Today I listened in on a webinar. The presenter told the online audience — peeps seemingly hopeful about making gobs of money as online authors without actually, you know, writing more than a handful of words — how “easy” and “quick” and “profitable” it is to create online journals to sell on Amazon, using a free online design tool and just an hour of one’s time.
The presenter, whom I immediately liked because she was a bit snarky, a whole lot of funny, and obviously knew her stuff, walked us through the process of creating a simple journal template using Canva and several free photo sites. She made it look doable, but it was clear — at least to this cynical, jaded buyer — that she was making it look easy, because she knew her way around the software. A fact she confirmed a bit later when she mentioned that she’d been working in design for a dozen years.
Still, I admit, I was intrigued. Could one really make 4-figure royalties, monthly, just by creating a handful of niche-specific journals built from a 1-page template? (Which one conveniently doesn’t have to cut and paste to duplicate, as there’s a handy-dandy page duplication button to expand to the presenter’s suggested 60- or 90-page book length.)
My brain began asking me if I didn’t want to go get my wallet (just to satisfy my curiosity, of course) … until the webinar moderator swooped in to make the sale, hitting us repeatedly over the head with how the presenter’s advanced training classes — “amazingly” priced at $200 and $500 — were going to “empower us” to be authors, if not make us rich, as they did her. (I mean, a 6-figure publishing business would make anyone ecstatic, right?)
Fortunately, my brain stopped thinking about my wallet because it became preoccupied with regurgitating images of my dousing this guy with my projectile vomit.
Man, I am sick to death of online marketers (well, all marketers, actually) over-selling, over-promising, and talking down to us like we are stupid, stupid, stupid. They think all they have to do is say a bunch of marketing buzz words and wave the “You’ll be rich!” banner and we become greedy and dumb.
Which we just might be … until we’ve made one of these purchases and realize we’re never gonna produce even a penny from it. #beentheredonethat
If you have yet to make this purchasing mistake, good for you. Just don’t rub it in. Some of us still feel lame for buying into the lie that it’s possible to do little work for a big payoff.
Lol. End of rant.
