Nov
Would Guru’s Make Any Money If They Couldn’t Hide Behind Their Ebook?
Something I’ve been wondering for a while, even more so now that technology is rapidly improving and expanding, is…
What happens when a guru can no longer hide behind his ebook?
Future internet marketing guru.
The thing with ebooks is that you can write some crap down, come up with good sales copy, and then make a bunch of sales. You don’t even have to write the book yourself; you could get someone else to answer your questions, or resort to the ever-popular “copy and paste” method.
So not only don’t you have to be an expert, you don’t have to know jack!
That has been changing to an extent in recent years, what with all the popular seminars, teleconferences, and DVD packages. But even then, the only additional requirement is a little bit of public speaking skill.
Even if you’re presenting live, you’re still giving your own speech, which could just be a few hot points from your ebook. Then you’re done.
But today, people crave more. They crave personalized advice, action plans designed specifically for them.
But how many “one hit wonder” internet marketing gurus can help beyond what’s in their book?
I don’t know, and they don’t care. They don’t care because phone consultations are typically reserved for big B2B consulting services charging $500-1000 per hour.
But VOIP and live chat and that kind of stuff is gaining popularity. There’s even this new way to monetize your website called Speak To Me.
It takes the one-on-one phone consultation but makes it very easy for both an expert and the customer, eliminating nearly all the former “barriers to entry” on both sides.
I guess it’s like a widget that makes phone calls with just a couple clicks. But the point here is that gurus will desperately cling to their ebook thrones, while secretly wishing they were raking in the big bucks by giving out personal advice.
As I mentioned, anyone can play the ebook game. But it takes a true expert to dish out advice over the phone. (Advice that’s worth paying for, at least. Maybe SpeakToMe needs a built-in “dumb guru, refund my charges” button!)
So what do you think? Will gurus stick to their intense sales letters and ebooks, or will they risk their reputation in the phone consultation gold rush?
You can probably guess which side I’m taking! (Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but unless the gurus outsource their phone consults to real experts, Speaktome will only be as profitable as BlogRush…)
Photo credit: F.S.M.
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Click here to buy me a beer, because damn, I need to get drunk to forget how much internet marketing sucks!
Fantastic tips,I enjoyed reading your post.
If I were the guru, I will hire people with expertise in my area. So I still maintain my reputation and give solution to my customers
“But how many “one hit wonder” internet marketing gurus can help beyond what’s in their book?“
We must first research the alleged guru…so many are just wanna-be’s and scammers.
I’m amazed at how writing and selling an eBook online is still such a good way to make money… I’d personally never buy an eBook unless it was highly recommended (such as with the SEOBook eBook).
Like you, I don’t think many ‘gurus’ will be rushing to offer phone consultations!
Why I can’t click the beer image to buy you a beer?
The “buy me a beer” is yet another joke
I think the “dodgy” gurus will have a ready market for some time. There will always be desperate new seekers, and usually their ebooks are cheap enough for the inexperienced customer to think “what have I got to lose?” More expensive ‘phone consultations would make the prospect hesitate to pay.
Dave
I would guess they would just use a fake name and give terrible advice. It would just be the phone version of their ebooks.
hmmm, nice question
well i can think of a good advice after some time 
but are they that smart to give advices over the phone when they have a few second to think up an answer… nice post
@Will
Haha, I bet that is how it would work out
If the time came when people preferred live person over the books, the sketchy gurus will take their money and call it a day. They will walk away with pride (themselves).
By the time they have the ebook printed, the information is obsolete!
Totally agree with everything blog above me.
I was always fascinated how there are so many “experts” selling ebooks on how to make money fast, etc. I never thought these “experts” were making a lot of money themselves. I guess if you consider the number of people who are willing to spend maybe $20 to learn and earn something fast, I shouldn’t be so surprised.
I don’t think that these more expensive, more personal phone “consultations” would prevent these “experts” from earning their money. They would just find a way of masking their cluelessness.
Hi, Good article indeed! Writing and selling ebook is a good way to earn money.I will hire experts from the area for research.
I totally agree with you on the dubious reputations of these ebook authors. The thing is, selling information products, in which case are ebooks, over the Internet is their BUSINESS MODEL. Thus, giving personal consultations, which COULD give reveal their incompetence, if any, would probably be something that these Gurus would avoid.
Does this make sense?
Cheers,
Samantha
You can’t blame them for hiding behind their products, because well it’s a super information highway, as long as they give a good and useful information, I think it’s okay
Besides Speak to Me, Skype has also launched a beta service called Skype Prime. It allows people to call you via skype for consulting purposes. I think it will be a great way to help smaller companies get consultants for less money. Since I put the skype button on my blog, I’ve already gotten one call and its only been about a week.
@Justin
When I first saw SpeakToMe I immediately thought of Skype and wondered if they had a similar service or plugin. I think the benefit of SpeakToMe is the fact they take care of billing and whatnot, but it’s good to see Skype expanding.
I checked your site and the Skype button is relatively small, so one call per week from that seems pretty good. Nice blog by the way
EBooks do increase revenue, but I think they should make them available in more formats and not just pdf and html, especially since there’s more people viewing sites from their mobile phones using wap, so online goodies need to accomodate that too.
These gurus are my hero.
Usually the ones that spams the crap out of you with 2,548 different offers on how to make $40,000 in FIVE MINUTES.
Seriously…
web gurus who sell their ebooks are idiots, most of the time nothing new just old junk
Nice post. It is a smart work to give advice over phone. I like these gurus.
thanks for the information i will apply that.
great system
I found very few of gurus to share their tips on web,, but nice tips hope it will be effective…
Doing a lot of research (googleing ) etc, would soon reveal the genuine “gurus” out there.
A bit cynical I think but there is an element of truth in there…
Most Internet gurus are making money from their ebook.
Yah, many hide behind an ebook, which upsells to another ebook, etc.
Yeah I agree with you, the ebook thing is getting a bit generic these days.. Every Internet marketer seems to be using it to hide behind. I think Video ebooks are more unique..
A good way to generate traffic. I believe by hiring real experts to tackle with the speak to me option might be good as it will maintain a good number of traffic coming in.I believed it’s chargeable right?
The thing with ebooks is that if it realy was a fast and easy method of making money nobody would share it.
Those ebooks contain either advice on untested “miracle methods” (they don’t work), methods that require a lot of hard work (you spend more time and get less money than if you’d just get a full time job) or most notably, methods that bring only limited money (like all those “make money of your blog” ebooks – the author reached say $1k and is unable to move forward so he writes an ebook and sells it to earn a little more money).
If there are any working “miracle get rich quick schemes” only few people know about them and they spend their time practicing it instead of teaching.
Yes, I think the most internet marketers are making money through their ebooks.
You’re absolutely right, yesterday I downloaded an e-book which was the “ultimate secret to Google Page 1″, which you get after you subscribe to their aweber mailing list, as I did so, the e-book contained the most shittiest information I could’ve read in my whole life, a way to build back links which even a donkey would no is totally useless and that was his so-called “SECRET”!
thats the thing i asked today in dp from a so called guru that why ar you selling your million dollar method for 7 dollars :S
I hope that all gurus should practice what he preaches
If there is some magic “make money work for itself” scheme you’re sure as hell not going to find out about it. Especialy not from some $10 ebook. Maybe someone out there has had an ingenious idea that makes money without any actual work – but in that case I belive that he doesn’t need to write it down and let everyone around know.
Actually, all of the hot selling ebooks can be easily found on other websites for free. Their content is often duplicate or at most a “re-production” of an already well known information. It’s quite irritating seeing how these fancy “guru” calling themselves expert in some area but in reality they don’t. Even more ironic, they actually managed to fooled lots of newbies out there and make a fortune from their worthless ebooks.
So the conclusion is, do not buy any ebooks from anyone who called themselves as “guru” -period. What you need to do is simply Google it and you’ll be amazed on how much you can save for the same information. ^_^
There are many ways on the internet for one to make money. ebooks are just one.
I would never pay for a Ebook when all the info is open source and free on the Internet anyway. Most Ebooks are all over the internet, all you have to do is find them.
Regards,
Will
Sadly eBooks have been devalued over the years because of the typical junk eBook you describe. They were once a good source of quality information.
I know e-books have been a great source of information for me. Whenever i used have any queries it helped the most. But now a days they been disrespected and devalued. Thank you very much for making people aware.
Ebooks are all over I-net. the most infos is open source