1 Million Monthly Income for Anyone!? How to Spot Easily Deceptive Products
'Anyone can do it,' 'Earn money with copy-paste,' 'Limited time offer'—many people would likely frown upon seeing such phrases on a landing page (LP). Yet, at the same time, we find ourselves stopping our hands from skipping YouTube ads or accidentally clicking on posts on X that include screenshots. Behind the frenzy of the generative AI boom, information products that seem to promise 'success' are being mass-produced every day.
Why do people get drawn into these products even when they know they are clearly suspicious?
The background lies in human 'information vulnerability' and 'cognitive bias.' Especially with unknown technologies—such as ChatGPT, image generation AI, or AI video editing—people are prone to feeling an anxiety that they are the only ones falling behind. This impatience paralyzes thinking, leading them to jump at 'passive fantasies' like 'you can earn money if you do X' or 'you just need to copy the methods of successful people.'
However, these information products are structurally 'designed to deceive.'
A typical example is 'performance appeals.'
For instance, numbers like '3 million in monthly sales' or 'surpassed 500,000 in the first month' are displayed. But if you look closely, the 'proof' is often a doctored screenshot or a PayPay receipt history. And the most crucial part—'How? Why is that possible?'—remains vague.
Even more clever is the seemingly kind message that says, 'You can do it too.' 'No skills required,' 'Even for housewives,' 'Easy for side-hustle beginners'… but these are nothing more than words to amplify the 'reason to buy,' not the appeal of the product (the teaching material) itself. If it were truly valuable skill or know-how, it should 'narrow down the target audience' and not be a universal solution that works for everyone.
Here, what you should be aware of is that a 'business that sells dreams' and a 'business that sells systems' are completely different things.
For example, saying 'If you post with this template, you will grow' or 'If you copy this AI prompt, work will come your way' is merely 'one example from the past'. If the algorithm changes, it won't work, and it cannot be replicated without that person's character or communication context. In other words, 'products that sell only the results' are extremely dangerous.
Also, as a typical 'fraudulent structure,' there is a scheme to earn money not from '0 to 1' but from '1 to n'.
What this means is that in reality, the person themselves is not 'earning money from an AI side hustle' but is only 'earning money by selling the method of an AI side hustle'. In other words, they are just earning money by selling teaching materials or courses, and the content of that 'side hustle know-how' has no reproducibility. 'Products for selling products' with no substance circulate like an infinite chain.
To see through such structures, it is good to ask yourself the following questions.
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✅ 5 Questions to Spot Easily Deceptive Products
Who is proving that track record and how? (Is there third-party verification?)
They say 'you can do it too,' but what are they assuming?
Is the 'know-how' outdated? Will it work in the current environment?
Are they just 'earning money by selling it'?
Why would you be in trouble if you didn't buy it? Would you really be in trouble?
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Information products themselves are not bad. The mindset of taking them at face value, stopping your own thinking, and expecting to be 'saved' is more dangerous.
Truly useful educational materials are those that "provide an opportunity to think for yourself," not those that "make you dependent."
Successful people in the age of generative AI never seek "magic templates." Instead, they repeat an extremely mundane cycle of forming hypotheses with their own minds, experimenting on a small scale, verifying, and improving.
That is precisely why what you need to avoid being deceived is not knowledge, but a "perspective."
"Who is selling this information, why, and for how much?"
"Will I really be able to change if I buy this?"
Keep asking yourself these questions. That may well be the "highest form of literacy" in the AI era.