Is this crazy or a good idea?

[Your Boy George]

I think before starting any new business, it's almost mandatory to get thoughts/feedback from 3rd parties. So here's my idea:

It's basically a 5+ year plan to develop a personal brand, software/s, and community.

People are struggling more than ever with internet addiction. Younger generations have it the worst because they’ve grown up with constant internet dopamine feedback reward loops that just bombard their brain with addictions, similar to what it'd be like if you started smoking at 3 years old.

It's not even the severe debilitating forms of it I'm necessarily talking about. I'd say a significant portion of people have a mild form of internet addiction, whether it be to news, YouTube, Facebook, politics, porn, their phone, whatever.

Contrary to popular belief of “just willpower against it”, it’s actually quite difficult if you’ve struggled with spending so much time online. People are slowly starting to realize that these online platforms are basically designed to addict them for the sake of ad revenue, with AI to optimize this addiction process.

Resources have already popped up in this area. And I want to help accelerate that progress (profitably so), in a multi-pronged approach that will include the following steps.

The Steps

1. Develop a personal brand (on YouTube at first, ironically) as an authority in this space. Videos will be about the best blocking softwares/configurations to use, misc techniques to avoid getting sucked in online when you’re trying to use the internet productively, answering viewer/common questions, etc. (successfully reducing internet use is more complicated than installing one internet distraction blocker and calling it a day; multi-billion dollar distraction vampire corporations do not give up that easily)​

​

2. Affiliate links/affiliate discounts to the distraction blocking software I use and recommend in my videos.​

​

3. Creating a dedicated forum/community away from the reddit.com/r/nosurf subreddit (based on an open source forum software like Discourse). Mainly for an obvious reason: the Nosurf subreddit is on an extremely tempting and timewasting site-- Reddit. Being the head of a community, even if small but gradually growing, would be a nice addition to the personal brand​

​

4. Create advanced courses (price point $100-$500) to add to the free content on my channel. Also do 1 on 1 coaching. The coaching could be actually a very expansive area given that there’s so many particular different scenarios and flavors of internet addiction that people are facing, so vanilla courses may not even cover every particular case. The main selling point of courses/coaching is: time = money, therefore, you’re going to be saving so much time from my course/coaching that it will be well repaying itself.​

​

5. Eventually, I get to a point where I have sufficient capital built up that I start throwing money at developing simple software (perhaps even partner with a software guy). Then gradually more complex and paid distraction blocking software. The current software out there is actually not that good and doesn’t cover certain things as well as it could.​

​

6. I continue synergistically building a personal brand, paired with a community, paired with courses/coaching, paired with ever-improving software. I become a Russell Brunson of sorts (guy who founded the software clickfunnels, does all this coaching/courses on building internet sales pages, has a community around that, etc).​

I know a lot of people on this forum are allergic to the whole “guru” scam artists we’ve seen around dropshipping, crypto, finance, and other areas in recent times. I am too. With a money making guru, it doesn’t really make sense why they’re selling a course/coaching when they could just be making more money scaling up their wonderful business idea. And even if their business idea works, as a result of them spreading the word it soon becomes a red ocean which nobody can make money with (doesn’t stop them from continuing to sell courses/coaching though).

With a health based coach, it’s much different because there is no incongruity as to why one would be selling courses/coaching. Also, there’s never an ironic red ocean effect created as a result of you helping others.

Breaking down the Idea per NECST:

Need – there is a need since people are really struggling with internet addiction and I’m sure a lot of them would appreciate a systematic way of killing that addiction from someone who’s been through it. The question that concerns me is whether or not there's enough people who'd become paying fans or not. There's successful coaches in the Nofap niche, but not necessarily the newer Nosurf niche yet.
There is already a Reddit community around this with 60k subscribers called reddit.com/r/nosurf (similar to /r/nofap). From the subreddit stats, it's clear Nosurf has really started gaining a lot of steam as of recent.

Entry – entry is moderately high because most internet addicts haven’t spent 2+ years intensively learning/experimenting what works and doesn’t work in terms of cutting down internet use nor have been able to successfully cut it down by 95%
Scale – YouTube/courses/software/community of course have the ability to scale
Control – Except from YouTube and minor affiliate deals, I control my brand, courses, coaching, software, community, etc
Time -- YT/ courses /software/community of course do not need to depend on time.


Here's some pilot videos I already made after revamping my old channel (not the point of this post, but if you happen to be interested, feel free to subscribe):

Video 1
Video 2

I actually do believe in what I’d be teaching, not in a guru scammy “lets get sum monayy, rented lambos on my IG babayy!” way. I myself have drastically cut down the number of hours per month I waste online. I’m probably saving 40 hours a month through the processes and knowledge I’ve accrued so far. With my knowledge and experience, I think I could help a lot of people and make a solid sustainable business out of it at the same time.

Any thoughts or feedback on this idea?

 

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[NursingTn]

Forget us.

Go find the people you want to help with internet addiction. If they're willing to throw money at you to help them with it, then take their money and help them. If you make a profit, then scale the solution.

 

[SD Entrepreneur]

I think before starting any new business, it's almost mandatory to get thoughts/feedback from 3rd parties. So here's my idea:

It's basically a 5+ year plan to develop a personal brand, software/s, and community.

People are struggling more than ever with internet addiction. Younger generations have it the worst because they’ve grown up with constant internet dopamine feedback reward loops that just bombard their brain with addictions, similar to what it'd be like if you started smoking at 3 years old.

It's not even the severe debilitating forms of it I'm necessarily talking about. I'd say a significant portion of people have a mild form of internet addiction, whether it be to news, YouTube, Facebook, politics, porn, their phone, whatever.

Contrary to popular belief of “just willpower against it”, it’s actually quite difficult if you’ve struggled with spending so much time online. People are slowly starting to realize that these online platforms are basically designed to addict them for the sake of ad revenue, with AI to optimize this addiction process.

Resources have already popped up in this area. And I want to help accelerate that progress (profitably so), in a multi-pronged approach that will include the following steps.

The Steps

1. Develop a personal brand (on YouTube at first, ironically) as an authority in this space. Videos will be about the best blocking softwares/configurations to use, misc techniques to avoid getting sucked in online when you’re trying to use the internet productively, answering viewer/common questions, etc. (successfully reducing internet use is more complicated than installing one internet distraction blocker and calling it a day; multi-billion dollar distraction vampire corporations do not give up that easily)​

​

2. Affiliate links/affiliate discounts to the distraction blocking software I use and recommend in my videos.​

​

3. Creating a dedicated forum/community away from the reddit.com/r/nosurf subreddit (based on an open source forum software like Discourse). Mainly for an obvious reason: the Nosurf subreddit is on an extremely tempting and timewasting site-- Reddit. Being the head of a community, even if small but gradually growing, would be a nice addition to the personal brand​

​

4. Create advanced courses (price point $100-$500) to add to the free content on my channel. Also do 1 on 1 coaching. The coaching could be actually a very expansive area given that there’s so many particular different scenarios and flavors of internet addiction that people are facing, so vanilla courses may not even cover every particular case. The main selling point of courses/coaching is: time = money, therefore, you’re going to be saving so much time from my course/coaching that it will be well repaying itself.​

​

5. Eventually, I get to a point where I have sufficient capital built up that I start throwing money at developing simple software (perhaps even partner with a software guy). Then gradually more complex and paid distraction blocking software. The current software out there is actually not that good and doesn’t cover certain things as well as it could.​

​

6. I continue synergistically building a personal brand, paired with a community, paired with courses/coaching, paired with ever-improving software. I become a Russell Brunson of sorts (guy who founded the software clickfunnels, does all this coaching/courses on building internet sales pages, has a community around that, etc).​

I know a lot of people on this forum are allergic to the whole “guru” scam artists we’ve seen around dropshipping, crypto, finance, and other areas in recent times. I am too. With a money making guru, it doesn’t really make sense why they’re selling a course/coaching when they could just be making more money scaling up their wonderful business idea. And even if their business idea works, as a result of them spreading the word it soon becomes a red ocean which nobody can make money with (doesn’t stop them from continuing to sell courses/coaching though).

With a health based coach, it’s much different because there is no incongruity as to why one would be selling courses/coaching. Also, there’s never an ironic red ocean effect created as a result of you helping others.

Breaking down the Idea per NECST:

Need – there is a need since people are really struggling with internet addiction and I’m sure a lot of them would appreciate a systematic way of killing that addiction from someone who’s been through it. The question that concerns me is whether or not there's enough people who'd become paying fans or not. There's successful coaches in the Nofap niche, but not necessarily the newer Nosurf niche yet.
There is already a Reddit community around this with 60k subscribers called reddit.com/r/nosurf (similar to /r/nofap). From the subreddit stats, it's clear Nosurf has really started gaining a lot of steam as of recent.
View attachment 26662
Entry – entry is moderately high because most internet addicts haven’t spent 2+ years intensively learning/experimenting what works and doesn’t work in terms of cutting down internet use nor have been able to successfully cut it down by 95%
Scale – YouTube/courses/software/community of course have the ability to scale
Control – Except from YouTube and minor affiliate deals, I control my brand, courses, coaching, software, community, etc
Time -- YT/ courses /software/community of course do not need to depend on time.


Here's some pilot videos I already made after revamping my old channel (not the point of this post, but if you happen to be interested, feel free to subscribe):

Video 1
Video 2

I actually do believe in what I’d be teaching, not in a guru scammy “lets get sum monayy, rented lambos on my IG babayy!” way. I myself have drastically cut down the number of hours per month I waste online. I’m probably saving 40 hours a month through the processes and knowledge I’ve accrued so far. With my knowledge and experience, I think I could help a lot of people and make a solid sustainable business out of it at the same time.

Any thoughts or feedback on this idea?

Way to take action... use MJ's evaluator to get some of that feedback... definitely a concern for people and parents, I'm sure you can tap into a profitable revenue stream depending on the direction you take it.

 

[Pink Sheep]

Sounds ironic to make internet content on internet addiction, but i get your idea.
How about books, offline programs, physical subscription boxes, snail mail content, weekly/monthly irl challenge cards, public bucket lists you can compare with others, pen pal system, accountibility groups (because partner programs dont work)

Anyways, I like the idea. I think it will be hard to get started, but if you make a compelling product or community you can do it.

 

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[Champion]

Cool Idea, checkout this site: How to Quit Playing Video Games | Game Quitters

Maybe you can get some ideas from there.

Best
Champion

 

[GoodluckChuck]

There's a reason why interventions are a thing. Getting addicts to quit is an up hill battle. Getting them to pay to stop doing something they want to keep doing is even harder.

I have experience in a few niches dealing with helping people with addiction and I can say it's hard to sell them. Talk about tire kickers galore

Someone will find you when they are having a painful moment. Unless you sell them right away then the cards get stacked against you because by the next day they are happily surfing the net happy as a clam.

I would definitely take the first suggestion you got and try it on a small level before you invest a ton of time into it. If you can find success with a few people and it's worth your time, then you can try to scale it.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

I just skimmed your post.

But you're trying to use the internet to cure internet addiction? Your software might help, but it doesn't seem anywhere near as good as something that's not on the internet.

 

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[Rabby]

I voted "bad" but take it as constructive feedback. I just can't imagine taking an internet course on internet addiction. The irony would kill me. There might be a problem to solve, but maybe there are other ways to solve it? Faster ways too... the 5 year plan thing gave me chills.

 

[Your Boy George]

Thank you everyone for your feedback. This is a superb community.
I'm seeing a few recurring themes in the comments above I want to address.

@NursingTn and @GoodluckChuck -- Regarding what you said, I really like the idea of finding some test clients for the sake of potentially saving a ton of time. My plan before was to make my YouTube a lead magnet for my coaching. But that's going to take a several months to get anywhere substantial, and if I can't get any clients after that, then I've just wasted a several months of time.

Any ideas on how to get internet addiction coaching clients without already establishing a clear authority presence in my niche?

 

[Your Boy George]

@Creep , @AgainstAllOdds , @Rabby -- you guys all brought up the irony of doing reducing people's unproductive time spent online... through the internet. Yes, it's ironic.

At the same time, the goal isn't to cut out internet use completely and have my clients sit around at some rehab center in Malibu. I'm sure for some people, they do need that. Although I can probably really help people like that, their not my ideal client.

Fundamentally, the internet is an incredibly powerful tool that shouldn't be cut out completely. Rather, the goal should be to have the productive time online maximized and the unproductive time as close to zero as possible.

My ideal client is someone who just spends a bit too much time online but wants to do productive things using the internet without getting distracted .

A lot of people try to beat unproductive internet use by changing the "inner game" mentality with temporary motivation like "life is better when you don't waste 10 hours/day watching porn" or "why not go for a walk rather than mindlessly surf YouTube for hours on end". While I will definitely emphasize that inner motivation if I go forward with this, inner motivation is often temporary and not enough alone.

That's where the "outer game" of using the right software, blockers, and system to keep them away from their worst online impulses comes into place.


@MJ DeMarco talks about in Unscripted how the battle for not gaining weight starts at the grocery store. With the internet right now, it's like having the sweets aisle right in your living room, office, or wherever you are on your phone/PC. My goal is to get the sweets aisle out of your living room. To stop that ambient hum of dystopic AI driven temptations.

You're trying to be legitimately productive on YouTube while there's a suggested video that YouTube throws in your face just because its AI knows that it will get you into a 12 hour binge. That's the archetypal example, but there's many other similar examples like this.

That's the type of problem that people have right now that willpower often fails to solve and I'm trying to help solve. And I know I can help people with this because I've done it myself. I literally haven't been on a porn site for a year. I've not been on a multi-hour YouTube binge for forever as well. With the right semi-technical lattice of systems/rules, it is possible legitimately and consistently reduce the amount of unproductive time you waste online by 95+%.

 

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[Melissa Tucker]

I think before starting any new business, it's almost mandatory to get thoughts/feedback from 3rd parties. So here's my idea:

It's basically a 5+ year plan to develop a personal brand, software/s, and community.

People are struggling more than ever with internet addiction. Younger generations have it the worst because they’ve grown up with constant internet dopamine feedback reward loops that just bombard their brain with addictions, similar to what it'd be like if you started smoking at 3 years old.

It's not even the severe debilitating forms of it I'm necessarily talking about. I'd say a significant portion of people have a mild form of internet addiction, whether it be to news, YouTube, Facebook, politics, porn, their phone, whatever.

Contrary to popular belief of “just willpower against it”, it’s actually quite difficult if you’ve struggled with spending so much time online. People are slowly starting to realize that these online platforms are basically designed to addict them for the sake of ad revenue, with AI to optimize this addiction process.

Resources have already popped up in this area. And I want to help accelerate that progress (profitably so), in a multi-pronged approach that will include the following steps.

The Steps

1. Develop a personal brand (on YouTube at first, ironically) as an authority in this space. Videos will be about the best blocking softwares/configurations to use, misc techniques to avoid getting sucked in online when you’re trying to use the internet productively, answering viewer/common questions, etc. (successfully reducing internet use is more complicated than installing one internet distraction blocker and calling it a day; multi-billion dollar distraction vampire corporations do not give up that easily)​

​

2. Affiliate links/affiliate discounts to the distraction blocking software I use and recommend in my videos.​

​

3. Creating a dedicated forum/community away from the reddit.com/r/nosurf subreddit (based on an open source forum software like Discourse). Mainly for an obvious reason: the Nosurf subreddit is on an extremely tempting and timewasting site-- Reddit. Being the head of a community, even if small but gradually growing, would be a nice addition to the personal brand​

​

4. Create advanced courses (price point $100-$500) to add to the free content on my channel. Also do 1 on 1 coaching. The coaching could be actually a very expansive area given that there’s so many particular different scenarios and flavors of internet addiction that people are facing, so vanilla courses may not even cover every particular case. The main selling point of courses/coaching is: time = money, therefore, you’re going to be saving so much time from my course/coaching that it will be well repaying itself.​

​

5. Eventually, I get to a point where I have sufficient capital built up that I start throwing money at developing simple software (perhaps even partner with a software guy). Then gradually more complex and paid distraction blocking software. The current software out there is actually not that good and doesn’t cover certain things as well as it could.​

​

6. I continue synergistically building a personal brand, paired with a community, paired with courses/coaching, paired with ever-improving software. I become a Russell Brunson of sorts (guy who founded the software clickfunnels, does all this coaching/courses on building internet sales pages, has a community around that, etc).​

I know a lot of people on this forum are allergic to the whole “guru” scam artists we’ve seen around dropshipping, crypto, finance, and other areas in recent times. I am too. With a money making guru, it doesn’t really make sense why they’re selling a course/coaching when they could just be making more money scaling up their wonderful business idea. And even if their business idea works, as a result of them spreading the word it soon becomes a red ocean which nobody can make money with (doesn’t stop them from continuing to sell courses/coaching though).

With a health based coach, it’s much different because there is no incongruity as to why one would be selling courses/coaching. Also, there’s never an ironic red ocean effect created as a result of you helping others.

Breaking down the Idea per NECST:

Need – there is a need since people are really struggling with internet addiction and I’m sure a lot of them would appreciate a systematic way of killing that addiction from someone who’s been through it. The question that concerns me is whether or not there's enough people who'd become paying fans or not. There's successful coaches in the Nofap niche, but not necessarily the newer Nosurf niche yet.
There is already a Reddit community around this with 60k subscribers called reddit.com/r/nosurf (similar to /r/nofap). From the subreddit stats, it's clear Nosurf has really started gaining a lot of steam as of recent.
View attachment 26662
Entry – entry is moderately high because most internet addicts haven’t spent 2+ years intensively learning/experimenting what works and doesn’t work in terms of cutting down internet use nor have been able to successfully cut it down by 95%
Scale – YouTube/courses/software/community of course have the ability to scale
Control – Except from YouTube and minor affiliate deals, I control my brand, courses, coaching, software, community, etc
Time -- YT/ courses /software/community of course do not need to depend on time.


Here's some pilot videos I already made after revamping my old channel (not the point of this post, but if you happen to be interested, feel free to subscribe):

Video 1
Video 2

I actually do believe in what I’d be teaching, not in a guru scammy “lets get sum monayy, rented lambos on my IG babayy!” way. I myself have drastically cut down the number of hours per month I waste online. I’m probably saving 40 hours a month through the processes and knowledge I’ve accrued so far. With my knowledge and experience, I think I could help a lot of people and make a solid sustainable business out of it at the same time.

Any thoughts or feedback on this idea?

Yes, you can make a business out of this. My buddy Cam Adair started Game Quitters. His started out of his own gaming addiction...now he has speaking engagements all over the world, has a couple of Tedx Talks, has an online community that supports people who want to no longer be addicted, last time we spoke he was partnering with someone to create a support system for parents.

I have the Addiction Support Podcast and spent all of 2016 learning a lot about addiction, recovery, and what drives people in this space.

My advice is to connect with the people already working in the space. Find out what they are doing that's working & not and how you can set yourself apart. Then pick one specific addiction, ie porn - it causes a lot of pain in relationships. (Where there is a pain, there is money if you can provide relief or solution.) Then be the porn addiction guy. Once you own that space, then grow into the other spaces.

Also, know that this is a highly emotional space. You'll need a lot of compassion, empathy, and strength to do well. If you're just looking to make some money, there might be easier niche's.

 

[thefakejew]

Hey, I like your idea and I think it has great potential, but I would like to share you some of my thoughts. The idea is good, but I am going to spin it off in my own direction. Creating a software or add-on that blocks out all that irrelevant time wasting junk like Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, gaming, etc.. but allows access to productive and education things such as google docs, Project Gutenburg, Archives, forums like this one, Khan Academy, etc... This would at the least help people on the internet form better habits and at least be more productive, and possibly help people not be addicted to the internet. And maybe make this software or add-on a bit militaristic in style so that it can effectively force people into forming better habits so that it can really positively effect people. A sort of self-discipline may even be formed in the person as a result. My personal thoughts, I would love to hear what you have to say.

 

[G. Wellthy]

It’s less scalable but I think you have to build in direct accountability. Addiction recovery without ongoing support is just too lonely.

Ensuring people have “real world” accountability is the key to your scale IMO. Figuring out how to get people in the same city to get together and support each other.

 

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