Creators should stop building online courses now

Once upon a very caffeinated sabbatical, I started noticing a strange pattern: Courses were becoming the creator economy’s equivalent of junk bonds—once shiny, now suspiciously unstable.

I didn’t just study this collapse.

I lived it.

I had the logo. The landing page. The hype.

Result?

Three buyers. One was my cousin.

The other two? Probably bots.

Turns out, building a course no one finishes (not even yourself) isn’t a business model—it’s economic self-sabotage in a creator costume.

And it gets weirder:

Underneath the failure, there were logical, psychological, and economic forces at war.
Forces no one talks about when they’re trying to sell you “6 Figures in 6 Weeks” webinars.

(Spoiler: most courses quietly die from market misalignment and creator burnout, not “bad marketing” — more on this soon.)

So today, I’m doing what I should’ve done back then:
Investigating the myths, breaking the system, and building a smarter model from the wreckage.

First stop?
The 4 biggest lies you’ve been sold about course creation.

Buckle up. Bring snacks.

4 Myths of the Course Business (That Made Me Want to Fight a Wall)

Before we get to the bloodbath of what actually broke me (coming up next—brace yourself)…

Although I wrote the entire Info product 101 like a breeze…

I need to take you through the four beautiful lies that seduced me—and pretty much everyone I know—into course creation mistakes that felt like dating a red flag on rollerblades.

Every myth sounds logical. Every myth sells hope.

And every myth sells creators into burnout faster than a DeFi rug-pull (source: my inbox full of meltdown DMs).

Let’s break them down before they break you.

Myth #1: If you build it, they’ll enroll.

Somewhere between “Field of Dreams” and “Twitter platitudes,” creators were handed a dangerously dumb blueprint:

“Just share your knowledge. The buyers will come.”

Except… they didn’t.

Because value ≠ knowledge.

What your audience values isn’t how much you know — it’s how much they believe your product changes their status, security, or satisfaction.

(Reference: Perceived Value vs Delivered Value Theory, adapted from Behavioral Economics research… you can check out a version here.)

📈 Simple Equation of Death:

Knowledge ≠ Perceived Value

Perceived Value ≠ Purchase

Result → Crickets + existential crisis

Meanwhile, your beautiful Google Doc outline sits there, wondering what it did to deserve this neglect.

(See also: The Elimination Framework for products that actually fit your brand and audience.)

Myth #2: Courses are the most scalable format.

Ah yes.
The Great Creator Lie: “Build once, sell forever.”

Reality:

“Build once. Sell maybe. Update forever. Support infinity.”

Nobody told you that selling a course is like adopting a pet raccoon—chaotic, needy, slightly dangerous.

Hidden costs you didn’t account for:

• Time-cost per student (support, emails, onboarding)
• Customer success management (because if they fail, you fail)
• Backend delivery fatigue (constant fixes, updates, tech fires)
• Platform fragmentation (your audience spread across 7+ apps like digital confetti)
  

📊 Table: Scalability Smackdown

You don’t scale a business on abandoned LMS platforms and sad Slack groups.

Myth #3: If it’s not working, it must be your content.

Welcome to the Course Shame Cycle:
Where hope goes to die.

It starts with a fumble—maybe a bad launch or slow sales.
Then… the voices come:

“Your content just isn’t good enough.”
“You must suck at teaching.”
“Maybe if you just added 3 more bonuses?”

Cue:

• Endless re-recording
• New templates, upgrades, rebranding
• Personal shame spiral
• Final boss: full creative burnout

Nobody tells you the truth: The SYSTEM was misaligned, not your soul.

Your monetization model might be wrong. Your offer ecosystem could be broken.
Not every valuable insight needs to be jammed into a 97-video Kajabi monster.

(See: The mistake that leads to Creator Burnout)

Myth #4: Teaching = Transformation.

Here’s the academic scam most creators accidentally recreate:

Confusing content delivery with transformation.

Teaching ≠ Transformation.

Sometimes the last thing your buyer needs is more instructions.
Sometimes they need:

• Immersion
• Implementation
• Identity shifts
• Micro-coaching or nudges

And that’s where I give you the Format-Intent Mismatch Disaster:

Stemming directly from the Format-Intent Cross

Problem:
You’re selling a “masterclass” when they needed a “sprint.”

Or you’re selling a “12-week course” when they actually needed “3 private consulting sessions and a checklist.”

🧠 Format-Intent Mismatch Formula:

Audience Desired Path ≠ Product Learning Format

→ No Completion

→ No Transformation

→ No Referrals

→ Collapse

Teaching satisfies you.

Transformation satisfies them.

Big difference. Fatal if ignored.

And if you don’t see the difference…you should check out 2 categories of Info Products before you sell your brain like a burrito.

Reality Check: What Actually Broke Me

(a cautionary tale, live and unfolding)

There’s a special kind of heartbreak when you realize you’ve outworked yourself into a dead-end.

For me, it wasn’t a dramatic collapse.

No final boss music. No heroic last stand.

It was death by a thousand “productivity hacks” — slow, silent, spreadsheet-colored.

Despite all the shiny frameworks, marketing funnels, and 2x speed YouTube motivation, my first course business faceplanted harder than a meme stock during a Fed announcement.

(If you’re wondering, yes: it hurt worse because it was supposed to be the thing that gave me freedom.)

The Info Product Fallacy: My Hidden Trapdoor

Here’s the painful pivot I didn’t see coming:
I had stumbled into what I now call The Info Product Fallacy.

Law #5 of the Creator Economy’s Hidden Curriculum

There are 9 more such laws. If you want to understand the hidden intricate movement of the creator economy, read the full deep dive: The Hidden Curriculum of Creator Economy

In other words: I confused likes for lifetime value.

I confused followers for buyers.

I confused content performance with product-market fit.

Economic Reality Check:

Scaling the Wrong Thing: Burnout at Light Speed

Instead of scaling freedom, I scaled burnout.
Beautifully. Efficiently. Systematically.

It looked like this:
🛠️ Build faster → 🧹 Polish harder → 📈 Launch bigger → 😵‍💫 Break sooner.

It’s the Economics of Marginal Collapse:

Every additional course unit I sold created more downstream customer management I couldn’t sustainably deliver.

(Think of it like a Jenga tower: success stacked wobblier, not stronger.)

As Rory Sutherland so perfectly put it:

My mistake:

I had a good idea (share knowledge),
but a bad strategy (scaling a model that punished success).

3 Internal Alarms I Ignored (but You Shouldn’t)

• 🚨 You resent your own students (secretly).
• 🚨 You dread every new sale because it means more work, not more leverage.
• 🚨 You daydream about deleting your entire email list.

If any of these alarms are ringing inside you…
Congrats. You might be trapped in the same broken matrix I escaped.

This isn’t where the story ends.

(That would be way too neat. This is creator economy chaos, remember?)

The Silent Epidemic: Dead Courses Everywhere

You can hear it if you listen closely enough.

The faint echoes of refund requests. The ghost towns inside Teachable dashboards.
The millions of half-finished, abandoned online courses silently rotting in digital graveyards.

Welcome to the secret epidemic hollowing out the so-called “knowledge economy.”

And no, it’s not because people “don’t want to learn.”

It’s because the system was engineered to fail.

Here’s how the scam unfolds:

• Platforms reward creators for launches, not completions.
• Course templates prioritize “what sounds impressive” over “what moves people.”
• Marketing culture tells you to scale optics, not outcomes.
  

What I’m Testing Instead (Because Insanity is Doing the Same Launch Twice)

This realization hit me like a cold slap during my sabbatical.

Courses were never broken because of the content.

They were broken because of the containers we put them in.

So now, instead of building bloated online courses nobody finishes, I’m experimenting with a whole different ecosystem:

Prototype > Promise System:

💬 Test Tiny Outcomes → 📋 Build Mini Tools → 🚀 Bundle Hybrid Offers → 🛠️ Craft DWY (Done-With-You) Services

Here’s what I’m actively prototyping:

• Hybrid Offers: Combo of coaching + micro-resources + short wins.
• Tools-First IP: Instead of 20 hours of lectures, deliver an asset that saves 20 hours.
• DWY Services: Partner with the buyer to do the thing, not just learn about the thing.
• Outcome-Guided Journeys: Mapping customer action first, designing product second.

In simple terms?
I’m tying value to outcomes, not optics.
Control to satisfaction, not consumption.

Or, in Rory Sutherland’s words:

Courses tried to logic people into results.

I’m trying to re-engineer the magic back in. ✨

Why This Shift Matters for the Future of the Creator Economy

If we don’t fix this now, the “knowledge economy” dies from the inside out.

Creators will burn out. Buyers will distrust creators.

And the platforms? They’ll keep profiting while both sides bleed dry.

This isn’t just about reasons not to build a course.

It’s about building an info product strategy that doesn’t accidentally trap you in an unsustainable creator business model.

(Related: check out The Creator-Operator Matrix to see which type of creator should avoid course-first businesses.)

From Dead Courses to Living Systems

I’m not saying I’ve solved it yet.

I’m saying I’m building a prototype that’s alive, evolving — and customer-backed instead of creator-ego fueled.

I’ll break down the frameworks, experiments, and messy data behind designing “Living Info Product Systems” instead of Dead Digital Graveyards.

🧠 Living Systems vs 💀 Dead Courses

🔮 Spoiler: It involves thinking more like a city planner than a course creator.

(But that’s for another day.)

Quick Matrix: Traditional Courses vs Prototype Models

Conclusion: Build Systems, Not Ghost Towns

I didn’t burn out because I was bad at building courses.

I burned out because courses are a rigged game — and I was playing it by someone else’s rules.

The creator economy doesn’t need more half-finished knowledge vaults gathering dust.

It needs living systems that move with people, adapt to their needs, and grow in ways no static syllabus ever could.

The old advice was “Build it and they will come.”

The new reality?

Build it wrong, and they’ll leave faster than you can say ‘Abandoned Cart.’ 🛒

So if you’re staring at your half-built course, wondering if it’s even worth launching…

You’re not broken.
The model is.

I’m not offering certainty.
I’m offering a crowbar. 🔧

The next phase?

Prototyping smarter, smaller, living things.

Products that breathe.

Products that move.

Products that don’t die on contact with reality.

More soon.

(And it’s going to get weird.)

(Writing this piece has taken me upwards of 20+ hours, from all the research to making sense of things and putting it up in a slightly easy-to-digest format.
So for some reason, if you decide to share this piece of content with others on social, it’ll be appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed, so thank you).

Sudhanshu Pai

Sudhanshu Pai is the writer of THE INFO CREATOR DEPT. He spends his days researching knowledge business, creators economy, why & how 7 fig info business scale (or flop) and generally figuring out blueprints, breakthroughts and strategies to help creator educators get higher return on their expertise.

The deep dives and other content take more than 100 hours to put together, so sharing this content with others on social media will be much appreciated (and won’t go unnoticed.)

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