The Course Creator Economy
MLMs for the chronically online
Ever since I started thinking about freelancing and looking for resources on how to get started, I’ve been inundated with ads from people claiming to have the secret recipe for building a six-figure business while only working 10 hours a week!
I mean, sign me up, right?
Logically, I know this is a bunch of hogwash. However, I am highly susceptible to internet advertising, and after seeing the same ads 800 times, I started clicking on them just to see what they were all about. Almost every single one of them was a course telling you how to make your own course to sell.
Sure, they might disguise themselves as teaching you how to sell “digital products” - but if selling digital products is so lucrative, why are they charging to show you how? Or they might disguise themselves as freelance marketers, freelance writers, or even career coaches.
But what they’re really selling?
That’s right, a course.
It’s unclear if they even perform any of the work they claim to be experts in or if they’ve just packaged up some free advice they found on the internet, slapped a price tag on it, and started yapping about it on Instagram. I suspect it’s the latter.
This isn’t saying that every course you find online is a scam - there are plenty that are genuinely reputable and worth the money. But they’re few and far between.
When I started doing research on this, I found people were either adamant they were just another version of an MLM, and others insisted many of these courses were invaluable and that paying for the knowledge rather than finding it themselves for free made them more likely to stick with the “learning.”
People who believe these courses are worthwhile are the ones who are keeping these creators in business.
I have yet to come across anyone who can definitively say, “Yes, I took this course, and now I make $10k a month.” This is probably because even a free course can tell you how to do something, but if you don’t actually go out and do it, it will never work. A lot of these course creators sell the dream but gloss over how much work you’ll actually need to put in to get to these income levels they’re promising. It’s also likely by the time you’re coming across the course, whatever they’re teaching you how to do is already an oversaturated market, and your odds of finding success are little to none. (Which is why they’re selling a course instead of doing the thing their course teaches.)
But damn, they are tempting. Don’t we all want to believe in a real get-rich-quick scheme? I won’t lie - during this period of unemployment, I have thought about whipping up some Canva templates and selling it as a “course” and seeing if the money does indeed roll in.
In the end, it feels too scammy and disingenuous for me to actually go through with it and I really don’t know how these creators live with themselves. Unless they truly do believe they’re providing value, which I’m sure most of them think they are.
And before you think these types of scams are limited to just Instagram - think again! LinkedIn is absolutely flooded with these.
Recruiters trying to be influencers. Career coaches preying on the unemployed. It’s “valuable insights” with absolutely no substance. LinkedIn used to be a career platform, meant for networking and job hunting, and now it’s just another oversaturated social media platform with the same “influencers” posting meaningless content.
There’s a ton of these schemes right here on Substack, too. “How I Went From 0 to 100k Subscribers in 3 Months,” “How I Make $5k a Month From Substack,” - take a scroll through your Substack notes feed and these will pop up eventually. The content is either behind a paywall, or you’ll quickly realize they gained subscribers and made money on Substack by claiming they can teach you how to gain subscribers and make money on Substack. It’s one big, meaningless loop.
Unfortunately for me, I’ve now turned all my feeds into a cesspool of sponsored posts about these life-changing courses. Gotta go start liking posts of behind-the-scenes clips from Traitors to refresh my algorithm. ✌️