It's funny to hear you call the WaFo products "guru" here on HN (I would agree they are), because HN itself is subject to the same kind of guru-bullshit. There are multiple people on HN who make money selling info products purely to the HN crowd. I would classify them as "guru" as well. I enjoy watching it play out, because as HN builds as a community, it seems a lot of trends are evolving in the same way the IM community did. Someone makes money, makes a blogpost, gains a following, writes an ebook, makes more money. I would call that "guru", but people on HN pay for it. I will say, however, that the content the "gurus" on HN produce is far better than 99% of the shit coming out of WaFo.
Relatedly, it's amazing how quickly people on HN will dismiss the SEO and affiliate marketing industry. It's a massive market. The "marketplace" forums on WF, WaFo, and BHW process five figures of transactions per day. That's mostly SEO services, some spammy, some not. Outside of that, there are multiple affiliates on those forums doing six figure daily revenues. The AM industry as a whole is ~6billion annually.
Despite all the money in SEO/AM, commenters on HN are quick to degrade the industry as spammy/blackhat/assholes/whatever, and yet most of those people are making more on their own than anyone here. It's quite funny, honestly.
