The Online Learning Podcast

The episode contains a handful of genuinely useful tactical specifics - tier structure, royalty rates at various price points, file specifications, and the immigrant-niche strategy - but is padded with repetition, promotional filler, and course upsells that dilute the signal considerably. A complete beginner would extract some value; any experienced operator would find little new.

“If you put the, um, price at 11.99, you get nothing. Or 30 cents. Um, if you put it at $14.99, you get about $3.00. You put it at $17.99, you get about $5.00.”

“in order to go to a higher tier where you're allowed to sell more T shirts, you have to sell as many T shirts in that tier. So in tier 10, you need to have sold 10 in order to tear up, uh, to 25.”

The Vietnamese immigrant-community niche idea is a minor creative spark, but the rest of the content is standard 2016-era Merch-by-Amazon how-to advice that circulated freely on forums and YouTube at the time. There is no contrarian framing, no first-principles reasoning, and no challenge to conventional wisdom.

“I'm actually targeting immigrant groups in America as well. So I went on to Wikipedia to try and find out what are the largest immigrant groups.”

“if you pick a hobby that, or even occupation that women aren't necessarily, ah, associated with and make it female friendly, uh, then that's something that's doing very well for me”

Rob Cubbon is a genuine hands-on practitioner, but his scale is very modest ($200 - 500/month, a personal record of 10 shirts in one day) and the interview functions primarily as a promotional vehicle for a $59 course discounted to $19. He is a course-creator-first, small-scale side-hustler rather than an operator who has built this at meaningful scale.

“I'm making about $500 a month. Now, I don't know how much I'm selling. Maybe, um, 200amonth.”

“my record is I sold 10 T shirts in one day and then it can go down and sell one. One T shirt a day.”

This is the episode's relative strength: royalty figures at named price points, a concrete tier ladder (10, 25, 100, 500, 4,000, 8,000), exact file specifications, named tools (DS Amazon Quickview, MerchResearch), and real income figures are all present. The copyright section and niche-research guidance remain vaguer than they could be.

“the size is 4500 pixels wide by 5400 pixels high and 300 dpi”

“I sold one in April, one in May, and it just went parabolic...I'm making about $500 a month”

The host discloses a 50% affiliate commission on the guest's course mid-episode, which structurally compromises any possibility of genuine challenge. Questions are largely prompts for the guest to elaborate or plug the course, with no meaningful pushback, no stress-testing of income claims, and no probing follow-ups.

“And I think you have to disclose you've also given me an affiliate link which means that I will share the bounty.”

“And I think the trick is to get onto the platform and then gradually Build it up, uh, and see how you go.”