Disclosure: This post was originally published in October 2015. It has been updated.
It seems like new courses for entrepreneurs are popping up every day. There are hundreds of thousands available and they can be as low as $50 or cost you upwards of $10,000.
The problem with it being so easy for anyone to create a course these days is that you don’t know which ones are going to benefit you and which ones will just be a waste of money.
I’ve been on my entrepreneur journey for 6 years now and over this time I have purchased a handful of courses for bloggers and entrepreneurs. However, out of the courses that I invested in, only about 2 or 3 of them provided me with valuable things to grow my business.
Therefore, today I wanted to share with you some things to consider before investing in an entrepreneur course because maybe you would be better off spending money on another aspect of your business instead.
Let’s get started.
How Does This Person Primarily Make Their Income?
The courses that I found to offer the most value, are the ones that come from people who make their income from doing what the course is supposed to teach.
During this day in age, people can purchase a course from an expert writer and market it as their own without having any actual experience being a full-time entrepreneur themselves.
For example, have you been seeing new courses pop up in the form of Facebook ads in your feeds lately? I know I’ve been seeing ads from Grace Lever and a few others lately. While I’m not in the market for a course at the moment, sometimes I do find that some of these new courses have a great copy and it makes me interested in knowing more about the entrepreneur behind the course.
I’ll first Google them to see what it is that they do outside of selling this course and see how long they have been an entrepreneur. If they are one of these overnight entrepreneurs popping up I’ll immediately lose interest. However, if they have been around for years, but just went unnoticed, I’ll then dig deeper to find out more about their entrepreneurial journey and may even go as far as using their name and review in my Google search (for example Grace Lever review) to see if anyone has left some sort of review about them. Reading reviews, like the Modern Millionaires review at: https://serp.co/a-review-of-modern-millionaires-chance-welton-abdul-farood-samed-scam-or-legit/, for example, can be really useful in ascertaining if a course is the right one for you.
By doing a combination of these things I can see how they make the bulk of their money to determine if their course may be worth the money.
For instance, a couple of months back I was thinking of doing a copywriting course from someone who had been around for years, freelanced full time, and ran a successful Facebook group. However, after joining her subscription list she revealed that she only made $20,000 a year from writing and the rest came in from affiliate marketing and selling her digital products, I immediately, knew her course wasn’t for me.
How can you possibly tell someone how to make $100,000 per year copywriting when you’re only pulling in $20,000 from it yourself?
Is It a Marketing Scheme?
Everyone knows that to run a successful online business you must have excellent marketing skills. If a course is marketed correctly and has a well-written sales funnel, there’s a good chance potential buyers won’t think much of it.
While not all entrepreneurs try to play with the potential buyer’s emotions, a lot do when it comes to making a sale for their course. For example, they will give you a sob story (rags to riches story) that they have fabricated, or enhanced, to draw you in because you may relate to it.
For example, let’s say you’ve spent the last two years trying to get your business to turn into a full-time venture. You have a few good months, but you never can seem to keep up the momentum. You somehow stumble across a course that has the story line of a person finally being able to turn into a full-time entrepreneur after 3 years just when they were finally about to call it quits and go back to the corporate world.
If the copy is well written, it will suck you in and make you feel like the seller is going through the same thing you’re going through and if you purchase their course in a year you will be in the same position that they are in. You skip doing your research and purchase the course after follow up emails alert you of a limited time price, only to find out that the course if full of information that you read in free eBooks or maybe even information that’s already readily available on the web.
What You Could Be Doing Instead of Purchasing That Course
I just want to say not all courses are bad. However, when it comes to spending hundreds and thousands of dollars to take a course, it is very important to do your research. Therefore, before purchasing that course you have your eye on, do some research on the person who created the course, read other reviews of the course, and search online for free information on the course topic. You may find that you can find out everything you needed to know on the topic by looking past the first couple of pages on the search engine and even hanging around in specific Facebook groups. You could even spend some time investing in some other parts of your business that you are guaranteed to benefit from such as:
Starting Your Business
If you haven’t gotten your business started yet because you were depending on a course to walk you through the steps, go ahead and get started.
- Purchase your domain name from a site such as NameCheap, which has some great coupons on Groupon.
- Write your content up or hire a writer to do it for you.
- Build up your reader base.
- Start putting your business out there by marketing.
- Then, once you’ve started your business revisit the course and see if you still feel as though it can provide you with value.
Update Your Business Supplies
Maybe one of the reasons that your business isn’t performing well is because you’re not using the right type of software and tools. For example, if you’re trying to take off your graphic design career you could probably benefit from professional photography software or upgrading your camera equipment. If you’re trying to be a professional recipe blogger, you could benefit from having professional photography equipment such as a backdrop, lighting kit, and even Photoshop.
While updating your business supplies is another investment, you can always find deals for places such as Amazon on Groupon. Plus, you know that these business supplies will pay for themselves quickly because as you increase the quality of your work, you can charge more, and your work will begin marketing itself.
After you’ve recovered your costs and started profiting more then revisit the course to see if you still think it’s worth investing in.
Final Thoughts on Entrepreneur Courses
While it’s true that some people can become internet successes overnight, for most people this isn’t something that going to happen. There are a lot of good courses available for entrepreneurs but it is hard to pick them out from the thousands available. Therefore, before feeling like you have been scammed after purchasing a course it’s important to do your research and avoid making impulse purchases.
What are your thoughts on purchasing courses to help you with your entrepreneurial journey?
The rags to riches stories always amaze me. They don’t have the money for their groceries and are embarrassed at the check out, but somehow they still have a gym membership or right afterwards they can muster 5,000$ that was “the last of their money”. Ok, then.
I have signed up for Grace Lever courses and they are great! Concise, informative and real info on how to do it. Easy! The customer service is excellent, and Victoria helped me out graciously and swiftly. I’m so happy with their products. I highly recommend them. The Doers Way etc is good stuff.
Why is it that every review I read about Grace Lever involves a customer service rep named Victoria? Hmmmm . . . .
In this article you mention some good courses you have taken. What ones were they? Thanks
I would like to know which ones you liked also.
Hi Sherry,
I haven’t taken any courses recently so the ones I did at the time I originally wrote this post are more than likely outdated.
This is a wonderful post! Finally someone speaks up and tells the thruth! So many scammers on Facebook or online. I’ve bought 4-5 e-courses and they were rubbish, the sellers just copied and pasted some info from internet , write it as their own, nothing new.
Everyone is an expert these days. Which makes it easy for the people that are seeking help to sometimes get scammed out of money. I always do my researches before buying an ecourse or ebook. Even then, I have bought ebooks that made me regret it right away (lack of info, info I already knew, info that is easily found online etc). You just have to be careful.
I agree with a lot of what you said. You never know which ones are real and will be helpful.
I’ve never invested in an entrepreneur course and before I do I’m going to do some leg work on who’s behind them. Your tips are very helpful to steer me in the right direction.
I have purchased an ebook or too and I always end up disappointed. I like to learn from people I meet – I hate throwing away my hard earned money!
I feel the same way too! There’s only been one ebook so far that I purchased that was useful to me in a BIG way and it only cost me 5$
I think that there are good ones and bad ones out there. i cannot imagien spending 10,000 on one though!
Lots of good points here! It’s hard to know what is a good course or not. Sometimes being able to google reviews is your best friend.
Thanks for compiling this information on buying online courses or classes. I seem to get an invite every day. Often it’s difficult to determine if they are valuable or a dud. Your tips will certainly help!
Your information is so accurate. It’s hard to choose courses because so many people are “experts” and just make all their income selling classes, not following their own advice. I have purchased one course that I found was worth the money, but I researched before purchasing to make sure it was a good fit for me.
Udemy offers great courses and they are very inexpensive…some are even free.
As,a blogger of the years I have seen so many say they offer these which makes me leary. Thank you for such soubd advice.
Interesting read. I guess it’s what course works for you at the end of the day. There is a huge choice out there.
I have wasted hard earned dollars on course that help at all. This is wonderful information.
I make a share of money online, but have not dived into buying a course yet.
I’ve SEEN a lot of blogging courses, specifically, offered for a charge. I’ve also seen many free offers that lure you into purchasing something bigger. What I’ve found is that most of it, is stuff I already know or have found for free. The best investment I ever made was Blogelina’s course. I thiink I paid $17 for it, but I got free hosting for a year and a wealth of knowledge.
For the most part, I won’t pay for info that can likely be found through free research. It’s like buying a book instead of renting from the library.
As far as reviews go, I have never run into a product I didn’t have genuinely positive things to say about, but when I do, as I suspect it may be soon, I could use some advice on to write said review.
You are right to an extent. I recently started taking a Udemy course for blogging a week ago…I got it on sale for $10, and I have already learned so much to make it worth the $10. Will I get rich off the info? Probably not, but a few of the things I’ve learned have already made my blogging life easier. So I would agree to do your research, but I would add that not all courses are bad, especially if you go into them with realistic expectations.
Miranda,
This is 100% true. Not all courses are bad. In fact, I would say the cheaper courses are usually more valuable than the higher priced ones. However, it all boils down to doing research before investing the money, regardless the amount.
Most information on mmo can easily be found online. As for bloggers being “overnight” successes, these are usually not novice bloggers. More like they have had a blog succeed or fail before, they are tight with someone who has, or they already have a built-in audience.
Great points, I agree 100%. In fact, one day I hope to be a blogger making 6 figures a year. However, I know it is going to take a ton of hard work, determination, and failures. I would never make someone think they could achieve the status without sweat and tears.
YES! This is why I’m so wary of people claiming to make $20k a month from blogging, yet their actual lifestyle doesn’t reflect that…
While I have no purchased any ebooks or courses on making money blogging, I did have the opportunity to review a book on just that. The book was definitely geared toward beginners, and anyone who had been blogging a little while would have no use for it.
The classes online are those that I typically steer away from, I prefer to teach myself or further my degree by adding classes at college. Thanks for the advice and great article
I’ve never tried enrolling myself to classes that teach you how to earn money online, nor have I purchased ebooks. Because when I think of it, it really depends on how you handle your own website, we all have different styles. Even I can’t teach someone how to make their blog successful because I can’t begin to describe what I did or what I’m doing.
That is great information. You just never know about some people!
Such great advice. I haven’t purchased any ebooks or courses, and now I will be careful.
Honestly, I don’t read every blog post that I come across line by line but I did yours. Why? Well, as someone with a blog and receiving these offers and lures everyday, these expert tips about how to make money online and how I am doing it wrong, it was refreshing to come across a blog that tells it like it is. Now everyone is a scammer but like you said, everybody is pushing something and it is up to you to discern what is real versus what is hype. Thank you very much for the honest post.
Claudette,
No problem. I am glad that you were able to find this blog post useful. I felt like I was rambling in some of it, but wanted to give my honest opinion/advice on the subject as it has become more frequently lately. Being an full time online income earner for all of these years, I felt that it was something I needed to write about to keep those new to the industry motivated because online income is real, but there are a lot of people out there who prey on newbies.
Great information for a new blogger. Thanks for posting.
I have received a lot of ebook offers about making money online, but I never bought anything. I’ve always thought that these are scams..
I won’t say all of them are scams, but if it is saying Make XXXXXX in 30 days (or something similiar) more than likely it is.
Fabulous…..thanks so much for sharing
Interesting information and you are so right “spinning lies” I get it the offers, the promise…Join the blog groups yet like you said no blueprint. Great blog post!