Why is this so prevalent and people see it as a viable strategy instead of focusing on product and customers?
It is a viable strategy to sell anyone a dream. You don't have to live it today, but it makes it a hell of a lot more compelling (social proof) if you do.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
This isn't just in the indie hacking community. People sell real estate courses, stock investing courses, podcasting courses, youtube courses, small biz courses, and many more things you'd be better off by just reading a book or watching free videos instead of paying somebody an inflated amount of money for their "system".
There's no proven system. There, I just saved you hundreds if not thousands of dollars. That will be $499.
People are constantly thinking "I should do that" and will watch videos on it and even pay money to get an ebook or take a course on it. Maybe they start a channel, maybe they become successful?
I've seen a woodworking youtube channel turn into (in my opinion) a slimy "learn how to make money with a small biz" type of content where they just talk about their business. It feels like a lot of content is crafted to feed the algorithms for profit via ads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley#Brinkley_and_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XERA-AM#The_border_blaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkley_Act
(There probably are wagonloads of printed works - sales flyers, bottle labels, newspaper ads, etc. - documenting the literal "snake oil". Though you might have to do some digging in newspaper archives, libraries, and museums to find much of it.)
When you sell how to do something, you don’t have to shoulder any of the risk or good luck required to actually make the thing happen. A “how to do something” sale is shorter and more direct than actually doing the thing.
What always crosses my mind with most of these people is - are you making money from composing music, or is your income actually giving "advice" to people? I get the diversifying of income streams etc of course.
But theres a point - invisible to the viewer - where the person is not "doing some videos on the side to help people" anymore, but transitioned to being an "educator" instead of being a composer.
Is your job actually being a working composer, or are you an online-course person? There is a course by a composer which is $4000-$7000.
If you want to make money, portray yourself as the authority and sell the advice and wisdom of your underappreciated genius. The online courses are the modern 8-page ebooks.
But really - its almost impossible to see if the person is just doing videos or courses to help others or to pad their income vs becoming a fulltime content creator and doing the very thing they create content about as a hobby so to speak.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great experience, and I’ll continue doing it. But it’s a terrible way to invest your time for money. Building and selling a product or freelancing is IMHO a much safer way to make a living ;)
Be careful, you easily see the 10s of people who succeeded in selling courses, not the 1000s one who barely make a few bucks each month, despite great content.
But like what we used to call wantrepeneurs, they love the result, not the process. So they try to replicate the success of other people without bringing in any special skills or unique insights.
Those courses are an obvious recipe for people who want a recipe to get rich. It fuels an industry of people selling get-rich-quick courses to each other.
(I agree that the survivorship bias is strong within the indiehacker community)
Who should sell books on how to make a living online? People who haven't made a living online?
Then, would you buy it?
Yes, people who earn money only by selling such guides and has little earning outside of these books/courses, then those should be avoided.
This is the reason I don't buy self-helf books from most authors. If your largest success is selling self-help books and milking corporate funds for "employee growth", then you aren’t getting a dime from me.
For example, see "Trump University".
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-university-scam/
But instead of actually doing it, they sell advice. Wonder why?
In any case, just because you don't see them having a successful non-knowledge product, doesn't mean that they don't have the ability to do so. Despite decades of being known for his insights into strategy, Peter Drucker had never actually run a business until his 80's.
Their only success is in selling your dream back to you with a bit of fluff and widely documented approaches.
Because there is a market for easy money courses. As long as there is a demand and easy to do then people will work to supply that demand.
For example, imagine if there was just a single person making these "make money doing X" books, he would get very rich. People would copy him to also get rich, and then enough people enter until it is no longer easy to become rich making such books. So just standard capitalism.