TL;DR: Are Online Courses a Scam? What’s the Value of an Info Product in the AI Age?
Short answer: No, selling information is a legitimate business. A course becomes a scam when the seller lies about what it will do for you, such as promising income, faking reviews or hiding the refund terms.
What you pay for: Almost every fact in any course is free online, and ChatGPT or Claude can answer most questions in seconds. A good course sells the instructor’s experience, a tested path and the months of trial and error it saves you.
What a course can’t do: It can’t do the work for you. The instructor shows you the path they walked, and you still have to walk it.
Where the law draws the line: The FTC goes after unproven earnings claims, hidden refund terms and fake reviews. Selling information that exists elsewhere isn’t on its list. In 2026, Publishing.com agreed to pay $1.5 million over all three.
For course creators: Say what your course includes, what it doesn’t and what the buyer has to do. Back up every result you show, and nobody can fairly call your course a scam.
Post an ad for an online course, and someone in the comments will call it a scam. “This is all free on YouTube.” “ChatGPT can tell me this for nothing.” “Another guru selling a rehashed course.”
I’ve sold online courses for years. I sell my own courses on Thinkific and run programs for Leading Learning and Tagoras on LearnWorlds, including one that thousands of people have bought. So I take these comments seriously, and I’ve thought hard about where the line sits.
Some of the criticism is fair. Some sellers do make promises they can’t keep.
But most of the time, the word “scam” lands on a course that never lied to anyone, because the buyer expected something the course never offered.
In this article, I’ll explain where a legitimate course ends and a scam begins. I’ll show what you pay for when the information is free, what the law says about course marketing and how course creators can sell a course nobody can fairly call a scam.
Are Online Courses a Scam? The Short Answer
Most online courses aren’t scams. A course becomes a scam when the seller misleads buyers about the results, the income they’ll earn, the refund terms or who is vouching for the course. Selling information you could find elsewhere isn’t fraud on its own.
A scam needs two things. The seller deceives you, and you lose money because of it.
A course that turned out to be basic, slow or not right for you is a disappointing product. It’s only a scam if the seller lied to get your money.
| Situation | Scam? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The course covers material you could have found free online | No | The seller sold access, structure and experience, and never claimed the facts were secret |
| The course promised $3,000 a month in passive income, and almost nobody earned it | Yes | The seller made an earnings claim it couldn’t back up |
| You bought it, didn’t do the work and got no results | No | The course showed the path, and the work was yours |
| The “no questions asked” refund had hidden conditions | Yes | The seller misrepresented the refund terms |
| The reviews came from the seller’s staff or paid fans | Yes | The testimonials hid who wrote them |
| The course was too basic for your level | No | It was the wrong fit, which a clear sales page should have flagged |
Why People Call Online Courses Scams
The complaints come up so often that they’re worth taking one at a time. Some are fair. Others come from a mismatch between what the buyer expected and what the course offered. If you’re wondering whether you have enough expertise to teach at all, my guide on who can teach online covers that question.
| Complaint | What’s behind it | When it’s fair | When it isn’t |
|---|---|---|---|
| “It’s all free online” | Free videos, articles and AI tools cover most topics | The course adds nothing beyond a list of facts | The course adds experience, structure, practice or feedback |
| “The seller has no real expertise” | Anyone can sell a course with no credentials | The seller can’t show any record of doing the work | The seller has years of real results in the topic |
| “It’s a rehashed course” | Some sellers copy other courses or AI output | The course repackages someone else’s material as their own experience | The topic is common, but the lessons come from the seller’s own work |
| “They make more money selling courses than doing the thing” | Some income-teaching courses earn mainly from course sales | The seller hides that their income comes from selling the course | The seller teaches a skill they practice and is open about their income |
| “Fake urgency and endless upsells” | Countdown timers and constant offers | The deadline is fake or every lesson pushes the next purchase | A real enrollment window, such as a live cohort with a start date |
| “I didn’t get results” | The buyer finished, or didn’t, and nothing changed | The seller promised a result it couldn’t back up | The buyer didn’t do the work the course asked for |
The last complaint is the most common one, and its cause deserves a closer look. I cover it in the section on what a course can’t do for you, after a look at what you pay for.
“It’s All Free Online”: What You Pay For in a Course
Almost every fact in any online course is available for free. ChatGPT and Claude can answer most questions in seconds, so a good course sells something other than information.
I’d go further than that. If a course only sells information, AI has already made it close to worthless. Here’s what a well-built course offers on top of the facts.
Experience on Top of Information
The instructor has done the thing you want to do. They know which steps mattered, which ones wasted time and which mistakes cost them the most.
For example, a free article can tell you how to price an online course. An instructor who has priced and sold dozens of courses can tell you which price points sold, which ones stalled and why.
That layer of judgment is the part you can’t find with a Google search.
A Tested Path in the Right Order
Free information comes in pieces, with no order and no filter. You get a hundred videos on the same topic and no idea which one to watch first or which advice to ignore.
A good course gives you the sequence that worked. You learn the right thing at the right time and skip the advice that sounds smart but leads nowhere.
Time Saved and Fewer Mistakes
The real trade in a course is money for time. You can piece the same knowledge together on your own, and plenty of people do. It usually takes months of trial and error, and you’ll make many of the mistakes the instructor already made.
A course shortens that trip. You pay to arrive faster, with fewer wrong turns along the way.
Feedback, Practice and Commitment
Information alone rarely changes what people do. Practice, feedback, a community and live help do. The best courses build these in, through exercises, reviewed assignments, live Q&A sessions and peer groups.
Price plays a part too. In my experience, what people pay for, they protect, and the research points the same way. A study of Harvard and MIT courses on edX, published in Science, found that 3.13% of all learners finished their courses in 2017-18. Among learners who paid for a verified certificate, 46% finished.
Paying doesn’t explain that whole gap, since people who pay often arrive more motivated. The commitment still counts. As I put it in a recent newsletter, “Free is why they didn’t finish.” Our breakdown of online course completion rates has more data on who finishes and why.
Here’s how free information compares with a well-built course.
| What you get | Free information and AI | A well-built course |
|---|---|---|
| The facts | Yes, almost all of them | Yes |
| The instructor’s experience and judgment | Rarely | Yes, it’s the core of the course |
| A tested order to follow | No, you build it yourself | Yes |
| Practice and feedback on your work | Limited | Yes, in courses built for it |
| Accountability and a community | No | Often, in cohort-based courses and community courses |
| Proof the path works | No | Yes, from past students’ results |
| Time to results | Longer, with more trial and error | Shorter, if you do the work |
If you’d rather piece it all together yourself, that’s a fair choice. A course is for the people who’d rather pay to save the time.
What an Online Course Can’t Do for You
A course can’t do the work for you. The instructor shows you the path they walked and found success on, and you still have to walk it yourself.
For example, a course on building an email list can show you how to write a lead magnet, set up a sign-up form and write a welcome sequence. It can’t write your lead magnet, promote it or wait out the months it takes for a list to grow. If you want someone to do the work, you need a done-for-you service, which costs far more than a course. Online coaching sits in between, with an expert who reviews your work and adjusts the plan for you.
This is where most “scam” accusations start. A buyer pays for a course, expects results to arrive on their own and feels cheated when they don’t. Sellers can prevent most of this by saying it plainly on the sales page, before anyone buys.
Where an Online Course Crosses the Line Into a Scam
A course crosses the line when the seller misleads people to make the sale. The table below shows what that looks like next to a legitimate course.
| Area | Legitimate course | Misleading course or scam |
|---|---|---|
| Earnings and results | Describes typical results honestly and backs up any numbers it shows | Promises income or results it can’t back up |
| Testimonials | Real buyers, with any incentives disclosed | Reviews from staff, relatives or paid fans, with no disclosure |
| Refund policy | Plain terms, easy to find and honored | “No questions asked” with conditions buried in fine print |
| Scarcity | A real deadline, such as a cohort start date | A countdown timer that resets every time you visit |
| Instructor | A track record you can check | Claims of expertise with nothing to show for them |
| Certificates | Clear about what the certificate does and doesn’t qualify you for | Implies a license or qualification it can’t grant |
| What’s included | A clear syllabus and list of what you get | Vague promises with no curriculum |
| Course content | AI-assisted where useful, with the instructor’s own examples and checked by them | AI-generated and passed off as the seller’s own experience |
| Upsells | Optional next steps for people who want more | Lessons that withhold key steps to push the next purchase |
AI-Generated and Rehashed Courses
AI now lets anyone produce a full course in an afternoon, with scripts, slides, quizzes and an avatar to present it. This is the newest reason buyers say a course is “rehashed,” and they’re often right.
Using AI to build a course is fine. I use ChatGPT in my own work, for example to analyze transcripts from our podcast conversations. The problem starts when AI writes the course, nobody with real experience checks it and the seller presents it as hard-won expertise. That course offers buyers nothing they couldn’t get by asking a chatbot themselves.
For buyers, the test is simple. Look in the free preview lessons for things only the instructor could know, such as their own examples, mistakes, numbers or student work. If you can’t find any, assume a chatbot wrote most of it.
For sellers, use AI to draft and speed up production, then add the parts only you can supply. My guide on ways to humanize AI content covers how to add that layer.
What the FTC Says About Earnings Claims
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made deceptive earnings claims a priority, and course and coaching sellers are in its sights. In January 2025, the FTC proposed expanding its Business Opportunity Rule to cover money-making opportunities, including business coaching. Under the proposal, sellers would need written proof behind any earnings claim and would have to share it with buyers on request.
The FTC already acts on earnings claims under its current powers, and these two recent cases show the kind of seller it targets.
- Publishing.com: The company sold self-publishing courses and coaching. In July 2026, the FTC finalized a $1.5 million order over allegations that it overstated how much buyers could earn, buried refund conditions in fine print and used reviews from employees and relatives without saying so.
- Lurn: The online business coaching company sold programs costing thousands of dollars and pushed buyers toward coaching costing up to $10,000. In 2023, Lurn and its CEO agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle FTC allegations that it made false claims about what buyers would earn.
Notice what these cases have in common. The FTC didn’t go after anyone for selling information that’s available elsewhere. It went after false promises, hidden refund terms and fake reviews. I’m not a lawyer, so check the FTC’s guidance or talk to one if you make any claims about income.
How to Tell If an Online Course Is Legit
Before you buy a course, check these seven things. A legitimate course passes all of them, and a scam usually fails several.
- A real person with a record you can check: Look up the instructor’s own work, clients, books or business beyond the course itself.
- Free content to sample: Read their articles, watch their videos or listen to their podcast. If their free material helps you, the paid course probably will too.
- A clear syllabus: You should see what each module covers and what you’ll be able to do at the end.
- Specific, believable results: Look for named results from real students. Be wary of income screenshots and promises of fast, passive money.
- A plain refund policy: Read the refund terms before you pay, and check for conditions such as having to finish every lesson first.
- No guarantees about income: A seller who guarantees you’ll earn money is making a promise no course can keep.
- Reviews you can trace: Check for reviews outside the seller’s own sales page, from people you can identify.
This article covers courses that mislead buyers. If you sell courses and want to protect yourself from fraudsters, see my guide to avoiding online course scams, which covers chargeback schemes, content theft and fake marketers.
How to Sell an Online Course Nobody Can Fairly Call a Scam
You can’t stop every angry comment. You can make sure the facts are on your side, so that anyone who reads your sales page and your course can see you were honest. Here’s how.
- Lead with your experience and show the proof: Explain what you’ve done, for how long and with what results. For example, “I’ve run this program for six years and coached 200 managers through it” says more than any credential.
- Validate the idea and sell a specific outcome: Test demand before you build, using the steps in my guide to validating an online course idea. Then name the result the course delivers and the people it won’t help. A line such as “This course isn’t for complete beginners” filters out the buyers most likely to feel misled.
- State what’s included, what isn’t and what the buyer must do: List the lessons, the support and the hours of work you expect each week. Make it clear the course teaches the method and the buyer does the work.
- Set honest time expectations: If most students need three months to see results, say three months.
- Skip income guarantees and back up any results you show: If you share student results, keep records that show they’re real and typical. If they’re exceptional, say so.
- Use real testimonials and disclose incentives: Never write reviews yourself or pay for them. If you gave a student a discount or bonus for a review, say so next to it.
- Write a refund policy without traps: Keep the terms short, put them on the sales page and honor them. Our refund rate cost calculator shows what refunds cost you. A high refund rate usually means the sales page promises more than the course delivers.
- Build in practice and feedback: Add exercises, assignments, live sessions or a community, so the course does more than any free video can.
Price your course to match what it delivers. Our guide on how to price online courses and the online course pricing calculator help you set a price you can defend.
What to Do When Someone Calls Your Course a Scam
Your response depends on who’s making the claim and why. Here’s how I’d handle the four most common situations.
| Situation | What to do | Example response |
|---|---|---|
| A public comment from someone who hasn’t bought | Reply once, calmly, with facts and a free resource | “Fair question. Most of the facts are free, and I link to my free guides here. The course adds my process, feedback and a community.” |
| An unhappy buyer | Ask what they expected, offer help and refund if they qualify | “I’m sorry the course didn’t meet your expectations. Tell me what you hoped to get from it, and I’ll see what I can do. If you’re within the refund window, I’ll refund you.” |
| A bad-faith troll | Don’t argue. Hide or delete abusive comments | No reply needed |
| Repeated complaints about the same issue | Fix the course or the sales page | Rewrite the sales page so it matches what the course delivers |
Repeated complaints are worth more than any compliment. If several buyers say they expected something the course doesn’t cover, your sales page is the problem. Fix it, and the complaints usually stop.
How AI Changes What an Online Course Is Worth
AI has made information close to free, so courses that only package information are losing value fast. Celisa Steele and I see this in our own research. In our 2026 Strategic Outlook for association learning businesses, 37.9% of the associations we surveyed named increased competition as a top challenge. That competition now includes the open web and AI tools like ChatGPT.
That shifts the value of a course toward the parts AI can’t copy. These include your judgment about what matters, your practice exercises, your feedback on a student’s work and the results your students get. AI can produce endless explanations. As I wrote in my newsletter this summer, “What AI can’t manufacture is evidence that you get results.”
For example, AI can explain how to run a coaching session. It can’t watch your student run one and tell them what to change. Courses that add this kind of practice and feedback hold their value. Course platforms are moving the same way. My LearnWorlds review covers how its AI tools fit into course building.
Creators are using the same tools. In a survey we cover in our elearning statistics, 57.3% of creators said they use AI daily, so AI-made course content is everywhere. The content that holds its value is what I call authority assets, material that proves your expertise in ways a quick AI answer can’t.
If you’re deciding whether a course idea is worth building, my 3M Model helps you test demand, your ability to deliver and your motivation before you start.
Are Online Courses Worth Buying? My Verdict
A course is worth buying when it saves you time on something you’re committed to doing or gives you access to an expert whose advice can help you make real progress. It’s a waste of money when the instructor can’t show proof that their path works.
| A course is worth it when | Skip it when |
|---|---|
| You’re ready to put in the hours the course asks for | You can’t commit the time right now |
| The instructor has a record of doing what they teach | The instructor’s main proof is income from selling the course |
| You want a tested path more than you want to save money | You enjoy researching and have the time to do it yourself |
| The course includes practice, feedback or a community | The course is a set of videos covering what free content already covers |
| The sales page is clear about results, time and refunds | The sales page promises income or fast, effortless results |
Overall, selling online courses is not a scam, and it isn’t foolish to buy one. I’ve built a business on courses because a good one gives people a faster, surer path than they’d find alone.
Celisa and I talk about this often on the Leading Learning Podcast, because the value of learning has always come from experience and practice. If you’re thinking about turning what you know into income, my guide to monetizing your expertise covers the options beyond courses.
If you’re a course creator, be honest about what your course does and what the buyer must do. The next comment calling your course a scam won’t hold up for anyone who reads your sales page.
If you’re ready to build one, start with my guides on how to create an online course and how to sell courses online, and compare the best online course platforms to host it.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are short answers to the questions people ask most about whether online courses are a scam.
Are online courses a scam?
Most online courses aren’t scams. A course becomes a scam when the seller lies to make the sale, such as promising income it can’t back up, using fake reviews or hiding the refund terms. Selling information you could find elsewhere isn’t fraud, as long as the seller is honest about what the course offers.
Why pay for a course when ChatGPT can answer my questions?
ChatGPT can give you facts and explanations, but it can’t give you an expert’s tested path, feedback on your work or a community to keep you on track. A good course saves you the months of trial and error it takes to figure out which answers matter and in what order.
Is it ethical to sell a course with information that’s free online?
Yes, as long as you don’t claim the information is secret and you’re honest about what the course includes. Buyers pay for your experience, a clear order to follow, practice and feedback. Most courses in any topic cover facts that exist elsewhere, and that’s fine.
Why are online courses so expensive?
Course prices reflect the instructor’s experience and the time it takes to build and support the course. They also cover extras such as live sessions and feedback. Price also works as a commitment device. In one study of edX courses, 46% of learners who paid for a certificate finished, compared with about 3% of all learners.
How can I tell if an online course is legit?
Check that the instructor has a track record you can verify, that the syllabus is clear and that results are specific and believable. Read the refund policy before you pay, avoid any course that guarantees income and look for reviews outside the seller’s own sales page.
Is it legal to promise income on a course sales page?
In the U.S., the FTC treats unproven earnings claims as deceptive. It has taken action against course and coaching sellers, such as Publishing.com and Lurn, and proposed rules requiring written proof behind earnings claims. Avoid income promises, and talk to a lawyer before making any claim about earnings.
Can I get a refund if a course misled me?
Start with the seller’s refund policy, and ask for a refund in writing within the stated window. If the seller misled you and refuses, you can dispute the charge with your card issuer. In the U.S., you can also report deceptive marketing to the FTC.
What should course creators do when someone calls their course a scam?
Reply once and calmly with facts if the comment is public, offer help or a refund to unhappy buyers who qualify and ignore bad-faith trolls. If several people raise the same complaint, fix your course or your sales page, because repeated complaints usually point to a real mismatch.
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
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