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Comment by richardlblair | Hacker News Reader

When I was 16 I fell into the Amyway trap. What the author is documenting is accurate. It's a trap.

I never really regretted it because there were so many other bad things I could be getting into at 16. Especially where I lived. It also instilled some values that I still hold today.

Not to mention that at 16 I had access to wealthy people who taught me how to manage my money.

So yea, Amyway is a trap - but a lot of people are happy in that trap. I think the most disappointing thing for me was when I realized that the guys at the top aren't getting rich from Amyway, they were getting rich from everyone buying tapes, books, and going to these conferences.

Edit: Typing is hard

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> the guys at the top aren't getting rich from Amyway, they were getting rich from everyone buying tapes, books, and going to these conferences.

I've noticed the same about many of the super successful "entrepreneurs" who frequent places like /r/Entrepreneurship, various entrepreneurship blogs, and even sometimes here on HN. They get rich off of selling books, classes, access to "forums" [sic], and from referrals to their fellow "entrepreneurs", and not from any other entrepreneurial activity that they've done previously.

It's the same as the reason why people like Pat Flynn make 25x more from affiliate fees than from any of their actual businesses. There are a lot more people who want to "make money" than there are people who want to "start and grow a business."

PF makes money selling tools that help people make money online (doing anything - read some of his article on "article spinning" and how he defends it and it will make you want to vomit). Darren Rowse makes money selling tools that help people make money blogging. Even Nathan Barry (who I'm a big fan of) made a lot more money from Authority than he ever did from his design books. ConvertKit was just a shift from product to service.

Along the same vein, a lot of people in Amway want to "make money" and not very many want to "start and grow an MLM business." Selling $40 CDs and lecturing your down-line about buying non-Alticor products is just the best way to do it.

>There are a lot more people who want to "make money" than there are people who want to "start and grow a business."

Exactly right. Cf "Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weights."

I see exactly this from sites like unicornfree.com. And I don't mean that as a slight against @amyhoy. Occasionally I get a similar vibe from @patio11, but I still respect his incredibly good insights. These are people who are very involved in the startup community and contribute a whole lot more value than most people. They just like to sell knowledge as well as give it away.

I get where this comes from with regards to Amway, but I'm really puzzled as to why geeks pattern match all teaching to scummy "make money online" infomarketing.

Nobody ever says "I kinda get the vibe that, in addition to your virtuous OSS contributions, you might be angling to sell software / programming time. Not that there is anything wrong with that." Well, yes. I was employed as an engineer; I then ran a succession of software businesses. Taking money for software is indeed what one does in these jobs / businesses. HN seems to be pretty well-acquainted with selling software for money.

I wish HN were similarly well acquainted with training, consulting, or infoproducts, to pick three examples of business models which "sell knowledge" if you squint a bit. They are no less real, value-producing businesses than software is. They happen to be easier to build and grow to mid six figures than SaaS businesses, in a way which is of material interest to the stated goals of many HNers, and I say that as someone whose financial situation is historically dominated by SaaS businesses.

I'm not sure why I pattern-match sites like unicornfree into the same bucket as scummy "make money online" infomarketing, but I do. I wish I could identify the cause, because it would probably help people running legitimate sites like Unicornfree to avoid the vibe.

Maybe it's related to a stigma against selling knowledge in general. Consider Aaron Swartz and the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Many geeks tend to do a lot of learning via freely available content online, and may be even more inclined than the average person to want open access to knowledge. Just some thoughts.

Have you run into this reaction from geeks before?

I think the issue I have is with people who create info products on how to create info products.

There's an element of this in book writing "author services" too; enough people want the status of being a writer that they're prepared to pump money into promotion and editing while never receiving any discouraging criticism.

"I realized that the guys at the top aren't getting rich from Amyway, they were getting rich from everyone buying tapes, books, and going to these conferences."

I always think it would be nice if people were able to be valued by the value they add, rather than what they can extract for themselves from the system. Not sure how that would work in practice, but it would basically fix capitalism if it was possible, since preying on suckers often seems the easier and faster route to wealth and power.

The same happened to me at 17 and keept it going till I was 19. I really didn't buy that many Amway products, but I did enjoy reading the monthly self help books they sent, many of those books were really helpful.

I was active for about 18 months, and probably would have stayed longer if I had a single sales bone in my body.

I mostly enjoyed listening to the stories of those above me (I never made more than $400-500/mo so that was most people who weren't losing money) but of course I paid for those CDs so in the end I made much less money than it looked like I did on paper.

I do like the concept of being positive, visualizing your future, making a plan to reach it, etc. It's a shame it's so closely ingrained with a company selling dish soap and disgusting energy drinks, though!

HEY MAN DONT TALK SHIT ABOUT THIS ENERGY DRINKS!!!

Fuck, maybe I should stop drinking those? :P

I like energy drinks but my god XS tastes like garbage.

Seriously - as a teenager with way too many hormones doing all sorts of crazy shit to your brain, it was nice being around people that were so grounded. The books added to that. The perspective I had at 16 can only be attributed to "the system" they talk about in the article.

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