If it really makes that much, why are they selling it to you?
When a seller puts their own revenue on the screen as the reason to trust them, ask the question the figure is designed to stop you asking: if a method reliably prints that kind of money, why is it being sold to strangers for a few hundred pounds? A genuinely reliable money machine is not something you teach ten thousand competitors to copy. You run it, or you guard it. The act of mass-selling the method is the strongest evidence against the method.
The tell. A big monthly number, usually revenue and not profit, undated, with no denominator, used as the credential. Then the turn: and we will show you how.
Why it works. Visible success is a shortcut. We assume someone rich must know something worth paying for, and the bigger and more confident the claim, the less we interrogate it. That is the authority and social-proof shortcut doing its job, and it fires hardest exactly when the claim is hard to check, which an income figure always is.
The check. Three questions pull the claim apart. Is that revenue or profit? Over what period? And is it earned from the method, or from teaching the method? The last one is the whole game. Very often the business turning over the headline figure is the business of selling the course, not the business the course is about. Then ask the only one that matters to you: what percentage of your students reached the result in the advert? When the United States regulator took a coaching seller to task, its own filing noted that very few buyers, if any, made money, while the marketing implied they all could.
The limit. A seller who genuinely earned a sum may say so accurately. The line is whether they imply you will repeat it without showing you the spread of what buyers actually got. A true "I made this" is a fact about them. "You will make this" is a claim about you, and it needs the denominator.
What honest looks like. A seller who says, plainly, here is what I earned and how, here is what a typical student gets including the ones it does not work for, and here is why it might not suit you. Cross-check the visible-wealth version of this on the rented lifestyle and the story version on I was just like you. Then run the master check: proof you did not make yourself.
Common questions
- Is a coach showing big income proof that they are legitimate?
No. A seller's own revenue is the weakest credential there is. The figure is usually revenue not profit, undated, with no denominator, and very often it is earned from selling the course rather than from the method the course teaches. The number that matters is what percentage of students reached the result in the advert, and that is the one rarely shown.
- What is the difference between revenue and profit in these claims?
Revenue is the money coming in before any costs. Profit is what is left after them. A headline like "£250k a month" is almost always revenue, and frequently it is the revenue of selling the course itself. Profit, and the spread of what buyers actually earned, are the honest figures, and their absence is the tell.
Sources
- In multi-level marketing, the one corner of this industry where income figures are published at all, a review of seventy disclosures found most omit the share of buyers who made little or no money and lead with a few top earners; coaching sellers face no such requirement, which is why the percentage of students who reached the advertised result matters more than any single figure. · Federal Trade Commission staff report, Multi-Level Marketing Income Disclosure Statements (September 2024)Checked 4 June 2026
- In its action against an online business-coaching seller, the FTC alleged that although the programs cost thousands of dollars, very few buyers, if any, made money, while the marketing implied large profits were typical. · FTC v. Lurn, Inc. and Anik Singal (Federal Trade Commission, September 2023)Checked 5 June 2026