Kind of like all the investment and finance influencers. If they’re so good at it why do they need to spend all that time trying to be an influencer? They should be rich already. They even beg for likes and subscribes so they’re obviously not doing it as a hobby. It’s simply because they’re trying to get rich selling advice to gullible people.
Personally I find indiehackers unique amongst get rich quick schemes because it's very transparently a community of people trying to get rich quick by building small apps for other people trying to get rich quick building small apps. It's not necessarily that the influencers are deceiving anybody (I think some do), they really do build apps like that too, some of which are genuinely successful. They're not selling advice.
So it's like, on one hand it's not like "I'm a genius trader, buy my course for $3k and you will be too" because the people at the top actually, (mostly) demonstrably do the thing they claim is possible. And it's not like an MLM because there is not really any pyramid scheme dynamics involved. But on the other hand it's a market that only exists on the buyside because enough people believe it exists on the sellside to build for it, thus generating demand on the buyside.
Most influencers also don’t sell courses, although some definitely do. They try to ramp up eyeball time any way they can. It’s more about starting a mini-community in their favor which is where I see the parallel. You’re right though, it’s more fragmented it seems in the indiehackers community and a bit more ponzi.
There is a similar "community" of real estate investors. I've met one of them through a friend and asked a lot of questions about his business. He was "pivoting" to seminars and courses as well. I asked him why and he said he can "easily scale" with seminars/courses while investing, even pure flips takes time and you can only do so many with a limited budget, maybe one/two transactions a year.
I am very skeptical as well and I think there is a lot of truth to "those who can do, those who can't teach" adage. It's one thing if you are in "who can't" group because you are older/retired/done with it after many years. It's another if it's a guy in his 20's or 30's selling courses. Those in my experience are almost always just snake oil salesmen.
