Your making it sound as if he has created some sort of blog monopoly where people dont have a choice. The fact is people do have a choice to buy his product or they can spend hours to attain the same level of knowledge… Get a grip, it’s $15 bucks!

Plus if people feel the education wasn’t worth it they have eight weeks for the money back guarantee.

-J

I guess I would just echo what others have said that different people will have different needs and abilities and that means some will be willing to pay for something that they feel is a little beyond them. I know I would have in my early days – it’s just the kind of guy that I am.

I’d also use free stuff too – but presenting people with a range of options is good (something I’ve also done over the last year or so). Happy to have had this debate here – it’s not an unusual one actually. It seems every time I talk about different ways of making money from blogging (which is what Jon’s doing here creating an information product) that there is a diversity of opinions about whether it’s legitimate or not.

I just wanted to point out a couple examples of other businesses similar to mine.

One would be Red Hat Linux. They are a 100 million dollar company that provides support services based on the free Linux operating system.

And when I went to college to learn computer programming all the “information” that I was taught was available for free on the web.

What I was paying for was the organization of the content and the experience of the teachers.

There are plenty of off line night school courses now teaching essentially the same thing as my videos: “How to set up a blog.”

Someone with your technical skills, who can compile a vast list of resources in 5 minutes, is not the person who the product is aimed at. I have installed WordPress for many friends and online acquaintances and I realized that even if I did steer them towards the free online resources they still wanted someone to either do it for them or hold their hand and walk them through the entire process step by step.

I do appreciate all of the opinions that were expressed and even though it was uncomfortable for me to hear, it will make my company and online products better in the long run.

Thanks again to Darren for the review.

Jon Symons

I am new to blogging and appreciated the video nature of the training.
Yes, it is done in “raw and uncut style”, but quite watchable and understandable.

I agree with the poster who mentioned a written transcript would be useful – maybe Jon should have that task outsourced and then upsell it together with the video for $25? $35?

Whoops! Still reading? ;-)

As part of an ongoing marketing education I am prepared to spend some affordable money each month on info products and services from people I trust and like.

I actually paid less than $15 for this one because I regularly read and enjoy Jon’s http://artofmoney.org blog, signed up for his email newsletter and got a pre-launch price for the video product.

The money back (ClickBank) guarantee was a bonus but Jon had already built up a degree of trust with me from his blogging persona and via some email conversations.
‘Relationship marketing’ anyone?

Same thing with Guido from easywebtutorials.com.

I like his open and friendly style too and after being on his list for a while and getting some f-r-e-e stuff via blog updates and articles, ended up buying the CD-rom of his html and blogging tutorials and some other freebie s/w and templates.

An absolute steal at $9.95. – even though most/all of the info is available (in some format) for f-r-e-e on the Net. But not (in the limited time I have available to find what I believe to be trustable info sources) using his own words and style.

regards

mark

I don’t charge for information – I charge people to do the work for them. Just like I don’t charge people to tell them how to install wordpress. I charge them to do it for them.

Sure, anyone who’s spent 10 years (and by no means is that exhaustive – I keep making a living at what I do because I keep learning as things change and improve) doing the research, learning, and gaining the practical experience I have can do just as good a job as I do. Some might do even better. But the people who hire me have other careers, and don’t have the time to devote to knowing the business the way I do. That’s why I have no qualms about making a business of what I do. I’m being paid to complete tasks that would take someone else ten years to know how to do the way I do.

Wordpress doesn’t take 10 years to learn. It doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to just do the install (for first timers, that is), and while even I am still learning things about wordpress, the culmination of that learning wouldn’t take up even 20 or 30 hours I think. And I do a pretty good job of it, to the point that I give out free advice on how to use it to others on the wordpress support forums. And if I don’t have the answer when they ask, I find it, and hand it to them.

And as for the comparison to books – I’m not saying that there’s not a need for these videos, any more than I’d say there’s not a need for books. What I’m saying is that charging $15 to help people use FREE software is, in my opinion, just wrong. Especially when they can easily get all the same information (in many forms, including manuals, support forums, and other videos) for free.

Think of it this way: It’s like someone coming up to you on the street and asking you where a certain restaurant is. You tell them that you’ll walk them there for $15. They agree, thinking they’ve found a great tour guide. And you turn them around to show them that they were standing in front of the place all along.

It’s just not right.

And with that – I’ve really said all I’m going to say on the matter.
Sorry for hijacking your blog, Darren… my only intention was to show your readers free places to get the same info.

I don’t have an issue with knocking somebody who is producing crap resources and charging for them, but if their resource is useful (and it is, I’ve bought the videos and found them very helpful despite having read a lot of the free stuff others have recommended above) then I don’t have an issue with them charging for it.

While I have searched a lot of sites looking for information on how to start a blog I thought the $15 I spent on these videos was well spent. I saw someone register a domain, organise hosting, install WP and cutomize it before my eyes.

I’ve read a lot of the tutorials others have talked about but it only ‘clicked’ for me when I saw the videos.

While I don’t have anything against people having principles of keeping everything free I don’t have a problem with paying someone to show me how to do something either. We do that every day when we buy newspapers (you can get the information for free online), when we buy books on lots of topics (you can get the information for free online or from friends of friends) etc.

I also think it a little ironic that some of the people critiquing these videos charge money for SEO, marketing and other online services. All of these things you can find great information for online for free but all of these things can also be paid for. The benefits of paying for them is that you get the benefit of another person’s experience, you get the benefits of that other person having researched a field and collated information etc – very similar to what you get when you pay to see someone show you how to set up a site if you don’t know how to do it.

I guess different people have different needs and will be willing and able to see them met in different ways. The rest of us need to be open minded enough to see that our way is not the only way.

So what your saying is that books exploit people because they charge for information that can most likely be found for free on the Internet?

Hmm… how much of your search engine marketing insight can be found on the Internet for free?

-J

“Much of business is creating a system or actually doing the work for people that many times they could do themselves, but choose not to.”

You’re right. And the videos mentioned in this post have nothing to do with your statement… The creator of the videos made them for the sole purpose of making money off of information – not by doing the installs for them.

I’ve even found some FREE videos that give the same advice:

http://www.likomaisland.com/_storage/likoma/videos/20060810-wp-overview.htm

and tutorials by the same person:

http://www.likoma.com/tutorials/

see? http://wordpress.org/support/topic/83047?replies=2

I’m sorry, but there’s no convincing me that charging people on how to learn to use free software is anything but an exploit of others’ lack of awareness.

For $15 he should install the software and my theme of choice FOR them. Although, there’s already a group of people who do that for free too, as I mentioned earlier.

Would Darren be as nice to feature my videos as well even if I can’t offer any affiliates? In the first place the videos will be free.

But the main content is going to be the same. And that same content can be found for free by searching. I would say it would take an inexperienced user longer than 20 minutes to find what they need.

Users may have to look at more than 1 tutorial on a topic. I know I have had to do so in the past. 2-3 hours of searching would not be unreasonable for total search time.

I haven’t looked at his product, nor do I plan to. I don’t pay for things that I can find for free. Of course there are people out there who are willing to pay. Not everyone is a cheap SOB like I am.

http://www.easywebtutorials.com/tutorials/index.php

Best free ones I’ve ever seen.

Lowell