at least go through the exercise of talking about the work that I used to do. I was watching some YouTube not too long ago, and I saw a video, and it was something like how I made 10K in two months. And I just got started, and I had no background in whatever I earned money on.
Speaker0: Reminded me a lot of videos that I used to create. So I was watching and I was like, you know, what are the kids doing these days? And it was a young guy. And he said that, you know, he was making money as an influencer. He was a YouTuber. From what I could tell, I don't know if he did other social media stuff. I think it's been a little while. I think he did some other social media, maybe, I don't know, TikTok, Instagram, whatever. Fill in the blank. It doesn't really matter. And I only made it about two minutes into the video and I was like, I can't do this. I can't do this anymore. And it was filled with scammy phrasing and sales tactics that I used to personally
Speaker0: put into like my sales pages and potentially videos. I don't really remember, but But I would definitely put them in emails that I sent out, and I would definitely put them on sales pages. And I learned from other people. I mean, I studied copywriting so that I could write a sales page that was effective. And I'm going to skip ahead. I'll tell some more details. But basically, as I was watching this, I was like, oh, this dude seems like a scammer. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of them on YouTube or wherever you're consuming content. And I was like, oh shit, was I a scammer? Externally, I mean, if my videos and my sales strategies closely mimic,
Speaker0: I was like, it's hard to separate. I mean, the make money online area is pretty tough. So I'll talk about this, a bit of self-reflection as well. So the whole video, the two minutes that I watch rather, filled with these sort of scammy tactics, these ideas that they actually work really well from a marketing standpoint. So he would say things like, I tried X, but it didn't work. And later in this video, I'll reveal to you what actually worked. And I'm like, man, what? just just tell us why why do all of this stuff but um as at my copywriting training kicked back in i mean i took online courses right okay so it's very,
Speaker0: uh recursive it's a snake eating its fucking tail right so i mean i took marketing courses to like learn how to write an effective email, right? A sales page to create like a video that was effective. Although video never actually worked for me and the written word seemed to work a little bit better. And I. As I, I skipped ahead and I do know he was selling coaching on how he got brand deals. And the thing is, the hard part about the internet and like, if you're an effective creator, what, what happens is people want to do what you are doing more than they want to learn what you're teaching directly.
Speaker0: And I have an analogy that I can give you that should make perfect sense. But basically, I'm pretty sure he didn't share the dollar line items from where he was earning money specifically. He was just like, I made 10K in two months with no experience. That's the bottom line. And he was selling coaching about how to get brand deals. The almost direct analogy is i've been making friends and interviewing some of my, guitar youtube inspirations people that i've watched for you know a couple few years and i'm like oh they're pretty cool and i would like to talk to them about their their business so i interview them here,
Speaker0: we get to talk shop as a youtube creator, and we get to talk about guitars and the stuff that we're into literally like it's a, it is an interesting venn diagram where like if i'm doing youtube they're doing youtube and they like guitars and we kind of consume similar content, we have a lot of stuff in common it's pretty amazing and it's fun stuff that we want to talk about, so it's worked well and outside of some of the interviews and sometimes i talk to people that I, you know, it's off the record. And so I'm not going to say anything super specific other than when I hear people and they're like, oh, we'd like to earn a little bit more money.
Speaker0: I haven't said this yet, but I'm like. People probably don't want to take a course from me about playing guitar. Here's the analogy. People don't want, because I'm not that great of a guitar player. It's just for fun. You know, I'm not a pro. I barely know my way around the fretboard. However, people probably would take a course from me about how to run a YouTube channel or how to create content or start a podcast or other things that I literally have like taught people about. And that is just what people want to learn. That's what they will pay money for. There's actually, I know there's... There's a really cool guy. I don't know him personally, but he has a channel
Speaker0: called Five Watt World, and he basically does, short documentaries on things that are guitar related. Five Watt is a nod to like the early class A tube amps that were often five watts from like the late 40s um i think is when some of the early ones were out, to the whatever they still make them today but those were like some of the the cool ones so he does these documentaries and he'll he does a ton of research they're beautiful essays beautiful video essays and literally like the quality that he puts out. And i can't remember his name like i said i don't know him personally but, keith i think his name's keith keith williams maybe five oil world great channel
Speaker0: if you're into like just documentary style things, but the quality that he puts out is like the documentaries that i've watched like growing up on whatever discovery channel or something like that, and really cool he has a course on like being a creator as a musician on youtube so it's like how to YouTube for musicians and you know he's, doing a documentary style channel. So there's not a direct product that he would easily be able to charge for. I think he has partnered with some folks to do like guitar pedals and stuff like that. But I mean, people go to his channel to like learn something and be entertained.
Speaker0: There's not a direct product where he's like, I'm rolling out this guitar based on this other guitar. Like he's not doing anything like that. So it totally makes sense for him to charge for it. And going back to the the young dude that i was watching and i was like ah fuck is this guy a scammer like can he really learn anything or can you learn something from him and i'm sure you probably can't. What he was trying to teach and the community that he was launching and all all the stuff that people do, he was like i could teach you how to get brand deals and i'll tell you like what I was doing now the I could tell you the very valuable part is if I was
Speaker0: teaching something versus that dude, completely different right, I'm going to guess that the guy that I am referencing and it could be a generic person by the way I don't want to like call anyone out specifically but basically, He's 26. I'm 47. So I'm like 20 years older. He's just starting online. And I've been doing something online from blogging starting in like 2013. And then I've done YouTube from like 2016. So I have a cynical, jaded, probably closer to a boomer than I'm Gen X technically. But yeah so it's coming from like an old guy and everyone has their own audience now the thing that he would do better than me is i'm i'm a little bit out of
Speaker0: the loop and i have my um crusty uh, exterior where i'm like i'm like um i. I don't want to deal with a lot of the the noise that comes at me so i i literally don't but this younger dude has been able to sort through it he's, he probably, and I did this at the beginning. I was like, I'll take whatever deal I can get when it comes my way, because this is all brand new. And I don't know what is what. And he has been able to uncover things that I don't know right now. And, you know, ignore the medium, right? Like he's probably doing more short form stuff. I'm doing long drawn out things that a 47-year-old might do.
Speaker0: And I don't have as much energy as him, too. So, man, remember when you used to be able to drink in your 20s and a hangover would be like, I don't know, it would last like until lunchtime. Now it's like lunchtime, four days later, it's like, ah, shit, is this really worth it? It's not typically, but sometimes, but you never know. And then you forget how long a hangover takes to get over. So the big issue with this guy, and I think the big issue with a lot of the sort of make money online and this snake that, eats its tail situation is. It's possible that the guy made most of his money from brand deals.
Speaker0: The more likely scenario is the guy made a couple thousand dollars. I'm just making it up. He made a couple thousand dollars with a brand deal maybe he made a thousand dollars with a brand deal and then he sold coaching and memberships and he has like, a community i don't even know the apps that people use right now like i'm so detached i know everybody has a hard-on for, school a couple people like off off the record have been like man you should really check it out like you might like you can, pull your community in there and i i don't um have the enthusiasm to do such a thing um so i was like i don't know that sounds like i don't want to do that but.
Speaker0: There's a strong chance the guy made 90 of his revenue from teaching other people to do what he did with the brand deals, which might be totally valid. And there is a value that can be placed on the information and knowledge that he's able to teach. And that value might be worth it for everyone that has joined his community. Externally, it looks bad. And it looks like, well, if you're so good, go get more fucking brand deals. Like, why are you teaching people? And that's what people say when they, you know, they're external, right? Like, that's what I was thinking. I was like, ah, if you're so good,
Speaker0: then why are you doing that? It's like people like in the investing world with like stock picks. It's like, if you're so good with your stock picks, then just go fucking invest all your money, borrow against it, be fully leveraged, and then you don't have to fuck around with the community. Like, that totally doesn't make sense. It's like a waste of time. That said, some people like to teach. Some people view it as a way to give back. And. In my warped brain, that's what I was thinking when I was going through it. So full circle, as I was watching this guy, fortunately, I am self-aware enough to think, is that exactly what I was doing? Were other people thinking,
Speaker0: like, Doug, you're a scammer. Like, why are you selling these courses? And certainly some people did. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, I was chatting with someone that was in my stand-up comedy class, which I'll do a show on that sometime soon. I've been recording some thoughts about the things I learned from the stand-up comedy class. Anyway, this dude, sounds like he's pretty successful. He mentioned that he worked at, you know what, it's a big enough company. He works at a company called Amazon and it sounds like he's doing like some interesting software stuff. I won't say what department or anything specific,
Speaker0: but yeah, he was, um, it seems to be doing well. And I say, Hey, I work on a couple of podcasts, you know, as my job. So he was like, how's, how's the podcasting world? What's it like? And I mentioned that, you know, I'm currently doing it as a hobby. There's not really much money that I'm making from any podcast that I'm doing. It's barely enough to cover the cost. And he was, you know, he asked a couple other questions. I was like, ah, I did, you know, YouTube online courses and affiliate marketing. And he was actually familiar with Amazon associates. And I, I was like, yeah, I had some online courses and I kind of shut everything
Speaker0: down maybe about three years ago, four years ago. And he was like, oh man, yeah. So you're like milking them for all they're worth. And I was like, no, no. I was like, that's the worst fucking way that you could say that. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude? I didn't use those exact words, but like pretty close. I was like, no, not anything like that. It was like, I had a corporate job. I did project management. So I tried to bring professionalism to the make money online world. That is inherently kind of scammy and people are doing weird shit all the time. And he accepted, he was like, oh, okay.
Speaker0: Like I get that. But I was like, no, no, I'm not. I wasn't trying to milk any, anyone, which sounds gross. Over there trying to milk milk stuff the fuck you talking about dude so anyway. When I reviewed what I did I was like well I had, my ideal of like you know giving back a little bit and part of it was I learned from people online and I was like oh they're doing a blog They're doing a podcast. Maybe I could do that too. It seems like an interesting way to organize what you've done. It's almost like, I mean, honestly, it's almost like journaling and reflecting in a formal way that you're sort of.
Speaker0: Obligated to finish and tell people about what you're working on. So that's why those case studies were so interesting back in the day, people would do a case study. And then you're like, all right, I'm going to do this for X amount of time, I'm going to give like an update every month or two weeks. And case studies were always super popular from the people that I watched and learned from. So I learned a ton from those case studies. And I was like, Oh, I can do case studies myself and other people will learn as well. And eventually I was like, oh, I should probably actually not eventually very early.
Speaker0: I was like, I think teaching with an angle of project management could be an interesting way to differentiate my content from other people, but also it would be a cool way, to use my specialized skills in project management to create that content, put frameworks around it, and use some of the vocabulary from the project management world, which is exactly what I did. And it worked well because people in IT either did project management type work, or they were working directly with a project manager and they knew the vocabulary and the lingo. And it set us apart from people that didn't know and, it's fine like people could learn it but project management had,
Speaker0: its day in the sun or whatever right so people like knew project management and they were down to explore working online through the lens of project management so that worked for me. From my sort of defensive standpoint, I was like, well, I did have strong testimonials once I got started and I had case studies and people that took the courses, that got something out of it. And all along the way, I didn't do it on purpose, but I ended up earning about the same, amount of revenue from my affiliate websites, primarily. There was some affiliate revenue from like this podcast back in the day. So there were times in the email newsletter. So basically I earned,
Speaker0: I would say just a ballpark. I would, I would earn maybe like 35 to 40% of my revenue was from the course, course sales. The rest of the money that I earned was either advertising on YouTube or podcast, or affiliate marketing on my own website or selling a website or other ways that I pull in revenue, which if you're working online, there's usually a few different sources, but it falls into like advertising, affiliate, your own products and, you know, larger assets or smaller businesses that you might start depending on your point of view and perspective on like what a website is. So all that to say, I had a decent amount of pride in that I earned money from
Speaker0: walking the walk, not just saying, hey, I had one good deal once and then I'm going to teach about that over and over again, which another analogy I could bring is real estate where, real estate is the make money offline equivalent of make money online. And it has been for a really long time. Actually, I remember when I was like in high school.
Speaker0: I was at the mall. There's a place that we used to go to called the mall and I could drive. I remember I was there by myself as a fucking nerd, right? So I was like checking out the bookstore. Maybe a, um, they used to have software stores, like a computer store where they, they would have like boxes with a floppy disks in there. It's true. It's kind of like CDs except for your computer. So anyway i remember i got some book about real estate because i was like oh like rental property sounds interesting so i got one of those and i was like. I was like 16 so i was like i don't know how to buy a house or whatever so i
Speaker0: didn't do anything with that but real estate is another super scammy area where, they are fairly predatory. There are some people teaching valuable, good information about real estate, whether it's like, uh, having, you know, short-term rentals or long-term or, or some other, you know, apartment buildings or whatever real estate you want, undeveloped wholesale real estate. I mean, there's all different flavors and you can get the information, right? You can get books and you could read. There's also courses and there are scammy people doing, you know, real estate courses out there that are insanely expensive.
Speaker0: And it is the equivalent of like make money online. In my opinion, there's enough scammy people out there. And the other thing that, I mean, it's, it's sort of like standard for marketers online, email list, you know, the guy from the, you know, the video that the young guy from the video that I've been talking about, he was trying to build his email list. And he was like, Oh, you know, I have my, my top 10 cheat sheet list of whatever shortcut to make money online. And of course it's to like, get on the email list. And then he could try to get you into the community and sell you the extra coaching and all the other stuff.
Speaker0: So it's like the same business model and plan. And as I was thinking about myself, I was like, I'm probably judging the guy a little too harshly. There are scammers out there. There are scammers that were, you know, my peers going parallel with the, some of the shit that I was working on and they're still doing it. And they, they migrated, you know, slightly over to, you know, something AI flavored. There's legit people that transitioned on, but some of it, I'm just like, oh man, what, what is even happening? Like, this is all crazy. I can't believe, you know, you haven't moved on it's just. It baffles me a little bit because at some point, like it gets boring,
Speaker0: right? If you keep doing the same stuff, it's just like a slightly different flavor. It gets boring and not everything works like you think. One other side note, a little scattered. I did have some notes here, but one of the other observations is, you know, the guy was like, I made 10K in two months as a brand new influencer. And i think there's a narrative i've i heard a question come in on a podcast that i listened to and it was like, yeah some of these influencers are making so much money there's like you know not much value that they're providing they're just influencers online doing stuff and they're making millions right.
Speaker0: It's a very small portion of people that are making a good amount of money They might be creating a lot of content and I watch, like Van Life and Nomadic Life YouTube channels and they, some people that I've watched, they've grown tremendously in the last couple years, right? Maybe there's a couple of people I'm thinking of, they may have started off at, you know, I started watching them with like 1500 subscribers and now they have 150, 250,000 and subscribers. And I'm like, man, that is some crazy growth. And they are getting some brand deals. You know, they have, you know, products like batteries for, you know, your RV and different accessories,
Speaker0: different things like that. There's a lot of VPN advertisers out there too. And in my head, I'm like, oh man, they're getting a ton of views. You know, they may put out a video and they'll get. 100,000 views in a week or something like that. I mean, a lot of people watch those channels and I watch them too. They're, you know, 20, 30 minutes long. They're fun. They're doing stuff outdoors, which I enjoy. And in my head, I was like, man, I wonder if they're making a lot of money. I don't think they're making a lot of money. Like when I was doing more advertising and I had some brand deals myself.
Speaker0: It was, it's in the business arena, software and business and people pay a lot more to get in touch with those audience members. And I had a huge amount of leverage when I had those good deals. And it was, I mean, I over-negotiated basically. I over-negotiated because I didn't need to do it, which is super interesting, right? Like I couldn't run those deals now. It just, the economics don't work. It was a different time in the business cycle of like content websites and working online. All that to say, the idea is that people, the influencers are making a huge amount of money and only some, some of them are, but not as many as you think.
Speaker0: And like the people that I mentioned that are in the, you know, outdoor van life niche, they're probably making enough to get by on the road. But when they talk about some of the struggles and how much they work, because I mean, creating those kinds of logs, huge amount of work, editing takes forever. Editing takes forever. And a lot of those folks really enjoy editing, or at least they know they have to spend the time editing. Takes a long time. It takes a very long time. And it's a lot of effort to record, yourself while you're doing something that you actually enjoy. That's why I'm like, I want to do a vlog on a hike and it totally ruins the hike.
Speaker0: So I only have like two of those on the whole channel, even though I really, I like hiking and I like the idea of recording a vlog, putting it all together. It's just like, man, this is a lot of work for not a huge amount of payoff for me. So I think, you know, it looks like those people are making a lot of money because it's like, oh, you get a brand deal with fucking elements or something like that. And they probably don't get that much. I don't think they get that much, especially when you look at what you could make doing something else, like selling a course on how to be an influencer, which brings us full circle i don't fault the guy you know he's probably learning from people,
Speaker0: um that are doing the exact same thing and that is okay i think you know there's obviously an ethical way to have an online business, i think the authenticity of like what you're doing is super important. It's like the only thing, right? It's why I could record this video and there's a handful of people. The channel is smaller from a viewership standpoint. Still, audio, awesome. This was always an audio podcast first. So audio, going strong. And it's not as big as it was in the heyday of like 2020, early on when people were still doing some cool stuff with niche websites before. I think it was like a few algorithm updates really hit before it was a helpful content.
Speaker0: I forget, it doesn't even matter. But then AI hit and that changed everything. But when you're looking at teaching other people, you can bring value, you can help them out. I think online courses are totally different. A lot of stuff has moved to communities from what I could tell. There's still courses out there i recently bought a course from a guitarist that i enjoy i've seen him play live, a guy named greg cock and he has a course and i was like you know what i said i want to support his shit he's, a working musician he's made a career out of it i could buy his his course and it was like 70 bucks.
Speaker0: I think it was, you know, launch sale. So I got it half off. I think it'll normally be 120 bucks, but it's like 10 hours of instruction. I'm going to go through it, at least, you know, most of it. But the big thing is I'm like, I like this guy as a creator, as a musician, and I support what he's trying to do. So I was like, I'll buy his course. And I think if you're trying to figure it out, like I said, there's definitely an ethical way to go about it to make sure you're not taking advantage of people. There's a way to make sure you're bringing them value. And if you're kind of full of shit, I think people can see through it. Which, side note.
Speaker0: I will, I I've been, this is a callback. All right. So this is a callback to a couple episodes ago. I think I mentioned someone who emailed me and they were like, I'm really curious about doing a, faceless YouTube channel and just doing it with AI and see how that goes. And I was like, that's a waste of fucking time. Basically don't do that. Like do something better, do something better and i did pop over to alex cooper he did a live stream which, i mean back in the day i was doing like one or two live streams a week alex was doing them, and um yeah i mean there were it was just like there was a community out there
Speaker0: so i popped over there but i did see like Alex had experimented with, um, it was not his face, but it was just like AI characters with, you know, AI video. And I don't think that's a good route. I mean, it's interesting to experiment with maybe for me, it's not worth my time. Cause I know that's, I mean, if i see one of those videos that are total ai. I'm like this is something i don't want to watch i actively don't want to watch an ai video and the other part is the content, if it's written by ai there's a very strong chance that fucking information is wrong and that is not. Anything i want to watch at all and i don't think other people do either and
Speaker0: i think if they find out that like a character that they've been watching is not real they probably feel a little bit um, They feel like they've been taken advantage of and it doesn't make them feel good. Like at the end of the line, it's just like they're not happy. Even if they learn something, they're like, ah, that's a fucking fake person. Like I don't want to watch a fake grandma like in the kitchen. I don't even know if the information's right. Are these recipes like really like an heirloom recipe that has been passed down? Probably not. It's made up. So anyway, a little bit of a rant. It's another story for another day.
Speaker0: The video looked good. I don't know if it's economically viable. My hunch is no, probably not. But, Going back to the original topic here, is a guy or online courses a scam? Some of them are. If it seems like it's too good to be true, it probably is. Some of those might actually be okay. It's pretty hard to tell the difference. And then the person that I was watching, I don't think he was a scammer. It just came off poorly from my perspective. And then was I a scammer online? I never was a scammer online. I delivered a lot of pretty good information. Some people would disagree on some of the specifics, but overall, I mean, I stand by the work that I did.
Speaker0: And if there was ever, you know, even from an ethical standpoint, I had a very generous refund policy. So if someone enrolled in the course and went along and they were like, Hey, I don't like it. I'll give you a refund. Yeah i was like just yeah take the money i don't give a shit give a refund um, only rare occasions did i not some some people were literally scamming me where they like bought the course and then like tried to publish it elsewhere kind of thing so i would do i would like not refund their money and, overall like i said stand by my work so i wasn't a scammer and, you know, be careful out there. It's hard to tell sometimes.
Speaker0: If you have any show ideas, questions, comments, shoot me an email, feedback at doug.show.
