Do people in IM still buy training in text format?

11 replies
Years ago, people in the "internet marketing", "make money online", and "work from home" niches used to buy tons of ebooks.

Nowadays, if you look at the top product launches on marketplaces like WarriorPlus, JVZoo, Clickbank, etc, you'll almost never see that. Instead, the top products seem to be video courses or apps.

The only exception is PLR courses. People mainly buy them not to learn from them, but to resell them (but will enough of their own customers buy them?).

Can someone create text training and compete? I would imagine this would require a good salespage, and the training should be presented as a membership site, not an ebook, to boost the perceived value.

What is your honest opinion?
#buy #format #people #text #training
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Singletary
    I buy a lot of text materials. For example, Jimmy D. Brown has never? put out anything in video but he is quite successful and respected. Of course, he has 20 year's worth of results behind him and a big following.

    Ryan Deiss at Digital Marketer has a whole series of products that are in text format.

    The Warrior Forum has taught thousands of people about marketing with text only.

    Be careful of ultimatums like "you better use video or you'll go broke". A good example of this is how video was the king and then audio came back with the success of Clubhouse. Now FB has gotten into the audio game.

    I think different audiences may need different formats but for me, I prefer text most of the time.

    My two cents.

    Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author nicenet
    Hello,


    I prefer texts. GA course is both in text transcript and video. The learners can make choice.
    Thanks.
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    • Profile picture of the author hbeezy
      As Mark said earlier, Jimmy D Brown still puts out text materials that sell easily. That's funny that I see his name in this thread because I just bought from him yesterday.

      Anyway, there was a promotion a couple months back by Barry Rodgers. It was on the topic of a plr case study. This product was about 20-30 pages and it was just a simple PDF.

      So, yes people are still making money by selling text materials as content to learn from. But I think the main thing is what you're offering (and the quality of it) within the content you create. Barry alludes to this in his case study.

      Regardless, it is possible, it has been done and it still will be done until people believe it's a dead or dying medium (like newspaper, yet there's still a market/niche for that).

      One day I'm going to create my own text material that people can learn from (PDF[s]). It'll be evergreen so it will sell for years to come.

      Now I understand that Barry created an upsell showing exactly what and how he did what he did and that's "video".

      But one thing I've realized is maybe everyone won't have the service to stream video.

      Or maybe they won't have the service to download it.

      Maybe they might not be able to store the video if they download it.

      Maybe they can't even play the video (because modern video is high quality).

      So I do think it's important to have multiple mediums to let anyone choose which they want to learn from (text, audio, video, etc) because from a point of view, downloading or streaming each can be rather intensive versus a text material.

      Forgive me for my little tangent at the end. Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    I think its good to have products in both video and text to satisfy both types of consumers at once. I still read text products as there is usually a "find in text" feature in PDF readers that allow me to quickly back and for through content. Video depending on the length allows you to kind of do the same, but i also i like video too as i can see a technique explained visually in front of my eyes.
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  • Profile picture of the author George Flm
    The sales page would be in text, I imagine.
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  • Profile picture of the author AFunyarinpa
    I'm a big fan of text, because I can chill with some ambient music while I read and make notes. The chill music makes the process enjoyable for me. I can't do that with video. Of course, some types of training are much better suited for video.
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  • Profile picture of the author sids70
    I personally prefer to buy text pdf material only. I hate audio/video. I'm fast reader so text works better. Unfortunately in IM world lots of hawkish useless marketers repackaged txt info in audio/video format with same rehashed material and start charging 997/- for useless courses.
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  • Profile picture of the author WF- Enzo
    Administrator
    Text-based courses (eBooks, etc.) are still effective.

    Originally Posted by perneali45 View Post

    Years ago, people in the "internet marketing", "make money online", and "work from home" niches used to buy tons of ebooks.

    Nowadays, if you look at the top product launches on marketplaces like WarriorPlus, JVZoo, Clickbank, etc, you'll almost never see that. Instead, the top products seem to be video courses or apps.

    The only exception is PLR courses. People mainly buy them not to learn from them, but to resell them (but will enough of their own customers buy them?).

    Can someone create text training and compete? I would imagine this would require a good salespage, and the training should be presented as a membership site, not an ebook, to boost the perceived value.

    What is your honest opinion?
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Hancox
    Originally Posted by perneali45 View Post

    Can someone create text training and compete? I would imagine this would require a good salespage, and the training should be presented as a membership site, not an ebook, to boost the perceived value.
    Yes. Some people are visual and prefer to learn visually. Some people prefer reading... so there will always be people who prefer one over the other.

    That said, why not do both if possible?

    I'm creating a course right now, which started out as all text documents. Then I decided to make videos for it, and I'm currently writing out the transcripts.

    What I've noticed is, writing a transcript forces me to think about how to present the material differently (using different examples, for instance) and often it turns out better than the original documents. I'm not sure why!

    Anyway, even if you can't record videos, you could create transcripts for the vids and get someone else to record them for you.

    Think of ways you can make the videos add value, so they're not just someone reading out the original docs. That way you could make the videos an upsell.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ian Jackson
    Text is as strong as anything else.
    I rarely invest in video or recorded training because I dislike it; I also like to scan content.
    I DETEST recording video, and being on camera, so all my info delivery is PDF format.
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  • Profile picture of the author Klara Pelhe
    I wouldn't say that text tutorials disappeared, the thing is that there are more video tutorials nowadays in offer as it's often easier for content creators to go with these types of courses since videos require less time than writing and organizing textual content, and you're totally right, this requires more effort as you also have to think where you will place those courses or ebooks, and sites where you sell them has to be quality or you should join some bigger platforms, like the ones you mentioned. If you have a good idea for something like this, give it a go, it has a lot of potential, but you just need to have a decent idea and structure for your ebook or other type of textual education.
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