So, I'm sure all of you guys have seen an advertisement
whether that's here on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram
trying to sell you some type of expensive course.
So in today's video, I want to break down
what's really going on behind the scenes
and clarify everything you need to know about expensive online courses
so you can see which ones are good and which ones are really scams.
Hi, everyone, I hope you're all doing well today.
If you're new here,
my name is Greg and I like to talk about online entrepreneurship
and share the resources that I wish I had along my journey.
So if you're interested in making money online,
feel free to look around the channel and consider subscribing.
In today's video, we're going to be talking about
the popular trend of selling expensive online courses.
And I'm going to share with you guys everything
that I think you should know about these courses
so you can make educated decisions for yourself.
So the very first thing that I want to clarify in this video is that
not all of these courses are bad.
Sometimes the good courses and the bad courses
use the same process to try to sell the courses.
But it's hard to determine which ones are good and which ones are bad.
So let's start off with the bad courses;
the common things you're going to see with bad courses are
they always overpromise,
they're always going to underdeliver,
they're expensive courses, and there is nearly no support.
If you just take that one thing away from this entire video,
you will already be ahead of the game.
If you're considering a course
and they're promising you the world and it doesn't sound realistic,
they already have a red flag on the first one.
They're over promising to you.
Now if you just dig a little bit deeper
and you see what past students are saying about the course.
If they say that the information is basic
and you can find it online for free,
this often happens in expensive courses,
then you know that that's the second red flag.
The course underdelivers.
And then the next thing is expensive price tag,
so just keep an eye out if you see that it's an expensive course.
Yes, sometimes the really good courses also are expensive
and we'll talk about that in a bit here.
But just keep an eye out if it's an unreasonable amount of money
for what you're going to get
that's another big red flag.
Also take a look at what their return policy is
and what people are saying about the return policy,
a lot of the times people will say there's a 30-day money-back guarantee,
which is what you really want.
But if you dig a little bit deeper,
see if people are actually using the 30 day money-back guarantee
and getting their money back.
A lot of the times with some of these courses
people will request their refund within 30 days
but not get a response until after the 30 days.
And then the core seller tries to say that it's been over 30 days
and they can no longer get a refund.
And then the last thing to really look for is ongoing support.
So a lot of the times with these expensive courses
you sign up you enroll,
and then when you have a question you ask it,
but you don't get a response.
If you're going to be paying top dollar for a course,
you want to make sure that the instructor
or someone is going to be there to answer your questions along the way.
So the bad rap really comes from people seeing a flashy advertisement,
going through the funnel and signing up for the course
and then there's really basic information.
They can't get their money back,
there's no support, and it's just an overall terrible experience.
Now, what about the other side? Speaking from experience,
there are some amazing online courses
and if creators are making these courses for the right reasons,
you can learn so much as a student
and this is often the best way to learn these things.
The top three traits of a really good online course is;
one that it's fairly priced
and they're not asking an astronomical amount for the course.
Number two, that it's going to over-deliver and give you more value
than what you paid for the course. And then number three
that there is great ongoing support.
When you think about the alternatives to online courses,
you can really start to see the benefit to a good online course.
If you're not learning from an online course,
then your other resources are free information here on YouTube,
free information on Google.
But the big problem with this is a lot of the times this is
either outdated or you don't know if it's actually factual.
The hands-down biggest problem with all the free information online
is oftentimes its intention is to try to lead you into buying something.
So because of this, the information is not always factual.
Now if you look at your other two main alternatives to learn information,
you have books which are typically going to be
outdated by the time it is printed and published.
That information may not be relevant anymore.
And then two, you have traditional education like going to college
and the two issues that can really arise from this is one,
that it's going to be very expensive
and two, that you're going to learn general information
not specifically what you need.
So with all of those alternatives considered,
this is where online courses really shine.
Online courses can be made by anyone
and that's where a lot of these scam artists come into it.
There's always going to be people selling snake oil in any industry
and it's just very easy for them to do it in the online course industry.
But if you look at the really positive opportunity here,
as technology is starting to advance,
people are able to create online courses easier.
So, a lot of really successful entrepreneurs and business owners
and people who have done the thing
that you want to learn are starting to create online courses.
These are the people you want to learn
because their information is current, it's worked for them,
it's step by step and this is digital content.
The big plus to that is that if you were to have
a one-on-one consulting call with them or meet them in person,
the amount that you would have to pay for that would be so astronomical
because this person's time is worth so much.
However, if they put everything
that they would tell you in that consulting call into an online course,
they can sell it for a fraction of the price because of scale.
These are the online courses that you want to find
and these are the ones that can be extremely helpful.
So now let's go behind the scenes and break down how this is typically done.
So when you see these advertisements on YouTube,
Facebook, Instagram, you know what's going on.
So the main way that these courses are typically sold
starts with an advertisement that's going to be either on YouTube
or Facebook or Instagram.
And what these advertisements are meant to do
is to emotionally get you attached and sell you an idea of
how you can change your life.
And all you have to do is click on the link and put in your email address
and what that's going to do is reserve
your seat in an upcoming webinar.
Now I have nothing against webinars,
it's just when they're used improperly.
So let's move on to the next step. Once you've put in your email address,
it's going to say that the webinar is starting in five minutes
or whatever it is.
Just know that these webinars are not often live.
They are pre-recorded. And again, I have nothing wrong with this,
it's just when they're used improperly.
So moving on to the next step of the process,
you're going to sit through this webinar that's going to be
between 30 minutes and 90 minutes. And when used properly,
you can learn a ton of information from this webinar,
when used improperly,
this is going to be a carefully scripted sales pitch.
Just be aware of which one you're in.
If you're getting a ton of information from it,
this may be for a good course.
If you're only getting a little bit of
practical valuable information out of this webinar
and the overall topic of the webinar is talking about emotions
or trying to get you attached or how you can change your life,
just know that they are trying to sell you the course.
And that's where I would really look for the red flag the course sellers
that are not in it for the right reasons
they revise these webinars 10, 20, 30 times to see
what's going to convert the absolute best.
And it's all based on human buying nature.
So it's not actually what you need to learn
and how much value you're going to get,
it's how to close the sale with you as you're sitting through that webinar.
So I really want you guys to be aware of what type of webinar you're in
if you're getting a ton of really good information
or if they're trying to sell you something.
And in the last two parts of process here are at the end of the webinar
both for good courses and for bad courses.
They're going to give you some kind of special offer,
this may be 25% off and it's only valid for two hours after the webinar.
Yes, that's for good courses and for bad courses,
I don't have a problem with that.
It's what comes after this that I do have the problem with.
Now whether you sign up for the course then or you don't,
there's going to be an email follow-up sequence.
This is almost for every course that's being sold online.
And this is called the sales funnel, part of the process.
What this is going to be is automated emails
that you're going to get after the fact,
if you did buy the course, you will get a different sequence
than if you don't buy the course.
Now I want to be very clear on this part as well,
for the people who are in it for the right reasons
and they're selling you really good courses.
They are going to be emailing you really helpful resources.
However, on the other side of the spectrum
you have the people selling the bad courses
and the content
and their email automated funnels is going to be very different
what their main purpose here is to make more money off of you.
So they're going to be sending you every affiliate offer under the moon.
They're going to be selling you high ticket items.
They're going to be selling you everything
and a lot of the times
the content that is in those emails is not helpful.
It's not what you really need. It's another scammy or spammy product.
But if you go buy it,
they're going to get another commission.
Now linking to affiliate products
and the email follow-up is not a big problem.
The problem comes in, in what type of product
they are linking to.
The good course creators,
they may link to an affiliate product,
but trust me when I say that's going to be a helpful resource for you.
The bad course creators are going to link to
affiliate products that have the biggest payouts.
So that's the process that you're going to go through
if someone's trying to sell you a course
whether that's a good course or a bad course.
Those are kind of the differences,
so you know what to look for.
So now for my absolute favorite part of this video,
and that is the saying, 'if you can't do it, teach it'.
We can't go on throughout this video without touching on this.
So first things first. Yes, this statement can be very true.
However, there's a big catch.
It's only in the last couple of years
that we've been able to create an online course.
And this brings the variable of scale into the equation.
So to give you a perfect example of this,
you may have an entrepreneur
who's running a social media marketing agency
and making $200,000 per year.
Now, that's a very comfortable income.
But if he wants to increase it,
he's going to have to bring in more resources,
maybe more employees, maybe more account managers.
However, if we bring teaching into the equation, it gets interesting,
this same person is currently doing $200,000 per year
in a social media marketing agency,
so they know how to do it. They know what works,
they know it doesn't work, what to do what to avoid,
step by step how to do it, what you need to do first,
every step along the way.
However in previous years
if this business owner wanted to teach other people
how to do exactly what they're currently doing
they would have to do it in person
because they didn't have the ability of creating an online course.
So by doing it in person, it's limited.
You can only reach so many people at a time.
And it's active income, every time you want to teach new people,
you have to go spiel the exact same thing that you did for the last class.
However, if we bring in online courses,
it changes the equation entirely
if this business owner puts all of that same information
into one online course,
they can sell it over and over again
and they don't have to actively teach it each time.
Now to put this in perspective,
for the example of social media marketing agency.
There are over 22 million people in the world
interested in learning how to do this,
if this business owner is teaching in person
they're only going to be able to reach
a tiny little percentage of those people.
However, if they have a digital course that covers the same content
that can be sold anywhere in the world.
They can now reach a lot more of those people
and that is where scale comes into the equation.
Now they can mentor people virtually
through an online course that's pre-recorded.
And all they have to do is be there for ongoing support.
So often the next question that people ask is,
'if they know how to do it,
why would they tell other people what they're doing?'
'Wouldn't that be more competition and they're going to lose business?'
Well the short answer is the world is so big
and there are so many different businesses and so many clients
and so much business to be had.
For this example of social media marketing agencies,
the typical client is a business
and there are almost 200 million businesses in the world.
There is no shortage of clients here
So an experienced business owner knows that
showing other people how to do what they're doing
is not going to affect their current business.
So the moral the story is these good courses are taught by business owners
who are currently doing it or have done it in the past
because they can teach you current information that really works
and all the real information that you want to learn.
So I've got to make sure to put this in the video here.
If you are a course creator and you're watching this video,
if you're selling good courses,
and you're teaching people good valuable information
and charging a fair amount, i'll 100% support you.
If you are someone who is selling an expensive course
and you know the course underdelivers
yet you continue to sell it
and you continue to put more advertising behind it.
It's a shame what you're doing
and I really urge you to stop
and consider putting out a really beneficial product.
So with that said, my advice for you guys is to investigate these courses,
really look at the offers,
be aware of what part of the process you're in for selling
and what's going on in that process.
If you guys have any questions about courses that you're considering,
feel free to even leave them in a comment
and I can do my fair share of investigating.
I may have even seen the course before
but let me know if you guys need any help.
I hope this video has been valuable to you guys
and you've been able to take something away from it.
If you have any questions at all about anything,
please, let me know down in the comments.
If you enjoyed this video,
I really appreciate the Thumbs Up
and as always I will see you guys in the next video.