I just bought a course, based solely on the glowing recommendation of somebody I’ve come to trust and respect.
The course is made up of five actual, physical books. It costs $300.
Since the seller is only willing to ship in the U.S., I will need to have these five books shipped to my friend’s post office box in South Carolina, and then pay more to have them forwarded on to me in Spain.
The whole process to order this course has taken about three weeks. The seller has no website, no phone number, no email address publicly listed.
And in case you’re wondering, there are no copies of the course available on Amazon or eBay or other popular “web sites.”
(After this course was recommended by somebody I’ve come to trust and respect in a semi-public setting, I saw someone on Twitter asking how and where to get this course. There were no responses.)
The way I managed to get this course is I remembered a copywriter who mentioned he had worked with the creator of the course. I contacted the copywriter. He put me in touch with the family of the guy who created the course.
Then it was back and forth over email with the daughter of the course creator for a couple weeks, with each back-and-forth taking another few days.
Finally, I made the payment last Friday. I had hoped to hear that the course has been shipped, but the weekend passed. Yesterday, I got a message from the daughter. She wrote:
“Hope you had a great weekend. Thanks for sending the PayPal; I received it and have the package ready. I forgot to ask earlier: Are you interested in other courses that I have…”
… and here followed a list of about 15 more attractive-sounding courses, at least going by titles alone, because that’s all there was. No price, no details, no sales page, no order form. That’s the upsell process. And thanks to this upsell process, it will be another few days before my course is shipped.
I’m not telling you this to complain. I’m happy to get this course and amused by the ordering process.
I am telling you this because, while you might not realize it, there’s a dark marketplace for courses. “Dark” as in “dark web,” the web that’s not accessible publicly or at least searchable by Google and Perplexity.
The fact is, there are billions of dollars’ worth of info products that are not sold on Clickbank, or eBay, or Amazon, or on anybody’s website.
Maybe these info products were created before the web and are simply sitting in a garage or warehouse, in book format or on tapes or DVDs.
Or maybe these info products were online once. But the hosting expired. Or they were a one-time offer. Or the creator simply moved on to other things, and the only place are now is on somebody’s hard drive.
Or maybe these info products are available online, but not publicly. Maybe they are simply sold via backchannels, to people who are on private email lists, or inside private communities, or only to people who know somebody who knows somebody.
To be fair:
Not everything that’s old is gold, and not everything that’s hidden is worth uncovering.
But there is gold, and a lot of it, among the many info products in the dark marketplace.
This is a legit opportunity, for anybody who has the digging instinct, and a bit of marketing and copywriting chops. To wit:
You can find these dark market info products, and simply sell them as-is to a new audience…
Or you can convert them to a new, more accessible format…
Or you can repackage and rebrand them into an offer of your own, while paying the original creator a licensing fee.
If any of this gets you excited, and you’re thinking “Oh if only there were more info on how to do all this,” well, then you’re in luck. This is the kind of stuff that’s taught, discussed, and practiced inside Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community.
Travis happens to be the person who recommended the course that I ended up buying, based on his recommendation alone. That’s because I happen to be a member of Royalty Ronin, and while I’m not very publicly active there, I do lurk and absorb information and even put it to use.
As I’ve written before, at $300 per month, Royalty Ronin is expensive. But at least in my case, it has paid for itself many times over.
If you’re curious about profiting from the dark marketplace for courses, but hesitant to risk $300 to test out Ronin for a month, then you’re in luck once again. Because Travis is currently offering a week’s trial of Royalty Ronin for free.
If you’d like to join me inside and see if it’s for you: