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> Except what the Mikkelson Twins actually make money on is selling you on a “money making course” where they tell you to do the above. So there’s all kinds of

by derefr 4y ago

> Except what the Mikkelson Twins actually make money on is selling you on a “money making course” where they tell you to do the above. So there’s all kinds of people trying to follow this method out there, it seems. How do people still become wealthy selling "money making courses", when enough people have created "money making courses" that they are, themselves, a commodity?

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
You know the old saying: there's a sucker born every minute.
hex4def6 4y ago
What gets me is; if this was a money making opportunity, and it truly is as simple as they make it out to be, aren’t they literally creating their own competitors in this space by revealing their secret? I’m sure the argument is something like “the market is so vast, that helping others do the same won’t affect my income stream”, but that suggests The correct answer is to scale up, not populate the landscape with completion.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  The argument can also be that it actually benefits them by making other people richer and therefore, increasing the amount of their own customers (and the amount of money those customers are willing to spend). insert a random comment about how "market economy is not a zero-sum game"
  - derefr 4y ago
    As the recent dive in the British economy proves, increasing spending is not necessarily good for a market ;)
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Yes. It turns out that there’s a whole lot of aspects of their scheme that would turn off any informed rational person. But there’s enough people who fail that test to keep a constant flow of new customers buying in to their scheme.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    In fact much as with “obvious” scams, this becomes a feature: non-marks deselect themselves from the pool at no cost to the scammer, which means the scammer has a much higher average “prospect quality” than a random sampling would give.
    - Freak_NL 4y ago
      It's sort of like the spelling and grammar mistakes in spam mail.
- narag 4y ago
  Well, it's only logical: what they propose is barely legal and sooner or later, more sooner than later, the scheme will be burnt, so it's better to teach others to make a quick buck than staying in the same place for too long.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    I don't think legality is a significant part of the problem – I simply doubt there is really a lot to make regardless of legality. Most get-rich-quick schemes are really either “make a few pennies here or there, a few $/€/£ if you are lucky, a few 100 if very lucky” or “make-a-bit-slowly-with-lots-of-effort” or both. The rest not included in that “most” are even more completely bunkum, you'll never make anything unless maybe you join the pyramid and resell the scheme. There is more easy money to be made selling make-money-easily schemes to those that lack critical thinking, than there is to be made via the schemes themselves. Even if no one you sell the scheme to makes anything, even if they all make a loss in the grand scheme of things, the scheme seller still has some revenue. A scheme seeming illegal/immoral/both might make some marks easier to catch, as they think they are being clever by knowing that crime does in fact sometimes pay so their guard is further lowered due to confirmation bias on this matter.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    What's barely legal about commissioning and selling badly written books? I might point to a dozen other parts of the situation as "barely legal scam", but why that part?
- lupire 4y ago
  They are so rich that they are retired but want to pay it forward. But it's not free because they only want to teach people who take it seriously and respect the idea.
  - monktastic1 4y ago
    Can't tell if this is a joke, but the most likely explanation isn't nearly so noble. They realize that the stream for this particular scam has already run dry (thanks to Audible catching on), but realize that others don't know that yet.
- mughinn 4y ago
  As far as I understood from the video, the Mikkelsen Twins did get rich from that money making scheme, until Audible basically found out and started trying to stop them (most of the books they "published" are not in the page anymore). They milked the cow dry then they made a money making course and created a new way to get money And now with the competition basically no one who bought their course can actually make money
coldtea 4y ago
Well, first, we're 8 billion (or 350 million in the US), which is a big market, and there's a sucker born every minute. Second, money making courses, don't work. So people tend to buy another and another, to get to the mythical "good" one...
nicbou 4y ago
You sell a money making course course generator and sell that
- kreeben 4y ago
  Or, alternatively, you create a money making course generator generator. If that goes well your next project should be a generator generator generator.
- hoistbypetard 4y ago
  Money making course course generator as a service. MMCGGaaS. It's the next big thing.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  There's a famous old ad where someone put an ad in the newspaper that said "Learn how to make money, send $10 to XXXX". Sending the $10 in got you a letter that said: "place an ad in the newspaper that says "Learn how to make money, sent $10 to [your address]."
svnt 4y ago
Well, see, that’s just it: once they become fungible then the value inevitably follows.
gernb 4y ago
You make courses about how to make money making courses. This reminds me of an episode of Reply All. They ordered some cheap Rolex rip off, it was even worse than they expected. They found out they were all being sold on shopify and that if you sign up for a new account on shopify you'll fairly quickly start getting spam emails helping you setup a shop of all this crap. Then they'd try to sell you on lessons on how to make it more successful. I forgot if the rabbit hole went deeper. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhe3l https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhe3l
beckingz 4y ago
The secret to getting rich quick is to get other people to pay you for the secret to getting rich quick.
ankaAr 4y ago
The offer of idiots always grow
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kayxspre 4y ago
Probably because the ultimate end of these course isn't to make money by yourself, but by engaging in an MLM and let it work. There's a company engaging in MLM sales paying some news agencies to promote its scheme every day during the news (a subtle sponsor, so to speak; it's on regular TV so SponsorBlock won't help). As my family watched the news from this channel often, I would recognize how it works. It would promote an online course along the lines of "Make Money with a Smartphone" and advertised the course it claimed to cost $249.99 at $2.49 (price may vary, depending on who is the presenter, though the course are the exact same). The news program is careful not to show the names of the ultimate company offering it, only presenting that this person will be teaching. Sharp-eyed viewer, however, can notice that those adverts intend to direct the prospective "client" to an MLM.
- lupire 4y ago
  John Oliver (just the presenter, ha!) on Last Week Tonight also did an episode about easy it is for a scam to get a fawning advertorial piece on local TV news segments.
latexr 4y ago
As the saying goes, there’s a sucker born every minute¹. An important feature of these scams is to frame success and failure as being entirely in your hands: it’s not the system’s fault that you didn’t achieve success, it’s yours and yours alone, you didn’t want it bad enough. Someone who falls in that hole is bound to do it again, this time for a different grift which looks easier. They’ll do as much as it takes until they strike gold, go bankrupt, or finally understand it’s all a scam. That last one can take a long time to come. In sum, money making courses don’t need an infinite supply of new chumps when they can keep reeling in the same ones. Offer some discounts and rewards for bringing in new members, and you’ve gone full MLM². ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing
- derefr 4y ago
  Oh, no, I do get why people would buy into money-making courses. I'm basically wondering why the market for money-making courses isn't a winner-take-all market, with the wealthiest course-creators spending their advertising budgets (that they earned by building their money-making-course empire when the field was more green) to outcompete upstarts in the money-making course market. Presumably, people can only be actively trying the techniques of one of these courses at a time — so why aren't most people focused on learning + putting into practice, the techniques of a few very popular courses?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > so why aren't most people focused on learning + putting into practice, the techniques of a few very popular courses? Because that entails hard work.
    - derefr 4y ago
      No, I meant, why aren't a few very popular courses the only ones people hear about, such that they're de-facto only focused on those? Money buys advertising / brand recognition; why aren't there big-name money-making-course brands that are outcompeting the new upstarts? Why isn't the market consolidating around the guys who won big first and then reinvested in making their brands the biggest?
calibas 4y ago
Just send me $49.99 and I'll teach you my fool-proof method for how to steal $49.99 from an unwitting dupe.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by derefr 4y ago

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

You know the old saying: there's a sucker born every minute.

hex4def6 4y ago

What gets me is; if this was a money making opportunity, and it truly is as simple as they make it out to be, aren’t they literally creating their own competitors in this space by revealing their secret? I’m sure the argument is something like “the market is so vast, that helping others do the same won’t affect my income stream”, but that suggests The correct answer is to scale up, not populate the landscape with completion.

Joker_vD 4y ago
The argument can also be that it actually benefits them by making other people richer and therefore, increasing the amount of their own customers (and the amount of money those customers are willing to spend). insert a random comment about how "market economy is not a zero-sum game"
- derefr 4y ago
  As the recent dive in the British economy proves, increasing spending is not necessarily good for a market ;)
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Yes. It turns out that there’s a whole lot of aspects of their scheme that would turn off any informed rational person. But there’s enough people who fail that test to keep a constant flow of new customers buying in to their scheme.
- masklinn 4y ago
  In fact much as with “obvious” scams, this becomes a feature: non-marks deselect themselves from the pool at no cost to the scammer, which means the scammer has a much higher average “prospect quality” than a random sampling would give.
  - Freak_NL 4y ago
    It's sort of like the spelling and grammar mistakes in spam mail.
narag 4y ago
Well, it's only logical: what they propose is barely legal and sooner or later, more sooner than later, the scheme will be burnt, so it's better to teach others to make a quick buck than staying in the same place for too long.
- dspillett 4y ago
  I don't think legality is a significant part of the problem – I simply doubt there is really a lot to make regardless of legality. Most get-rich-quick schemes are really either “make a few pennies here or there, a few $/€/£ if you are lucky, a few 100 if very lucky” or “make-a-bit-slowly-with-lots-of-effort” or both. The rest not included in that “most” are even more completely bunkum, you'll never make anything unless maybe you join the pyramid and resell the scheme. There is more easy money to be made selling make-money-easily schemes to those that lack critical thinking, than there is to be made via the schemes themselves. Even if no one you sell the scheme to makes anything, even if they all make a loss in the grand scheme of things, the scheme seller still has some revenue. A scheme seeming illegal/immoral/both might make some marks easier to catch, as they think they are being clever by knowing that crime does in fact sometimes pay so their guard is further lowered due to confirmation bias on this matter.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  What's barely legal about commissioning and selling badly written books? I might point to a dozen other parts of the situation as "barely legal scam", but why that part?
lupire 4y ago
They are so rich that they are retired but want to pay it forward. But it's not free because they only want to teach people who take it seriously and respect the idea.
- monktastic1 4y ago
  Can't tell if this is a joke, but the most likely explanation isn't nearly so noble. They realize that the stream for this particular scam has already run dry (thanks to Audible catching on), but realize that others don't know that yet.
mughinn 4y ago
As far as I understood from the video, the Mikkelsen Twins did get rich from that money making scheme, until Audible basically found out and started trying to stop them (most of the books they "published" are not in the page anymore). They milked the cow dry then they made a money making course and created a new way to get money And now with the competition basically no one who bought their course can actually make money

coldtea 4y ago

Well, first, we're 8 billion (or 350 million in the US), which is a big market, and there's a sucker born every minute. Second, money making courses, don't work. So people tend to buy another and another, to get to the mythical "good" one...

nicbou 4y ago

You sell a money making course course generator and sell that

kreeben 4y ago
Or, alternatively, you create a money making course generator generator. If that goes well your next project should be a generator generator generator.
hoistbypetard 4y ago
Money making course course generator as a service. MMCGGaaS. It's the next big thing.
WalterBright 4y ago
There's a famous old ad where someone put an ad in the newspaper that said "Learn how to make money, send $10 to XXXX". Sending the $10 in got you a letter that said: "place an ad in the newspaper that says "Learn how to make money, sent $10 to [your address]."

svnt 4y ago

Well, see, that’s just it: once they become fungible then the value inevitably follows.

gernb 4y ago

You make courses about how to make money making courses. This reminds me of an episode of Reply All. They ordered some cheap Rolex rip off, it was even worse than they expected. They found out they were all being sold on shopify and that if you sign up for a new account on shopify you'll fairly quickly start getting spam emails helping you setup a shop of all this crap. Then they'd try to sell you on lessons on how to make it more successful. I forgot if the rabbit hole went deeper. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhe3l https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhe3l

beckingz 4y ago

The secret to getting rich quick is to get other people to pay you for the secret to getting rich quick.

ankaAr 4y ago

The offer of idiots always grow

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kayxspre 4y ago

Probably because the ultimate end of these course isn't to make money by yourself, but by engaging in an MLM and let it work. There's a company engaging in MLM sales paying some news agencies to promote its scheme every day during the news (a subtle sponsor, so to speak; it's on regular TV so SponsorBlock won't help). As my family watched the news from this channel often, I would recognize how it works. It would promote an online course along the lines of "Make Money with a Smartphone" and advertised the course it claimed to cost $249.99 at $2.49 (price may vary, depending on who is the presenter, though the course are the exact same). The news program is careful not to show the names of the ultimate company offering it, only presenting that this person will be teaching. Sharp-eyed viewer, however, can notice that those adverts intend to direct the prospective "client" to an MLM.

lupire 4y ago
John Oliver (just the presenter, ha!) on Last Week Tonight also did an episode about easy it is for a scam to get a fawning advertorial piece on local TV news segments.

latexr 4y ago

As the saying goes, there’s a sucker born every minute¹. An important feature of these scams is to frame success and failure as being entirely in your hands: it’s not the system’s fault that you didn’t achieve success, it’s yours and yours alone, you didn’t want it bad enough. Someone who falls in that hole is bound to do it again, this time for a different grift which looks easier. They’ll do as much as it takes until they strike gold, go bankrupt, or finally understand it’s all a scam. That last one can take a long time to come. In sum, money making courses don’t need an infinite supply of new chumps when they can keep reeling in the same ones. Offer some discounts and rewards for bringing in new members, and you’ve gone full MLM². ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing

derefr 4y ago
Oh, no, I do get why people would buy into money-making courses. I'm basically wondering why the market for money-making courses isn't a winner-take-all market, with the wealthiest course-creators spending their advertising budgets (that they earned by building their money-making-course empire when the field was more green) to outcompete upstarts in the money-making course market. Presumably, people can only be actively trying the techniques of one of these courses at a time — so why aren't most people focused on learning + putting into practice, the techniques of a few very popular courses?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > so why aren't most people focused on learning + putting into practice, the techniques of a few very popular courses? Because that entails hard work.
  - derefr 4y ago
    No, I meant, why aren't a few very popular courses the only ones people hear about, such that they're de-facto only focused on those? Money buys advertising / brand recognition; why aren't there big-name money-making-course brands that are outcompeting the new upstarts? Why isn't the market consolidating around the guys who won big first and then reinvested in making their brands the biggest?

calibas 4y ago

Just send me $49.99 and I'll teach you my fool-proof method for how to steal $49.99 from an unwitting dupe.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]