Is advice still free? Everywhere I turn, advice is monetized. E-courses that talk about ways to increase audience, page views, and 10 tips to do X and X. Ebooks that are a “crazy deal” and promise to give the low down on how to get going on with your business. The creative world has been going through an advice monetization era.
I know that obviously advice is still free. There are super helpful blog posts being written, gracious people give out wisdom on social media, and relevant Facebook mastermind groups full of advice with a variety of perspectives.
However, the monetization of advice has been growing more abundant. Everyone wants to be an authority figure. Cranking out ebooks, e-courses, filling their content with several sponsored posts, and churning out repeated advice.
What happened to starting out and just creating? You know, setting out to do something, experimenting, failing, and experimenting some more.
The creative world’s advice problem is people who are spouting out advice without experience behind it and action in it.
I thought, at first, the issue was solely with bloggers. For the past year or two, the business blogger selling their advice has become a popular thing. Bloggers aren’t the only ones after all. Many of the ebooks, e-courses, and workshops churned out are valuable. Even still, the amount of non-stop selling, vague statements, and courses about mindset rather than actual strategy have been increasing.
A teacher I had back in middle school said a quote that sticks with me to this day: Nothing is ever truly free, everything has a price tag.
Does everything really have a price tag? There is lots of free good and bad content out on the internet. Aside from paying for an internet connection, you don’t have to pay for the actual content you reading.
Unless it’s a post meant to convert, which consequently happening a lot more. You read an article that promises a free download (checklist, cheatsheet, resources guide,etc) and the only way to get it is to provide your email.
Then, provide your email and then you’re added to a list in which you can start being sold to. There’s nothing bad about this. Everyone has their ways and is trying to make a living. Problems happen when all the emails end up being sales pitches. One after the other. Over and over. People are tired of being sold to.
The creative world’s advice problem isn’t tied just to bloggers as I thought, it’s going on throughout the industry. Advice is churned out over and over. Now more than ever, people must be intentional with their content consumption.
With seemingly every other person taking their slice of the pie and selling their advice, it’s important for people to be intentional and understand their behavior towards spending before they go and buy another information product.
There is still great advice out there. Even great advice that doesn’t require your email address :). Many times, an online course or ebook isn’t the only way to get the information. Cue the old grandpa voice saying there weren’t many e-courses back in my day (let’s say 2010). I had to look up the information all by myself!
There’s a good possibility that free alternatives are out there.
Being an authority leader isn’t the be all version of success in the creative world. Advice should be something given without the constant thought of monetization and making an income off it.
Do you think the creative world has an advice problem?