Earning $1k and Beyond
My progress of Ramit Sethi's Earn1k Course
What I liked About Earn1k
Posted by on June 30, 2012
Some things I liked: I did like the two qualifier method, as well as the Ideal Client Profile. These were very helpful in getting rid of non-paying clients and figuring out the target market. I also liked the case study about Ramit at the IWTYBR blog. It was really good. I also liked how he admitted he got into the minds of us customers. Ramit knows a lot about his customers so we should do the same for our clients.
He is really good at marketing, but it may be the reason why he is able to get so many clients without delivering on the content that Earn1k promises. I don’t want to be a part of his upsell to get the details I thought I was paying for when Earn1K is the most expensive of any legitimate freelance guru I’ve come across. His reputation on Lifehacker and his IWTYBR book convinced me to buy the course. I know his advice is valuable, but I would’ve just appreciated less sizzle and more steak.
Earning $1k and Beyond 
Thanks for the great writeup. Very enlightening.
Thanks Jon. I hope it helped you learn more about Earn1k. I’m just giving my experience of Ramit’s course so others will have a broader scope of information from different sources. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Not sure if you still keep up with this blog but I almost let myself spend $2K on this dream job course of his. Check out this article that thoroughly dissects how he spends most of his energy drawing you in and building the perfect sales page: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/01/26/ramit-sethi-exposed-how-he-earns-millions-blogging/
Maybe he does have some great networking skills to share, but now I understand that most of his claims are repackaged email responses from email list subscribers, and in-course self assessments. There is another article where he says Nigerian princess scammers purposely make their emails look like scams so they know any responses are from only severely gullible people, making it easy to focus and convert them into $$$. Knowing the target and isolating them.
Wow, I forgot the dream job course costs $2k. That’s very high. A great book to read is How to Find the Work You Love and What Color is Your Parachute to help find your dream job. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to. I got a feeling there are a lot of people like us who have great skills and enthusiasm to do great work, but we just don’t know what do. I think Ramit plays towards this in his pitches. I guess he found his job, I just hope more people realize his pries are too high and just because he points out the faults of others for their failures doesn’t mean he is right and worth the cost.
I always feel conflicted towards Ramit. His I Will Teach book is very good, and I was the right target market for it so he does his due diligence on his target market. I even had my relative buy the book 2 weeks ago. It just seems with these courses there is a lot of “we’ll get to that later,” which gets a little annoying; especially when he finally does deliver the content it is fluff. He also makes fun of people so much in articles to make himself look edgy and cool to boost his brand. Most personal finance people/books are very boring so there is a market for interesting/fun PF experts. It’s just sad when they oversell and the delivery falls flat.
I recently wanted to launch a tutoring business that was to help people improve their basic computer skills so I re-watched the marketing parts of the course, and I couldn’t find anything he recommended other than classifieds and craigslist. They were almost a waste of time. Thanks for the comment!
tl; dr – His I Will Teach book was excellent and I highly recommend it, but his courses are over priced for the content provided. Ramit is very good at pitching and pointing out the bad advice of other personal finance experts, and he uses that to sell to a market of people who have great skills but don’t know how to utilize them.
Thank you for reviewing this so thoroughly, as a fellow member of the “80%.” Today is the “last day” for me to purchasing Earn 1K and I wanted to read as many genuine reviews of it as I could (at lease one review I’ve seen was *clearly* written by someone on his team), since I got a feeling that this was not worth the price. Not necessarily that this was a scam, but as resourceful as I am, I imagine I could easily get this information for next to nothing, if not for free, and I was doubtful that I could obtain significantly more success with this program than…well, anything else.
Re: Vito’s comment — That actually makes a lot of sense given what Ramit has said about “appealing to the client” and how his emails are worded. He makes it seem like this program is just what *you* need, YOU, reading this email, and even the way he says that it’s not for certain types of people makes you think, “Well, I’m not lazy, I work hard, I’m smart and have some seemingly marketable skills. I don’t really have any credit card debt either, I suppose.” What person who has a serious interest in personal finance (shown by subscribing to his emails, at the very least) doesn’t view themselves as a smart, hard worker, you know?
Thanks. I’ve been following Ramit’s recent month long pitch to get people to sign up for Earn1K, and I actually enjoy reading his emails because he is a really good pitchman. It’s kinda cool to go through Earn1k, and then get pitched too again because now I know what tactics he’s using when pitching to prospective customers.
I think it is very doable to find all this info. for free or close to nothing, but I’m tired of hunting down content. I’d rather just pay someone to do all the work and just hand it to me. I wouldn’t pay the $1,000 of course because the hardest problem I have is finding leads, and he does a really bad job at this part. His favorite and pretty much only tactic is to use Craigslist, which has become filled with junk services and requests for work.
Thanks for saving me a grand. Or rather, saving me the time as I would have requested a refund if my experience was the same as yours.
I’m a long time Ramit reader and have actually implemented a lot of his free material–I’m out of debt and am freelancing at more I was making at my day job. (Took me two years.) After his webinar tonight I nearly pulled the plug on Earn1k2.0, but instead scoured the internet for an honest review.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this up.
No problem, thanks for the comment. I spent more than 20 hours when I did the course exercises so I’m glad I was able to save you time. I’m learning time is actually more important than money. I guess that’s why I did actually like parts of Ramit’s course because his qualifier method and advice on getting rid of bad clients were beneficial to saving time.
His emails, webinars, and free videos are sooooooo long. It must be a marketing thing to get rid of uninterested people and filter in those that can’t stop craving more. I’m learning a lot by reading all his pitches, how he crafts it, and figuring out how he is selling his course to us so I can use those tactics when I sell. Heck, if you want to earn more money just watch and emulate Ramit, Tim Ferris, and every infomercial. They all have constant testimonials, statements of authority, time limits to buy, and extra bonuses up the yahoo. Sorry if this is getting to be long, but another good place to watch how to upsell your clients is to go to a retail store during a sale or that offers a credit card. They are great at getting people to spend spend an extra $5 to reach a spending threshold that gives them a coupon for 50% of their next purchase of $20 or more <— Old Navy is really good at this. Best buy is good at tacking on extras when buying Phones etc.
I was in the same position as Reve. I’m glad I found your blog and your review. I was considering taking the risk, but I think I’ll just go my own way (after all, I’ve probably accumulated enough information to start and be successful–I just have to /do it/).
Thank you for the honest review, Jason. I think I’ll pass on the course.
Do you have any recommendations (other than Ramit’s book)? As a note: I’m currently reading $100 Start-Up, Little Bets, and So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
Thanks. I am currently working on eliminating fear so I’ve been watching a lot of Ted talks and reading The Confidence Gap, but I’m only 50 pages in. Other than that, I’ve read E-Myth by Gerber, and plan on reading The 50th Rule, which looks to be pretty good for hustling. I’ll look into the one’s you’ve mentioned. The lean startup could also be a book looking into.
Hi Jason,
just wanted to thank you for taking the time to put up all this blog and keeping it online so people can find a neutral review of earn1k online (which surprisingly it’s a hard task). There are similar (cheaper) programs out there, like trailblazer, which I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than earn1k, but at least the price tag may be closer to the value.
Thanks again,
thanks, glad to help!
Jason, it is refreshing to read your review of the Earn1K programme and I wished I had read your blog posts earlier but it was so difficult to find a neutral review online. I, like you, am bitterly disappointed by Ramit’s upselling and think he has way overpriced this programme. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get my hard earned $1k back, but I will take it as a lesson learned.
Sorry to hear to that. Keep reading his stuff though. Like he says, he gives away 98% of his material for free so every now and again I find something that I like. He talks a lot about fear, and I noticed that getting over your fear and just start selling is probably 90% of the work. The other 10% is just perfecting your skills to sell better. I’ve been putting ads on online classifieds and getting more replies when I tweak my message to find the right pressure point, but it is very important to ask your target market first to see if what you are selling is even wanted. It saves so much time.
Read books on fear and watch TED talks about Fear and Taking action. I read the Confidence Gap recently, and it has helped tremendously in addition to all the TED talks on Fear on Youtube. I watch TED Talks more than TV now, and I enjoy it as much if not more.
Jason, I totally agree with you about 90% of the work done is getting over your fear and start selling. When my partner exited the business, I was left to run it alone from meeting clients, giving quotations to production.
I’m a freelance graphic designer, but I was in marketing before I quit my job. I didn’t have any formal education in graphic design and whatever I had was picked up on-the-job throughout my years at a corporate job.
If we believe in the product or we can do the job, others will start to believe too when we slowly gain ground. None of my clients asked to see whether I have a certificate, which design school I came from, or if I’m using PC or MAC to churn out those designs. All they are interested in is “How Can I Help Them?” “Can I Do the Job? (which is in another way of saying it is, will this person screw up?)”
Selling is like exercising. Once you take the first step and starts the ball rolling, you will get into the momentum of it. You will just want to keep improving, and make it work.
Love the TED talks too. You may also want to check out podcasts like My Wife Quit Her Job, or eCommerce Fuel – good materials.
– Hello from sunny island Singapore 🙂
Thanks for the heads up!
Hi Jason, I just watched Ramit’s webinar tonight with the same “buy tonight and get the masters program for free” pitch, with a few other interesting points. It definitely got my wheels turning about starting a business and had a few good points.
It was very refreshing to read your post and comments. I think it has helped a few of us save $1200. Thank you for this blog.
BTW since a few people found this blog because the were looking for honest reviews and you are getting traffic, you may want to mention what your freelancing business is on here.
Thanks for the feedback. Once the wheels start turning, it is hard to stop them.
Thanks for your review, and I agree with your assessment. I’m curious about what you did to “prove” you had done the work and didn’t get results, which is what Ramit’s sales email says is the criteria for a refund.
I just stated briefly that the course wasn’t up to the quality that I was expecting. I also gave an honest and real example or two from the course to provide feedback for them. Ramit’s employees are the people you work with. There was only 2 email exchanges. My original asking for a refund, and their reply asking for feedback. As you know, Ramit loves feedback. I can’t remember how long it took to get my funds back, but I believe it was within 2 weeks. Just to be clear, unless something has changed in the past year, you will get your money back if you request a refund. He is not a scam artist, but he does take advantage of your hopes, dreams, and fears.
Thank you for these REAL reviews of this program. I was actually considering taking his course “Zero to Launch” $2400, or ($199 a month) because I wanted to invest in myself, and I felt like I was missing the boat if I didnt sign up by the “expire date” I searched and searched for a negative review, or even one not affiliated with him, and couldnt come up with one. I even felt bad when I missed the cut off time to enroll( which happened to be midnight last night). I was actually feeling desperate to get the course, and was signing up for the waiting list . Then I found this review!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!! It was as if I was aware of all the tactics he was using, but I WANTED this to be the thing that would change my life. I almost caused myself a lot of extra stress by going into debt to buy that course, and that is one thing that I -or anyone else for that matter- DONT need:)
I’m glad it was beneficial to you! Still buy his book, I Will Teach, if you haven’t, it made me money by doing simple things such as calling my bank and asking if they had a higher interest account. Took 15 minutes.
He’s pretty good at getting into your head though right? Read his stuff and see what tactics he uses, then use similar wording etc. when doing your own sales pitches. It’s all about playing off your customers’ hopes, dreams and desires.
If you go to http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/webcast/3-ways-to-earn-more-money/ and watch the video until it ends, a link that leads to signing up for the course will pop up. You can shortcut that process by viewing the source of the page and looking for the link right after “Be sure to watch the whole video for a special offer”. The link will look like http://join.earn1k.com/?ud=6547823-13-256-32733-17-201598373-01243&md=782342-82674-12953-17-2015764-9284-01256 but this changes every so often to reset the clock.
Every time you use a new link it will bring your to the signup page with the clock ticking down from “1 day, 14 hours, etc left”. I’ve done it every day for two weeks.
On day 7 of the precourse, the “live” webinar is not actually live and if you look at the page source you can find the link to the mp4 (https://s3.amazonaws.com/earn1k/ebs-mindreading.mp4) and download it and watch it at your own leisure.
I’m still about to enroll in the course though! Just this free week of info has been incredibly valuable! I’m Ramit’s target audience, I have the money to spend on this and the same problems he points out. In fact the sense of urgency helped me to actually get off my butt and start working with this information. If I were in his shoes it would only make sense to automate this.
If while taking the course people are available to help me it shouldn’t matter if I’m taking it at the same exact time as other people. For that matter it doesn’t matter to me if it’s actually Ramit that gives me a refund if I need it or not. I believe this material will be worth more to me than what it costs.
Thanks Michael!