A few weeks ago in Dubai. As I wrote, the conference seemed to be a dotcom-era update on the age old get-rich-quick schemes, appealing to the audience's deep desire to break free of the rat race and become an entrepreneur. The speakers all seemed to have a similar pitch, and it went something like this: <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">To get the details, most speakers had some sort of training or mentorship scheme, where you pay them, often in the many thousands of dollars, and they teach you the system. Successful students can then charge others to train them on the system. </span></i> From what I saw, each speaker did pretty well in attracting some new students. And this weekend, we have two more events that seem to do much the same thing. At you can pay $500 for two days of training on making your millions online. Training topics include Neuro-Linguistic Programming. And the will help you use Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to become famous (seriously, watch the video). "One day is all you need to start the ball rolling, and if you want to work with me after that, its a whole new ball game," Social Megastar's Dave Crane promises in the intro video (Mr Crane was one of the ). "But I promise you it will change your entire career. What would normally be something that takes 10 or 20 years to hopefully catch fire, you can start instantly with Social Megastar." A few thoughts on all of this: - Good luck to them: if you can convince a whole bunch of people to pay hard cash for your event, without breaking the law, then more power to you. - Genuine practitioners of social media or online marketing need to be aware that the industry is going to be filled with more and more noise like this as time goes on. - The generally-accepted tipping point when is when the bulk of its profits come from joining / training fees paid by new recruits, rather than the actual sale of good and services to customers. Just saying. - A bit of disclosure: , 17-year old Anas Hameed. He started a web business as the s. The business is hosted by , a website ran by Webpreneur University's owner , who is also quoted in the article.