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"Internet marketing" is full of this. Folks start out trying to make money online, until the eventually come to realise, the only way to make money online, is

"Internet marketing" is full of this. Folks start out trying to make money online, until the eventually come to realise, the only way to make money online, is to sell a product telling other people how to make money online.

eli 6y ago
Maybe another way to look at it is people overestimate the importance of marketing strategies and underestimate the importance of a product people really want. Lots of people spent time getting really good at marketing and e-commerce only to find the thing they were selling didn’t have much of a market fit.
bt3 6y ago
There's also a terrible self-fulfilling cycle where the the content producers will solicit their testimonials from those that will undoubtedly speak highly about the content regardless of its quality, under the quid pro quo of getting it free. I suppose this is not limited to the internet marketing genre, but I've found from my own experience, this is common. Small anecdote: I was once asked to review an ebook in the internet marketing space based on some things I was doing at the time. The "author" had created an ebook that consisted of clipart, default Microsoft Word formatting, and egregious spacing to pump up the page count. The "author" was furious when my review was neutral rather than glowing.
puranjay 6y ago
> the only way to make money online, is to sell a product telling other people how to make money online That's patently untrue. For every huckster hawking his latest course, there are 10x as many successful marketers. You just never hear about them because they run actually successful websites. Anyone you see ranking for "best hosting" or "best website builder" is likely pulling in nearly 6 figures a month
sak5sk 6y ago
I totally agree with this statement, but don't see how it applies to what I wrote. My summary was to explain how I utilized my time and energy to build a product and launch it on a popular platform (with some pre-sales). I do not teach anyone how to make money online. In fact, most product hunt launches are free apps and resources.

eli 6y ago

Maybe another way to look at it is people overestimate the importance of marketing strategies and underestimate the importance of a product people really want. Lots of people spent time getting really good at marketing and e-commerce only to find the thing they were selling didn’t have much of a market fit.

bt3 6y ago

There's also a terrible self-fulfilling cycle where the the content producers will solicit their testimonials from those that will undoubtedly speak highly about the content regardless of its quality, under the quid pro quo of getting it free. I suppose this is not limited to the internet marketing genre, but I've found from my own experience, this is common. Small anecdote: I was once asked to review an ebook in the internet marketing space based on some things I was doing at the time. The "author" had created an ebook that consisted of clipart, default Microsoft Word formatting, and egregious spacing to pump up the page count. The "author" was furious when my review was neutral rather than glowing.

puranjay 6y ago

> the only way to make money online, is to sell a product telling other people how to make money online That's patently untrue. For every huckster hawking his latest course, there are 10x as many successful marketers. You just never hear about them because they run actually successful websites. Anyone you see ranking for "best hosting" or "best website builder" is likely pulling in nearly 6 figures a month

sak5sk 6y ago

I totally agree with this statement, but don't see how it applies to what I wrote. My summary was to explain how I utilized my time and energy to build a product and launch it on a popular platform (with some pre-sales). I do not teach anyone how to make money online. In fact, most product hunt launches are free apps and resources.