A checklist for auditing any "$X/month" income claim before you copy the strategy

A checklist for auditing any "$X/month" income claim before you copy the strategy

Thesis: most published income figures are unfalsifiable. Before you reorganize your business around one, run it through a verification protocol.

The audit:
— Gross or net? A $50k "month" with $42k ad spend is a different business. Demand the spend line.
— Revenue or cash collected? Annual contracts booked once inflate a single month.
— One month or sustained? Ask for the trailing 12-month chart. Survivorship hides the months near zero.
— Sample of one? A single creator's result has no error bar. Look for cohort data instead.
— Incentive to inflate? Course sellers and "mentors" report numbers that double as marketing.

Methodology note: screenshots prove nothing — dashboards are trivially editable, and even genuine ones omit refunds and chargebacks.

Implication: treat any uncorroborated claim as a hypothesis, not evidence.

What we still don't know: what fraction of viral income claims would survive a forensic accounting review. No researcher has been granted that access at scale.