Hotmart: customer decides whether AI-generated course is worth it – 09/06/2023 – Tech

The best evaluator of product quality is always the buyer, says the founder of the digital product sales platform Hotmart, João Pedro Resende, when asked about the possibility of people looking for easy money filling the site with content made by artificial intelligence (AI ).

On Youtube, videos viewed thousands of times promise ways to profit from ChatGPT on the internet. What is bad is barred by Hotmart’s seven-day refund policy, according to Resende. The platform only delivers the money to the creator after that period.

Known for selling digital courses and ebooks, Hotmart has recorded more than R$ 5 billion in sales since its creation in 2011. The company born in the capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, today is in seven countries, has 135 thousand creators and 35 buyers in more than 180 countries, according to Resende.

The platform is home to content from famous coaches such as Geronimo Theml, whose YouTube channel has 970,000 subscribers, and digital marketing influencers such as Peter Jordan (2.87 million YouTube subscribers).

There, creators sell everything from material for public tenders to physical education and wellness courses. Hotmart calls virtual products from online consulting to the development of computer programs.

To create an account at Hotmart, all you need to do is name, contact information and fill out a form about your experience in selling digital products —you can do this in less than ten minutes.

The platform, on the one hand, is cited by digital marketing influencers as an easy place to sell courses and ebooks that can be produced at scale. On the other hand, it has already hosted ebooks that encouraged customers to fall for the scam known as the “Pix robot”, in which the person is asked to make a small transfer to supposedly receive larger amounts.

Materials of this type are removed from the platform in the short term, due to the whistleblowing policy adopted by the company, according to the founder.

How did Hotmart start? wanted to put a [arquivo] PDF for sale and I realized that it was not a simple task to sell a download. It wasn’t automatic at all. It was necessary to collect payment and then, manually, send that PDF to the person who bought it by e-mail. There was no sort of protection against piracy. If I wanted to do that, eventually there could be more people wanting the same thing. This idea of ​​a platform for selling digital products started there.

This year Hotmart released the company’s artificial intelligence. How is HotMart AI different from other text generating AI? Our AI is very specific to our client’s needs. It is not a generalist artificial intelligence [como o ChatGPT]. We have two main forms of use in the air. One of these is the course generator. During course creation at Hotmart, this feature delivers suggestions, according to the subject chosen by the creator. It helps to think about the consumer profile, the price of the product, at least five modules that make sense to address and classes within each module. It helps overcome the blank page challenge. The other product is an email marketing assistant, which generates messages with the chosen tone.

Since its launch in March, there have been more than 20,000 course suggestions generated by Hotmart AI. In the email marketing tool, after a week of launch, 10% of the campaigns launched already used the artificial intelligence assistant.

Hotmart AI still has more focus on product design in terms of marketing and idea, right? Yes, the construction of the product. The creator puts his hand to arrive at the final result, to have that human touch. There is no possibility of leaving a good course without his knowledge. The most important thing is personality, own experience.

On YouTube, there are videos that claim to teach how to use ChatGPT to earn money. Part of this material teaches how to make digital products, online courses, hosted at Hotmart. Does the platform attempt to filter AI-generated spam? Our algorithms review these products when they are registered. Who will best decide the quality of the product is always the buyer. A product might be too basic for me, sometimes it might be too advanced for another. The buyer evaluates whether it is good information or a good course. We looked at the opinion of buyers. Products without quality, remain in this filter, this does not concern us today.

We haven’t seen the emergence of many AI-generated products yet, although content creators will certainly use AI to create their products faster and even better.

If the buyer is dissatisfied, he can report it on the platform itself, which our team verifies. You can ask for a refund and have your money back in up to seven days at least, which is a guarantee for the buyer.

How does this refund work? Does this money come from the creator’s pocket or directly from Hotmart? The creator cannot redeem the money before the seven days. In those seven days, the buyer, being dissatisfied, can ask for that refund. With that, we also guarantee quality. If the creator publishes a bad product, he will hardly come out with money. This policy filters the quality of products. Seven days is enough time to evaluate.

On the security side of this client, there was the case of the Pix robot, in which the former boxer Popó disclosed the material hosted at Hotmart on their own networks. Does the company have any responsibility for this type of content? Do you have a security policy to avoid this type of problem? If any product like that comes in, it quickly starts to have some complaints. If a report arrives, our team will review and remove the product. Other than that, there are refund policies that we mentioned. Hardly, something like that will stay there for a long time.

Sales at Hotmart depend a lot on the creator’s projection. Hotmart tries to keep in touch with influencers, to have influential creators who increase the reach of its own platform? Hotmart is not responsible for advertising the content posted on the platform. The platform is a kind of engine that allows the creation of the business. Hotmart, to attract more customers, has its own influencers. But it’s not for customers. Building influence is their job.