Surviorship bias and case studies that make everything look easy

A mainstay of the modern product creator’s marketing toolkit is the case study. They typically walk you through step-by-step what the creator did and show how you too can do this. They typically come with a title that looks something like:
I made this many thousand dollars in this many hours whilst doing surprising thing.
I got this much traffic whilst not doing thing you expect me to do and in this timeframe.
After all – after you’ve made said achievement it’s easy to milk it a little bit extra by sharing the tantalising secrets to your incredible success.
The problem with these case studies is they make it look easy. Whatever “it” is, it’s always just a straight road from a blank page all the way to watching the money flood in.
I have a problem with this: very very rarely is any of this easy. If it was easy, someone else would have already executed your idea.
The notion that I made twenty thousand dollars in twenty four hours is endlessly appealing – who doesn’t want to do that – but grossly misrepresents the reality that this is hard.
In misrepresenting reality, I argue these case studies are of exceptionally limited use.
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/13540/surviorship-bias-and-case-studies-that-make-everything-look-easy

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/surviorship-bias-and-case-studies-that-make-everything-look-easy-2/