Spent $200 on a viral TikTok marketing course and all I got was a bunch of generic advice that any free YouTube video could've given me.

The algorithm just pushed it hard because the creator paid for ads, not because the content was actually any good - has anyone else noticed paid promotions getting disguised as "expert tips"?

3 comments

3 Comments

williamhenderson7d ago

My neighbor paid $300 for a "landscape design consultation" last spring and got told to plant more bushes and trim his trees. That's essentially what you're describing here on a bigger scale. @josephbailey hit it well - people charge for packaging common sense into a course, not for actual insider knowledge. It's like paying someone to tell you that grocery stores put milk in the back so you walk past everything else. The whole system runs on making simple things look complicated so someone can charge you for the privilege of learning them.

josephbailey7d ago

i mean this with respect but people gotta stop thinking that paying for a course = getting secret knowledge. tiktok marketing is literally just knowing the algorithm and making content that people actually want to watch. you could've learned that by scrolling through the platform for a week. the real "expert tips" are just watch time, retention, and hashtags which are all free to figure out. paid promotions have always been disguised as expert advice since like 2018 when everyone started making courses. honestly the best tiktok marketers are just regular people who experiment a lot and pay attention to what works.

alice9287d ago

paid promotions have always been disguised as expert advice" - it's the same thing with those "university" ads on YouTube that look like news segments... I clicked one once and it was just a guy reading from a Wikipedia page.