Should You Trust Online Experts? Should You Be One?

In the age of the internet, everybody can become a teacher. This is because everyone knows something that is unique to their education and experience which they can share to anyone. And the internet makes this sharing of knowledge possible.

Others are content with sharing whatever they know online without claiming mastery of whatever it is they are teaching. However, there are those who teach online and even physically who claim that they are masters of a certain knowledge or skill. And they insist that they should be categorized as experts.

While it is true that there are many teachers out there who are truly masters of their knowledge or skill, should you listen to them all the time and even pay them good money just for them to share their skill or knowledge to you?

There was a time when skills and knowledge were hoarded by the gatekeepers of knowledge and skills. They gave out knowledge sparingly and in exchange for usually good amounts of money.

The old ways for a person to gain knowledge and skills is to read books and learn from those who already know the knowledge. For example, if a person wants knowledge and skills on how to make shoes, they usually read books about making shoes and/or learn from an actual shoemaker.

But times have changed. The internet was invented and soon people were able to communicate with each other in a more faster and concise way. Many people soon began sharing not only idle information but also skills and knowledge.

Today; websites, YouTube and other digital media mediums are full of information regarding all kinds of skills and knowledge. If there is a subject a person wants to know, all they need to do is go online and most often they would find some sort of information about it.

These information can be had for a very cheap price and is most often provided free. Although the information is very cheap or free, the quality of the information you could find online is not garbage but mostly of a high quality.

This is because many people now are providing duplicate information of the same subject many people are searching for. For example, if one wants to learn about nuclear physics, Googling the search keyword “nuclear physics” would provide plenty of articles about the said subject.

This is proof that many forms of knowledge are so common now and well distributed that many people are almost distributing their knowledge for free. Usually, most of these people are distributing their knowledge for the price of you just clicking an online ad.

If you want to earn money being an online expert of some sort. Then you should bear in mind that whatever it is you are planning to teach online, most of the people who would consume your online content would already be jaded.

This means that most of these people have already a good information or understanding of whatever it is you are trying to teach. Usually, they have seen the same information before over and over again from some other content provider.

The likelihood of them paying good money to access your content is very remote as most of them would have been given the same information for free by some other content providers who have provided similar information before you.

This is one of the sad facts of life in the digital age. There are so many free digital information and products being provided online that almost all people want their digital products and information for free now.

Being a digital content provider myself, I can attest to the fact that creating digital products is hard work and I definitely feel that I should be compensated. The question now is this: By how much do I want to be compensated?

This is the answer to the question. This applied to both provider and consumer of digital information. So it does not matter if you are an amateur or an expert in a particular knowledge or skill. It is both the provider and consumer who would eventually price a product based on market conditions.

If it took you years to gain knowledge on a particular subject or information, don’t expect that just because you spent years learning, you would be rewarded commensurately as well. People now expect to pay little or nothing to learn what you know.

But if you want to be a provider of online information and perhaps someday even dreams of being called an expert, then do not be disappointed if you do not earn readily or get known readily.

An online business is usually a “long game of quantity. It is usually those who stick to creating online content through thick and thin for sometimes years that win the online business game.

But if on the flipside you are a consumer of digital content and not a producer, should you feel bad that as what is happening today, you are bombarded with similar digital products which seem to repeat themselves over and over again?

No, you should not. If you regularly consume online information, you would notice that there would be bits of new information on the same old information. If you are lucky, all the information would be entirely new.

This means that online information evolves over time. It becomes better and better all the time. This is because content producers try to outdo each other as time goes by. The product might be better, but it is still the market that decides on how much to pay for the online information.

There are many kinds of knowledge that is freely available online. I can only discuss those that I have generally encountered so far and have a bit of experience learning already.

Financial Information

There are many finance information and so-called experts online. However, most of the financial information provided by these people generally fall in two categories. These categories are saving and investing.

Let us discuss the saving category first. Most of the saving information I learned from these teachers and so-called experts I know already. But as I have mentioned before, information evolves and gets better. I am willing to consume these digital content over and over as long as I continue to learn something new.

Now we go to the investing category. This is where the information given gets tricky. What are these investing information? These are usually about investing in financial instruments and markets such as forex (foreign exchange market), stocks, bond and notes.

While learning from investing is not entirely bad, there are so-called experts online that blatantly lie to you about the financial investing information they teach. I cannot give out the names of some of them for they can be very vindictive and might even sue me.

But you would see patterns in the way these people teach. Usually they would brag about their financial success. Usually they entice you with their so-called mansions and sports cars and some even mix in beautiful women or the charity they supposedly provide for.

But these experts are not experts at all. They are most of the time selling their courses which supposedly makes you financially savvy that in no time you would gain the riches that these so-called experts promise.

Fiduciary

I know of one thing that could help both provider and consumer of such financial information. This is by becoming a Fiduciary. This title means that if a person is one, they are legally and morally obliged to put the financial interest of their client above their own.

This is especially good for the consumer of financial information. This means that whoever is providing them with the financial information, this person must have no ulterior motives but the benefit of his client or viewer.

If this fiduciary fails to provide for the best interest above their own, then they could be legally punished by the authorities. For the fiduciary, their title has the advantage of having a trustworthy reputation.

Self-Help Information

Experts at self-help teaching like to give out information that a person just needs to do something in their life and their life would be better. Usually this involves adapting a certain habit or routine in their life.

There are a lot of people who pay good money for such information. But is it really worth it? As I have said, everybody has something to teach and information becomes better and clearer as time passes by.

But if you search the YouTube keywords “what’s wrong with self-help,” you would find many videos telling you what is wrong with the self-help market these days. One of the problems according to some people who have studied the self-help market is that these so-called experts tend to overcomplicate their teachings.

This means that the more you read more of these self-help books, the more you get confused. Self-help for you becomes a knowledge akin to accounting or any college courses when self-help is basically just making small gradual improvements in every facet of your life.

There is no need to overly change your life just to comply with what a self-help book teaches you. All you need is to make small goo changes in your life one at a time. But this simple but effective information does not make a lot of money unlike complicated and mostly unattainable self-help book advise.

The Self-Help Industry Is Booming

This does not mean that the self-help industry is not growing. In fact, it is growing well. As of 2016, the industry was worth $9.9 billion and is expected to grow by $13 billion as of 2022. This means that a lot of people want self-help information.

If you have something to say on how to improve one’s life, then today is the best way to spread it and hopefully you would make money out of it. As I have said, take small good changes one step at a time.

You could use this as a reference in making your self-help information. Once people see that the small steps they have taken has changed their life for the better, the more your reputation as a self-help teacher and even an expert would be solidified.

Health Information

Being not a medical professional myself, I can only give a small advise to anyone who consumes medical information. My advice is that you should only consume information from actual registered medical professionals.

There are many people who give out pseudo-science advise especially in the field of herbal and alternative medicine. There are even registered medical professionals who also give out pseudo-science advise so be very careful.

The best thing that you can do is to compare the teachings of more than two medical teachers and see which information is common between them. The more medical teachers you can compare the better.

Marketing and Selling Information

There are many people who have a career in marketing and selling. Selling is also a must-have skill for anyone. For one, everyone must at least know how to sell themselves to be successful in life.

I myself have consumed many marketing and selling digital content. I can almost guess what are the outlines of these digital content. It starts out with the teacher or so-called expert starting out as a ‘loser’ in life.

This means that the person was initially not good at marketing. They might also say that they were once poor, uneducated, handicapped or face other obstacles in life. Then, out of some coincidence they discovered a marketing and selling skill that they usually learned from a more senior marketing expert.

This comprises almost all the marketing and selling books I have seen and heard. Then there would be the inspirational talk of not giving up and one day, you their listener or reader would become a marketing and selling success.

Sad to say, but this is the essence of most marketing and selling information online. My advice is to continue listening to them to learn new marketing knowledge and be inspired, but don’t think that there is anything extraordinary new about most of them.

There are plenty of information with clear value in them. For example programming, car repairs, arts and crafts, woodwork, tooling have a clear outcome value. There is no danger that the teacher or expert is trying to teach worthless information.

For the teacher of these kinds of information, there is more believability in you as the viewer (especially in YouTube) sees the result of your teachings. These may be subjects that you may be interested in teaching as teaching them does not endanger you of being labeled as a conman or snake oil salesman.

There are now many teachers and so-called experts who teach all kinds of knowledge online. If you want to be one, bear in mind that competition is fierce and consumers of digital information are so jaded that they almost expect you to provide your information for free.

If you are the consumer of information, should you trust these so called experts? There is almost some sort of value that can be derived from the teachings of anyone. The important thing is that you must get this information for as little as possible without devaluing the hard work of the content creator.

Career Advise I Would Have Told My Younger Self.