Exposing "Fake YouTube Gurus" and the business of Selling Courses

There are very few industries out there where you have the potential to make tens of millions of dollars with no employees, no overhead, no office, no physical products, and nothing but a computer, an internet connection, and something to teach. There are three billion people on the internet, and when you find the winning formula to convert a cold audience and turn eyeballs into dollars, your potential is as much as you want.

That brings us to present day where information changes and moves so quickly that many college classes simply can't keep up. By the time they end up crafting a curriculum around what works, the techniques have already changed, and it's really difficult to be at the forefront of anything digital. But oftentimes, an individual can knock out up-to-date information in a matter of a few weeks or months, have it up and running, and be able to adapt as quickly as needed. This almost makes the college curriculum obsolete.

Now obviously, more and more people are catching on to the YouTube sales technique as it becomes more common, and more people flood into the information sales industry for quick short-term profits. The more people begin selling information, just like any industry, the higher the chances of seeing unscrupulous people that give the legitimate people a bad image. But the bigger question is, why does selling information work so well, and why do so many people want to sell their information in the first place?

Also, it's not to mention the saying, "those that can't do, teach," and as much as people don't want to hear or admit it, the reality is that often selling information is much more profitable than actually doing what you're teaching. For the simple reason that it's highly scalable. For instance, it's not uncommon for someone to make $200,000 per year in a business, let's just call it social media marketing.

But having the ability to teach other people how to make $200,000 per year can often generate $500,000 per year or up to a million dollars or more per year. It's a lot like selling the shovel during a gold rush. While you can absolutely make a killing and make money digging for gold, you'll often make more money selling the product that helps the person get the gold in the first place.

A revolutionary concept by any means, and this has been around for quite some time, although the mediums from which this information is shared are constantly changing. Right now, it seems to be a mix between YouTube and Instagram.

And is it reasonable to charge someone to learn something when pretty much everything they need to know is already online for free? I'll be the first to openly admit that I was the type that fell into that category. I was vehemently against selling anything online. I didn't offer any coaching; I didn't immediately monetize my videos. I spent hours every single day making free YouTube videos and answering long-winded comments, Snapchats, and DMs with the expectation of getting absolutely nothing in return.

Well now, I think it's no surprise that 18 months later, I offer a paid program for those that want to learn the business of becoming a real estate agent. In addition to that, I take paid coaching calls anywhere from a hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars for a 45-minute phone call. So what happened here? Am I a sellout? Am I a scam artist? Am I taking advantage of people? After all, I started this channel with absolutely no end goal in mind, with no objective, and just to have fun as a hobby.

At that point, the concept of monetizing anything was extremely foreign to me, and because of that, I had a very surface-level perception of what it was like. Coincidentally, I had a very black-and-white opinion of what it actually meant to sell information. My mindset was give it all away for free, and if you don't do that, you're taking advantage of people. But hear me out on this one.

The distinction I wasn't aware of before selling information, much like many people out there watching this, is that selling information did not need to be a win-lose transaction. It's often the misinterpretation that it's okay to give out as much free value as you possibly can, but as soon as you make any money from it, all of a sudden it becomes a win-lose transaction where your gain comes at the customer's expense and loss.

While this absolutely can be true in some circumstances, the reality is often much less black-and-white. So consider this as a purely hypothetical example, and I have a feeling that this alone will change your perception on selling information. Let's just say that I charge you 25 cents to watch my videos. In fact, let's just say you pay 25 cents just to watch this video.

I'm probably going to spend anywhere between 8 to 10 hours crafting this video for you to watch. That includes coming up with the topic, planning it out, spending 3 hours filming it, spending much longer than that editing it, coming up with a thumbnail and a description, and everything else that goes into crafting the perfect YouTube video that I could possibly make.

Now, that doesn't take into account the twenty-one hundred dollars that I spent on camera, audio, and lighting equipment, or the $2,800 I spent on a MacBook Pro computer to better edit videos on. It doesn't take into account the eighteen thousand dollars I spent creating this YouTube studio so you guys will have a visually appealing video to watch.

There's a lot of time, effort, production, and money that goes into making a very simple 15 to 18 minute YouTube video that hopefully you guys enjoy and find educational. Now, with all of this considered, any reasonable person would probably conclude that he's spending eight to ten hours creating this video, has ten years of real estate experience that I can learn from, spent twenty-three thousand dollars in overhead costs so I can watch this video, and have an enjoyable experience doing so.

In return, it's only costing me twenty-five cents. This seems like a good deal, and I am getting by far my 25 cents worth of value. But then you have to ask yourself, why is Graham only charging me 25 cents? What's wrong with that? If his time is worth two hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and he's spending eight hours of his time making this video for me to only spend 25 cents on, that's two thousand dollars worth of his time.

So something doesn't quite add up. But you know what? I don't care because I'm getting more than 25 cents worth of value. If he's going to take it, okay, but let's not ask any more questions. Here you go, Graham. Transaction done. But this is where scalability comes into effect. Even though you only paid 25 cents and got way more value than what you paid, I benefit from tens of thousands of people watching my videos and doing exactly that.

In this purely hypothetical example, where you paid 25 cents to watch this video, if this single video gets 20,000 views, that is worth five thousand dollars or six hundred and twenty-five dollars per hour of my time that it took to make this video. That is two and a half times higher than what my individual time is worth on a coaching call at two hundred and fifty dollars an hour.

And you, in return, get the benefit of watching educational content at one-tenth the cost per minute of going to a movie at a movie theater. Now let's spread the concept throughout my entire channel and let's even go so far as to say ten cents a video. I think we could all agree there's more than 10 cents worth of educational and entertainment value per video. That's also less than a penny a minute.

If this happens, my channel would generate 2,500 to 3,000 dollars per day. That is just by getting 10 cents a video with zero employees, zero overhead, and just by spending 30 hours a week making YouTube videos, coming up with topics, and answering comments. At that rate, my time would be worth 641 dollars per hour and over a year, given 10 cents of video and the 750,000 views I get every single month, that works out to be 900,000 to 1.1 million dollars every single year in income.

And let's be real, that's more than double what I make working as a real estate agent. I would expect that you get way more than 10 cents worth of value from every single video. All of a sudden, I can make a million dollars per year for the magic of scaling online. In return, you get access to extremely inexpensive information, all things considered.

So when you think of selling information in these terms, when you think of the customer experience first, and you make sure that they're getting way more value than what I get in return for what they're paying, the economies of scale work in my favor where I can get a lot of people paying at very small amounts. All things considered, all of a sudden the net benefit to me is there because all of a sudden I can scale up, and it becomes a win-win scenario for everybody involved.

That is you guys, the entire business of selling information online in a nutshell. And the best part about all of this is that I'm not charging you 25 cents for it. I'm not charging you 10 cents for it. It's entirely free. All I ask in return is that if you guys enjoy it, just hit the like button or comment anything down below to help the engagement of this video.

If you like it, if you don't like it, well I'm not done yet. Let's go into some further detail about the fake online gurus. Just like any business, there will be unscrupulous people out there that understand this business model and then exploit it for profit. This is where the problem lies. It's the people who carefully and falsely craft their image around what sells, and then immediately pop up to sell a course or program, regardless of whether or not that person is actually qualified.

This might include fake credentials, fake testimonials, or anything else purposely done to deceive the person watching. The reality is oftentimes having an expensive car or big house is enough to buy your way to reasonable credibility, regardless of if you actually have the experience. Now don't get me wrong here, but I don't think it's wrong to do what works, and there's a reason why houses and cars are used in sales.

The reason why is because it's effective, and it works. You would be an idiot not to do what works if you had that within your means. But the issue here is when people use these props as a replacement for first-hand experience at the customer's expense and detriment. It's oftentimes these people that give everyone else the negative connotation of being a scam anytime they try to sell information online, whether or not it's actually justified.

These types of sleazy fly-by-night snake oil salesmen are unavoidable in any single business. They will always be there. You will always have people who seek out and exploit vulnerabilities for their own profit, and that has been going on since the beginning of time. It will continue until the end of time, and this is something I think we all need to acknowledge.

It is oftentimes what makes people skeptical in the first place—not the sale of information itself. But for every sleazy fly-by-night snake oil salesman out there is someone who understands the business model and takes an honest customer-oriented approach to business. For instance, when I started making YouTube videos, I made them from the perspective of the viewer because since 2010, I was the one who was on the other end of the screen watching the videos.

I knew as a viewer exactly the type of content I wanted to see more of. I knew the type of videos that I liked the most, so I made my YouTube videos from the perspective of a viewer first, creator second. I knew exactly what it was like to really look up to somebody I’m watching on YouTube and really value their product, insight, and what they have to say.

I knew what it was like to be a customer, and I also knew how it felt when something didn't quite add up. I started to be skeptical of someone and began to think, "Is this person real? What's the real story behind this?" I knew exactly how that made me feel. The biggest difference I see between the sleazy salesman and the honest influencer is just the desire to bring long-term value from a consumer-oriented perspective.

The former care more about quick short-term profits than massive long-term gains. This is something we have to be mindful of, regardless of the business or the industry. When I thought about it from this perspective, I realized that there's nothing inherently wrong with selling information online, so long as the customer gets more value than what they pay for it, and it becomes a win-win situation for both parties involved.

And nothing less. That is you guys, the right way to sell information online. In fact, it's the right way to run just about any business. Any time you give the customer more than what they pay for, they become a lifelong customer, and you will have a lifelong business. Best of all, you will have something that's sustainable, and you will be able to sleep at night, proud that you are giving more than what you get in return.

Now, I found one thing extremely interesting from my perspective of selling a course online, and that is there is a huge difference between the type of person willing to pay for information and the type of person who wants the information for free. For instance, I gave away about 20 courses for free over the last few months. Do you know how many people actually finished that they got it for free? The answer is about three.

For the people that actually pay for the course, that amount is much higher, and it's nearing almost 80% that actually end up finishing it. Now, I'm definitely going to generalize here, but for my own experience, the type of person who's willing to pay for information is often much more dedicated to seeing it through. Or on the other side of the coin, maybe because they've spent money on it, they value it more. Because they value it more, they're more likely to finish it and actually implement what they've learned.

Also interesting enough, the same thing applies to my one-on-one paid coaching calls. Like I said, these are calls I charge anywhere from a hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars for a 45-minute session. Every now and then, I get a very convincing thoughtful email of why they can't afford that amount and why they will either pay a much lesser amount or they just want it for free.

And every now and then, I agree to it, and the results from doing this honestly were pretty astounding. I hate to generalize here, but like I said, there is a big difference between the type of person who's willing to pay for information and the type of person who wants it for free. Because of this, I stopped doing any discounted coaching calls altogether.

The reason why is because any time I take a coaching call, I take it very seriously, and I schedule my entire day around this call. Well, one of these discounted calls overslept, tried calling, did not pick up, ended up calling me back thirty minutes later, half asleep, hung over, had no idea what they wanted to talk about, and it was a complete waste of time. One of my other callers was all over the place, had absolutely nothing prepared, had absolutely nothing they wanted to work on, and just bounced from idea to idea to idea.

Another one of those people just wanted to get rich quick, whatever it is that they wanted, and the call went absolutely nowhere. It was a complete waste of not only my time, but their time as well. Now on the other hand, the people that actually will pay a hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars for a phone call with me are the types that are extremely prepared.

They know exactly what they want to ask, exactly what they want to work on, exactly what they want to get from this, and I make sure they get more value than what they paid me. These are the type of people that are dedicated enough to often implement everything we talked about and then follow up with me weeks or sometimes months later with their progress.

The difference between the two types of people is astounding, and I wouldn't have noticed this if I didn't witness it firsthand. So the next time you see someone pitching a course or trying to sell you a program or you're going through a click funnel, it's not necessarily a scam. Honestly, there's nothing inherently wrong with the desire to monetize content and sell information, so long as the customer gets more than what they paid for.

Now, while there are plenty of unscrupulous people out there who will happily and quickly take your money, the blunt reality is that that's just life, and that's unavoidable. Even though these people generally have a short-term lifespan, the reality is that when one goes down, two more will crop up in their place.

The best thing you can do to protect yourself is just think to yourself, is this the person who has my best interest in mind? Are they coming from the perspective of the customer experience first? Am I going to be getting more value than what I'm paying them? And most importantly, what's going to happen if I ask for a refund? Or is this just another eight hundred and ninety-seven dollar course with zero refund policy that's just going to save me 30 minutes of searching on Google?

In order to be successful in selling any sort of information long term, you have to study what people want. You have to identify their problems and then find a way to solve their problems in a cost-effective method with the customer experience placed first, profit second. But of course, I think it goes without saying that throughout the entire process, it's really important that you have fun doing what you do.

More importantly than that, that you would be doing it regardless of whether or not you get paid. When it comes to me, I could care less if you use adblock on my videos. I don't care if you buy anything I have to offer. I don't care if you bring anything to the table because I would be doing YouTube videos whether or not I get paid to do them and whether or not I sell any courses whatsoever.

But obviously, you know I'm not going to lie; if I happen to make a little money from this as a by-product from making videos and providing value, so be it. I'm open to receiving that, but that never becomes the forefront; that never becomes the priority or the objective. It's simply a secondary byproduct of having fun making videos and providing value.

That is, you guys, the biggest difference I see between the people who go into it with profit first as a priority and trying to extract as much value from the viewers as possible, and from those who profit from the scalability of win-win transactions. So as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really, really appreciate it. My voice—I can't tell if you can tell, but my voice is going out because I've spent forever filming this.

If you guys enjoy this video, I spent probably three times as long making this video. Just give it a like; I would greatly appreciate it. Also, if you haven't subscribed already, I think after this video, if I haven't earned your subscription, if you guys enjoy this, if I didn't earn it, I'm doing something wrong. So if you haven't subscribed, just hit the subscribe button.

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Don't want this video to be too long—it's gonna be too long anyway. Thanks for watching, and until next time.