Open letter: Why don't I earn more money?

Let's not lie to ourselves, I'm lucky enough to earn a very good living thanks to my work as a freelance developer. But eventually, I'd like to be able to live just as comfortably from the income of my courses, and that's possible—it's actually going pretty well—but it takes time.

Yet when I look at some course creators, and some "entrepreneurs," I realize that some of them get there much faster than I do, so I started looking at what each of them does.

And in reality, I'm happy to progress more slowly. Simply because most of my values and my work ethic are incompatible with most of their strategies.

So here are a few rules that govern my day-to-day life:

Rule #1: I don't sell dreams

In all the courses I offer, I have to create sales pages to make people want to buy them, because after all, that's part of my job.

But I make it a point of honor never to lie, distort the truth, or give false hope no matter what, even though I'm convinced of the quality of my courses, even if the course could sell 10x better.

I'm not going to offer you a "Become a freelancer to double your salary," because you might have trouble finding clients, despite all the good advice I can give you.

The moment a tagline could prove false for even a single person, I will never sell it as a generalization. Get out, dream sellers.

Rule #2: No targeted advertising

I have nothing against advertising in general, but targeted advertising as found on Google, Facebook, and all the other platforms involves too many large-scale abuses.

Massive data harvesting, circumventing regulations for resale or excessive use, categorization, and over-analysis are consequences of advertisers funding targeted advertising.

I chose the slow path, but an organic and thoughtful one: People discover me through my articles, follow my newsletter, and if they happen to like my work and are interested in my courses, they fund me that way.

Rule #3: Making virtuous investments

Stock market, Crypto, NFTs, etc... In most investments promising the highest returns lies a detail that everyone turns a blind eye to.

Let's not beat around the bush, if you buy low and sell high, it's because on the other side, someone sold low, bought high, and lost money in the process.

In other words, we're betting on the fact that others will lose money so that we can make some, and that's not my idea of something positive, something virtuous.

And even real estate investing can have a negative impact on people's lives:

Buying a few properties to rent out, why not? But buying up properties left and right to put on AirBnB, encouraging a shortage of rental housing, and ultimately driving up rent prices just to get richer, that raises serious concerns for me.

Rule #4: No tax optimization

Even though tax optimization is legal (unlike tax evasion), that doesn't mean it's ethical.

At the risk of upsetting some people, and my argument may sound demagogic, but coming from a rather modest family, I received a free education, a scholarship to continue my studies, free healthcare, and surely many other things I'm forgetting.

Still, I don't see why I would dodge paying taxes, and thus refuse to help fund what I myself benefited from, all just to enrich myself a little faster?

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Note that all these choices are mine, and they serve only one purpose: so that I can be proud to look at myself in the mirror before going to sleep.