Are Investment Newsletters & Services Worth It?

As a middle-aged, middle class member of society who is trying my best to support my family, raise enough funds for my three kids' educations, and hopefully enjoy my senior years without sweating over living expenses, I have been wondering how to make what modest savings I have grow. Sure, I have the usual 401k at work, along with one old 401k that I converted to a self-directed IRA to see if I could do any better than the funds it used to be invested in. I am by no means a financial investment expert, but have been "motivated" to try new investment strategies with a small portion of my savings with the hopes of gaining a better return than what I have been experiencing.

With all the bombardment of advertising on the Internet, I succumbed into subscribing into a few $99 per year newsletters. One letter's main strategy is covered call writing, another's has a mix of buying and selling stocks and options, and another's purports buying and holding dividend paying stocks and ETFs. How has my return been using the recommendations from these letters? Well, overall, I'm certainly damaged by the current market conditions, but, fortunately, not taken out. The covered call trades are pretty much even, but my cost basis gets cut each time I get to write premium. The dividend paying ETFs are beaten up a bit, but, again, maybe the monthly dividends at least put band-aids on bleeding cuts. The mix of stocks and options letter? Well, I think you'd have to have enough money to play EVERY recommendation in its portfolio, so I mostly just read and try to understand the analysis.

Now the above brings me to the question in my title. Are any of these investment letters and services truly worth their prices? Are they merely vehicles of advertising to induce one to subscribe to their more expensive versions? Do some of the expensive ($999/year and up) truly deliver winning recommendations?