In the meantime: money

In the early days of my move to London, people often asked me what I loved about it. Especially when I tell them that I never, ever wanted to stay here after I graduated from my masters programme. I remember saying something corny like, “Anything I want to learn, I can learn here.” Over the years, I’ve taken or bought a variety of classes from sourdough making, vegan cooking c/o Plates, risograph and letterpress printing, bookbinding, jesmonite casting, darning and visible mending, Japanese woodblock printing, even investing (did not get very far on this as I do not have capital, lol) and so on. It was my way of exploring the city and my newfound “freedom.”

Naturally, when I wanted to kind of get better at learning how to make content that performed well on social media metrics, I looked into some courses… and then was subsequently bombarded with ads for similar programmes. While the course I ended up purchasing wasn’t exactly completely aligned with what I envisioned for myself in the content creation realm (and TBH, TBD on what that is anyway because cringe aside, I don’t know if I can, in good conscience, pursue an influencer consumption route, but that’s another story), some parts of it were useful in how I approached this new fixation on “creating value” and “engaging others” instead of just constantly talking about my personal life.

I’m on the journey of getting an ADHD assessment (as in, I have submitted a request for a GP referral for a Right to Choose scheme and have an appointment booked in… in two weeks time) but I have never met a hyper-fixation that I couldn’t clock. And “content creation” has been a big one for me, in that I wanted to make carousels on Instagram that were interesting and not necessarily about me yapping about my life, which is what I’ve mostly done on there thus far. A natural progression from relentlessly blogging from 14 years old, if I do say so myself. What I noticed was that a lot of these tactics of making money off of this are just so MLM.

If you’re new to the world, MLM means multi-level marketing, which is basically a corporatised way of saying “pyramid scheme”. If you’ve ever been approached to buy goods to sell to people you recruit who in turn sell more product, and therefore then offsets your initial investment. But then, they have to offload their own investment, looking for their own recruits, and when they don’t, they’re stuck with unsold products and unrealised dreams of wealth.

(This is also the model, I realised, of our evangelical “strategy” at my old church where we were expected to lead a group of 12 — because Jesus had 12 disciples — who then lead their own group of 12. But, again, that’s another story for another day. Maybe.)

And, like, there are courses that actually try and help you get to where you potentially want — ALL YOU NEED IS A HOOK, GOOD SEO, ETC. ETC. — but I’ve come across some (too many, really) that flaunt a certain kind of “passive income” that preys on unsuspecting people who want to try and earn money doing something on the side. I don’t know what your algorithms look like, but it’s usually a text overlay over a video of someone doing something leisurely like lounging on the beach, travelling the world, or enjoying a matcha (because of course) that says something like, “I made $127,540 while on holiday selling this PDF-or-app-or-Claude prompt to suckers (like you). Click below to set up your own system. No coding, just vibes.”

Personally, a well-structured programme is different from selling “low-ticket” PDF files or methods that essentially give you a formula to dupe other people into buying a repackaged version of the how-to guide you just checked out on. I’ve bought a lot of courses that are not 100% helpful — and hello, my masters tuition has decidedly given me zero ROI — but that doesn’t mean they’re completely useless. I’ve learned something, just not earned something at the expense of other people’s hard-earned cash and desperation eagerness to earn more.

And, like, I’m not against automation as a concept. I love automation. One of the best things I introduced into my workflow as a designer who had to batch edit a crazy amount of photos in different sizes for socials (lol) was custom Actions on Photoshop. I think when you use psychological tactics to hook people into buying something useless to pass on to others who will then make more useless “vibe coded” apps and PDF files to peddle to others, ad nauseam. When does it end???

To be honest, probably never. It’ll probably get worse.

I understand the appeal of easy money. Like, why would I put in three times as much effort to make a fraction of what these modern-day snake oil salesmen make? That’s just been an attractive option since time immemorial. Like, I get it. I get that life is hard, and you want to get your bag and actually enjoy life, or even be able to afford good groceries and whatnot without spiralling into a panic attack over which brand do get because the other one is 20p cheaper per litre.

My (quickly deteriorating) dream has always been to own property and actually feel settled in a place, but that’s literally never going to happen with an on-site 9-to-5 at £36,000 before taxes. It’s probably not going to happen at all, to be fair. But, the scumminess of the language of how they hook people into this model of wealth generation is still so icky to me, and no matter how much I dream of a place to call my own — unfortunately in one of the most expensive cities in the world, possibly on the brink of total economic collapse — I can’t bring myself to extract money from people this way.

I’ve had to ask myself: how different is this business model, really, from shilling unnecessary stuff to people, though? I’ve worked in marketing for way too long, and no one needs to purchase a pair of trousers for £400 or a bikini for close to £200. But, my job was to make you think you had a gap in your closet (and potentially, your heart) that these products could fill. We all know Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and if we haven’t even addressed the fundamental layers, I don’t think a sample sale visit is going to fix anything deep.

Essentially, what bothers me is that making money using this method is often contingent on you suckering people into buying your generic, AI-generated get-rich-quick scheme, who then have to look for other people to buy into it. A bit of a deep cut, but it’s like this episode of Veronica Mars where she uncovers the bogus performance of stocks her teacher invested in, in hopes of early retirement. Veronica urges him to dump the stocks before they plummet (which, insider trading, hello), but he falls on his sword because he doesn’t want some other sucker to be saddled with the loss.

So, a) there’s nothing wrong with selling goods or services (even stuff people don’t need, because we all want a little treat sometimes), but b) MLMs still exist! Like, I could even argue that branding is a little bit entwined with this whole situation because what do you mean a change in brand colours and implementing a more readable typeface means I can charge premium for the same thing? I’m not going to lie, it’s also crazy and a little bit humiliating to admit that I’m being targeted for these schemes.

One of the courses I got had lessons on “attracting” dream clients using the sheer power of your energy and essence as a woman. It’s a repackaged version of manifestation, law of attraction, and even the prosperity gospel being taught by people who got rich by charging other people to learn how to get rich. And then if you feel a little suspicious of this “strategy,” you’ll get told it’s your own attraction of negativity and subscription to mindset of scarcity rather than abundance that is holding you back.

“There’s enough to go around for everyone,” they’re saying, but the people who are buying into these online courses and content creation tips aren’t the billionaires or the people who are already rich. They’re propping their wealth on people who are so desperate for some reprieve of financial instability that they’ll try anything, often alongside another job or another responsibility that keeps them from making more money more conventionally.

There’s enough money in the world, true, but a lot of it never crosses the threshold down to the have-nots. Not without someone else getting exploited. These models only work if you have such a lack of consideration for what this money means to other people and have no problems taking it from them. After all, it’s their fault for not utilising the priceless knowledge you’ve imparted on them.

I’ve sat through a literal “master course” on being an influencer (lol) before I figured out it wasn’t quite right for me, and that’s okay. There are lessons in there that I can adapt to what I actually want to do. My life has been a long and meandering journey of acquiring transferrable skills. I’ve sat through hours and hours of free content whose sole purpose is to get you to convert to a big ticket item they’re trying to get you to buy into, so that you can “make back the investment x times over.”

They all say different things. Pick a niche. Don’t niche down too much, actually. BECOME THE NICHE. People like to sell you a formula that leads to a life you think you want, but there’s no formula like that. And at the end of it, when things don’t feel quite right, you realise that the life that this formula worked out for isn’t one that’s quite what you wanted for yourself.

I guess you have to draw the boundary somewhere and commit not to cross it. I’ve committed not to use AI for any generation of creative output, and I will commit to not scamming people out of their money by selling them repackaged and useless AI-generated tips and tricks for £17. And sure, you could argue that people have the agency to say “no” to things they feel like are scams, but as a person who has literally been scammed (as in like, actually scammed, and not in the “I didn’t get what I feel like I paid for” way), it just feels like a moral obligation to not partake in that.

I read recently that a lot of people don’t find value in higher education, even. I think that could be a scam, too. In the U.K., 13.9% of new graduates face immediate unemployment. That’s way too many people in precarity when they have invested in and gone through the route that promised stability. Do I feel scammed by my research masters? Kind of. And I got it from a university that is ranked 2nd in the world for art and design.

What’s my point? I don’t have one, to be honest. This was a 1 a.m. thought my brain couldn’t get rid of. Because how can I earn a living doing stuff I like doing without feeling like a grifter? Does my devaluation of own work reflect my own thoughts about creative output in general? Is a creative practice closed off to people who can’t afford to “buy into” it or even take the time off to pursue something beyond their 9-to-5 (who in some cases, have to pour time and energey into their side hustles because the average wage is just not enough to live on)?

I was privileged in that I didn’t grow up having to think about money in the way that I think about money now. It feels like it’s running out all the time. Every purchase that feels outside the bare minimum feels like a splurge, even though it’s just a literal flat white. And these worries trickle down to whether or not I’ll be able to live in a house I’d actually own, to if I’m able to keep working as an artist, to questioning if it’s fair to try and have a baby if I don’t feel like I’ll be able to give them the same comforts and opportunities my parents have and continue to give me.

I don’t mean to catastrophise my situation at all. I’m sitting in my flat in the middle of a workday afternoon writing a Substack essay, after all. But, just… are these schemes the only viable way to make money these days? How many influencers do we really still need, and if you don’t want to shill products for other people to buy into, what value does your influence have to companies who can pay you?

I suppose maybe most types of wealth generation are just sometimes incongruous with one’s values. And maybe my deep-seated insecurity about money is tied to that acknowledgement of resisting these tactics. The numbers of promised wealth are attractive. I believe the things I want are fairly simple, but the way everything is going up in price pretty consistently, I’m not sure there’s a path towards getting those things in life that doesn’t involve some type of scamming or like, incredible patience. Maybe I’ll get my dream home when I’m 65.

Highly unlikely, but at least I didn’t get there selling automated crap to people who are trying to get out a financial hole like I am.

What’s frustrating is that the stuff I’m working on and pouring so much of my time and effort in is probably what’s going to not be doing well in terms of financial returns. Like, these things probably do work — I don’t know, I haven’t tried — but just because they do probably work better at creating profit, especially when the effort you need to pour into it is a fraction of what you would put into making something meaningful, that doesn’t automatically mean that’s the better course of action. I don’t want to participate in creating an environment where that’s the norm.

Selling courses, especially those you’ve built yourself, isn’t evil, obviously. There’s an insidious feeling of just wrongness when you’re teaching people to use AI to scour the internet for information on a niche you repackage and sell when they could probably have used that money on something else that would have genuinely helped them more meaningfully. That’s just me, though. I don’t know, it’s a hard thing to navigate, and I can’t figure out how to wholly reject these tactics, but I can’t subscribe to them myself, personally. I welcome any and all thoughts on this. The world is so hard to live in right now, so I don’t feel I can grandstand morally and judge everyone who does this. But at the same time, I do think we have a responsibility in shaping the future by what we choose to do and champion.

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