Every now and then I indulge myself a little mindless trip down the Instagram algorithm rabbit hole. It was on one such trip today that I encountered a self-purported Chronic Fatigue Syndrome wellness guru. I’m always curious for a new nugget of wisdom, maybe a missing piece of the puzzle that could lead to some breakthrough in my own struggles. So I signed up my email for this dude’s free E-book, which was literally titled ‘How I healed from CFS’…, but expectedly just turned out to be a self-indulgent sob story ending with a miraculous, but unexplained recovery. The intention of course being that I would hopefully be inclined to pay for further resources so that I could enjoy a miraculous unexplained recovery of my own.
I’m not so naïve that I can’t appreciate that this is the way the world works. Everybody needs to make a living and why should anybody trade their insight and work for free? I remember encountering the same sort of problem when I was desperately trying to recover from my DPDR disorder (depersonalisation/derealisation: an anxiety disorder where the body is stuck in a dissociated unreal state constantly). On that occasion I was the perfect target for this kind of marketing – desperate, young and naïve. And I did pay for some guy’s recovery methods – and guess what? I can’t remember anything about it… Except for thinking to myself ‘gee having been in this boat and knowing how fucking miserable it is, if I was in possession of some secret wisdom that could beat DPDR, I’d like to think I’d be shouting it from the rooftops – not trying to capitalize on the misery of those who are exactly where I used to be.
I guess the moral of the story is be careful with whom you give your hard-earned money to, especially if they’re not providing any genuinely helpful free advice to point you in the right direction, and just trying to lure you in with marketing gimmicks. I get it – everybody needs to make a living, and if you’re good at something never do it for free, etc.. But you can still make a living while giving away free advice. There will always be people who need help, even when all the information is out there. Some might need that information interpreted or personalized, or they simply need someone to guide them through it. So, you don’t have to withhold all your secrets in order to make money off desperate people.
In my case: I want to make as much as anybody else, to make an income off writing would be a dream come true. But when my blog takes off because I’ve found solutions for all the problems I set out to, I will rely on an advertising, affiliate marketing on products that I believe in, and potentially donations from people who have appreciated and benefitted from my work. But my content is for helping people, just like I needed to be helped when I was in the same boat. I have no desire to profit off the misery of the similarly afflicted. So when I’ve solved my own Chronic Fatigue Puzzle, I promise I won’t hide my secrets behind a paywall.
Cheers,
Remy.
Toomanymind 