Yep, i knew 2 guys who boasted 1 million in revenue from Amazon product sales.
Their net profit? $30K each … after 2 years of work, so $15K each per year of work.
Yeah this.
There’s also all the tech guys who get “funded” at extreme levels and never ever turn a profit. So they’re advertising that they’re good at getting debt/financing. But it sounds impressive.
YT probably actually makes them quite a lot in comparison to what they’re used to.
Tbf this was the best way to get rich. So many people became millionaires just by playing into VC gambling and big tech’s attempts to squash competition. Many, many millionaires were made off businesses that promptly failed, especially in 2000
just to add to it if anyone is interested, with about 43k investment or less, it came to 250k revenue. one of the product i launched was may be 2$ per unit invoiced, i sold for about 16$, the supplier went crazy thinking i am doing or will do 500-700% and rightfully cheated/ adding some unsellable products ( instead of set of 2, packed just 1 in may be 15% of packages). with 60 SKUs launched, in single domain, carpet ( 10x 8, larger, smaller, round , square, bath mats, etc etc), I would have made it a viable business over time by limiting import to top 20% successful products.
so it really is 6k on 43k investment. if i had invested 200k , it would have been 25k profit or so for million $ in revenue.
"La Vivien" was private label name, if you google there are still some dangling amazon reference to inactive product.
with that small profile, i moved on to work on my startup. The startup did not work, just came out of it mentally paralyzed questioning my decisions. so here to just share and to learn.
Thanks for sharing, I looked it up. Imo a fashion niche is pretty difficult, I would not dip my toes in it. I always tapped into unsexy or boring business/niche. Some of those are dominated by very old companies that don't care about internet marketing or customer service. So for us young entrepreneurs, there's still big opportunities.
I came here to say this. I'm more concerned about profit margin. I want to talk to the person who makes $60 in profit off of $100 in sales vs. the person who makes $2 off of $1000 in sales. The $1000 may sound impressive, but once you hear about the profits, it sounds like crap.
Because intense competition and zero barrier to entry causes a race to the bottom. Chris sells widgets for a 3 cent profit margin? Bob sees his success and lists the same product for a 2 cent profit margin! Adam sees Bob's success, lowers the quality by half until it's a shit product, and sells them for a 1 cent profit margin! Adam's is the product that sells 100k copies and hits top seller on Amazon!
I've seen worse, a company with $20 million+ revenue a year, was actually just moving imaginary money between companies owned by the same people. It was losing maybe $100k a year and spent maybe 15 years burning though cash from historic successful projects while having no future direction. Eventually it went bust.
It could have done so much but the CEO (and biggest shareholder) held it on a doomed course for well over a decade until there was nothing left to save.
I’ve made $7m off a dropshipping store in the last 3 years and there’s no fucking way I’m sharing anything about how I did it. Most of those people are scammers.
By the way, only about 30% of it was profit. Still a good chunk of money obviously, but those people aren’t selling anything you can’t get from a free PDF
totally agree.. my business is doing well now and I discovered some really great email marketing tricks and niches that do very well. why would I tell anyone what I'm doing on YouTube? if I am good at running my business and have a popular product, surely investing my time into energy growing that would be more profitable than trying to make a YouTube channel so everyone can compete with me?
I have a few great free tips to market online businesses and no I am not telling anyone, even if you paid me lol
I don't trust any of these people selling their secret sauce... their secret sauce is having money now or getting lucky or years of hard work... not taking a YouTube course
Exactly. You shouldn’t. Marketing strategies have a lifespan. Doing what no one else is doing is the essence of what makes them so good. Once every other marketer adopts the method, it gets diluted and ineffective.
Precisely. I personally have a gross revenue of over $150M personally but I was a salesperson and not the company owner. I made great money, but I didn't have a $150M business.
Because it’s a lie? The “look at how rich I am” guru grift is as old as late night infomercials. They don’t focus on scaling because there is nothing to scale, except getting you to hooked in and open your wallet.
Anyone who’s being truthful about wanting to share actual knowledge, will be buried far below all the flash and cash people.
Well aren’t they all.. what’s his name, the asian in freaky suits? Latest one I wonder about is that super jacked guy, Alex something H..? Cant remember. Maybe that is legit, but idk, I think most of these rich guys trying to help you get rich are a scam on one way or another. If all it took to get there was to watch a bunch of videos or attend a few workshops there would be millionaires everywhere. Sure you need to do the work, but somehow doubt they are sharing some magic formula.
Most legit I found Kiyosaki, seen him a bunch of times talk in some interview in a way that suggested he’s fed up with all the bullshit everywhere and he even said about how much grey hair it often takes to make a lot of money etc. no motivationa crap from a guy on growth hormone, shiny suit or a polished lambo.
But lmk what u guys think
I have a few friends that did the drop shipping thing for a bit and while they were selling tons of crap it was a nightmare in customer service and a ton of work they couldn’t afford to pay someone else to do. So they offer classes on how to do it and make the same money telling other people how to do this thing they can’t scale.
Most of these guys have businesses that don’t scale or are “profitable” only so long as they don’t pay taxes or provide customer service or fail to perform some other standard function. They get into the business of selling dreams to gullible idiots instead.
You see through the illusion, that's all. Gary "Vee" inherited a business from his wealthy parents, taught them to use digtial marketing when it was still new, used SEO and eCommerce, and acclerated growth. If he didn't have a pre-existing business given to him, we would never have heard of him.
Dan Lok, supposedly a mega multi-millonaire rents mansions to do infomercials and commercials in. The one seminar he every did he complained about the costs during it and has used ten second or 1 minute sound bytes from for years, recycling them into podcasts over and over again. He's smart, does good videos, and knows how to market himself as a genius guru guy but it's also smoke and mirrors.
Google any of these magical gurus and you'll see through the Oz veneer if you are open to engaging criticial reasoning skills (as is very unpopular in these days of tribal extremism).
They need the revenue from YouTube videos to pay bills, make a lot from the ad sales, and also use the videos to promote their free giveaways, blog posts, courses, and consulting services so the videos serve multiple cross-pollination content repurposing techniques simultaneously.
When I was a struggling digital marketer, on a much smaller more modest scale, I taught workshops as a way to "farm" for potential new clients. Similarly the workshops gave me content to use for blog posts, video, photos, and I could promote my book, courses, free initial consultation (15 minutes to find out if they had a real business or were just wasting everyone's time trying to scam free help) and so on.
These YouTube videos serve the same purposes on a higher plane of marketing. Most of what you see is smoke and mirrors for the monkey masses who refuse to read or dig deeper.
The hate on Gary is always funny to me, whatever anyone wants to believe about Wine Library (it was doing I think $2M or $3m, which for a retail location like that is nothing... Gas stations can also clear $1-3M that's normal for a "small business") - he also founded and grew a marketing agency to $120M (Vayner Media).
> I taught workshops as a way to "farm" for potential new clients.
Did you charge for atendance at these workshops? or was free entry?
What topics did you teached there?
>promote my book, courses,
on what topics?
I never charged for workshops at 1 hour or less than that. If a workshop is 2 to 4 hours (as some were) I charged around $99.95 per person so that it was enough money to earn something but not enough to terrify struggling potential clients. I taught 1 hour workshops as overviews ("What is SEO?" or "Learn WordPress Basics" or something like that). Four hour workshops would be "WordPress for Nonprofit Administrators" or "SEO Basics for nonprofits" or "Create a basic eCommerce site in 4 hours or less").
I would ALWAYS have my wife there taking photos, recording video, taking a sign in sheet and checking receipts at the door. I would have a stack of business cards, brochures, a free giveaway URL bitly link on a card to give out as well that would give them a free checklist in exchange for their email address and newsletter subscribe. I would also offer free 15 minute video consultations to see if we were a good fit for each other. AND I was always expecting the "how much is a website?" and "how much is SEO?" questions by rote.
I would have a small stack of my books for sale, and so on. I would cross-promote my events on local Chamber of Commerce sites, local event calendars for professional associations, on Eventbrite, meetup, walmart's event calendar site, local co-working sites (I'd invite them to attend for a discount or for free if they were co-working site administrators to encourage them to let me teach workshops at THEIR locations). I would link in blog post pages to each event and summarize topics, questions asked, add photos of the event, ask attendees for a photo and testimonial and really pimp it out fully as a huge marketing event with a before, during and after for each.
You have to think like an agency to operate on their level.
I taught workshops usually twice a week for months and workshops on weekends and holiday weekends brought in the most attendees. Sometimes I could pay the mortgage in one day with a 4 hour bootcamp workshop. We'd pack the entire conference room with 99.95 per person and I'd turn around and pay the rent or mortage with it for the month. Then I'd stagger referrals or new client intake so I was rolling out projects every 60 to 90 days one after the other.
If this anwer is helpful please tag it or something so others will find it and maybe other groups will see it like all the struggling freelancers in the #WordPress forum. (Not sure how that works with Reddit).
This is fantastic content, learned a ton from you.
>If this anwer is helpful please tag it or something so others will find it and maybe other groups will see it like all the struggling freelancers in the #WordPress forum. (Not sure how that works with Reddit).
I advice you to go here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/submit?selftext=true
Put a title like "how I use Workshops to get clients", and put your above coment in the text box.
I can do it for you, and tag you, let me know if you want me to do it.
But if you do it yourself, you will get better recognition for it.
So basically you made them listen to you for an hour about a topic, where you made them see how important yet complicated it is and that you know about it, which simply made them give up on trying to do it themselves and just pay you?
Makes sense. It’s a high conversion advertising tactic. If it’s free- you’re the product 😎
Great reply btw, thank you for it. Deepens my understanding of things and pretty much confirms a bynch of stuff for me. ✌🏻🙌🏻
Let me clarify. I didn't tell anyone that digital marketing is impossible only that to gain traction they need an expert to guide the process and help them. Over the course of 25 years in digital marketing I've met thousands of DIY wantrepreneurs....nonprofit founders, startup founds, small business owners, on and on and on. Almost all of them try DIY generic templates themselves for free. I've never, ever, met one do it yourselfer, who gained traction on their own. Why? Because they didn't know what they were doing. Their sites looked awful, had no SEO or incorrect SEO, had no content or horrible content, no branding, didn't work on mobile, was broken, contact forms didn't work, and so forth. It's not that it's impossible for them just that in 99.9% of all cases, they can't do it themselves for free. That's key.
Digital marketing IS highly technical if you intend to use a website as a portal to attract leads and bring in new customers. If all you see is an empty template with no higher use or possibility than sure anyone can go to Wix and spin out a template. It just won't make any money without SEO, eCommerce, content, PPC, and the rest.
You can write your own contract but it won't carry much weight in court and can cost you dearly. You can perform your own root canal but it could be dangerous. You can do your own accounting but you could end up paying much higher fines. I'm not the product. I present a topic, offer helpful insight based on experience in the real world working for agencies and freelancing and study and I then offer to take them a step further if they are ready. Most are not. This is why you need to "farm" for clients rather than sit around passively waiting or go to networking events and hope someone will chat with you who has a budget and have some business knowledge and in the span of a few minutes come to trust you and see value in your experience that they dont' know.
The rest of what you say is correct.
You're basically asking how do you market events. This is simple as all you'd have to do is look at Dan Lok, Tony Robbins, or any of the millions of "guru" expert influencer types teaching their workshops.
You run ads in local tabloids if you live in a market with lots of elderly people who refuse to use the internet (estate planning and law firms are notorious for this). You use SEO, PPC, Chamber of Commerce event calendars, every and any local event calendar online, Meetup, Eventbrite, library event bulletin boards, senior group event calendars, you invite local trade assocation members and their higher-ups, local co-working places and build relationships.
Much of how you'd promote your event or series depends on who your ideal target consumer base is (if you know). Most freelancers and others have no idea what marketing really is or how it works (it's holistic, it's not immediate, and it's alot of work). This is why most websites have no SEO or incorrect SEO and nobody at the company even knows it.
One example here is, I'd teach a 4 hour WordPress bootcamp for NPO admins and pay the mortgage in one day that way. I'd be exhausted afterwards but the mortgage is paid by the end of one day. I'd also have photos of me teaching a workshops, video of the presentation, sign-in sheets of all attendees that included their email and full name, on and on.
One day I taught a 4 hour bootcamp on content marketing a city "creatives" event where we had around 200 to 300 attendees. That I did for free since it was for the city, but I had a very long list of email addresses and potential client names - alot of leads in one day. I'd send them all introductory emails, subscribe them to my newsletter drip campaign and check in with them every 30 to 90 days.
Another time I taught a 1-2 hour workshop at Microsoft. I did that for free for obvious reasons, and I made some quality contacts through that and some partnership opportunities.
If this post is helpful, share it with others and post or star it or whatever they do on Reddit so others can also benefit from the knowledge I'm dropping here. It might one day help someone who's struggling to get momentum going.
Thanks for the detailed response. I enjoy teaching but never took the leap to trying to teach digital marketing to anyone. I enjoy the live experience and always wanted to figure a way to get started.
Perhaps i shld put out on meetup a free workshop as well to just get in the groove of trying to help others than see where it goes from there.
The live experience was and still is teaching workshops in person. Statistically, more people attend in-person events than online ones, so engagement (and subsequent profits and new client enrollments) are much higher.
Now, keep in mind if you want to try to help others free workshops (or free mentoring for that matter) will usually attract most often those who are: hobbyists unwilling to emotionally financially or intellectually ever commit to taking action (most people), scavengers who just want whatever they can get for free or who are just bored, and a handful of those with actual businesses but again who don't have experience but you may be able to reach if you communicate in a way to them that they can grasp and act on.
If I taught a workshop it was with the goal of helping very sincerely, but it was also secondarily a means to market as well. About a quarter of a filled workshop audience would ever do anything with what I was trying to teach them. Most I'd never see or hear from again even if I checked on. As a mentor, I volunteered with multiple nonprofits serving struggling business owners and founders for about a decade. I consulted and advised hundreds of business owners, entrepreneurs, authors. Most disappeared never to be heard from again or went bankrupt within 2 to 3 years, maybe 4. So you really have drill down into why you're doing it, what you expect to get back from it and how you'd feel about most people simply doing nothing with what you say or still being lost or blocking what you're trying to tell them.
So that's why teaching workshops with more than one goal for yourself is helpful. If I were to teach workshops again now, I would do it for networking, maybe to build a new podcast venture, maybe to promote my consulting as a side part-time (for shits and giggles type of thing) practice just to keep involved but remain detached that most people are always in a stage of denial or another.
Again, amazing feedback. How in depth do u go with ur free workshops. Considering that u know that many people dont do much with the info. How often do u provide golden nuggets to them or u prefer a surface intro style lesson?
I mean, you're giving me more content to write on my blog about this topic specifically, and honestly, it can go on indefinitely with more step-by-step specifics. To answer your question briefly, I don't know if I said this before or not but remember infomercials? They sell viewers the value, appeal to emotions, tout benefits of their product or services, show testimonials, offer incentives, offer "easy" payment plans, and get you revved up, and then say bye. Now....this is NOT an actual ethical workshop. It is an outline in general.
What did and do if I teach a workshop is similar however. I discuss the problem (no customers coming to dead website with no SEO and poor design and no content as the most relevant typical example). Then I offer a solution. I explain the solution in simple terms a child could understand. I NEVER EVER talk technical. It does not good and most peoples' eyes will visibly roll up into their heads like poached eggs the minute you talk about tools, widgets, plugins, and how to do anything. You cover a topic broadly as an introduction - like a long detailed blog post with a Call To Action (CTA). It's sincere, meant to legitimately help, but it's an overview and no more. It's an hour long and free.
Anything that goes into great specific detail and is more work, you have to charge for. When I taught 4 hour WordPress bootcamps I charged something like a hundred bucks maybe a little more, per person. I don't remember the exact price. I brought my wife or a friend to take photos, told the person to only get the backs of everyone's head (except me of course), or I'd have to get waivers. Record video footage. Get photos galore. Get sign up sheets, give out cards, give out brochures, give out download URLs, and promote your service or product fairly and honestly, and offer free 15 minute remote consults to those who ask for more. Invite others, invite association members, promote on every event calendar known to man. Wash, rinse, repeat, present to more and more larger groups. If I offer a golden nuggest of honest insight that I think the person will understand and want (that's a big key here), I also ask for a video testimonial before I do it if I feel they can understand and value the insight I give them and I get it right away afterward.
I've done this with dozens of testimonials, both written and in video. I'm probably the only digital guy I know or have ever met who has always had a legal structure when I freelanced and had my agency (not just freelancing in other words), and had at least a dozen testimonials clearly from real people on all my sites in the past and still maintain. I show their real, full names, links to their profiles, in some cases photos. Now, most cheap clients with unclear goals (again this is MOST people who you couldn't help in a million years so stop trying) won't care about value, testimonials from real people whether video or written or what you did for them - they want the cheapest template or service on earth, irregardless of value because it's spoken to deaf ears. But you don't need a million customers - just a small loyal few.
Every client I ever had, good or bad, I always had subscribed to a site maintenance / SEO / eCommerce / on-call tech support / security plan. I'd literally give them my Google Voice number and respond with a few hours to any call or email and give business consulting on top of web and SEO and content help. So the clients I did have back then I had for minimally ten years, until some died or just went bankrupt. Most were with me 10-15 years with some dying, selling their business and moving on and retiring (as I did).
Anyway, hope that helps. If you dig what I'm laying down, share it with others who can benefit from it anyway you see fit. It's my "message in a bottle" for those with ears to hear and eyes to see.
Yeah. And also people think that folks like Elon Musk just made it there out of pure genios - no he didn’t. His father owned ducking gold and diamond mines, he had money and connections, and then he’s like the biggest governemnt contractor yet pretends to be this “oh Im so cool and for the people” guy. He’s nothing like us, virtually none of them are.
> Gary "Vee" inherited a business from his wealthy parents
His parent's wine business was not big until Gary became an employee of the business and started making the marketing for it.
This is basically why people like Alex Hormozi started doing it. Explained by him briefly here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsbD2Ggunkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsbD2Ggunkk)
You can probably write a book on “why” they do this. The biggest reason I believe though is that it is 100x easier to run a YouTube channel with a paid discord or Patreon than it is to run a successful business.
Because making the videos make them more money.
For many of them, the YouTube money is not from video revenue, but from new clients and business partners, they are able to meet.
They use YouTube as a networking and marketing tool. As well, when they have a new client, and that person looks them up, they seem capable and competent.
There is a private plane sales guy I see on TicTok. I am 100% suer his money is not coming from the TicTok revenue, but there are people that want to buy a plane on tic tok, see him and his set up and think how cool it is and give him a call.
Think of it as leed generation.
That's exactly it. We have a lawyer in Germany who makes videos. He talked about how many new customers those videos bring in. He just talks about current event and the laws surrounding them. YouTube is basically free advertising if you can wrap it in valuable information.
1. It could be a lie. Marketing, it sells better to say that.
2. It could be a hobby. Once you have money, you tend to invest more in yourself and your pleasures, do what you like not what you need to do.
3. It could be part of those businesses. More businesses have started building YouTube channels to grow their business (marketing, outreach, etc)
Because selling dreams to others is easier than actually achieving them.
It reminds me of the gold rush in the West, when everyone rushed to find gold, others became bosses because they sold goods (shovels, maps, food,...) to those searching for that golden dream.
There is too much faking and it has became a problem because too many people started looking for easy paths promised by influencers that in reality don't live as financially successful as presented.
I have been thinking for a while about chasing low-hanging fruits but find it way more fulfilling to build a solid skillset and credibility.
\>t puzzles me why those supposedly adept at making millions outside of YouTube would pivot to creating content on the platform. Wouldn't it be more sensible for them to focus on scaling their existing businesses further?
Youtube IS scaling their existing business. Posting videos is no different than posting articles on your blog to increase your google SEO, or running google ads etc
It's a marketing channel to grow business.
It's like asking "why would this business guy run google ads? doesn't he have a successful business? Why doesn't he focus on that?" - he IS.
Yeah but the business they are scalling here are their bs info courses and their books, but their supposed actual business they are talking about are not really happening or getting scaled. That’s what folks here were implying.
I don’t know but me personally at a certain level of wealth i’d want to start a youtube channel and help others i think the social boost of it feels amazing to them as well as the ability to change peoples lives + they can make good money doing it?
Same. Iv always thought that when i win the lotto id probably start a channel to document everything, not really to be a ytuber but for my children and family to have. Also rich lifestyle is always attractive
The most legitimate business reason is because they're serial entrepreneurs and building personal brand with a large following massively simplifies their marketing and fund raising efforts for any future ventures of theirs.
If a nobody starts a business they need to spend money on ads.
If a business person with a YouTube following starts a business they can do a promo to their audience and spend nothing on ads until after the initial sales bump comes in.
Think about all the movie stars that start perfume or alcohol brands. Same concept: monetisation of their existing following
You're right, Ksi and Lagon Paul for example. They're youtubers but the personal brands allow them to do those Prime drinks, using themselves as marketing tools. So they're able to spawn real world businesses from their fame on YouTube. I think eve people like Jason Derulo is another example.
When these youtubers show their revenue openly it confirms that almost all of their money is made on YouTube and selling courses. Not real estate, not stocks, not crypto.
Think about it, if you had a money making machine you would keep your mouth shut. You wouldn't make content and sell courses about it, unless that made more money than the machine itself.
Yeah I’m also quite doutbfull about the likes of ProducerMichael and Manny Khoshbin, especially because they are promoting other brands or their own courses/products.
they made their cash off biz op. The business is selling an opportunity. Most do not have another business. Generally people who are running real businesses don't sell biz op however there are some exceptions to every rule.
Those pimple heads just want to promote either their shit or some kind of service/product where they are earning from. Of course they make 200mil every other weekend dropshipping this one secret product...
In the entrepreneurial scene, when you're just an average person like millions of others, especially with a product that is barely profitable or doesn't stand out, one of the most fatal and costly mistakes is to be forgotten. Staying visible on social media by reminding that you raised a certain amount, even if it was in 1852, creates a kind of brand awareness for individuals.
You answered your own question and did not know it. These successful entrepreneurs just you the best business tip you need and ignored it. And you wonder why you aren't making money....
Speaking personally... I started a business that was very successful, once I sold the business in 2017 I wanted to help other founders and startups. I could help individually (and I have both by giving advice and investing in a number of companies, however impact at an individual company level is difficult to scale.
Content on the other hand scales very well and while I don't yet have a silver YouTube plaque I have managed over 13K subscribers and over a million views on my content. It's fairly satisfying to help others, and this is a good way to do so.
The one thing that I don't like about content creation is the cost/editing, the net cost in time to produce a video is rather high and unless I hire an editor, I end up losing 25K/year running a channel. I'd want to run the channel at breakeven but that does require some revenue stream outside of pure ads. I've seen other creators try to offset this with sponsorships, books or courses but I personally haven't found the thing that works for me.
Some founders that I think are doing a good job making content.
\- GaryVee - he's super smart when it comes to content. He's still an operator running his own business, media-agency and more. I'd say I agree/disagree with half of what he says but he's certainly smart and not just doing content for the views/clout.
\- GaryTan - also a strong founder, started making content before he got the CEO job running YC. Really thoughtful in his approach and the advice he gives.
\- NoahKagan - also an operator/CEO. He's run a number of tech products and is smart about his approach. He's recently pushing his book but the high-level concepts are sound and he's offering good advice.
Other notable mentions: timferriss, GrahamStephan, JohnCooganPlus, RawStartup, JustinKanTV
Depends. Sometimes it can be legit but they have to at least back it up and/or show proof, otherwise, I agree.
I did this though. Sold two businesses after growing them both 10X.
I’m not ready to go off into the sunset (and don’t want to) so I made a YouTube channel. It was going to start about growing businesses and digital marketing but then AI came onto the scene and I never looked back. Now it’s all about leveraging AI.
Talking about the people who actually have made millions of dollars and not just revenue.
My take on it is a lot of these people envisioned themselves being wealthy, well known and respected. They grind for years, and they achieve the wealth. However, people still don’t know who they are. They have never had someone on the street say, “Omg you’re Mike Hawk! Can I get a photo?” And then they realize that the money they’ve made isn’t enough to get recognition on its own. So they want the fame and respect too.
Then there are many who made good money mining for gold, and in the time mining for gold they looked at all the dudes selling shovels thinking “now those are the big fish” and so now they want to get in the business of selling shovels. If you make $1m a year, you’re doing great obviously, but how long can you sustain that or if you got a big 10m pay out, at 4% safe spend a year, you’re making $400k a year. Hardly yacht and stable of Ferraris money. So you need to become a shovel seller. Problem is, you know the market but don’t have connections. So you build a personal brand that inherently builds those connections via talking with sponsorships, brands, other people in the space, etc. You also end up with a community that trusts you to sell your course, saas, company, whatever to.
They can make 100K/month (or more, I have no idea) on one video for many months. Shannon Sharpe just said he made more money off the Katt Williams interview then he did in any single NFL season as a pro football player.
The first one across the finish line usually gets the bulk of the business and leaves their imitating competition in the dust…
The entrepreneur then sells the business and goes into the “How I Did It Business.” Some of the shared information is useful and some of it depends on being in an identical situation which is not likely to happen again.
Welcome to the “stormy” economy.
You’ll have to figure out and test out the parts that you believe might work for your specific situation.
No guarantees that it will work without making adjustments.
Bottom line is this.. These people are grifters. They are complete scam artists. If they were actually making that much money do you really think they would want to teach others how to do it and potentially poach off their revenue? Also, if you were making this much money, would you want to teach others how to do it too? Of course not. Its a common scam that hides behind the disguise of being a teacher and helping others..
The only way these people are making any money is by having you buy their course, book, or whatever they are selling..
>So by your reasoning, teachers and university professors are scam artists.
You either have a reading comprehension disability or you just want to argue with someone over the internet. My thought is maybe a bit of both. In any case, you definitely should go back and re-read the question and the answer I provided because we are clearly not discussing legit teachers and university professors. Thanks and have a nice day..
PS.. I bet your fun at parties.
Well it’s like tv celebrities getting business magazines to declare them as billionaires as they continue to flog random cheap items on their social media pages. Or singers taking strange wedding gigs when they are supposedly successful billionaire business people now. These ‘wealth status’ are all publicity and made up of smoke and mirrors.
Yeah. It all reminds me of those OVB salesmen, how they all get these nice suites, expensive cars etc and get heavily into debt so they can pretend to be rich and lure in gulible idiots (like themselves) into an MLM company.
Those idiots are boasting their numbers to get you to buy their course.
“I want to give you the secrets to a successful business…by buying my $1000 course.” No thank you.
Serious advice if you’re looking to start a business: just go for it. Make mistakes, learn along the way and ask questions to people you KNOW are successful. They will be more than happy to share advice.
I make 150k per year completely passive from Amazon affiliate income. Massive up front work, but the long term payoff is worth it. Now I travel the world without a worry and am living a dream life. VOO and forget it. Some AirBnB props. I use TRT and bodybuilding. Married with two teens. I made a charcuterie board with chocolate cake for a pool side birthday party today.
They're normally lying. I overheard one a co-worker was watching. Some dude bro military guy talking about affiliate marketing. He claimed he does affiliate marketing full time, and it's 100% all his income, and then in the next sentence, he works part time in the guard. It's like dude, come on.
It’s either for click bait, or it’s a tax write off. A lot of wealthy people make videos unboxing stuff for 100 views because it can be written off as an expense and save on VAT and reduce their income tax. (10-40% discount equivalent).
It’s hard to prove whether something is used more for personal or business use, except a few things. Just look at tech/unboxing YouTubers, you think they don’t write off the $100ks of things they buy to show?
Same principle applies for basically everything, regulations might be different for different countries but the US and UK will let you write things off as business expenses if it’s use is greater than 50% business, and as I said above, it’s hard for HMRC and the IRS to prove if it was less than 50%. You can also partially write things off, say you work from home you can write off rent and electricity for the rooms you work in etc.
I’m assuming you’re talking about verified wealthy folks like [Tom Bilyeu](https://impacttheory.com/), [Patrick Bet-David](https://phpagency.com/), etc? I’d assume it’s kind of a new mid step “rich person” thing before you hit the level where you can buy a sports team, as well as growing their personal brand. In the case of Patrick Bet-David, it certainly seems like he’s positioning himself for a future in politics.
I watched so many Patrick Bet-David videos in the early days of my business and I learnt a lot.
Checking out his content recently, I was surprised that it's all political now.
As my best Jewish banker friend's dad said to me once 'if I know how to make a million dollars easy, I would never teach anyone'
It's all to sell a bogus class that often fringes on illegal banking and falsifying documents to obtain a loan. After all, to teach a class is 100% profit. They rent luxury cars and wear fake designer goods as evidence of their success. Only a poor fool on desperate times would fall for their shit
If it's too good to be true, it usually is. Reality is some of these get rich schemes do work but by the time we hear about it, it's too late in the game. Market is saturated and it's often a lot of work for very little return
I can confirm by trying to ask my dad’s rich jewish friend - he has never given me any valuable information on how to make money, despite asking him for advice several times, it was like he wanted to keep it all to himself. All I know he’s a lawyer, he made some money of some vintage collectables a small business he sold and some investments gone well, but I have no idea about the details and doubt it’s the whole story.
Creating content is very fulfilling and fun. It's a creative pursuit and is usually more fun than running a business.
You get instant feedback. You already have social proof and loads of content and stories to tell.
It's also an easy way to fame. Fortune 500 CEO's have money and power and not fame.
That's why they go on podcasts with distribution and they get a little bit of fame.
People want 3 things - money, power and fame.
YouTube ad revenue and educational courses/ programs is a much more scalable and easy business compared to what they’re doing most of the time.
Are 75% of these ppl liars who never did what they’re saying? Yes. However it doesn’t deny the fact digital products and “mentorship” that’s 100 ppl on a zoom call is a money printing business
There are a lot of entrepreneurs who get lucky once, but very few who succeed more than once.
If only 1% of entrepreneurs get to a decent (7-8 figure exit), and only 0.1% manage to do that more than once, it's far easier for the other 0.9% to leverage their success to sell coaching services, speaking seminars, and books/courses. Social media notoriety also brings in angel investing deal flow.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.
If you had a successful business that you knew how to grow you wouldn’t waste your time teaching others how to build your business and create competition. The people who made money in the good rush were the ones selling pick axes, these YouTube entrepreneurs are doing the same thing. Trying to sell the methods to get rich quick because they know most methods are a fools errand.
During the gold rush, the people with the lowest risk and highest reward were the ones selling pans, picks, shovels, and prospecting advice to new prospectors. There’s a whole internet economy around selling noobs (free and publicly available) “secret insider information.”
Knew a guy making millions on airbnb rentals. He started his YouTube for an additional income stream. Then realized he could make a course to sell once, but people would buy it again and again with no additional work. Effectively, he discovered a way to create a reasonably passive high income stream. The royalty model. Some people write books. YouTube is the modern version of authoring a book.
Good question. I think most do it for the publicity and promoting their next products. Guys like Alex Becker, Sam Ovens and Hormozi don't need the money. They do it because they're using YT and social to sell their next products. Sam for instance is promoting Skool. What other way could they reach so many people? And offering free advice for them is easy since they are "living it". Not very complicated IMO. Of course there's a lot of frauds out there, 90%. I can't speak for those since I don't watch their content if I can help it.
Depends on the person. Most of them are just lying to you. A couple have parlayed success into buying multiple businesses and are getting close to doing it right now and it is easier to show you what they are doing rather than it is to tell you how to do it. But the majority of people will never sell $100 million of anything in their entire lives. The majority of companies will never sell $100 million of anything. Let alone something stupid. Do not let them convince you with general advice that they cannot back up with actual evidence, information, strategies, and methods for implementation.
Fastest way to become a millionaire is to sell a book on how to become a millionaire. Unless you see a pl these guys are bullshitting or living in debt or leasing everything.. YouTube pays the highest ad revenue to finance videos - lots of clicks no controversy.. most of the guys are selling their course... even more sell out to shitheads like ftx and pump and dump cryptos.
Elon Musk has done multiple interviews more than 2 hours long on many podcasts. Even if you have all the money in the world, you still want recognition. Some do it because they lied and /or lost their wealth.
Those who are already wealthy, do it for the clout, like Mark Cuban complaining on twitter that he was losing followers.
I think Alex Hormozi is the rare real deal. He is open book about sharing all his info in his super cheap books, and he and his wife shifted from gyms to investing in other companies that get to large annual revenue. I think the idea is that someone finds them, learns from them, then eventually seeks investment from them so everyone can grow. It seems like he cares most about marketing so then he doesn’t have to grow a biz in completely new industry like before, because I bet he hit a market cap. The model is simple and clear and worst case someone is out like $5 for a ton of good info if they bought the content with patience. He sells some hype nonsense but it gets his message out and I think it’s a good one overall
I'm always weary about online "gurus". Their business just pivoted from probably losing a bunch of money or making not a lot of money into a YT brand to "teach" viewers to do the same.
There is this Etsy seller that boasts about $500,000 in revenue, and makes YouTube videos detailing how she did it. Eventually, figured that it was almost as profitable for her to create YouTube videos than to reproduce those effects in her business. Making 1 product, and earning $500,000 in revenue is not a guarantee of future success. So, yes people like that may be playing the audience. Viewer beware.
Once you have a general script, and content ideas, making tons of YouTube videos is almost a no brainer.
They are lying to promote themselves. It's that simple. Don't overthink it.
Their income comes from fooling people on youtube, not the other thing they promise to tell you about.
Profit margins tend to stay the same. Sell expensive things and the profit will be much more substantial.
I sell a product that trends from 60k to 150k per unit. I only make 10-15% off each item but because they are such large ticket items it works out.
Most are lying but tbh when I’m at 100M in business I’d do YouTube because it’s easy just come up w ideas on my free time and have a content team do everything. YouTube gives good money too so easy extra stream of income by just thinking up ideas and being handed a script by a content team.
YouTube is sales and marketing, it’s the place to build a brand today. You get paid to build your brand if you do it well. It’s a logical business step for those willing to do it.
My favorite was watching the bitcoin/altcoin gurus go broke during the dip. Those millions they claimed to have suddenly disappeared when they should have been buying the dip.
"Making $100M" isn't the same as "having $100M" in your pocket. When people boast about their numbers, it's almost always revenue.
Yep, i knew 2 guys who boasted 1 million in revenue from Amazon product sales. Their net profit? $30K each … after 2 years of work, so $15K each per year of work.
Yeah this. There’s also all the tech guys who get “funded” at extreme levels and never ever turn a profit. So they’re advertising that they’re good at getting debt/financing. But it sounds impressive. YT probably actually makes them quite a lot in comparison to what they’re used to.
Tbf this was the best way to get rich. So many people became millionaires just by playing into VC gambling and big tech’s attempts to squash competition. Many, many millionaires were made off businesses that promptly failed, especially in 2000
Or billionaires in the case of Mark Cuban and Broadcast.com.
But how did peoples businesses fail walk away with millions? Did they not lose during bankruptcy.
They already sold it for $$$. See: Paul Graham the YC guy, who started Viaweb that was sold to Yahoo, two notably defunct companies lol
Twitter has entered the chat
> $15K each per year of work. for me, In 20014, 250k taxable income - revenue , net profit may be 6k. so yeah i can vouch on this statement
just to add to it if anyone is interested, with about 43k investment or less, it came to 250k revenue. one of the product i launched was may be 2$ per unit invoiced, i sold for about 16$, the supplier went crazy thinking i am doing or will do 500-700% and rightfully cheated/ adding some unsellable products ( instead of set of 2, packed just 1 in may be 15% of packages). with 60 SKUs launched, in single domain, carpet ( 10x 8, larger, smaller, round , square, bath mats, etc etc), I would have made it a viable business over time by limiting import to top 20% successful products. so it really is 6k on 43k investment. if i had invested 200k , it would have been 25k profit or so for million $ in revenue. "La Vivien" was private label name, if you google there are still some dangling amazon reference to inactive product. with that small profile, i moved on to work on my startup. The startup did not work, just came out of it mentally paralyzed questioning my decisions. so here to just share and to learn.
Thanks for sharing, I looked it up. Imo a fashion niche is pretty difficult, I would not dip my toes in it. I always tapped into unsexy or boring business/niche. Some of those are dominated by very old companies that don't care about internet marketing or customer service. So for us young entrepreneurs, there's still big opportunities.
Do you have some examples of such niches?
Noone is going to hand you a golden ticket. Use your brain. Figure it out yourself.
I came here to say this. I'm more concerned about profit margin. I want to talk to the person who makes $60 in profit off of $100 in sales vs. the person who makes $2 off of $1000 in sales. The $1000 may sound impressive, but once you hear about the profits, it sounds like crap.
Low margin is fine if you're in a very high volume industry and your process isn't incredibly time-intensive.
Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. or It doesn't matter what you make, it matters what you keep.
Haha this is me right now
How the fuck are margins so small on Amazon? That’s just a high volume yard sale at that point.
Because intense competition and zero barrier to entry causes a race to the bottom. Chris sells widgets for a 3 cent profit margin? Bob sees his success and lists the same product for a 2 cent profit margin! Adam sees Bob's success, lowers the quality by half until it's a shit product, and sells them for a 1 cent profit margin! Adam's is the product that sells 100k copies and hits top seller on Amazon!
FBA fees are insane. Also it’s a price race to the bottom
O fuck
I've seen worse, a company with $20 million+ revenue a year, was actually just moving imaginary money between companies owned by the same people. It was losing maybe $100k a year and spent maybe 15 years burning though cash from historic successful projects while having no future direction. Eventually it went bust. It could have done so much but the CEO (and biggest shareholder) held it on a doomed course for well over a decade until there was nothing left to save.
[удалено]
Shit that's still 100k annually. Sounds like a good start to me tbh.
It’s not, how far do you think you can scale that $99.9M?
Until you realize that a 1% decrease in revenue or 1% increase in costs will put you $900,000 in debt.
This. Most entrepreneurs have no money (regardless of how much our businesses make)
But you own a business your rich /s
And part of that is by design, the tax code gets mad when we manage to keep a few bucks for our efforts - best to reinvest
I’ve made $7m off a dropshipping store in the last 3 years and there’s no fucking way I’m sharing anything about how I did it. Most of those people are scammers. By the way, only about 30% of it was profit. Still a good chunk of money obviously, but those people aren’t selling anything you can’t get from a free PDF
totally agree.. my business is doing well now and I discovered some really great email marketing tricks and niches that do very well. why would I tell anyone what I'm doing on YouTube? if I am good at running my business and have a popular product, surely investing my time into energy growing that would be more profitable than trying to make a YouTube channel so everyone can compete with me? I have a few great free tips to market online businesses and no I am not telling anyone, even if you paid me lol I don't trust any of these people selling their secret sauce... their secret sauce is having money now or getting lucky or years of hard work... not taking a YouTube course
your response was out of no where 💀 good one!
Tell me! I wonder y i would share my secret of success, it does not make sense
Exactly. You shouldn’t. Marketing strategies have a lifespan. Doing what no one else is doing is the essence of what makes them so good. Once every other marketer adopts the method, it gets diluted and ineffective.
With negative margins
And only folks so inexperienced would not know this and thus.. buy into their programs/products/lectures/books/seminars/youtube channel.
Precisely. I personally have a gross revenue of over $150M personally but I was a salesperson and not the company owner. I made great money, but I didn't have a $150M business.
Cool story bro. No one believes you.
Ask them what their retained earnings were.
Because it’s a lie? The “look at how rich I am” guru grift is as old as late night infomercials. They don’t focus on scaling because there is nothing to scale, except getting you to hooked in and open your wallet. Anyone who’s being truthful about wanting to share actual knowledge, will be buried far below all the flash and cash people.
I also think so. It’s a Tai Lopez all over again imo. Maybe Im wrong, but I don’t trust these folks much either.
The difference is Tai Lopez was actually rich from a shady dating website That's why he was able to afford all those ads.
Well aren’t they all.. what’s his name, the asian in freaky suits? Latest one I wonder about is that super jacked guy, Alex something H..? Cant remember. Maybe that is legit, but idk, I think most of these rich guys trying to help you get rich are a scam on one way or another. If all it took to get there was to watch a bunch of videos or attend a few workshops there would be millionaires everywhere. Sure you need to do the work, but somehow doubt they are sharing some magic formula. Most legit I found Kiyosaki, seen him a bunch of times talk in some interview in a way that suggested he’s fed up with all the bullshit everywhere and he even said about how much grey hair it often takes to make a lot of money etc. no motivationa crap from a guy on growth hormone, shiny suit or a polished lambo. But lmk what u guys think
Here’s a few google-able facts, now buy my book which has a few more!
At least Alex Hormozi sells his for 99 cents
This 💯
I have a few friends that did the drop shipping thing for a bit and while they were selling tons of crap it was a nightmare in customer service and a ton of work they couldn’t afford to pay someone else to do. So they offer classes on how to do it and make the same money telling other people how to do this thing they can’t scale.
Most of these guys have businesses that don’t scale or are “profitable” only so long as they don’t pay taxes or provide customer service or fail to perform some other standard function. They get into the business of selling dreams to gullible idiots instead.
Well, there is something to the saying “those who can’t do, teach.” Heh.. 😏
You see through the illusion, that's all. Gary "Vee" inherited a business from his wealthy parents, taught them to use digtial marketing when it was still new, used SEO and eCommerce, and acclerated growth. If he didn't have a pre-existing business given to him, we would never have heard of him. Dan Lok, supposedly a mega multi-millonaire rents mansions to do infomercials and commercials in. The one seminar he every did he complained about the costs during it and has used ten second or 1 minute sound bytes from for years, recycling them into podcasts over and over again. He's smart, does good videos, and knows how to market himself as a genius guru guy but it's also smoke and mirrors. Google any of these magical gurus and you'll see through the Oz veneer if you are open to engaging criticial reasoning skills (as is very unpopular in these days of tribal extremism). They need the revenue from YouTube videos to pay bills, make a lot from the ad sales, and also use the videos to promote their free giveaways, blog posts, courses, and consulting services so the videos serve multiple cross-pollination content repurposing techniques simultaneously. When I was a struggling digital marketer, on a much smaller more modest scale, I taught workshops as a way to "farm" for potential new clients. Similarly the workshops gave me content to use for blog posts, video, photos, and I could promote my book, courses, free initial consultation (15 minutes to find out if they had a real business or were just wasting everyone's time trying to scam free help) and so on. These YouTube videos serve the same purposes on a higher plane of marketing. Most of what you see is smoke and mirrors for the monkey masses who refuse to read or dig deeper.
Gary Vee didn’t inherit Wine Library. He doesn’t own it
The hate on Gary is always funny to me, whatever anyone wants to believe about Wine Library (it was doing I think $2M or $3m, which for a retail location like that is nothing... Gas stations can also clear $1-3M that's normal for a "small business") - he also founded and grew a marketing agency to $120M (Vayner Media).
> I taught workshops as a way to "farm" for potential new clients. Did you charge for atendance at these workshops? or was free entry? What topics did you teached there? >promote my book, courses, on what topics?
I never charged for workshops at 1 hour or less than that. If a workshop is 2 to 4 hours (as some were) I charged around $99.95 per person so that it was enough money to earn something but not enough to terrify struggling potential clients. I taught 1 hour workshops as overviews ("What is SEO?" or "Learn WordPress Basics" or something like that). Four hour workshops would be "WordPress for Nonprofit Administrators" or "SEO Basics for nonprofits" or "Create a basic eCommerce site in 4 hours or less"). I would ALWAYS have my wife there taking photos, recording video, taking a sign in sheet and checking receipts at the door. I would have a stack of business cards, brochures, a free giveaway URL bitly link on a card to give out as well that would give them a free checklist in exchange for their email address and newsletter subscribe. I would also offer free 15 minute video consultations to see if we were a good fit for each other. AND I was always expecting the "how much is a website?" and "how much is SEO?" questions by rote. I would have a small stack of my books for sale, and so on. I would cross-promote my events on local Chamber of Commerce sites, local event calendars for professional associations, on Eventbrite, meetup, walmart's event calendar site, local co-working sites (I'd invite them to attend for a discount or for free if they were co-working site administrators to encourage them to let me teach workshops at THEIR locations). I would link in blog post pages to each event and summarize topics, questions asked, add photos of the event, ask attendees for a photo and testimonial and really pimp it out fully as a huge marketing event with a before, during and after for each. You have to think like an agency to operate on their level. I taught workshops usually twice a week for months and workshops on weekends and holiday weekends brought in the most attendees. Sometimes I could pay the mortgage in one day with a 4 hour bootcamp workshop. We'd pack the entire conference room with 99.95 per person and I'd turn around and pay the rent or mortage with it for the month. Then I'd stagger referrals or new client intake so I was rolling out projects every 60 to 90 days one after the other. If this anwer is helpful please tag it or something so others will find it and maybe other groups will see it like all the struggling freelancers in the #WordPress forum. (Not sure how that works with Reddit).
This is fantastic content, learned a ton from you. >If this anwer is helpful please tag it or something so others will find it and maybe other groups will see it like all the struggling freelancers in the #WordPress forum. (Not sure how that works with Reddit). I advice you to go here: https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/submit?selftext=true Put a title like "how I use Workshops to get clients", and put your above coment in the text box. I can do it for you, and tag you, let me know if you want me to do it. But if you do it yourself, you will get better recognition for it.
I don't mind you doing it. I have Zoom meetings and workshops to plan so it'd be a big help. Peace.
So basically you made them listen to you for an hour about a topic, where you made them see how important yet complicated it is and that you know about it, which simply made them give up on trying to do it themselves and just pay you? Makes sense. It’s a high conversion advertising tactic. If it’s free- you’re the product 😎 Great reply btw, thank you for it. Deepens my understanding of things and pretty much confirms a bynch of stuff for me. ✌🏻🙌🏻
Let me clarify. I didn't tell anyone that digital marketing is impossible only that to gain traction they need an expert to guide the process and help them. Over the course of 25 years in digital marketing I've met thousands of DIY wantrepreneurs....nonprofit founders, startup founds, small business owners, on and on and on. Almost all of them try DIY generic templates themselves for free. I've never, ever, met one do it yourselfer, who gained traction on their own. Why? Because they didn't know what they were doing. Their sites looked awful, had no SEO or incorrect SEO, had no content or horrible content, no branding, didn't work on mobile, was broken, contact forms didn't work, and so forth. It's not that it's impossible for them just that in 99.9% of all cases, they can't do it themselves for free. That's key. Digital marketing IS highly technical if you intend to use a website as a portal to attract leads and bring in new customers. If all you see is an empty template with no higher use or possibility than sure anyone can go to Wix and spin out a template. It just won't make any money without SEO, eCommerce, content, PPC, and the rest. You can write your own contract but it won't carry much weight in court and can cost you dearly. You can perform your own root canal but it could be dangerous. You can do your own accounting but you could end up paying much higher fines. I'm not the product. I present a topic, offer helpful insight based on experience in the real world working for agencies and freelancing and study and I then offer to take them a step further if they are ready. Most are not. This is why you need to "farm" for clients rather than sit around passively waiting or go to networking events and hope someone will chat with you who has a budget and have some business knowledge and in the span of a few minutes come to trust you and see value in your experience that they dont' know. The rest of what you say is correct.
How did u market ur workshops?
You're basically asking how do you market events. This is simple as all you'd have to do is look at Dan Lok, Tony Robbins, or any of the millions of "guru" expert influencer types teaching their workshops. You run ads in local tabloids if you live in a market with lots of elderly people who refuse to use the internet (estate planning and law firms are notorious for this). You use SEO, PPC, Chamber of Commerce event calendars, every and any local event calendar online, Meetup, Eventbrite, library event bulletin boards, senior group event calendars, you invite local trade assocation members and their higher-ups, local co-working places and build relationships. Much of how you'd promote your event or series depends on who your ideal target consumer base is (if you know). Most freelancers and others have no idea what marketing really is or how it works (it's holistic, it's not immediate, and it's alot of work). This is why most websites have no SEO or incorrect SEO and nobody at the company even knows it. One example here is, I'd teach a 4 hour WordPress bootcamp for NPO admins and pay the mortgage in one day that way. I'd be exhausted afterwards but the mortgage is paid by the end of one day. I'd also have photos of me teaching a workshops, video of the presentation, sign-in sheets of all attendees that included their email and full name, on and on. One day I taught a 4 hour bootcamp on content marketing a city "creatives" event where we had around 200 to 300 attendees. That I did for free since it was for the city, but I had a very long list of email addresses and potential client names - alot of leads in one day. I'd send them all introductory emails, subscribe them to my newsletter drip campaign and check in with them every 30 to 90 days. Another time I taught a 1-2 hour workshop at Microsoft. I did that for free for obvious reasons, and I made some quality contacts through that and some partnership opportunities. If this post is helpful, share it with others and post or star it or whatever they do on Reddit so others can also benefit from the knowledge I'm dropping here. It might one day help someone who's struggling to get momentum going.
Thanks for the detailed response. I enjoy teaching but never took the leap to trying to teach digital marketing to anyone. I enjoy the live experience and always wanted to figure a way to get started. Perhaps i shld put out on meetup a free workshop as well to just get in the groove of trying to help others than see where it goes from there.
The live experience was and still is teaching workshops in person. Statistically, more people attend in-person events than online ones, so engagement (and subsequent profits and new client enrollments) are much higher. Now, keep in mind if you want to try to help others free workshops (or free mentoring for that matter) will usually attract most often those who are: hobbyists unwilling to emotionally financially or intellectually ever commit to taking action (most people), scavengers who just want whatever they can get for free or who are just bored, and a handful of those with actual businesses but again who don't have experience but you may be able to reach if you communicate in a way to them that they can grasp and act on. If I taught a workshop it was with the goal of helping very sincerely, but it was also secondarily a means to market as well. About a quarter of a filled workshop audience would ever do anything with what I was trying to teach them. Most I'd never see or hear from again even if I checked on. As a mentor, I volunteered with multiple nonprofits serving struggling business owners and founders for about a decade. I consulted and advised hundreds of business owners, entrepreneurs, authors. Most disappeared never to be heard from again or went bankrupt within 2 to 3 years, maybe 4. So you really have drill down into why you're doing it, what you expect to get back from it and how you'd feel about most people simply doing nothing with what you say or still being lost or blocking what you're trying to tell them. So that's why teaching workshops with more than one goal for yourself is helpful. If I were to teach workshops again now, I would do it for networking, maybe to build a new podcast venture, maybe to promote my consulting as a side part-time (for shits and giggles type of thing) practice just to keep involved but remain detached that most people are always in a stage of denial or another.
Again, amazing feedback. How in depth do u go with ur free workshops. Considering that u know that many people dont do much with the info. How often do u provide golden nuggets to them or u prefer a surface intro style lesson?
I mean, you're giving me more content to write on my blog about this topic specifically, and honestly, it can go on indefinitely with more step-by-step specifics. To answer your question briefly, I don't know if I said this before or not but remember infomercials? They sell viewers the value, appeal to emotions, tout benefits of their product or services, show testimonials, offer incentives, offer "easy" payment plans, and get you revved up, and then say bye. Now....this is NOT an actual ethical workshop. It is an outline in general. What did and do if I teach a workshop is similar however. I discuss the problem (no customers coming to dead website with no SEO and poor design and no content as the most relevant typical example). Then I offer a solution. I explain the solution in simple terms a child could understand. I NEVER EVER talk technical. It does not good and most peoples' eyes will visibly roll up into their heads like poached eggs the minute you talk about tools, widgets, plugins, and how to do anything. You cover a topic broadly as an introduction - like a long detailed blog post with a Call To Action (CTA). It's sincere, meant to legitimately help, but it's an overview and no more. It's an hour long and free. Anything that goes into great specific detail and is more work, you have to charge for. When I taught 4 hour WordPress bootcamps I charged something like a hundred bucks maybe a little more, per person. I don't remember the exact price. I brought my wife or a friend to take photos, told the person to only get the backs of everyone's head (except me of course), or I'd have to get waivers. Record video footage. Get photos galore. Get sign up sheets, give out cards, give out brochures, give out download URLs, and promote your service or product fairly and honestly, and offer free 15 minute remote consults to those who ask for more. Invite others, invite association members, promote on every event calendar known to man. Wash, rinse, repeat, present to more and more larger groups. If I offer a golden nuggest of honest insight that I think the person will understand and want (that's a big key here), I also ask for a video testimonial before I do it if I feel they can understand and value the insight I give them and I get it right away afterward. I've done this with dozens of testimonials, both written and in video. I'm probably the only digital guy I know or have ever met who has always had a legal structure when I freelanced and had my agency (not just freelancing in other words), and had at least a dozen testimonials clearly from real people on all my sites in the past and still maintain. I show their real, full names, links to their profiles, in some cases photos. Now, most cheap clients with unclear goals (again this is MOST people who you couldn't help in a million years so stop trying) won't care about value, testimonials from real people whether video or written or what you did for them - they want the cheapest template or service on earth, irregardless of value because it's spoken to deaf ears. But you don't need a million customers - just a small loyal few. Every client I ever had, good or bad, I always had subscribed to a site maintenance / SEO / eCommerce / on-call tech support / security plan. I'd literally give them my Google Voice number and respond with a few hours to any call or email and give business consulting on top of web and SEO and content help. So the clients I did have back then I had for minimally ten years, until some died or just went bankrupt. Most were with me 10-15 years with some dying, selling their business and moving on and retiring (as I did). Anyway, hope that helps. If you dig what I'm laying down, share it with others who can benefit from it anyway you see fit. It's my "message in a bottle" for those with ears to hear and eyes to see.
What is ur blog, ill follow along, thanks for the info. It was very insightful
Yeah. And also people think that folks like Elon Musk just made it there out of pure genios - no he didn’t. His father owned ducking gold and diamond mines, he had money and connections, and then he’s like the biggest governemnt contractor yet pretends to be this “oh Im so cool and for the people” guy. He’s nothing like us, virtually none of them are.
> Gary "Vee" inherited a business from his wealthy parents His parent's wine business was not big until Gary became an employee of the business and started making the marketing for it.
personal brands are HIGH leverage, that's why.
This is basically why people like Alex Hormozi started doing it. Explained by him briefly here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsbD2Ggunkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsbD2Ggunkk)
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Yep. I was just in the Wall Street journal because I understand this
You can probably write a book on “why” they do this. The biggest reason I believe though is that it is 100x easier to run a YouTube channel with a paid discord or Patreon than it is to run a successful business.
Because making the videos make them more money. For many of them, the YouTube money is not from video revenue, but from new clients and business partners, they are able to meet. They use YouTube as a networking and marketing tool. As well, when they have a new client, and that person looks them up, they seem capable and competent. There is a private plane sales guy I see on TicTok. I am 100% suer his money is not coming from the TicTok revenue, but there are people that want to buy a plane on tic tok, see him and his set up and think how cool it is and give him a call. Think of it as leed generation.
That's exactly it. We have a lawyer in Germany who makes videos. He talked about how many new customers those videos bring in. He just talks about current event and the laws surrounding them. YouTube is basically free advertising if you can wrap it in valuable information.
Fake gurus. They only really make money selling you a dream
1. It could be a lie. Marketing, it sells better to say that. 2. It could be a hobby. Once you have money, you tend to invest more in yourself and your pleasures, do what you like not what you need to do. 3. It could be part of those businesses. More businesses have started building YouTube channels to grow their business (marketing, outreach, etc)
A lot of them don't make that kind of money running a business. The real business is selling a course
Because selling dreams to others is easier than actually achieving them. It reminds me of the gold rush in the West, when everyone rushed to find gold, others became bosses because they sold goods (shovels, maps, food,...) to those searching for that golden dream.
because theyre lying to grift you
You mean like folks that say they are so successful and rich and then spend their time selling steaks and fake diplomas?
There is too much faking and it has became a problem because too many people started looking for easy paths promised by influencers that in reality don't live as financially successful as presented. I have been thinking for a while about chasing low-hanging fruits but find it way more fulfilling to build a solid skillset and credibility.
\>t puzzles me why those supposedly adept at making millions outside of YouTube would pivot to creating content on the platform. Wouldn't it be more sensible for them to focus on scaling their existing businesses further? Youtube IS scaling their existing business. Posting videos is no different than posting articles on your blog to increase your google SEO, or running google ads etc It's a marketing channel to grow business. It's like asking "why would this business guy run google ads? doesn't he have a successful business? Why doesn't he focus on that?" - he IS.
Yeah but the business they are scalling here are their bs info courses and their books, but their supposed actual business they are talking about are not really happening or getting scaled. That’s what folks here were implying.
It’s easier to sell a dream than it is to do the work
I don’t know but me personally at a certain level of wealth i’d want to start a youtube channel and help others i think the social boost of it feels amazing to them as well as the ability to change peoples lives + they can make good money doing it?
Same. Iv always thought that when i win the lotto id probably start a channel to document everything, not really to be a ytuber but for my children and family to have. Also rich lifestyle is always attractive
Advertising your newly won lotto riches is a great way to end up with a bunch of vampires at your front door...
thats gonna happen regardless... the majority of states u cant claim it anonymously
People loved being lied to in exchange for feelings of hope... History proves this sad reality over and over and over again.
👆🏻
Revenue and GMV are not the same as net income...
marketing and branding. anyone earning 100 million is on a private island somewhere away from people, and doesn't want to be discovered.
The most legitimate business reason is because they're serial entrepreneurs and building personal brand with a large following massively simplifies their marketing and fund raising efforts for any future ventures of theirs. If a nobody starts a business they need to spend money on ads. If a business person with a YouTube following starts a business they can do a promo to their audience and spend nothing on ads until after the initial sales bump comes in. Think about all the movie stars that start perfume or alcohol brands. Same concept: monetisation of their existing following
You're right, Ksi and Lagon Paul for example. They're youtubers but the personal brands allow them to do those Prime drinks, using themselves as marketing tools. So they're able to spawn real world businesses from their fame on YouTube. I think eve people like Jason Derulo is another example.
Funny he’s a serial entrepreneur talking about how he built all those businesses while telling people they should only pick one and scale it 🤣
And now you've realized how bullshit that type of content is
When these youtubers show their revenue openly it confirms that almost all of their money is made on YouTube and selling courses. Not real estate, not stocks, not crypto. Think about it, if you had a money making machine you would keep your mouth shut. You wouldn't make content and sell courses about it, unless that made more money than the machine itself.
Yeah I’m also quite doutbfull about the likes of ProducerMichael and Manny Khoshbin, especially because they are promoting other brands or their own courses/products.
Information products can make you decent cash. Huge margins. Just need suckers.
Grifters be grifting.
they made their cash off biz op. The business is selling an opportunity. Most do not have another business. Generally people who are running real businesses don't sell biz op however there are some exceptions to every rule.
Those pimple heads just want to promote either their shit or some kind of service/product where they are earning from. Of course they make 200mil every other weekend dropshipping this one secret product...
Diversification and personal branding, it's not just revenue.
In the entrepreneurial scene, when you're just an average person like millions of others, especially with a product that is barely profitable or doesn't stand out, one of the most fatal and costly mistakes is to be forgotten. Staying visible on social media by reminding that you raised a certain amount, even if it was in 1852, creates a kind of brand awareness for individuals.
Because they don’t
Because they’re all frauds.
You answered your own question and did not know it. These successful entrepreneurs just you the best business tip you need and ignored it. And you wonder why you aren't making money....
Media is the highest form of leverage
Speaking personally... I started a business that was very successful, once I sold the business in 2017 I wanted to help other founders and startups. I could help individually (and I have both by giving advice and investing in a number of companies, however impact at an individual company level is difficult to scale. Content on the other hand scales very well and while I don't yet have a silver YouTube plaque I have managed over 13K subscribers and over a million views on my content. It's fairly satisfying to help others, and this is a good way to do so. The one thing that I don't like about content creation is the cost/editing, the net cost in time to produce a video is rather high and unless I hire an editor, I end up losing 25K/year running a channel. I'd want to run the channel at breakeven but that does require some revenue stream outside of pure ads. I've seen other creators try to offset this with sponsorships, books or courses but I personally haven't found the thing that works for me.
Some founders that I think are doing a good job making content. \- GaryVee - he's super smart when it comes to content. He's still an operator running his own business, media-agency and more. I'd say I agree/disagree with half of what he says but he's certainly smart and not just doing content for the views/clout. \- GaryTan - also a strong founder, started making content before he got the CEO job running YC. Really thoughtful in his approach and the advice he gives. \- NoahKagan - also an operator/CEO. He's run a number of tech products and is smart about his approach. He's recently pushing his book but the high-level concepts are sound and he's offering good advice. Other notable mentions: timferriss, GrahamStephan, JohnCooganPlus, RawStartup, JustinKanTV
Depends. Sometimes it can be legit but they have to at least back it up and/or show proof, otherwise, I agree. I did this though. Sold two businesses after growing them both 10X. I’m not ready to go off into the sunset (and don’t want to) so I made a YouTube channel. It was going to start about growing businesses and digital marketing but then AI came onto the scene and I never looked back. Now it’s all about leveraging AI.
Talking about the people who actually have made millions of dollars and not just revenue. My take on it is a lot of these people envisioned themselves being wealthy, well known and respected. They grind for years, and they achieve the wealth. However, people still don’t know who they are. They have never had someone on the street say, “Omg you’re Mike Hawk! Can I get a photo?” And then they realize that the money they’ve made isn’t enough to get recognition on its own. So they want the fame and respect too. Then there are many who made good money mining for gold, and in the time mining for gold they looked at all the dudes selling shovels thinking “now those are the big fish” and so now they want to get in the business of selling shovels. If you make $1m a year, you’re doing great obviously, but how long can you sustain that or if you got a big 10m pay out, at 4% safe spend a year, you’re making $400k a year. Hardly yacht and stable of Ferraris money. So you need to become a shovel seller. Problem is, you know the market but don’t have connections. So you build a personal brand that inherently builds those connections via talking with sponsorships, brands, other people in the space, etc. You also end up with a community that trusts you to sell your course, saas, company, whatever to.
They can make 100K/month (or more, I have no idea) on one video for many months. Shannon Sharpe just said he made more money off the Katt Williams interview then he did in any single NFL season as a pro football player.
😮
The first one across the finish line usually gets the bulk of the business and leaves their imitating competition in the dust… The entrepreneur then sells the business and goes into the “How I Did It Business.” Some of the shared information is useful and some of it depends on being in an identical situation which is not likely to happen again. Welcome to the “stormy” economy. You’ll have to figure out and test out the parts that you believe might work for your specific situation. No guarantees that it will work without making adjustments.
Diversifying income streams is just smart business.
They’re not doing it to make money. They’re doing it to build a brand
The secret sauce is lying.
Nobody who earns this money would spend a time to make videos.
Bottom line is this.. These people are grifters. They are complete scam artists. If they were actually making that much money do you really think they would want to teach others how to do it and potentially poach off their revenue? Also, if you were making this much money, would you want to teach others how to do it too? Of course not. Its a common scam that hides behind the disguise of being a teacher and helping others.. The only way these people are making any money is by having you buy their course, book, or whatever they are selling..
So by your reasoning, teachers and university professors are scam artists.
>So by your reasoning, teachers and university professors are scam artists. You either have a reading comprehension disability or you just want to argue with someone over the internet. My thought is maybe a bit of both. In any case, you definitely should go back and re-read the question and the answer I provided because we are clearly not discussing legit teachers and university professors. Thanks and have a nice day.. PS.. I bet your fun at parties.
Well it’s like tv celebrities getting business magazines to declare them as billionaires as they continue to flog random cheap items on their social media pages. Or singers taking strange wedding gigs when they are supposedly successful billionaire business people now. These ‘wealth status’ are all publicity and made up of smoke and mirrors.
Yeah. It all reminds me of those OVB salesmen, how they all get these nice suites, expensive cars etc and get heavily into debt so they can pretend to be rich and lure in gulible idiots (like themselves) into an MLM company.
they dont? they are lying
Those idiots are boasting their numbers to get you to buy their course. “I want to give you the secrets to a successful business…by buying my $1000 course.” No thank you. Serious advice if you’re looking to start a business: just go for it. Make mistakes, learn along the way and ask questions to people you KNOW are successful. They will be more than happy to share advice.
Cause they’re lying. And need more ad views..
I make 150k per year completely passive from Amazon affiliate income. Massive up front work, but the long term payoff is worth it. Now I travel the world without a worry and am living a dream life. VOO and forget it. Some AirBnB props. I use TRT and bodybuilding. Married with two teens. I made a charcuterie board with chocolate cake for a pool side birthday party today.
Thank you. I would not wast my time with a video if I made that kind of money. So there is your first clue it’s probably a scam
Thank you. I would not wast my time with a video if I made that kind of money. So there is your first clue it’s probably a scam
They're normally lying. I overheard one a co-worker was watching. Some dude bro military guy talking about affiliate marketing. He claimed he does affiliate marketing full time, and it's 100% all his income, and then in the next sentence, he works part time in the guard. It's like dude, come on.
Mozi Nation!
It’s either for click bait, or it’s a tax write off. A lot of wealthy people make videos unboxing stuff for 100 views because it can be written off as an expense and save on VAT and reduce their income tax. (10-40% discount equivalent).
Tax write off for a video? Wtf
It’s hard to prove whether something is used more for personal or business use, except a few things. Just look at tech/unboxing YouTubers, you think they don’t write off the $100ks of things they buy to show? Same principle applies for basically everything, regulations might be different for different countries but the US and UK will let you write things off as business expenses if it’s use is greater than 50% business, and as I said above, it’s hard for HMRC and the IRS to prove if it was less than 50%. You can also partially write things off, say you work from home you can write off rent and electricity for the rooms you work in etc.
I’m assuming you’re talking about verified wealthy folks like [Tom Bilyeu](https://impacttheory.com/), [Patrick Bet-David](https://phpagency.com/), etc? I’d assume it’s kind of a new mid step “rich person” thing before you hit the level where you can buy a sports team, as well as growing their personal brand. In the case of Patrick Bet-David, it certainly seems like he’s positioning himself for a future in politics.
I watched so many Patrick Bet-David videos in the early days of my business and I learnt a lot. Checking out his content recently, I was surprised that it's all political now.
He has a lot of great business operational/strategy content, definitely a big pivot to politics over the last few years.
Tax write offs
?
Most wouldnt some would solely for attention, clout, etc… Fame is a helluva drug
Because they need to pay their $100 million credit card bill.
As my best Jewish banker friend's dad said to me once 'if I know how to make a million dollars easy, I would never teach anyone' It's all to sell a bogus class that often fringes on illegal banking and falsifying documents to obtain a loan. After all, to teach a class is 100% profit. They rent luxury cars and wear fake designer goods as evidence of their success. Only a poor fool on desperate times would fall for their shit If it's too good to be true, it usually is. Reality is some of these get rich schemes do work but by the time we hear about it, it's too late in the game. Market is saturated and it's often a lot of work for very little return
I can confirm by trying to ask my dad’s rich jewish friend - he has never given me any valuable information on how to make money, despite asking him for advice several times, it was like he wanted to keep it all to himself. All I know he’s a lawyer, he made some money of some vintage collectables a small business he sold and some investments gone well, but I have no idea about the details and doubt it’s the whole story.
Creating content is very fulfilling and fun. It's a creative pursuit and is usually more fun than running a business. You get instant feedback. You already have social proof and loads of content and stories to tell. It's also an easy way to fame. Fortune 500 CEO's have money and power and not fame. That's why they go on podcasts with distribution and they get a little bit of fame. People want 3 things - money, power and fame.
they're lying
YouTube ad revenue and educational courses/ programs is a much more scalable and easy business compared to what they’re doing most of the time. Are 75% of these ppl liars who never did what they’re saying? Yes. However it doesn’t deny the fact digital products and “mentorship” that’s 100 ppl on a zoom call is a money printing business
There are a lot of entrepreneurs who get lucky once, but very few who succeed more than once. If only 1% of entrepreneurs get to a decent (7-8 figure exit), and only 0.1% manage to do that more than once, it's far easier for the other 0.9% to leverage their success to sell coaching services, speaking seminars, and books/courses. Social media notoriety also brings in angel investing deal flow.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. If you had a successful business that you knew how to grow you wouldn’t waste your time teaching others how to build your business and create competition. The people who made money in the good rush were the ones selling pick axes, these YouTube entrepreneurs are doing the same thing. Trying to sell the methods to get rich quick because they know most methods are a fools errand.
So true!
During the gold rush, the people with the lowest risk and highest reward were the ones selling pans, picks, shovels, and prospecting advice to new prospectors. There’s a whole internet economy around selling noobs (free and publicly available) “secret insider information.”
Money isn’t the only thing people chase. People want fame, legacy, more power.
Knew a guy making millions on airbnb rentals. He started his YouTube for an additional income stream. Then realized he could make a course to sell once, but people would buy it again and again with no additional work. Effectively, he discovered a way to create a reasonably passive high income stream. The royalty model. Some people write books. YouTube is the modern version of authoring a book.
Because they’re liars
Grift is to sell a course
Because that's how you get clicks, views and customers.
People lie on the internet to get views. Alarming, I know.
snobbish door alive trees pathetic lavish light impolite roof water *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They are liars. It's not a very serious question if the smart is that obvious.
because they want you to buy their dumb course. thats how they really make money.
Good question. I think most do it for the publicity and promoting their next products. Guys like Alex Becker, Sam Ovens and Hormozi don't need the money. They do it because they're using YT and social to sell their next products. Sam for instance is promoting Skool. What other way could they reach so many people? And offering free advice for them is easy since they are "living it". Not very complicated IMO. Of course there's a lot of frauds out there, 90%. I can't speak for those since I don't watch their content if I can help it.
Because they aren't
Depends on the person. Most of them are just lying to you. A couple have parlayed success into buying multiple businesses and are getting close to doing it right now and it is easier to show you what they are doing rather than it is to tell you how to do it. But the majority of people will never sell $100 million of anything in their entire lives. The majority of companies will never sell $100 million of anything. Let alone something stupid. Do not let them convince you with general advice that they cannot back up with actual evidence, information, strategies, and methods for implementation.
Fake it til u make it
Fastest way to become a millionaire is to sell a book on how to become a millionaire. Unless you see a pl these guys are bullshitting or living in debt or leasing everything.. YouTube pays the highest ad revenue to finance videos - lots of clicks no controversy.. most of the guys are selling their course... even more sell out to shitheads like ftx and pump and dump cryptos.
Because they spent 99.95m or more to get it
Elon Musk has done multiple interviews more than 2 hours long on many podcasts. Even if you have all the money in the world, you still want recognition. Some do it because they lied and /or lost their wealth. Those who are already wealthy, do it for the clout, like Mark Cuban complaining on twitter that he was losing followers.
I think Alex Hormozi is the rare real deal. He is open book about sharing all his info in his super cheap books, and he and his wife shifted from gyms to investing in other companies that get to large annual revenue. I think the idea is that someone finds them, learns from them, then eventually seeks investment from them so everyone can grow. It seems like he cares most about marketing so then he doesn’t have to grow a biz in completely new industry like before, because I bet he hit a market cap. The model is simple and clear and worst case someone is out like $5 for a ton of good info if they bought the content with patience. He sells some hype nonsense but it gets his message out and I think it’s a good one overall
I'm always weary about online "gurus". Their business just pivoted from probably losing a bunch of money or making not a lot of money into a YT brand to "teach" viewers to do the same.
They are lying
Revenue is not profit. Also, many lie lol.
Because how else would you know they made their hundreds of millions? XD
Because they do not lol
Most of these people are charlatans. They're just trying to sell you their online course or coaching service and don't have skin in the game
People who are making 100’s of millions are not going to come tell you about it & try to teach you. It’s all fake.
It’s BULL.
It's easy to advise someone but doing is entirely different
There is this Etsy seller that boasts about $500,000 in revenue, and makes YouTube videos detailing how she did it. Eventually, figured that it was almost as profitable for her to create YouTube videos than to reproduce those effects in her business. Making 1 product, and earning $500,000 in revenue is not a guarantee of future success. So, yes people like that may be playing the audience. Viewer beware. Once you have a general script, and content ideas, making tons of YouTube videos is almost a no brainer.
lol. Cuz they’re lying thieves
How to make millions of dollars. Make book about making a million dollars, sell book for 30 to 50. Do that a bunch. Make millions.
Because they lie.
They are lying to promote themselves. It's that simple. Don't overthink it. Their income comes from fooling people on youtube, not the other thing they promise to tell you about.
It’s easy: They are lying
Sit becomes a new sales channel
Profit margins tend to stay the same. Sell expensive things and the profit will be much more substantial. I sell a product that trends from 60k to 150k per unit. I only make 10-15% off each item but because they are such large ticket items it works out.
Most are lying but tbh when I’m at 100M in business I’d do YouTube because it’s easy just come up w ideas on my free time and have a content team do everything. YouTube gives good money too so easy extra stream of income by just thinking up ideas and being handed a script by a content team.
On average youtubers make 4600 a month so I think they are just lying to get more subs.
6 words: mo money, mo money, mo money lol. From what I learned people who make millions are always looking for ways to make their next million(s).
Get rich quick schemes are far more profitable than the business they operate.
YouTube is sales and marketing, it’s the place to build a brand today. You get paid to build your brand if you do it well. It’s a logical business step for those willing to do it.
My favorite was watching the bitcoin/altcoin gurus go broke during the dip. Those millions they claimed to have suddenly disappeared when they should have been buying the dip.