Cheap Internet Marketing Know-How?

Are most internet marketing courses overpriced? My limited experience has been that many courses offering “the secret” to some aspect of e-business are overhyped and, shall we say, interestingly priced.

Copywriting, Internet marketing, usability, conversion, etc…. You can easily spend many thousands of dollars on courses, conferences and coaching promising to let you in on the secrets of “six figure” per annum or better wealth. The question is whether it is money well spent.

Often, but not always, the marketers of these courses, etc. know what they are doing. They definitely have knowledge to share.

And they use that knowledge to do a great job of convincing prospective students of the value of the courses. You know the technique — long copy pages with recognisable sales letter elements: red headings, lots of testimonials from other course/conference/coaching purveyors, lots of “free” extras, and a certain reticence about price.

If I’d had a bit more money to play with over the years I could have spent thousands….

But.

• Being skeptical by nature
• Being careful with my money by nature and need
• Being a voracious reader of everything the people behind these courses put out
• Being the owner of some of their books — sometimes republishing of ideas I have read in email newsletters
• Being the recipient of many pricy ebooks as reward for signing up to said newsletters
• Being high in the outside corner of the analytical* quadrant of the personality types graph…

I haven’t succumbed to the well practiced sales pitches very often.

(*Hey. I once spent so much time assessing industry and customer reviews and comparing prices on a pair of skis I wanted that they had sold out in Australia, where I was living at the time, by the time I went to buy them… Positive spin [for the context of what I do for a living]: as a reluctant purchaser I know how to cater to reticent prospects/customers.)

When I have I haven’t been hugely impressed with the results. A webinar series from a guy who has some great perspectives on selling and web success padded out just one of those ideas. An online/virtual conference that didn’t go beyond ideas that speakers had covered elsewhere — other participants seemed to think the event was great value but they hadn’t been reading the speakers’ newsletters for as long as I had… maybe.

So, in short: I am skeptical about much of the information being marketing by information marketers.

Interesting then to read a post script on a recent Bob Bly newsletter offering advice to information marketers/copywriters on what to sell in straightened times:

“In this market, e-books can far outsell all other information products. Reason: in a recession, customers who can’t afford your $1,000 coaching or $249 CD set can still come up with twenty, thirty, or even forty bucks to pay you for the same content in e-book format” [My emphasis]

“…the same content…” Two very different prices. Hmmm… I’m sure he doesn’t mean the exact same content.

Think before you buy even the ebook that will turn you into a master of copy. Think hard before you pay thousands of dollars for that online course. What is the cost of the packaged information? Is it less than the cost of your time to do a search on your favourite search engine and trawl through its’ authors’ back catalogue of freely available internet marketing know-how? It could be.

Then again: today’s $39 interview transcript is tomorrow’s free giveaway you get when you sign up for a newsletter.