You probably know that the question in the title is more of a rhetorical one than anything else. And the answer is different for each individual. For some of you, the answer may be 0. For other persons, it may be thousands of dollars or even more. Let’s get something straight: we are talking about money spend, not time or anything else, and yes, I know that time costs money.

So why do I insist on only taking money into this equation? Well, to be frank, because this is how Internet Marketers who supposedly sell recipes of success put it. And you might argue that I have something against them, which is simply not true. I couldn’t care less for the majority of them.

But why do they insist, in their sales letters, to say things like:
“This product will bring you tens of thousands of dollars each month, what is this worth to you?”

If you have seen some of the sales letters, I know you will recognize the speech. The overwhelming majority of their hyped up sales pitches have this line in order to justify their often absurd prices. In order for you to understand how stupid this type of line is, let’s think about an example that could easily be – and probably has been for many people – a real life example.

John buys a van, and starts transporting people between two different towns. He starts a small business, and due to the fact that he had a somewhat lower price compared to other companies and started developing a good reputation, business was good to him. He bought another van and so on and so forth. John now has an incredibly developed business, with many coaches and lots of routes, between many towns. Let’s say that the first van he bought cost $15,000. His current business has an annual money flow of 3 million dollars. So, was the first van he bought worth $3,000,000?

Of course it wasn’t. The time, dedication and commitment he put into development of his business is worth that much. However, many ebook and other digital products gurus try to lead you into believing their products are worth the metaphorical $3,000,000. But their products are not. It’s your own commitment and work that is worth the output you manage to get out of your business. You shouldn’t judge a product based on how much money it can theoretically bring to a person, because in theory you can make millions starting with a pencil. Now I wouldn’t mind the gurus saying: “Hey, this kind of advice is scarce and there are not too many experts on the matter, so that’s why it’s priced at $197”. In other words, to base their prices on the supply and demand balance of the market. But wait, now I remembered: they’re not real Marketers, they’re just salesmen.

Of course, in the end, this is just another one of their strategies that try to play with one’s mind and induce them the buying attitude. For me, it is just not fair. It doesn’t seem fair that an ebook from a quasi expert who barely knows how to write costs $97, while a real Marketing book, from a real expert, Philip Kotler, can be found on Amazon for as low as $68.

“Forgive me but the day I start trusting him is the day I would have sold my soul”. This quote is from Sayid, a very cool character from an even better show called “Lost”. A show which is definitely my all time favorite. What does that have to do with Internet Marketing? Well, the quote tells exactly how I feel about the majority of gurus - I will not call them Marketers, because I don’t consider them to be.

Being a “guru” is very fashionable in today’s online environment. They project an image of success and everyone who tries his/her luck online wants to be exactly like the gurus and fit into the guru mentality. I am telling you to think again. Let’s talk about some of the reasons why you should not listen or follow these self-proclaimed gurus.

1. THE GURUS FEED FROM YOUR LACK OF SUCCESS
It sounds pretty cruel, but it’s still the blatant truth. As I was saying before, many people who get disappointed by the lack of their online success tend to buy more and more of the gurus’ ebooks. When they don’t really find the answer in a product that sounded too good to be true, they move on and buy another. The conclusion is simple: the gurus only sell their products because you don’t achieve online success. Because if you would, you would not be needing their products, would you?

2. MOST OF THE PRODUCTS ARE OF POOR QUALITY
Not ALL of the products are of poor quality, but most of them are. For one thing, they never tell you the whole story. They tell you some basic things, without touching the essence. And they don’t really want you to succeed online. If you are successful online, it means that:
- they have more competition to worry about;
- they lose one of their potential buyers (you).

Then, not every person can be a writer. Many of these ebooks have basic Grammar errors that would make a 12-year old feel embarrassed. Amateurish and sloppy writing is the best way to define these products. In order to overcome this and capture the reader’s attention, they resort to extreme measures like offensive language, constant bragging, etc.

3. YOU DON’T NEED THE GURUS
That’s exactly right, you don’t need them; it is exactly the other way around. They need you and other people like you who dream of online success in order to sell their products. I am not saying that you shouldn’t buy any of their products at all. As I stated before, there are some good products. But you certainly don’t need to buy each and every new product that comes out. As a matter of fact, you can believe me when I tell you that it only takes the best product from each field and you’ve read them all.

4. SOME OF THEIR PRODUCTS ARE RIDICULOUSLY OVERPRICED
$800/month for a membership site?! $1000 - $1500 for a single product?! Some of these gurus’ greed is indeed endless. However, you must remember that not the people who demand such outrageous sums of money are being foolish; it is the people that give the money. Never pay such large amounts on Internet Marketing products; you would be disappointed of what you get in return.

5. LACK OF REAL QUALITY CONTROL
However, there’s one area in which these gurus excel indeed: vanity. OK, that too. But I’m referring to something else: copywriting. Yes, they are indeed very good at writing hyped up sales letters that touch a sensitive string in people. The fact that they don’t deliver is not that important (to them, anyway). Some of these sales copies are so good though, they should be made illegal.

Usually, the longer a sales page is for a product, the worse the product is. There’s no wonder that there’s a rumor that says that Google is going to filter these pages out of the search results. However, the lack of REAL quality control is an issue. For instance, what would you say if you saw a driving school’s advertisement that said: “Come to our school, and you will be able to compete in Formula 1”. Unfortunately, this is not a far fetched comparison, not by a longshot. While you would know that the driving school’s advertisement is fake, you would not really be able to tell that you can’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight by reading a certain ebook. This is exactly why I said that the gurus feed on people’s hopes and dreams, and take advantage of them.

Now, as a final note, you might argue that one has to sell his/her products. I am not against that. What I am against is throwing out poor products with no sense of ethics whatsoever. In one of my future posts I will make a comparison between your average guru and his / her inherent way of thinking and real Internet Marketers who know what they are talking about and actually bring something useful to the community.