Mikkelsen twins Rasmus and Christian (and now their new spokesperson: Christian’s wife, Charlotte, who was prancing around in a bikini in the ad I just saw) claim there’s a ground floor opportunity you should know about. Everyday folks—from high school dropouts to busy moms and even retired grandparents—are tapping into these so-called little-known royalty streams by uploading short audiobooks online. No previous business or technical experience necessary.
First things first. Can you make audiobooks, upload them to Audible, which is owned by Amazon, and make money (which is what the Mikkelsen twins teach)? Absolutely. And after you’ve done all the hard work of making the audiobook and listing it and marketing it and getting reviews and building momentum, could you even enjoy passive royalties each month for a long time to come? You betcha. But here’s the thing. Rasmus and Christian (and now Charlotte) are criminally overselling this opportunity.
They’re using words like “little-known” and “ground floor” and “rapidly emerging trend.” And all it takes to cash in on this is a “simple 4-step formula.” And basically even a meth head with two teeth could do it, right? When in reality, the opposite is true. Everyone knows about audiobooks. Many of us have purchased at least one from Audible before. But even if you haven’t, if you’ve been looking for ways to make money online for like more than a day, surely you’ve come across this idea of self-publishing.
Whether it’s uploading eBooks to Kindle or audiobooks to Audible, people have been a) doing this and b) trying to sell you their course or coaching program on it for, what, like 10+ years now? I mean the Mikkelsen twins, themselves, uploaded a YouTube video titled “How We Get Paid Every Month By Audible (8 Secrets)” literally four and a half years ago. So just right off the bat, it’s like, why lie? Why not just say, “We’ve been doing this for a long time, but it still works because of all the types of books you can make”?
And then to say it’s fast and easy? C’mon. Even if you outsource the outline, the actual writing of the book, the narration, the cover art and hire an assistant to handle the listing, the optimizing, the PPC ads, managing reviews and all that? It’s still gonna take you a lot of time and effort (in addition to all the money you’ll have to lay out) to sift through all those freelancers and gig workers and find the right ones. Then ya gotta guide them and check their work and give ’em feedback and go back and forth. And the entire process could take weeks or even months.
Worst of all, though, is Christian and Rasmus encouraging thousands of their students to go out and get these half-baked audiobooks produced and then spam Audible with ’em in hopes of generating all these hands-free royalties, right? Let’s think about that. You hire some slob on Fiverr—with Dorito dust on his fingers—to throw together an audiobook called Intermittent Fasting After 40; a topic he clearly knows nothing about. So it’s either gonna suck or he’s gonna plagiarize other experts.
How’s that sustainable? If bad reviews or an Audible ban doesn’t take ya out, perhaps a lawsuit will. Ya know what I mean? I just don’t see any way you use this approach and then take a permanent vacation paid for by audiobook royalties. Now if they changed their pitch and said, “Hey, if you know a lot about a topic people are interested in and you wanna work really hard to create amazing audiobooks yourdamnself, here’s how to do that successfully”? That I can get behind.
