Blame SEO and hucksters that couldn't cut it in affiliate marketing.
It's a long story to get from point A to point B, but it's not just a little side joke, that's really what happened so I'll give you a tiny rundown.
With the proliferation of instant communication (the Internet) and SEO (free massive traffic) all it took was an idea to make money where before it took a lot of time, effort and overhead.
Once that barrier was lifted the hucksters realized they could get into the industry of selling shovels and tents to gold miners (it's an analogy) and so they set out to establish themselves as guru's, but, see, no one was.
Over the course of the next few years (2000 - 2004) the real ballers were just getting rolling (guys like Shoemoney) and helping people understand that there was real money online and how to get it...for free. Not the MM guys, they just saw it as "Shoemoney is doing 7 figures so I can repackage this strategy..." and then a lightbulb, the world's best title "Make Money At Home With Google" and the industry (I believe 2006 - 2007) was born.
With just SEO and a dream (+ a huge payment) you too could start you very own business. Soon forums like WickedFire were filled with foreigners with zero experience selling ripped off eBooks for $5 to other wannabe marketers and the proliferation continued. No one was really gaining but the people selling the blueprints and there was no stopping it.
So, here we are, today. The blueprint to making money online has been proven, sell to the people want to make money online. Whether you've been successful or not, matters little. Things can be made up. If you can talk your way out of a paper bag you can set up a squeeze page for your free webinar and pitch your heavily borrowed "eBook" and subsequent mastermind classes. And thanks to the invention of the podcast, you now have another free platform to push your wares.
Listen, guys like Flynn I don't much like. I know the dude was just looking for angles and stuck with the "teaching people how to make money", but the truth is, he's really good at what he does and his side projects actually do make money. Most people out there however are only successful telling people they're successful and using the numbers from that...kind of a "fake it till you make it" thing.
So, yeah, long story, and I'm sure there are some gaps, but I've seen this from the beginning and that's why I've always kind of railed against this part of the industry. If people just knew most of these MM guys were down to $300 before they got the idea to start their course and 100% of the information is free online, they'd walk away, but I can't hate the playa, right? Gotta hate the game.