It’s great to see someone posting a warning shot about the coming onslaught of mediocre paid online content. As someone who has dabbled in the “passive income” community for about a year now, I have mixed feelings about the get-rich-quick enthusiasm of many of the blogs, podcasts and tutorials teaching everyday folks how to make money online teaching courses. The formula, from the business side: grow your email list with free content, then sell them paid content by creating immediacy (course is on sale for short period of time), and price the course high to create a sense of value. This “evergreen” content will sell itself while you sip cocktails on a white stucco balcony in Malta.

This marketing formula works for people who have solid content; unfortunately it also works for “experts” who repackage content you can find elsewhere online. There are no watchdogs calling these people out, and there’s hardly a repository, save for Udemy, of places to find unbiased reviews of this paid content. E-courses are like street food: buyer beware.

Those who have been successful in creating quality online paid content are right to package that knowledge to teach others how to do it; their courses are in-depth, helpful, inspirational. But they’re teaching people how to pan for gold, essentially, selling them a lifestyle that likely isn’t possible given the popularity of e-courses as a business model and, quite frankly, their own inability to create legit content or a decent landing page. (As a side note, the smartest people in this community are the Levis and the Western Unions — those who are supplying the gold rushers with products like high-converting landing pages and email automation. If you want to get rich online, that’s the direction to go.)

I have never paid for an online course, but I have built & sold paid online how-to content, always believing that if I provide quality content based on original research/knowledge that you can’t find online anywhere else, I’m not ripping anyone off. Your article is a great guide for buyers, but also sellers of e-courses. It all boils down to quality content. If you don’t have it, you’ll never be successful in the long-term.