[adrianhoward]

But it has always been pure sleaze and will continue to be so for the forseeable future.

I disagree. It's like condemning all 'learning to program' products because of the terrible 'Learn Java in 3 hours for idiots' books.

Sales, marketing, running startups, etc. are teachable skills. Learning those skills helps enormously. Figuring out what's a good source of learning is, like in any other field, a job of research and reference chasing.

I wish some of these things had been around ten years ago so I didn't have to learn stuff the hard way ;-)

[righyeah]

"It's like condemning all..."

No, it is not like that. I'm not sure why you would see it that way. It is condemning a very specific practice. This practice is much like multi-level marketing.

You might think of it as a sort of recursion. To use your example, it would be like selling a book on how to sell a book on how to learn to program. You might do very well with this sort of business but it does not require that anyone ever learns how to program. That is, the book does not need to be effective in accomplishing anything more than selling itself. As long as you understand this, it's fine. But somewhere down the line, someone may actually want to learn to program (not just sell ebooks). If this still isn't clear I am happy to give another example.

Do some Google searches for "how to become wealthy without...", "work from home..." or some similarly popular too-good-to-be-true idea, or even just "internet marketing". You will find eventually examples of people, who have (surprise) done very well for themselves, by selling advice on how to sell advice on how to {become wealthy, work from home, etc.}, using the internet (email, web). These "advice on how to sell advice" schemes are perhaps the most lucrative forms of advice that can be sold via the internet. And also the most hollow. A best selling ebook might simply be a ebook on how to sell ebooks (on how to sell ebooks)! Keep recursing.

Or just cut to the chase and search "multi-level marketing".

[ryanwaggoner]

Your whole attack falls apart here, because none of Brennan's products are about how to build products. They're all about how to better do consulting (which he has done and continues to do). There's a pretty strong difference here.

[righyeah]

"none of [his] products are about how to build products. They're about how to do better consulting..."

The question is: What is being consulting on?

Is it substantive?

Building products seems substantive. Especially building products that can produce sufficient income over the long term. But if it's not on bulding products like this then what is it? Is it about how not to have to build products that make sizeable but not sufficient income and instead to sell advice to people in that position? How clever.

If every developer were to become a "consultant", then who is left doing the grunt work of actually building products? Who is left to discover these websites, while they can produce decent bursts of monthly income, are not enough to sustain someone over a long period?

[ryanwaggoner]

Sorry for not being clear. Brennan is a programmer, and his audience (myself included) seems to overwhelmingly be programmers who do freelance programming. So his products are specifically for programmers who do contract / freelance programming work. Is that clear enough?

This discussion might be more productive if you had bothered to even check out his products.

[righyeah]

To be fair, what I am commenting on goes well beyond this specific blog. The type of practice I've described gets much, much worse than what is on this blog. But is essentially the same thing, only to a different degree.

It's ironic that the web has opened up the door to vast amounts of free information and at the same time led to many people believing they can and should sell any information they manage to acquire. Will some people pay? Yes, some people will. Buy my ebook and I'll explain how.