No Free Lunch

Remember one thing: no one works for free.

Initially, Isfar reached out with an offer that was too good to be true. He offered to work for free to convert my views into paying subscribers for my community. The deal was that after 60 subscribers, he would charge a fixed value of the total lifetime value of the new customers brought in. He was incredibly unclear about the details from the start. It was my fault; I should have been more vigilant and careful in creating the agreement, the schedule, and everything related to it. But I wasn't, and things started going downhill.

Our first introduction was in March. Since then, he has been creating lead magnets. He had me subscribe to tools like Kit.com and ManyChat to set up automations where people DM a certain word, get funneled into the automation, and land on pages on Kit to convert them into paying subscribers. He also ran email blasts using my name.

Lately, I have been scrutinizing his work a lot more, especially after our World Cup content blew up. Subscribers went from basically zero to a thousand, with a lot of people signing up for our newsletters. That is when I started noticing his issues day by day:

1. Operating without approval
He keeps sending content, funnels, and sequences to subscribers without my approval or even informing me. Because of this, I cannot monitor anything and only see the problems after they happen. When subscribers check their emails, they are left wondering what is going on. It is incredibly bad. For instance, he sent an email telling people, "Maybe reading email isn't your thing, and I will stop sending you emails if you haven't received them." It is spammy, highly unprofessional, and reflects poorly on my name. Every time I tell him to make improvements, he throws it back in my face, saying, "I actually don't need your approval, but if you need it, here it is."

2. Poor quality, AI-generated content
The newsletters he creates are incredibly low quality. He basically just takes my video transcripts, dumps them into a Word document, and calls it a lead magnet. You cannot learn anything from them, and there is no point in downloading them. For example, I asked him to make a lead magnet for Amazon and TikTok affiliates. He did not include a single link to the affiliate portals, instructions on how to register, or explanations of the benefits. He basically just wrote, "Yeah, you should just join the affiliate and you can get money this way." It is lazy, low-effort AI generation.

I was so pissed off that I tried to stop the automations. I did not think he would be stupid enough to actually turn off our critical automations, like the World Cup prompts, auto-DMs, and auto-comments. He just shut everything down.

I know I am not paying him anything directly, but at this point, he is actually costing me money.

Recently, he reached out to me saying he wants a fixed fee to continue working: $60 per month to dedicate his time and resources until we reach our first 30 paying members.

So the deal changed. It went from being free until we hit 60 members, to $60 per month until we hit 30 members. But it didn't stop there. Right after sending that message, he changed the terms again and raised the price to $70.

When I told him I was going to hire someone else to take charge of this so they could focus on it more, he got upset. He told me that $60 is an insult and demanded $600 for all the time he has spent. We never agreed to an hourly rate, nor am I paying him by the hour. I have no idea on what basis he is charging me $600, but it feels like the start of a scam.

Scams don't start by telling you they are scams; they start by offering something free with clear, simple terms. I have structured deals like this myself before. I have done work for free for friends and clients in exchange for results. But if we don't achieve what we guaranteed or promised, then the deal is done. I don't charge a fee, it doesn't cost them anything extra, and the partnership ends right there.

It turns out these scammers operate differently. Once they fail to achieve the targets they defined themselves, they start trying to charge you anyway.

I am not going to pay him $600. The absolute maximum I will pay him is $150 as a thank you and goodbye. I just want to cut ties, let it go, and move on. We settled on $200. Fuck it