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Sheltering from the rain at a 7-Eleven seating area in Da’an, Taipei, waiting for class, I overheard some aunties talking about AI: “I’m paying NT$18,000 a month for my son to learn AI, four installments now, it’s that teacher’s course he recommended last time.”
Infuriating. I really want to know which teacher rakes it in this well.
The market is now buzzing with “Law of Attraction AI,” “Benefactor AI,” “share your gratitude and closed deals with AI,” “AI raises your personal energy,” “networking coach radiating beauty” — I can’t take it anymore. The highest-value overheard conversations really do happen in convenience stores and fast-food seating areas.
What the NT$18,000 Buys
I never heard the course content, so I have no idea what that teacher delivered. What I heard was the price, and the referral chain the price traveled down: a course some teacher recommended last time, a mother paying four installments for her son.
Exactly one thing on that chain has been verified, and it’s the referral.
What the Value Side Looks Like
Let me put two things of my own next to it. Not to rank them. It’s just that with these two I can say exactly what gets delivered.
First one. Wrapping up a GMAT consult just now, the test-taker asked me how to use Claude Code to prep. So I quietly handed over the SKILL I distilled from my own 200-plus articles and 100-plus hours of video courses built up over fifteen years. Their Claude is probably the strongest GMAT teacher in history now (?)
Second one. Built a system that fully replicates the professional exam interface for students to practice on. Standalone subscription revenue is now past a thousand USD a month.
What those two share is that you can check them. The 200-plus articles are there. The 100-plus hours of video are there. The subscription number reports itself every month. Either students keep using it and renew, or they stop and cancel. Nothing in the middle rests on what I say about it.
That NT$18,000 times four installments, I don’t know whether it can be checked that way. That’s the difference.
The Zero-Price End
The other end of the price range has a cost too, and it isn’t zero.
Fifteen years of teaching, and the horror stories from free and pro bono consultations are endless. I’d love to hear the ones from other industries.
I bring that one in not to complain, but because it happens to fill in the other end of the range: setting the price to zero doesn’t make the delivery any lighter. So “high price means solid content” and “low price means generosity” both fail as rules. Price is its own independent variable. It reflects how many people in the market got persuaded, not what happened in the room.
I’ve written before about the baseline of teaching quality: how sections connect, whether hands-on time is designed in, whether the teacher can field the QA (see A Teacher’s Sense of Responsibility). That piece was about what a teacher ought to do. This one is about something else: even when none of that gets done, the price can still look great.
Which Side Time Is On
In the AI era, if you learn slowly enough, you can skip learning anything at all. By the time you finish, that thing has already been automated. Flip side: people who learn fast enough keep finding they can do more and more.
That line was aimed at learners, but it holds for course sellers too. Anything held up by marketing is held up by a window: the one where this skill is hot right now. Close the window and the thing goes with it. Output you can check doesn’t live off that window. The SKILL distills fifteen years. The mock exam interface solves the fact that test-takers really do have to drill every day.
I’m not trying to convince anyone. I overheard a price at a convenience store, then turned around and looked at what I have that can be checked.
That’s it.