In 2016, during my engineering days, I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
What stayed with me wasn’t the lifestyle part. It was the idea that you could build something once and keep earning from it. That income didn’t always have to depend on showing up somewhere physically every day. The thought of building something of my own — something that could run in the background — felt powerful.
I didn’t want to avoid work. I wanted smarter work.
That’s how I got pulled into the whole “make money online” world.
At first, it was curiosity. Then it became an effort.
First, I started a YouTube channel. I uploaded consistently. I tried to understand thumbnails, titles, and engagement. Nothing meaningful happened.
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Then I tried Kindle publishing. I wrote and published books, thinking maybe consistency and volume would create traction. It didn’t.
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After that, I built two blogs. Bought hosting. Installed WordPress. Learned basic SEO from free tutorials. Wrote articles. Tried different themes. Tweaked layouts. Changed niches.
I wasn’t dabbling. I was trying.
But after months of work, there was no traffic, no sales, no small win to even boost confidence. No sign that I was moving in the right direction.
When you try something once and fail, you think you need more patience. When you try multiple things and everything fails, you start thinking differently.
You begin asking: Who is doing this correctly?
If others are making money online, what are they doing that I’m not? Can I just follow what works instead of guessing all the time?
That was the shift.
I wasn’t looking for motivation. I was looking for structure.
And once you start looking for structure, you naturally start looking for someone who seems to have figured it out.
That’s how I found the first course I ever bought!
The Person Who Looked Like He Knew Stuff
I discovered the course seller on YouTube.
He had around 5,000 subscribers at the time. Not massive, but big enough to look established. His videos were calm and structured. He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t overhyping. He explained blogging and affiliate marketing in a way that sounded clear.
Then I went to his website.
It looked decent. The content was well-written. He had a series of posts about blogging that genuinely sounded expert-level. For a beginner reading it, it felt like real knowledge. It didn’t feel spammy or low effort. It felt serious.
That’s important. Because the free content was good & that’s how trust builds.
I then joined his email list. That’s where the selling really happened.
He sent regular newsletters talking about his course, how it was helping people, and how students were getting results. He used urgency — the price would increase soon, bonuses would expire, and seats were limited. It wasn’t sloppy marketing. It was intelligent. Thought through.
I didn’t buy immediately.
I watched for about two months.
I told myself I was being rational. I wanted to observe. I wanted to see if he was consistent. He was. The messaging was steady. The positioning didn’t change. The confidence stayed the same.
Looking back, I realize something important: I was evaluating his consistency, not his credibility.
I never checked if he was mentioned anywhere outside his own website. I didn’t search for independent reviews. I didn’t ask where his income actually came from.
I saw structure. I saw confidence. I saw stories of others making money.
And after a year of failing on my own, that was enough.
The course was priced at $197.
At that point, I wasn’t earning anything online. So $197 wasn’t little money. But I framed it as an investment in direction. I convinced myself that if this gave me a proper system instead of random guessing, it would be worth it.
So I bought it.
And I genuinely believed I was making a smart decision.
The $197 System
Once I got access to the course, the structure looked simple.
The core idea was to build a blog and monetize it through affiliate marketing. That part wasn’t new to me. I already understood the basics of blogging. What he was selling was a shortcut.
The strategy had a few main components.
First, create a blog in the “make money online” space.
Second, use PLR content to populate it quickly. For anyone unfamiliar, PLR (Private Label Rights) content is pre-written content that you can legally reuse. You can edit it slightly and publish it as your own. The logic was speed. Instead of spending time writing from scratch, you could build a content-heavy site quickly.
Then optimize those articles for keywords.
Then structure the blog similar to his website — similar layout, similar types of posts, similar calls to action.
And what were we supposed to promote?
His course.
It was very direct. The model was: build a blog about blogging and making money online, then recommend the same course you bought.
There was also a social media component.
He recommended creating new Facebook and Pinterest accounts specifically for this niche. Then he introduced a tool — an automation software. You would set the niche inside the tool, and it would automatically follow thousands of profiles related to that niche.
The idea was simple. Follow enough people, and some of them will follow back. Build up followers quickly. Then start posting content using pre-written sales-style templates provided inside the course. Drive those followers to your blog. Convert them through affiliate links.
At that time, this felt like a real system. It wasn’t random advice. It was step-by-step.
So I followed it.
I built the blog. I used PLR content. I structured posts the way he showed. I copied the general layout style. I placed affiliate links to his course.
Then I moved to social media.
On Facebook, I created two new accounts just for this purpose. I set up the automation tool. It started following people in the niche automatically. The follower count began increasing.
Then both accounts got blocked. Facebook shut them down completely.
The automation triggered their system & both profiles were gone!
I tried again, adjusted settings, and reduced the follow speed. Eventually, one account grew to around 1,000 followers before it got blocked again! Facebook was strict!
Pinterest was different.
There, the automation worked much better at the time. I built one account to around 4,000 followers. Another grew even bigger to 10,000+ followers. The tool kept following people. Many followed back. The numbers looked impressive.
From the outside, it would look like growth.
I was paying for the automation software. I was spending time setting up content. I was consistently posting using the templates provided.
It felt like momentum.
But here is the reality.
Not a single person bought the course through my affiliate links.
Not one.
All the followers. All the automation. All the posts. All the effort.
But zero sales.
That’s when the structure started to become obvious.
The content on the blog wasn’t original. It was modified PLR. There was nothing unique about it. Thousands of others would be doing the exact same thing.
The social media followers weren’t warm audiences. Most had been auto-followed. Many were spam profiles. Many probably wouldn’t even remember following back.
The entire model was built around replication.
And then I did the math.
The course cost $197.
If 50 people bought it, that’s almost $10,000. So when he talked about making $10,000 per month, it didn’t necessarily mean the blogging model itself was producing that income. It simply meant he was (through this scam course).
And if every buyer were encouraged to promote the same course as an affiliate, the system could multiply itself.
Buyers become promoters.
Promoters bring new buyers.
New buyers repeat the process.
The product wasn’t blogging. The product was the course. It was a pyramid scheme in course form.
I didn’t see that clearly when I purchased it. I saw it only after trying everything seriously and seeing zero results.
The system didn’t require most buyers to succeed. It only required enough new buyers to enter every month.
That was the real structure.
What It Actually Taught Me
When I realized this, I wasn’t angry. I was embarrassed.
I had waited two months before buying. I thought I was being rational. But I never did any real background checks.
The course was sold on Warrior Forum — a platform known for aggressive affiliate-driven products. At the time, I didn’t understand what that implied. Later, I realized many black-hat and low-quality courses circulate on platforms like these. That alone should have been a red flag.
I didn’t check for external validation. He wasn’t featured in any credible media. There were no independent references. All proof of success existed inside his own sales pages and testimonials. No popular blogs were talking about his success or reviewing his courses. I failed to do a basic Googling & realize what I was getting into.
I didn’t even question the black-hat business model at the time. I only questioned whether I could follow the steps. That’s a mistake beginners often make. They evaluate the clarity of instructions, not the strength of the foundation.
He’s still active today. The channel has grown. The website is live. The course is still selling. He’s still making money preying on innocent beginners.
That used to confuse me. Now I understand. A system doesn’t need to create widespread success to survive. It just needs a steady flow of new beginners who believe they are buying clarity.
And beginners will always exist.
If I had to give practical advice from my experience, it would be simple:
- Before buying a course, check where it’s being sold – that’s your first red flag.
- Then look for independent credibility. If all proof lives inside the seller’s sales page, be cautious.
- And follow the money. If the main income seems to come from selling the course rather than the business being taught, think twice!
And be especially careful with “replicate this exact template, and you’ll earn” systems. Real businesses require thinking, judgment, and originality. Copy-paste rarely builds something durable. If someone tells you can make money copy-pasting something, run away.
There is no easy way to make money – online or offline.
Period.
I know it from over a decade of experience trying things and failing. There’s no free money.
Real business models and assets that compound over the years make money. Like real, honest blogs built over years. Authentic YouTube channels with real content. Good books. Monthly SIPs from your 9-5 income. These things compound. Not black-hat copy & paste strategies.
My key learning – anything that promises a copy-paste or template-based system just doesn’t work. Try to build something real.
This $197 didn’t make me money. But it forced me to understand how easily structure can be confused with substance.
I sometimes look back & regret how foolish I was. I genuinely feel ashamed. To fall prey to such a scammy course – I always thought I was more intelligent than that. When I hear people falling for bank scams, I always wonder why people didn’t think through & how gullible they were. And here I am falling prey to a scam, just that the amount is small.
All humans are gullible. I wanted to share this story to educate readers on the reality of online courses. Even if the post could prompt 1 person to do due diligence on the next course they’re going to buy, I’d be happy that I wrote this post.
Remember – online courses are the gold rush today. It’s the easiest way to make money online. There are thousands of courses online. And 99% are not worth your money, time & effort. Be careful not to become prey to scammers.
You would think that after this, I would stop buying courses completely.
I didn’t.
That’s the uncomfortable part.
When you want something badly enough — clarity, direction, proof — you can convince yourself the next one will be different.
And that’s exactly what happened. I fell again, next to a popular, well-established course that mostly taught what I already knew – for $500!