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What Is More Profitable - Teach/Coach or Use Knowledge For Your Own Gains?

by wedreamseo Banned
5 replies
When you look at the WSO section, or perhaps before when income claims weren't forbidden it looked like all those coaches and guide writers must be multi-millionaires with their $500/day in a few hours per week.

We know a little better than that.

But let's assume someone does have the skills, would it still makes sense to sell his skills as a service or would it be more profitable to utilize these skills solely for himself, eg ranking own sites, driving traffic to self-owned sites, instead of teaching the rope to others.

What is your stance on that?

For what I see it seems that WSO's have lost a lot on popularity, it seems they dug their own grave with a lot of nonsense that has been sold and other legit sellers seem to be effected by that as well. I also spoke with writers, who are having a hard time to make the ends meet. Not to mention link sellers, obvious caused by their selves as well and as a result of that Google updates that took care of it. Sure we like to blame Google but we have to thank our selves for that of course.

So it seems a lot harder these days to make money from blogging, promoting the blog and making sales as people are a lot more skeptical than a few years back so is it even worth it to build complete guides, courses that will have a lot less ROI (at least if you plan to promote it through forums, Udemy might be a better place).

Funny enough the WF started to advertise after the take-over how great the marketplace is and that it has grown multiple 6-7 figure businesses, with the empahize on HAS as I see very few successfull sellers if I have to be real honest. Views sure, but sales little to none.
#gains #knowledge #profitable #teach or coach
  • Profile picture of the author Path Theory
    For the sake of the discussion, let's assume all of the claims the coaches make, are true. They are successful and earn a good living practicing what they preach.

    I think it comes down to a couple different factors. Time and effort Vs the amount of money they make. Any real income is going to take a lot of time and hard work. Coaching does take work, but if you have a lot of video tutorials and articles, it cuts the work load way down. It also isn't nearly as tedious in my opinion.

    Some people like working with and helping others, I know I do. I've thought about coaching, but I've decided against it. I've been extremely successful as an affiliate marketer in some of the hardest niches there are - Diet, Skin, and Pharm. As with most successful coaches, I'd have to charge about $100 an hour to make it worth my time to switch.

    At this point, it doesn't make sense for me to venture into it, especially since I don't have any kind of testimonials and such. I still like helping and working with people, so I devote about an hour a day to free consultations or coaching. I've had people try to hire me, but I don't have time for it, since I have business partners that rely on the work I'm doing now.
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    • Profile picture of the author wedreamseo
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Path Theory View Post

      For the sake of the discussion, let's assume all of the claims the coaches make, are true. They are successful and earn a good living practicing what they preach.

      I think it comes down to a couple different factors. Time and effort Vs the amount of money they make. Any real income is going to take a lot of time and hard work. Coaching does take work, but if you have a lot of video tutorials and articles, it cuts the work load way down. It also isn't nearly as tedious in my opinion.

      Some people like working with and helping others, I know I do. I've thought about coaching, but I've decided against it. I've been extremely successful as an affiliate marketer in some of the hardest niches there are - Diet, Skin, and Pharm. As with most successful coaches, I'd have to charge about $100 an hour to make it worth my time to switch.

      At this point, it doesn't make sense for me to venture into it, especially since I don't have any kind of testimonials and such. I still like helping and working with people, so I devote about an hour a day to free consultations or coaching. I've had people try to hire me, but I don't have time for it, since I have business partners that rely on the work I'm doing now.
      I agree completely with you, coaching wouldn't be for me for the same reasons as you listed. However I wasn't specifically thinking about coaching, I was more thinking about setting up a website, teaching people the ropes from internet marketing, setting up a membership site perhaps, offer the whole deal, SEO, content, hosting, you name it.

      But sometimes I think by myself, how absurd time consuming is all that going to be, I would have to interact with my customers, I would have a lot of support work to do, I would have to create dozens of videos and training material. I already get tired when I think of it lol.

      I value my free time a lot and though it would not be specifically 1-on-1 coaching it would eat up a lot of my freedom. Opposed to importing goods, selling them at Amazon and/or ranking sites and making affiliate income. Those things are pretty much passive income streams of which many tasks can be easily outsourced. Somehow I also have the feeling I'm less struck by boundaries in terms of income. When you go for one niche you reach a plateau at some point, out of ideas to attract more visitors and such. The top bloggers in the IM niche only seem to do like $100k/month. Don't get me wrong, that's a lot of money of course but that are the TOP bloggers, who I think I am to be on the same level as them.

      While with affiliate income or importing and selling physical goods, you don't need to have a super skill set, you just need to be good at scaling and outsourcing things, there's little magic involved.
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  • Profile picture of the author simonz
    You just can't take ALL your knowledge for your own. All information is getting old very fast, so everyone must share although part of it. I don't mean to share the best secrets that are currently making you success, but you can do that also! With that said sometimes sharing the knowledge can make you even bigger success than using it by yourself and sometimes sharing it can make you fail. It also depends on who for you are sharing it, how you sharing it, what quality of your coaching is and how they use your knowledge.

    In summary what's about internet marketing, you can sell your best secrets that are making you nice income, and in most of the time it'll still make you nice income, because most of them who buys it doesn't know how to use it properly or just doesn't use it after their first try! And the ones who use it can become your partners, who with you can share your interests, JV and make even more profits! So yeah, it's very profitable to use your knowledge on your on, but it's even more profitable to teach it someone else, when you are good on it.
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    • Profile picture of the author wedreamseo
      Banned
      Originally Posted by simonz View Post

      You just can't take ALL your knowledge for your own. All information is getting old very fast, so everyone must share although part of it. I don't mean to share the best secrets that are currently making you success, but you can do that also! With that said sometimes sharing the knowledge can make you even bigger success than using it by yourself and sometimes sharing it can make you fail. It also depends on who for you are sharing it, how you sharing it, what quality of your coaching is and how they use your knowledge.

      In summary what's about internet marketing, you can sell your best secrets that are making you nice income, and in most of the time it'll still make you nice income, because most of them who buys it doesn't know how to use it properly or just doesn't use it after their first try! And the ones who use it can become your partners, who with you can share your interests, JV and make even more profits! So yeah, it's very profitable to use your knowledge on your on, but it's even more profitable to teach it someone else, when you are good on it.
      Personally I don't believe so much in the secret stuff, I do believe there are certain rules to follow but I don't consider them a secret, in SEO for example anchor diversity / link velocity and tons of other small details, perhaps unknown to people who are just starting but no secret at all.

      The only things I would keep secret are the niches I perform in, as some simply convert much better than others, are much easier to rank than others and so on. The longer you're involved in something the better you know which niches too avoid and thus create much better incomes from your efforts. Obvious such data would not be shared in a coaching program as then it would directly interferre with my income, making the coaching less profitable so to say.

      Same like a PPC marketer wouldn't hand over this most profitable campaigns.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tom Addams
    There is no general answer.

    As someone mentioned, it depends on the per unit value of time expended by the coach. If he coaches on a subject that earns him, actually implementing it, $100 a day, and if he can coach it for $101 a day, without impacting his usual $100, then coaching is better. In that instance.

    There are other considerations, too.

    From personal experience: I began coaching, knowing full well that I would be earning considerably less as a coach than as a practioner of the subjects I coached. However, despite receiving less monetary value, coaching fees compared to being a practioner, I understood a greater value was actually going to be received in the end: testimonials, which would, over time, go on to make my products convert more easily and, thus, in a passive manner, earn me more money than without those testiminials. Were it just initial monetary reward I wanted, I never would have done it.

    So it boils down to this:

    - Per unit returns from coaching, compared to those of using the information in the field of which one coaches;
    - Benefits outside of initial coaching fees and initial and long-term returns from being a practioner.

    Consider who in our industry often coaches: some of the biggest names, generating, outside of coaching, several million a year.

    Tom
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