The traditional methods of delivering self-improvement content are broken. Books and DVDs are beginning the same trajectory of piracy that is decimating the music business. Seminars and workshops are great, but they simply don’t scale, both in terms of cost and time. Yet, consumers continue to hunger for quality self-improvement content.
The New York Times points out that 9 million books were illegally downloaded in the last few months of 2009, and with the increasing access to e-books and e-reader apps on smartphones, this rate will skyrocket. While preventing your content from being available in e-book format in the first place might help delay things, you lose those sales and, worse, eventually your content will be made available online anyway.
The issue is even more dire for those who provide DVDs. Do a quick search on torrent sites and you’ll likely find your DVD content available for anyone to download.
The experience of the music industry has shown that even without direct loss to piracy, the overall effect of downloads drives sale prices down dramatically. Making money on content sales is not going to get easier.
At the same time, authors of self-help content make a decent living by hosting seminars and workshops. But these models of delivery require you to train others to deliver your workshops – and also share your revenues with them – or else require you to rack up ever more expensive air miles.
Lastly, traditional e-Learning is designed for “academic” content rather than the social, interactive and dynamic nature of self-improvement. While traditional e-Learning is great for a Calculus, Java Programming or Accounting course, there are fundamental differences in learning that need to be considered.
So, if you can’t rely on content, can’t scale live sessions and aren’t teaching an academic subject, what’s left? Just give away your content and hope for donations? Or perhaps you need to start creating learning experiences.