In the past 6 months, I have watched hundreds of Youtube videos on how to become successful. Most of them use their free Youtube videos to promote their paid online courses, claiming that their courses are the only courses that can help us.

Charging for Money

“When your courses deliver value, you can charge for higher prices.” This is what I heard from most of the so-called life coaches, masters or “gurus”. I know that this is also the main reason of creating those paid courses.

While in most of the courses we are protected by 60 Day Money Back Guarantee, should we think twice if we really need to pay for the courses?

Recently, I have watched this video created by Graham Stephan, which is about his thought on paid online courses by those “gurus”. I personally quite agree with what he said.

I personally never paid for those courses unless I figured the knowledge to be delivered is something that cannot be found for free from elsewhere.

For example, if they are about Mathematics, Physics or Chemistry, and if I am interested in them, I would consider paying for the online courses, or even take some courses at university for them.

However, if those only include some fundamental knowledge that I can find out on Google, I will never pay for them.

Free Materials on the Internet

The reason is simple: there are a lot of free learning materials on the internet, why should we pay for them?

Yes, those coaches or gurus would say that their courses are unique and will definitely deliver value, but we need to think thoroughly before making payments.

Actually, the way of learning has changed for years when the Internet was created in this world. By one key word searching on Google, we can find tens of thousands of related articles and materials that help us resolve problem.

For example, when I want to look for some accounting treatments for certain item, all I need is to search on Google and check a few websites. While some of them are too old and might not work in that way anymore, others might be updated and give me some insight.

Also, if I type “passive income” on Google, not only I can find my blog post, I can also see a lot of popular articles and blog posts that introduce different ways of earning passive income FOR FREE.

This reminds me of the old days when I still need to check books for the answers. Now the world has changed.

Not only for some technical knowledge, we can also get a lot of knowledge on other thing such as doing workout, doing yoga, cooking, etc. Especially when the world is now fighting for Coronavirus and most of the people are forced to stay home, they can learn a lot of things on the Internet.

Learning from Others =/= Paying for Their Materials

In my last blog post I said we should learn from people who has the knowledge even he might not be one of the successful people in that field. It is because we should pay for the knowledge when we are sure about the value of that knowledge.

That is true, but that doesn’t mean that we should pay for the knowledge without second thoughts.

We need to make sure that we can learn something that cannot learn from free materials.

For example, there is one Hong Kong guru who claimed to have built million business and is willing to teach others how to build it. From his free videos I can see a lot of normal technique and knowledge that I can gain on the Internet for free. Therefore, it is hard to believe that he can teach something unique and helpful in his paid courses.

Of course I should not make any judgement unless I buy his courses.

What I want to say here is simple – there is no easy way of success, not even paying some money. If we want to start our own business, it is important to pay for something valuable to control the budget. In the beginning stage, we should try to minimize our cost as much as possible for emergency.

For example, if the business couldn’t run well and we have no other income sources, we need to use our saving to maintain our lives. What if we already paid for USD 1,000 for some paid online courses that actually couldn’t help us?

What if we can simply use some free knowledge online to bring our business back to life?

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If you have any questions or have anything things to share, you can reach out to me via email learning@iamdelusionman.com.

Besides, if you want to know more about what I have learnt from other successful people, you can click the below link. This could the one of the life-changing articles for you:

Idea 019: Value Mismatch