Rant: That $60 'masterclass' on plotting I bought was a total joke

I saw this ad for a writing masterclass that promised to fix all my plotting problems. The guy had some fancy credentials so I dropped $60 last Tuesday. Turned out the whole thing was just him reading his own book out loud for 3 hours. Has anyone else gotten burned by one of these expensive online courses?

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reed.ray1mo ago

Just him reading his own book out loud for 3 hours" - that is rough man. I almost bought into one of those too but a buddy talked me out of it. He said most of these "masterclasses" are really just glorified audiobooks with extra fluff. What gets me is the bait-and-switch. They show you clips of all these exciting lessons in the ad but the actual course is just them talking at you with zero structure or exercises. At least you can probably return that one. If you got it through a credit card or PayPal they usually let you dispute charges within 30 days for something that clearly misled you.

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christopher671mo ago

Tbh I saw a breakdown of one of those marketing guru masterclasses and it was literally just a podcast with slides. Someone on Reddit analyzed the curriculum and it was like 80% filler stories about their past clients and 10% actual advice you could get from a free YouTube video. The other 10% was just them pushing their other products. Ngl the whole industry feels scammy to me at this point. I read this article about how most of these courses have completion rates under 5% because people get bored or realize they got tricked. These guys know exactly what theyre doing with those ads too.

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