Recently at WAIC, last night was a dinner for our "Virtual and Real" bloggers.
This was the first time I met so many bloggers in person that I usually only see through a screen.
After a few rounds of drinks, I made my way to Kazik's table (yes, I just wanted to hang out with him repeatedly, hehe). I toasted him first, gave him a hug, and took the opportunity to chat for a bit.
I also ran into many other bloggers like Muyi and Chuanfan. As we chatted, we all coincidentally brought up the same thing:
"I've been thinking about selling courses lately."
This is actually quite normal. For current AI bloggers:
- Enterprise services
- Commercial sponsorships
- Selling courses
These have almost become the three main pillars of income.
As a blogger who has always been involved in knowledge payment, I never thought selling courses was something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, I really wanted to share my experience in this journey with everyone.
So, we symbolically asked for Kazik's opinion.
He said five simple words:
"Be cautious with selling courses."
At the time, I thought he was about to drop some shocking theory.
But after listening, I realized he was just reminding us of a more realistic and easily overlooked fact:
There is nothing wrong with selling courses itself, but it is very likely to ruin your IP and even drag down your account.
What really hurts an IP isn't the charging, but the delivery after charging
I thought of the recent viral incident of "Movie Hurricane" selling courses.
The course itself was only 49 RMB, which doesn't seem high. However, many users found out after buying that they needed to make secondary purchases on TapNow to actually complete the content.
Users feel: I've already paid for the course, why do I have to pay again halfway through?
Consequently, complaints, doubts, and negative emotions arise. For creators, explaining and digesting these issues one by one is a very painful process.
Another blogger, who wished to remain anonymous, also shared his experience.
His first course reached 2 million RMB in revenue with a unit price of 5,000 RMB. Looking at the results alone, it was a beautiful performance.
But once delivery actually started, he found that many users were stuck on basic issues like how to use the internet or set up a VPN.
He had to spend one or two hours of his precious time repeatedly helping users solve problems that weren't even part of the core course content.
Hearing this, I deeply resonated.
To be honest, the time I spend every day solving zero-basis problems for newbie users in my knowledge station has already become a major part of my work.
Sometimes, a user's question seems basic, but you have to answer it; if one link isn't caught, the other party might not be able to proceed at all. Even my entire course update rhythm is constantly adjusted because of these issues.
Thus, I fall into a very real dilemma.
- On one hand, my target audience is beginners. It's perfectly normal for them to ask these questions. Since I chose to serve zero-basis users, I should understand and support them.
- On the other hand, I consider myself a video blogger with a pursuit of content. I want to settle deeper thoughts and put more energy into high-depth content creation, rather than repeatedly solving network, installation, login, and basic operation issues every day.
Neither of these is wrong, but they are constantly competing for the same time and energy.
This has become my personal challenge for a long time.
When you are constantly pulling and choosing between delivery, Q&A, and content creation, you might unknowingly be doing what Kazik said:
Selling courses didn't directly ruin your account, but the endless delivery after selling is slowly consuming your creative ability and ultimately hurting your IP.
So how do you do it without hurting your account?
We followed up with another question:
Since selling courses can bring these problems, how can we do something that is both valuable and won't hurt our accounts?
Kazik's answer was very simple:
Go do truly altruistic things.
He created a trending platform that now has 7-figure daily visits. This project is quite similar to my idea for OpenLetter. My own https://openletter.xin/ has also accumulated over 300 users, all doing the same thing: continuously providing valuable AI information to everyone.
This kind of product can certainly be charged for.
Even if you only charge each user one cent, as long as the user scale grows, it can become a good income.
But Kazik doesn't think that turning this into a monetization product immediately is more valuable than opening it for free to everyone.
Because when you give something truly useful to everyone for free, it brings more than just direct income. It also increases people's trust in you, strengthens your IP, and lets more people feel your altruism.
And the returns these things might bring you in the future are much higher than a single, immediately calculable income today.
I have to say, I really admire this.
I think it's very cool.
Building a product that has demand, conversion, and monetization is valuable in itself; there's no problem with that. Monetization is not a sin, and selling courses is not an original sin.
But if we are willing to rethink the same thing from the perspective of open source and altruism, putting aside immediate income for a moment, the potential benefits it brings in the end might be even greater than direct monetization.
Being a blogger is more like playing a management game
After chatting, I suddenly felt that being a blogger is no longer a simple "nurturing game," but more like a management game.
You can't just look at how much content you posted today, how many followers you gained, or how many courses you sold. You also have to consider how to allocate your energy, how to accumulate user trust, what should be charged, what is better suited for free access, and whether a piece of income given up today will turn into greater IP value in the future.
In the early stages, you might have to spread a lot of energy and mobilize more operational means to make yourself useful and altruistic enough, rather than rushing to monetize every bit of traffic immediately.
Therefore, "forbearance" and "strategizing" will become increasingly important in my future career as a blogger.
Some things are not about being unable to make money, but about not needing to make it right now.
Some products do not lack commercial value, but giving them to everyone for free first might generate greater long-term value.
So, I decided to open-source my entire knowledge payment process
After seriously thinking about this, I made a decision:
I am going to open-source my complete knowledge payment process for everyone.
Not only that, I also plan to open-source my knowledge station, so that everyone who wants to make money through AI can see clearly how I did it and replicate the path I've taken.
You can turn this set of things into a product for immediate monetization, or you can choose to make it more altruistic. Both choices are correct.
But for me, the processes, experiences, pitfalls, and methods of building a knowledge station that I've accumulated in knowledge payment—I don't want to keep them hidden anymore.
I want to release them for free.
It's not because selling courses is shameful, nor because knowledge payment has no value.
It's precisely because I've been doing knowledge payment for so long that I can better understand: What is truly valuable is not just how many courses you sold today, but how many people actually took a step forward because of what you provided.
You can look forward to my content in the next couple of days.
This time, I want to lay out my path completely for everyone to see.
