Ramit Sethi's "I Will Teach You To Be Rich"

I found what I considered to be an excellent blog on the topic of wealth creation -- Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich. At first glance his site appears to be a marketing scam. After raking through the voluminous information he has to offer, however, I can plainly state that there is much there that is worth your time. He offers it for free and appears to take a very ethical approach. I very much like how he's all about action.

I wouldn't say that I'd necessarily pay him for his services, of course. The value of his site comes from elsewhere. Pay attention to the techniques he uses in what he writes. Study them. His ultimate goal is to set a high value in your mind as to what his services are worth. That's what most wealth gurus do. Always pay attention to the marketing used when dealing with people who want to teach you to be rich. That's truly the key.

Marketing is about using what you know about yourself, using what you know about the other person, and, perhaps most importantly of all, using what the other person does not know in order to create a sense of value. Your services become valuable when you imbue them with a sense of value. That's what Sethi does throughout his blog. That's why he offers 99% of his information for free. That other 1% is where his bread and butter is. It may or may not be as valuable as the rest of what he's given you (and what he's given you is easily available elsewhere) but his website creates a sense in your own mind that it's worth every penny he asks.

Without going into details, he also uses subtle and very effective psychological techniques in what he writes to increase that sense of value even further. Study what he says, but also pay attention to how he says it. Study the gears that move in your own mind as you read through his words. It's effective and, at the end of it all, it's like you'll want his services.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The ability to attach a high sense of value to your services is perhaps the single most profitable skill you can develop. No one forces you to pay for a particular product or service. It's all about the value you choose to attach to it. A great example of how he does this involves a contest he was running every week for the past month. As a reward for successfully applying his principles, you could choose between an expensive prize worth thousands of dollars or 15 - 30 minutes of his time. The implication is that his time and the value of his services far surpass the value of whatever else he was offering. It's a classic psychological marketing technique.

There is nothing wrong with this. Value is in the eye of the beholder. This is exactly what he teaches.

At any rate, I would recommend Mr. Sethi's website unreservedly, if only as a study guide for the methods he uses in establishing value in the minds of his readers. I don't personally recommend his premium services. I personally do not need such services and I believe that no one's advice is worth as much as he asks. If you find yourself considering paying for his services, listen to this bit of advice -- the value of a particular service is no more or no less than that which you personally assign to it. If you find yourself convinced to pay that sort of money for advice, it's not so much that the advice is worth that so much as that you've been convinced it is.

Study, examine, and recognize the marketing methods that go into the way he sells his services before agreeing to put your hard-earned money into paying for them. Realize, just as he recommends, that an intelligent individual would negotiate a buying price before going in. Finally, recognize that nothing is given to you in life. Even with the right mentors and consultants you absolutely must earn your success every step of the way.