 This video is dedicated to all of you who buy online courses or sell online courses. Or if you have been on the fence about whether or not online courses are worth selling, this is also for you. Because one of the common income models these days is to create lots of content and hope that your followers will be so kind as to make some donations so that you can actually have a living wage for making content. And I'm gonna give you the numbers from my experience towards the end of this video, but I first want to build a foundation for why I believe it is worthwhile to not only buy online courses while it's the same equation. Why should we buy something when information is all out there for free, right? In fact, back in 2014, 2013, 2014, when I had my spiritual breakdown and breakthrough, I got into this really idealistic state. And I don't even think it's idealism anymore. I think it's just lack of thinking things through. So I got into the state where I'm like, all information should be free. I should just give everything that I know away for free. And this will just help humanity. It'll help everyone faster. And hopefully some of them will decide to work with me one-to-one as a coach, et cetera. And I think if you are only wanting to do one-to-one services as a consultant or a coach, and that's your business model, then I think creating lots of content, lots of helpful, authentic content is great because people start to trust your expertise. They start to learn from you. And they said, well, instead of doing it myself, can you help me do it? Or can you walk me through it personally from my own situation, et cetera? So that's what I used to believe back in 2014. Like everything should be free. And then what happened was I came to this realization that information is valuable to the person who actually puts in some kind of signal, or in other words, they invest in it to say, no, this is actually valuable enough for me that I'm going to pay something for it and now I'm going to use it. Now, I don't mean that the more you pay for information, the more you will use it because you may, you and I don't know, you have the experience, but I certainly have had the experience of paying lots of money, like $2,000. Yes, in my early days, I paid $1,000 or $2,000 for online courses. Many of them are sitting on the shelf to the right of me that I barely used. So paying more doesn't mean that we're going to use it more but paying something is a powerful signal of commitment to yourself. And if it's like a purchase where you actually have to ask for permission from your spouse partner or just it's expensive enough where you have to like ask for and say, should I buy this thing? Then you're also signaling your commitment to them that, okay, you're going to actually use this, right? Because you're going to pay for this. But let's talk about how this common objections like, oh, information should be, information wants to be free. You can Google it. This is phrase, information wants to be free. And so therefore we should not charge for information. Just give it all away for free. Now, let me ask you this. If information wants to be free, why is it that millions of people, myself included, earn money by providing information? Information wants to be free? Well, the evidence says no because lots and lots of people, and I would say an increasing number over the years as for example, the Western world moves more and more away from a manufacturing economy into an information economy, much of the more and more jobs and businesses are created because people have valuable information and they provide it to others. Or here's the thing, when information becomes abundant, it becomes valuable when someone understands how to curate and structure that information to be valuable, to be helpful for others. So it's not that the more information's out there, the less business opportunity there is in selling online courses. The opposite may be true. I mean, when there was not enough information, yes, it's very clear. Oh, I need information. I couldn't find it. Let me buy it from somebody who has it. But like I said, the opposite is also true when there's an abundance of information we're all overwhelmed by, you know, how many blog posts, how many videos to watch, how many podcasts that people listen to and someone comes along says, okay, I understand that your problem is this or your yearning is to experience this. Well, guess what? Let me curate it down into a step-by-step sequence that if you went into the step-by-step, you're gonna save yourself tons of time because I did the research and I organize it all for you. So let me ask you this. Is it worth it for you, for someone to organize a bunch of data and information for you into a step-by-step sequence that actually helps you to improve your life? I assume the answer is yes. Otherwise, what's the alternative? You're gonna have to figure that out yourself. You're gonna have to wade through the hundreds or thousands of blog posts, articles, podcast episodes, Google searches, that the content creator, the course creator already spent all that time and put it together. So is it valuable for you? Well, obviously, because you usually save yourself tons of time. And the other thing is that sometimes you don't even know what to look for, right? Yes, as you get into the research, you'll start to get a sense of what the landscape of the topic is. But then wouldn't it save you dozens of hours or hundreds of hours or more? Wouldn't it be valuable for you to save dozens or hundreds of hours to get sequence information that you can actually apply? So instead of spending 100, 200 hours, probably more for most course creators, instead of spending a couple hundred hours to try to figure it out, you can spend the same 100 to 200 hours applying the information that has been sequenced for you. So you move your life forward so much faster. So now that's on one perspective. The other perspective is, don't you think that somebody who takes the energy and time to organize all that for you, don't you think they deserve to be compensated? Or no, they should do it for free. Why should they do it for free? Well, because they do it for free then, and we appreciate them with our likes and with our shares and with our comments, then maybe they'll get famous enough that they'll be able to make a living from donations. Again, I'll talk about the numbers towards later on, because I made the experiment myself. Can I make a living on donations or can I sell? Should I sell courses? Well, you'll find out. I'm not trying to make you watch the end of the video, but I'm kind of setting some more foundation here. The other reason why online courses, even offline courses, I guess, as we go back to in-person events, the other reason why courses are worth buying or selling, again, I'm addressing those of you who are like, something feels ethically wrong about selling information that I can easily find on Google. Here's the thing, lots of information aren't easily discoverable by Google. If the course creator has had personal experiences, their own journey of experimenting with lots of different things themselves, and now they are gathering all the data from their own experiences and presenting it in a course, you can't find it on Google or whatever because they didn't put it out there for free. It's something that, the school of hard knocks is where they got their PhD, and now they're putting it into, it's like, may you not have to go through the years of trial and error that I did to create this solution, to create this experience, to create this transformation that I now have. So the creator's own personal experience cannot be found on Google or YouTube or wherever you search. They themselves went through that, and then now they're putting it together, and isn't that worth something? No, they should give it away for free. Really? So let me just ask you this, this is a very basic question. Do teachers deserve an income? Do teachers deserve to be paid? I hope you say yes. Do teachers deserve to be paid? Okay, those teachers deserve to be paid, then why should information be free? Information, especially that's organized and sequenced into a step by step, you have this problem, you apply these steps and at the end you have a transformation that's worthwhile to you. Why should that be free? If teachers deserve to be paid? George, teachers deserve to be paid, but online nowadays it's online busking, right? Like buskers of people who like play music on the streets and then they people throw coins and dollar bills and hopefully five or $10 or $20 bills into their bucket to try to, they should do that. They should just give away everything and be allowed as possible and then people donate. Again, I will address the numbers, but let me go to another reason why. A curated learning community is valuable. How can you find a dedicated group of students who all care about a topic that you want to learn? Can you go to go under many YouTube videos that are popular? Sure, there's a little community there. You can go to Reddit, you can find a Facebook group, you can go to and some Instagram influencer if they're talking about the topic, maybe there are people within the comment section that you can gather together, try to gather your own community, but have you tried organizing your own study group and keeping it actually not having a fall apart and you have to do all the work of organizing a study group to study something together? That's what a teacher has done. A teacher who sells courses is basically gathering a bunch of study group of students and when you join, you get to say, well, you two are interested. Well, obviously they are interested they signal their interest by paying for the course. So a curated learning community is difficult to actually develop unless you buy into a course. And now you're like, oh, the student directory, you can now, it's proven that everybody has bought into this and they're interested in this topic. So at least, or maybe the teacher will create some Q and A calls or some coaching calls where people gather live and you can find the other people there or sometimes there's like a private group of students that this teacher has created for that. So curated learning community, very valuable because you have accountability, you have ideas bouncing with each other and it's all done. The other benefit is in a private setting because courses are private. You have to pay for it to be able to access both the content and the community and those comments, et cetera, right? So now let's talk about finally, we've gotten here. Why not just make money from donations, George? Why not have the model, George, be so generous that you just put your best stuff out there? George, I bet you if you put all of your courses that you charge $120 full, you put it out for free on YouTube? Oh my God, people would flock and just people would, you would become famous and then you could just get donations, George. Have you ever thought of that? I mean, I did that from the very beginning when I had that spiritual breakthrough and I had all information should be free. And then I started to do that. I said, let me give my best, even the technical information, the step I step, how to run Facebook ads or whatever. I mean, back then I didn't know Facebook ads but other specific technical marketing things. I put it all out there for free. I did that for two years, for two years I put it all out there for free and I had a Patreon page. Yes, back in 2014, 2015, I had a Patreon page. I had a YouTube channel with all my free stuff. I had a podcast where I gave away everything for free. I just tried to give everything for free. I said, please, if you like this, please donate at my Patreon page or you can use PayPal or whatever you want. Guess what? Did all that hard work after two years? How much was I making in donations? $500, 500 bucks. After two years, $500 a month was the high side of any given month. That was a lot of hard work. And then on the lesser months, it was more like $100 a month. A few hundred bucks a month. I mean, I live in United States. You can't live off of that, especially not anymore these days. Now, guess what happened? I then switched to selling online courses. So 2016, I started selling online courses again. And within two years, guess how much I was making? $5,000 a month. I'm just, I'm not bragging. I'm just giving you my own data, my own experience. Two years of online busking, trying to build a big enough audience. But here's what happened. So, George, why didn't it work? Why don't you think it worked? And why are you making 10 times the amount by selling online courses? Here's why. When information is freely available and abundant, like I said, people don't value it as much. It's like, oh, I can always come back to this later. I'll just save this YouTube video to my watch later and then watch later. How many of you actually watch all your watch later videos? Oh, blog posts looks really valuable. Let me go ahead and bookmark this and then I'll come back to it later because remember the psychology, your psychology, when you're consuming free information, when you consume free information, do you sit down and go, okay, I'm gonna spend one hour to consume free information now. So let me go ahead and get a notepad and pen and study diligently this free information and input. Well, okay, maybe like one to 5% of people might do that. Maybe I don't know what that, but most of us don't. What do most of us do? We're like sitting back on our phones, scrolling through free information because we're trying to relax when we're consuming YouTube videos or blog posts, free stuff, we're relaxing. We're not being in study mode, but when you buy an online course, especially if there are live sessions of some kind, then you're like scheduled to be there, right? Then you're like, oh, I paid for this thing. I better show up and be a student. And so people actually, ironically, they end up, even if it's the same information, one is free, one is paid, they're more likely to actually have the paid one change their life because they're taking it much more seriously. They've paid the money or that there's a live session, they're showing up for it. So like I said, and this whole online busking thing, you know, get money from Patreon, just put everything out there for free. It's not new. It's this 2,500 year old tradition of Donna, like from Buddhism, right? Like I'm sure other religious traditions have this too, where Buddhist monks would basically go around with a begging bowl, but they would just, they would teach for free and support others and they would just beg, just get donations. But that was much more doable because it was an in-person community. It's like you knew the monk and the monk probably helped you with some personal issues or whatever. Like, oh yeah, the monk's coming around and then it's like paying them, donating them. Well, also there was like community pressure or expectation to donate to the monk. So there was this in-person village, it worked, it worked. Oh, there's our monk, there's our shaman or there's our holy person and we're donating to that person because that's how they make a living. Online now, you can't do it. There's no, you know, I mean, like I said, unless you were able to gather like 100,000 followers, that's what I would estimate that any one of us would need 100,000 real followers, not purchased followers, Twitter, whatever. No, 100,000 real followers who engage with us, then we might be able to make enough from donations to make a few thousand dollars a month. Yes, those are the numbers, people. Okay, same thing with YouTube, making money from YouTube ads, really. I had, I have over a thousand YouTube videos and most of my videos don't have enough views to even make a dollar a month. And then I got lucky in one of my YouTube videos, my Zoom tutorial at the beginning of the pandemic suddenly took off and I had millions of views and I was able to make like $25,000 from that one video. And I've tried to duplicate that for other ones, $25, $10. I mean, like I said, you have to have a huge audience, 100,000 followers or more to be able to make a living wage versus a thousand followers, a thousand people who follow you and you sell courses, you can make a living wage pretty easy, a few thousand dollars a month, no problem by selling online courses. Okay, so basically, I'm hoping that I've given you a good enough reason. And the other thing I want to say as we complete this video is that when you put something, if you sell online course, you put something together and then you sell it, you feel, you'll try it out, you'll feel much more responsible for making it better than if you just put something out there for free. Now, I know the people who have large followings, they have really high quality content because now they have a large following. So now they have a lot of pressure to put out high quality content to keep their large following. But for most of us, we'll start out with a large following. So how many years are gonna take you to get to 100,000 followers? Have you tried? I've tried. I've been on YouTube for years, 15,000 followers. Years, years of hard work over a thousand videos. So like I said, I don't recommend online busking or free content for donations. I think it's the exception for those, the people who are able to do it are like a very small exception. You have to be highly entertaining and charismatic or you just happen to chance upon some sliver of knowledge that people are just looking for or if you're really good at keyword research, you wanna make videos. But even so, it's still extremely competitive, so much easier for those of us who are less entertaining, myself included, and who have pretty common knowledge, myself included. Easy, not hard to make $5,000 to $15,000 a month selling online courses with just a few hundred or a few thousand followers, which is fairly easy to do compared to getting to 100,000 followers. So I hope this is helpful and I look forward to your comments and your questions below. I hope this will help you to shift your mindset about whether teachers are worth supporting and whether you might want to become a paid teacher as well. So thank you so much and I'll see you in the next video.