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Are you being fooled?
Seriously, I am going to take a few minutes for you here to put things into perspective. Somehow over the past umpteen years it has become acceptable for people to sell high ticket course online.
You have seem them.
“Get my awesome super exclusive secret course for $1997, but wait you get $20,000 in bonuses if you buy in the next 10 minutes!”.
A course for $1,997?! I hope that comes with an ounce of gold as well, so you can get something that is worth the price of admission.
Guess what happens when you buy products like this, it feeds the system. It makes it OK for more and more products to continue coming out like this, and more and more affiliates and “guru’s” to further promoting products like this (by the way, they get a 50% cut when you buy one of these products through their link).
Whether the course is $500 or $5,000, paying this for "content", even if it is bleeding edge is ridiculous.
Think about authored content anywhere else in the world, someone spends a year writing a book and you spend $25 and get a copy of it at your local bookstore.
Then why does a ghost written course that was created in 3 months, much of which was probably outsourced or "ghostwritten" is worth two thousand bucks.
Logically, it makes very little sense. Help me if I am way off base here.
I know I am not and I have hard evidence. Just today, Britannica Encyclopedia ended the print production after nearly two centuries in the content business. The reason. They were TOO expensive and could not compete with online sites like Wikipedia.
A full set of 32 beautiful books was $1,400...written by professionals and developed over 200 years. Yet, somehow it is OK for a guru to charge $2,000 on their rehashed e-course or course they deliver via mail. See why charging this much for content is incomprehensible to me?
And those mentoring packages. $5,000 and up.
These are the same. If you can, avoid giving away your phone number to anyone online, especially within the self help or make money niche. The minute you do, you are inviting yourself to be sucked dry by a HIGH ticket mentoring program, that is typically taught by a minimum wage worker teaching you out of a reference manual.
This is true. The person selling the product is not the one you will receive the mentoring from...I would say as high as 99% of the time. Many times these programs are completely outsourced as there are companies dedicated to these mentoring programs.
And super exclusive “retreat” conferences.
Here is where you can clue in, if you have attended more than one conference that you have paid $1,000’s to attend and you are not operating a business that is earning a minimum of six figures, you need to stop buying hope.
Buying hope through “mingling” at conferences isn’t going to lead you to any greater success. If you are using these for networking purposes, fair game. If you are looking to get taught in 2 days how to create a business online, think again. That is a “dream” you are buying into.
You need to stop believing in “The Secret” and start believing in the real secret. One that I have learned over the years....
YOUR SUCCESS IS A BYPRODUCT OF YOUR HARDWORK
Sure, understanding what you are doing is essential, but this education doesn't have to be from an overpriced course. It could be done through free online reading, through lower priced education programs, and through opening communicating with people in the niche.
In your defense, I understand that many people are in a financial situation they want to improve (and sometimes act out of desperation). I understand that. I also understand that buying a course, or attending a conference that is expensive won’t help you anymore than a course or book that is priced at a fair market price.
What about the people that do get value out of an expensive content?
People that say “I got something valuable out of it that made money though”. My response is this. Is that because you spent $1997 on it, or was it because you actually took action on what was taught to you. I have gotten ideas that have made me a lot more than $1000 from a $20 book at Barnes and Noble or a magazine that I picked up at an airport. Seriously.
The saying “a fool and his money are soon parted”, that has never been more prevalent than high ticket courses.
Have you ever bought a high ticket item? I would love to hear about your experience. Do you sell high ticket items? I would love to hear your feedback on the subject as well.
If you are "A do-it-yourself guy" you will never pay too much for content. One has to learn how to create their own content and attract visitors to their content.
No one could have said this any better... What happens in this industry is no less than "kicking a guy(or gal) while they're down and trying to get back up". As far as I'm concerned, this is called "bullying", and should be a crime.
Could not agree more with you.I 've had my share. Luckily I was only a victim of small internet packages lets say around 100$.But I overpassed that and never looked back.What I do right now is to try something first at free of charge conditions and then if satisfied proceed
Sadly I have got sucked in some of the higher ticket items as well. I have never paid 4 digits for a course or anything, but do want information and knowledge. I'll share a little bit of my story. Summer of 2012 I HATED my job. Wanted out very very badly and was looking at a lot of work from home type of things. I DO have the drive and determination to make things work and to build things, but they got into my emotions. Yep, that is where they got me. This one program had a lot of the testimonials and they were people that had said that they made $1,500 their 1st month. I was like, "I can do that!" It was an online, home based business, that was in the health and wellness industry. All things I was looking for. I paid the $200, then come to find out it was Herbalife. I used some of their products after I paid the $200 and I liked them, nothing wrong with them. I haven't bought any since I ran out though. And it being a network marketing company didn't bother me at all, I'm into Legal Shield now anyways. But what did bother me and really bring me down, was that you had to buy the products to then re-sell them. I could very well have made the $1,500 the first month, but you had to pay like $3,000 to get $4,500 worth of products. Well I didn't have the $3,000, I was so tight on money that time in my life. I don't mind hard work, and building something, but at that time I was looking for a fast and easy answer. And again, I didn't have the big money to invest that it would take. That was a big let down. However I have picked myself up and moved on. Kept looking. Found EN, got out of EN. Kept looking more. Then found you Kyle with WA. I just had my first person sign up and complete their profile around the 2 month mark and I was so excited! I feel a little silly to be so excited over something so small but it shows how it can work and that it does work. I jumped up and down for about a good 5 minutes excited, lol. Thanks Kyle!
YES! I bought into over a thousand dollar software product with only a ten day money back guarantee claiming it would make me money through clickbank products in under a month and that it would take up to two weeks for it to start working... Woops, shoulda seen that coming I guess, although it did make me ONE $28 sale one day in the past 7 months I have been sucked into these HIGH claims too. :(
Achieving success takes more than a month, no matter what you are doing. I remember when I started out in the online world, I made $70 gross (I started out doing PPC) in my first month online...definitely no profit there, and I worked my butt off. However within 6 months I started seeing some real success...this is the sort of persistence it takes, but it will happen if you want it. Anyone that tells you big success can happen in a month is lying to you, flat out!
I agree Kyle, and thanks for the feedback! I have two websites now, one affiliate and one I offer my own training online right now. While niether has made me money yet its only been about a month or so, so I will use the skills I learned while I was a member at WA for the next 6 months and see if I cant rank in the search engines and pull in some nice targeted traffic! Ive been persistant at learning what I can when I can for the past couple of years now so I know it will take off for me eventually!
Yeah, keep at it Mike! You will get there. I do suggest that if you are trying to offer your own training in the IM industry and you haven't create great success yourself, you may be heading in the wrong direction. It is far easier to own your own product than it is to promote someone else's as an affiliate, so you may want to rethink this as it could be acting as a distraction. In order to become a successful merchant you need to first understand how to become a successful affiliate!
Many web-sites are offering sky high content. We know how hard it is to write content, but we also know how bad the economy is and that doubles everyone expectations of what money gets in return. Sadly the Internet has somewhat obscure the hard work of "WORD CHASING" and a quick and easy to make has diluted the reality of writing and the meaning of it. But we keep on doing it to maybe re-establish the true meaning of writing, always remembering that frequently quick money means also quick disappointments.
I agree, people do see it as being worth even more value when times are tight, but really it is just information. We are taught (and it is ingrained in us) that products that cost more are typically better. To me, I don't think that applies to information, in particular in the make money business. It is typically poaching the desperation market and taking advantage of people to earn substantial sums of revenue. It won't go away, but acknowledging what is going on is the first step of prevention.
I don't want to turn this into a Wealthy Affiliate review, but one of the other advantages of using WA as compared to a 1 time fee for other products is that you get to progress bit by bit. Rather than using a huge chunk of 2,000 bucks (or whatever the price) at once, you get to spread it out over a couple years. I mean, $47 bucks a month is a couple of beers or a tank of gas, while a one time fee of a couple grand is a couple months house payment, so the price is much easier to follow.
I agree (not sure why), but this wasn't necessarily to point out the alternatives, rather to point out the problems. I do think that people pay too much for information and that we are taught that it is OK to pay this much for, info. My personal opinion is that it isn't, but the consumer will lead the charge and are ultimately the ones that are going to dictate how long this goes on. Yeah and I do agree that with Wealthy Affiliate, The Open Education Project there is not a need for anything else out there (for the $47), but that is my biased opening obviously. :) Thanks for your feedback Rodders!
You wrote a very timely article. I have bought very expensive programs in the past, and I have benefited from getting input from different people. Of course, there are some exceptions to that rule, so I have requested refunds for some of those products in the past. You are also right about Wealthy Affiliates. It is a service. Some of the training is very valuable. Some of it isn't. I get enough valuable service and training to make it worth my while to continue to be a monthly member of WA.
Yeah, the training is going to be vastly improved in the near future as we move to a platform that is more conducive of creating quality training and getting it seen. There is a lot of training within WA that is great, but nobody knows about. Lot's of awesome stuff coming. Thanks for the feedback Sarah.
I attended a free introductory seminar that was aimed at self improvement and although there was some good information, it was worthless until I put it into practice. And they had the usual pitch at the end of $500 per month for a year sign up course plus thousands of added value. Again - worthless unless acted on. The voice of reason again, thank you Kyle.
Yeah, these are pretty common in the self help niche. A low entrance fee to attend a conference (usually $99) and then when you attend, and then they pitch their high ticket content once you are there and feel "obligated" to buy something. You get hyped up and you believe that buying this is going to change your life. I remember back in 2006 I attended an Internet marketing conference like this and I could not believe the rudimentary information they were teach. They at one point asked everyone to put up their hand who had purchased one of this particular companies high ticket items, almost everyone put up their hand. This was followed by, "who is running a full time business online", 2 people out of the 500 or so that were there. Guess who those people were. :) lol
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