If It’s Not A Freebie, Why Make It Look Like It?

Summary

The author reflects on the misleading marketing tactics used by online business coaches, emphasizing the challenges faced by emerging content creators with limited financial resources.

Abstract

The author shares insights gained from interactions with online business coaches who promise substantial earnings from creating and marketing online courses. After engaging with their content, the author points out that these coaches often use the allure of free valuable information to entice potential customers into purchasing expensive courses, which may not be feasible for those without significant capital. The author recounts experiences with a businessman offering a $5000 course after a webinar and a woman on Instagram who initially presented her services as free but ultimately required payment. The author advises fellow content creators to utilize free resources diligently and not to be disheartened by the paradox of needing money to make money. The piece underscores the importance of being cautious about marketing tactics that promise quick wealth but may not align with one's financial reality.

Opinions

The author is skeptical of online business coaches who use freebies as bait for expensive courses, questioning the effectiveness of such tactics for individuals who genuinely cannot afford them.
There is a critique of the aggressive marketing approach, known as hyper-selling, which can become off-putting, especially when the product is out of reach for the target audience.
The author believes that the promise of free assistance should be honored without leading to a sales pitch, to avoid wasting time and creating false expectations.
Advice is given to emerging content creators to focus on freely available resources and invest time and effort, suggesting that financial investment should come later when there is more clarity on the value of paid resources.
The author acknowledges the struggle of needing money to make money in the content creation space and encourages others not to feel incapacitated by this challenge.

What I learned from online business coaches

Indeed, when you experience writer’s block or any form of creative block, it is because you are in your way. You are self-criticizing, thinking what you have to say is not good enough, afraid to suck, and generally not wanting to be lame and I have been all that in the past few weeks

I have had some rough and interesting experiences and I am ready to write about them all.

I have just created my first online course on Skillshare and I am looking for ways to market it. I am also taking my content creation journey seriously which is why I have been searching for a lot of resources to help me in this new digital journey I have begun.

One encounter was with this online businessman who swears his secret would make you millions of dollars in a few months. He goes ahead to explain how he has helped so many people make millions of dollars from their online courses. I began by watching some of his YouTube videos. I had my reservations about the videos but some of the tips he shares are valuable so I decided to hang on.

Then I signed up to attend one of his webinars and this was where it became tricky. After sharing some useful information, he offered his course for $5000. For context, $5000 is a lot of money when you change it to my currency and I am surely not the dude’s target audience because if I was making $5000, I wouldn’t even be in his webinar.

Another one was a woman who targeted me on Instagram and emailed me about helping people for free to monetize and become Instagram influencers. Any opportunity to create content and make money from it, I am down. I didn’t ask for it, she emailed me and made me feel like the best thing since sliced bread because she looked at my profile and deemed me worthy of her help.

I obliged and after a few exchanges and emails back and forth, it still came down to me paying for a package.

All those tactics might have worked if I had the money to pay but my fault with the tactic is that there is no amount of marketing you can do to someone who doesn’t genuinely have the money. And if you say you are giving something free of charge, maybe simply do that not lure them in when they know they are doing it because it is free then you waste everyone’s time at the end of it all.

As a broke and emerging content creator, my advice to anyone in a similar situation is to take advantage of all the free resources available and put in your time and energy. When the time and money come, you’ll know the resources to spend your money on with more clarity.

Don’t feel bad about how incapacitated you get when you are trying to make money and you find that you need money to make money.

As a content creator who is looking for opportunities to make money, several people on the internet claim to have the life-changing information you need to make you the millions of dollars you have been dreaming of if only you’ll buy their products. I am not even going to snare at them because I don’t know if it works or not and I am hoping to make money online as well.

Here are some of the tactics they employ and what I think of them:

1. They lure you in with freebies: it is a sale tactic as old as time itself, luring people in with free valuable information such that they can’t resist buying from you. But the problem remains, if I had the money to buy your course or product, I won’t need to be marketed to do much. What’s a broke and emerging content creator to do when your course costs $5000?

2. They hyper-sell: I guess you never know until you try and the truth is if you are going to make one sale, you have to advertise to a lot of people. However, all too often when someone is trying so hard to sell you something, it becomes annoying, especially when it is way out of your reach. You find out soon enough that you don’t need a said thing and just move along.