I was scammed by a celebrity influencer
medium.com
medium.com
I can't believe at the missed business opportunity here. It sounds like she could have easily pulled 7 figures from running those classes. Even if she hired a "business manager" of sorts for a cut to grow her lessons, it would have been a really financially rewarding endevour.
One thing that boggles the mind is how many people were not planning to request a refund! I couldn't imagine spending $500, not receiving what I paid for, and being okay with that.
Honestly, it still surprises me how much some Instagrammers make. A friend of mine runs a food IG (~3,000 followers local to the area) and pulls in 1-2 free meals a week, effectively funding the content creation costs. Another friend is in the ~40,000 follower range and gets paid something like $50-$200 + meals for each event -- you just go and book a time slot on their website.
Yet for me, IG feels so fake, but there are enough repeat advertisers that there must be real users out there who follow and purchase influencer recommendations.
Its pay to play for sure. You don't get shown unless you are providing Facebook with money.
This is why the content feels fake. Only highly profitable instagrammers can afford to pay to promote.
That's what blows my mind. She had 500 people sign up for the course, obviously there is demand. I don't feel like it would be too hard to put together a 12 week course and have people feel like they got their money worth. Then just simply rinse and repeat. Heck, she could have even found the real die hards from the original 500 and offered a special one-to-one course for $5000 and had weekly one on one's with her. Sounds like it could have been a cash cow.
You seem to be overlooking that she already made up to $225,000 for doing close to nothing.
Plus up to $25,000 for making the first assignment "Start building a pyramid scheme for me." And that's gravy on top of however many new rubes signed up for the next course for which she "solved" the refund problem with a third party payment service.
That is exactly it, it becomes a job.
Its not really different than watching cable TV and hearing someone review a travel destination.
>This can't be healthy.
I think this is 'grass is greener on the other side' effect. What makes traveling and growing your influence unhealthy?
Its that we want this ideal lifestyle, and are jealous(?).
Whatever the case, most people are not making even 6 figures off their instagram accounts by just posting pictures. OP's article talked about offering an additional service.
Hmm. First video I looked at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TOltq6OgR4
After the "intro" -- which isn't exactly like someone (who isn't Paris Hilton or Stefan Raab etc.) reviewing anything in earnest -- it's just the usual half-coherent babbling most youtubers do. You don't fly a TV team to a destination and then just scratch your ass and drop sentences any random person interviewed on the street would say. That's not a "review", even for TV standards which are hardly anything to aspire to.
Youtube is much dumber than TV, just enter "game name review", and depending on the game most of it will be people playing a game, badly, sometimes without even talking, and when they talk, it's not a "review" at all, but "hi guys, my dog is cute, I'm bringing you the best reviews please subscribe, I'm about to review this game, okay I'm now reviewing this game, it's a game, it sucks and has many flaws but I enjoyed it, please leave a like, thanks for watching".
The best are the people who cut out every breath they take, every moment they think (or maybe they just go blank, who knows), and then they still manage to say not a single thing in 15 minutes.
> What makes traveling and growing your influence unhealthy?
That was referring to "constantly posing and putting on an image". If that's so great, why do you have to rephrase it first?
And what is "growing your influence"? I see a lot of people with NO grip on themselves, what influence do they have? Isn't Alex Jones also having a healthy career by that same token? A bunch of "followers", "just growing influence". They must be providing value, because they "make 6 figures".
> Its that we want this ideal lifestyle, and are jealous(?).
Turning oneself into the equivalent of a Teletubbie? No, thanks.
When someone makes it clear they find it cringey and would not enjoy "being that", maybe first accept that that is actually so. When someone says "I hate this, why would anyone do this?", don't say "Don't you actually love it though? whatever the case may be.."
Seeing a lot of these personalities that are anything but a personality, I think that's the main reason really, that they have no personality, no thoughts, but a long life to fill with that nothing. That makes people hyper, and people who are likewise lost cling to that bubbling nothing to distract them from the fear that sits squarely upon their neck as well. It's not driven by idiocy, fear drives the idiocy. Watching 99% of youtube to me is like watching a blob of water in an overheated pan gliding around on air. The question isn't where is it going, but what is it running from.
Sure, these people get to go places, but are they ever really looking at it through the eyes of relaxation? It just seems miserable to me actually. I feel the same way about actors, the job of acting actually sucks, but at least they get million dollar payouts at the end. The instagram 'stars' are lucky to get a free hotel room and a discounted flight.
That “Angie” whoever she is, is just a fraud. She’s not actually delivering any value. Whatever she’s pretending to earn could be all fake (it’s honestly not that difficult to fake these “perfect” photos and definitely doesn’t require to be a millionaire), and even if it’s real now, she’s gonna be the first one to get the door the second this social media/bullshit media bubble pops and brands realise it’s not worth it.
You want to make money? There are plenty of career paths that will make you good money by delivering actual value to your customers. Bragging on Instagram and getting virtual internet points isn’t one of them.
It used to be that the aforementioned magazines were sufficient to fill that gap of the market; as a result they were making decent money, could put out decent content that people were happy with and didn’t have to resort to scammy behaviour to make profit.
Nowadays the floodgates are open and everyone is a wannabe “influencer” except the pool of consumers & money remained the same, so they now have to resort to less than acceptable techniques to try and make money, and this article is one of the possible outcomes.
Text on the internet has the same problem by the way - there’s now a shit ton of garbage content written only to gain clicks and attention without actually delivering any value to the reader.
I agree that free distribution and approximately infinite supply have been a problem for many content businesses that based their businesses on scarcity. But as far as I can tell the topic here is whether Instagram content is valuable. It is. Many valuable things can be hard to monetize. E.g., air.
I own a couple of nice names and constantly have people with million+ followers messaging me trying to scam me for them.
There are no university courses for "instagram star" so if you're the charlatan who is promising fame and fortune for the low low price of $500, there are plenty of people willing to hop on board. If anything I would say 500 people is really low.
Check out these people's website/youtube on Alexa(or similar). They are dead.
Or check out the comments and see how fake/active the posts are.
But given that she probably only runs the one account, that's pretty small time.
Apparently lots of people fall for this, at least according to the scammers. Given how many DMs I get every day, I don't doubt it at all.
What honestly shocks me is the "aw shucks" attitude in the email from Teachable. I get that they're sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they did issue as many refunds as they could, but to turn to students and say "we've paid out the remaining amount of money... so sorry about that!" is like rubbing salt into the wound.
If she moved to a custom payment gateway, they probably know what it is, and that gateway ought to know about the scam she's pulling. After all, they have an incentive to keep these bad actors from using their systems.
Many people, usually housewives, bounce from one MLM scam to another.
I run a popular website that has saved hundreds of thousands of people money and time. Its been cool, but I lose about 1-3k/yr.
Often people tell me to run ads, or put affiliate links, or whatever.
The issue becomes, I wouldn't be saving people money.
The entire purpose of Efficiency Is Everything is to help people. If I'm shilling some crappy mutual fund or promoting an expensive protein shake- I failed my purpose.
/rant, but I do not think I will be profitable unless I contradict my original purpose.
I've paid many thousands of dollars towards courses to get my degree from a top university and most of them were awful. As with any university, there's of course no way to get a refund or make any public complaints that would yield an outcome.
Pay with a credit card, then you are at least protected if anything goes wrong.
I know that doesnt absolve from responsibilities, but I cannot imagine that experience.
I have friends who spend pretty much their entire lives on FB and Insta and they would swallow anything from there... last time one was surprised when I told her a watch she saw advertised on FB with a huge discount (300£ to like around 39£) was never at 300£ in the first place.