When the desires for [[Wealth]] override the intrinsic enjoyment of [[Creativity]] and having a [[Personal Brand]], encouraging you down the path of potentially becoming [[Online Creator Frauds]] I feel this is mostly gauged by your [[Brand Monetization]] strategy and the [[Marketing]] of your products. How can I prevent this while still making enough to survive? One approach could be to focus on the [[Value is subjective]] you provide before the income or return incentive. Some ways could include: - Initial paywalling with the eventual goal of making it more accessible - Kind of like how startups may provide generous offers in the beginning to scale with the new finances - Prioritizing helping - If you forced people to ONLY join your paid community or do consultations to offer help it shows you are in it for the money rather than the impact. Obviously, as things scale, it will be harder to always attend to everyone, but hopefully by then you can still make time occasionally or hire other people to help you. - Refunds from unmet expectations and misdirection - The problem with this is that people may be too scared to ask for refunds, but this can be prevented by being transparent on what is in the product and focusing your marketing on those who would actually benefit from it rather than just as many people as possible - Other suggestions can be seen in [[Online Creator Frauds#Application]] ## References ### YouTube has a pyramid scheme problem https://youtube.com/watch?v=UBV1bHGcjfc really glad someone covered this topic not about selling dreams, but sharing practical advice people who stopped being the people they wanted to be, but instead pyramid scheme salesman if people really found the advice helpful then they would just apply it themselves lol, or share it for free because of how powerful it is in helping others? rarely do these people survive making normal content for katlientte its interesting how he also labels her getting people into streaming as a pyramid scheme simply because she sells the solution. i would say that it isn't? videos are filled with sales tactics for retention and selling wait, strike through pricing and price anchoring is illegal??? should bring this up with aidan #### Action Items i really like their thought on how to avoid videos like this. if it was a genuinely informational video you would be able to find it through seo. go against algorithm videos. ask about credibility, [[How to be a credible creator]] ### Examples - [Coffeezilla exposing CSGO gambling sites and creators](https://youtube.com/watch?v=v6jhjjVy5Ls) I'm honestly really happy coffeezilla is working on exposing the scene because it really did influence me as well. I'm lucky I learned the lesson in a cheap way in the grand scheme of things with only $300 but that was still a lot of money at the time. It's just really unfortunate that these big influencers who have all the attention are stuck fulfilling their survival needs which then damage the people around them it really is the antithesis of what I want to be as a creator