I have spent a lot of years watching internet marketers sell methods, systems, courses, tools and “secrets” that promise to help people make money online.
And I have bought more than a few of them myself.
In fact, I once paid more than $7,000 for one marketing system… an experience I wrote about here.
Some were useful.
Some were disappointing.
Some worked for a while.
And some taught me more about how internet marketing is sold than about how to actually make money online.
Here is what I eventually learned.
By the time many internet marketers sell you their “proven method,” the method may already be well past its most profitable stage.
Think about it.
When someone discovers a method that is working extremely well for them, what are they most likely to do?
Use it.
They may use it quietly for months or even years while it continues producing results.
But markets change.
Competition increases.
Platforms change their rules.
Search engines change.
Social media changes.
Advertising costs rise.
What once worked extremely well starts producing weaker results.
And that can be exactly when the “secret” suddenly becomes something they are willing to teach you.
First, the Price is High
Often, the first version of the course or system is expensive.
High pricing is often paired with another tactic: a major savings offer for the first 50 buyers.
That way, you’re not only reacting to the high price… you’re also being pushed by the fear that the discount may disappear if you stop to think too long.
That helps create the impression that what is being sold must be valuable.
It also limits the number of people buying it.
Of those buyers, only a percentage will ever finish the training.
Of those who finish it, an even smaller percentage will actually put everything into practice.
And of those people, perhaps a handful will produce results good enough to become testimonials.
Those people then become part of the next sales campaign.
You see their screenshots.
You hear how much money they made.
You read how the system “changed their business.”
But… there’s a question I rarely see answered.
Did they actually make a profit?
There is a very big difference between revenue and profit.
Suppose eight students are shown as success stories.
Maybe all eight generated sales.
But perhaps only four recovered what they had actually spent getting there.
The course itself may have cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Then there may have been upsells.
- Software
- Hosting
- Email services
- Subscriptions
- Advertising
- Freelancers
- Transaction fees
And who knows how many courses and tools they bought before this one?
A testimonial saying someone “made $10,000” sounds impressive.
But if it cost that person $8,000 to generate those sales, the real story is very different.
And if they had already spent thousands more learning the business before that success happened, the picture changes again.
When an internet marketer shows you a successful student, ask yourself:
Did that person actually make money, or did they simply generate sales?
And then ask:
How much did it cost them to become a success story?
Then the Price Starts Coming Down
After a while, sales of the expensive course begin to slow.
Suddenly there is a special offer.
Then another one.
The price drops.
Bonuses get added.
There may be more videos, more templates, more tools and more “exclusive” extras.
It can look like you are getting far more value for far less money.
Sometimes you are.
But sometimes those extras are being added because the original offer is becoming harder to sell.
I’ve written before about the difference between a sound marketing strategy and the spin used to sell it.
And some of those extras may be based on tactics that are also becoming less effective.
That does not automatically mean the person selling the course is dishonest.
It does mean you should ask an important question:
Does this still work as well today as it did when the person teaching it built their own success?
That is a very different question from:
“Did this ever work?”
Guarantees Deserve a Closer Look Too
Another lesson I learned was to stop being impressed by large, bold money-back guarantees.
A verbal 90-day money-back promise can sound very comforting in the moment.
But if you cannot later find that same promise clearly stated in writing, along with the exact terms and conditions, that comfort starts to look a lot less reliable.
Read the conditions.
All of them.
The headline may say:
100% MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE!
The smaller print may tell a different story.
You may have to complete certain lessons.
Submit specific work.
Prove you followed every step.
Request the refund during a narrow period.
Meet conditions that many buyers never noticed when they purchased.
A guarantee is only as good as the conditions attached to it.
Copywriting can make an offer sound wonderful.
Good copywriting is not the problem.
The problem comes when the strongest promises receive the biggest type while the restrictions that qualify those promises are much harder to notice.
That is why I’ve learned to read the small print before believing the big print.
The Bigger Problem Is the Never-Ending Solution
There’s another part of internet marketing that took me years to fully recognize.
A business model built around selling you one solution after another does not necessarily benefit when you become completely independent of the seller.
You buy the first course.
- Then you discover you need another tool.
- Then there is an advanced course.
- Then a traffic system.
- Then an AI system.
- Then a funnel system.
- Then a new strategy because the old strategy has stopped working.
There is always another piece.
And every new piece seems to promise that “this” is the thing you were missing.
The internet-marketing industry teaches tactics very well.
What it doesn’t always teach is when to stop buying tactics.
At some point, if you have been doing this long enough, you have to stop looking for somebody else’s perfect system.
You have to start developing your own.
You learn your audience.
You test ideas.
You watch what works.
You notice what stops working.
You adapt.
That same principle applies to visibility today: build something solid rather than chasing the latest shortcut.
You combine pieces from different things you’ve learned over the years.
And eventually, you stop needing someone else to tell you what the next big secret is.
I Don’t Distrust Everyone
I should make something very clear.
I am not condemning the entire internet-marketing industry.
There are still perhaps four internet marketers that I trust.
They want to make a living too. Of course they do.
There is nothing wrong with selling useful training and being paid for your knowledge.
The difference is that the marketers I continue to trust are much more realistic about what they offer.
Much of their training is useful for beginners.
And there is nothing wrong with beginner training.
Everybody has to start somewhere.
But once you move beyond the beginner stage, another beginner course dressed up as an advanced solution probably isn’t what you need.
You may already know more than you think you do.
What you need may be the confidence to stop buying and start applying.
That May Be the Real Secret
After all these years, perhaps this is the most valuable lesson internet marketing taught me:
There probably isn’t one secret.
I’ve written about the selling power of a so-called “secret” before… even in an entirely different industry.
There isn’t one system that will keep working forever.
And there isn’t one marketer who can hand you a permanent formula for making money online.
Markets change.
Technology changes.
People change.
What worked five years ago may not work today.
What works today may be struggling two years from now.
So… when someone tells you they are finally revealing the “secret” that made them successful, ask yourself one question before reaching for your credit card:
If this method is still as profitable as they say it is, why are they making more money teaching it to me than using it themselves?
That question alone could save you a lot of money.
I know I wish I had started asking it much sooner.
Image Credit: Images created with ChatGPT from concepts and creative direction by Trish Parr.
