The "Courses Are Dead" Dilemma | Ep. 80

Are digital courses dead? What about memberships and digital products? In this episode, I dig into the drama around online courses, inspired by Amy Porterfield’s big announcement. If you want to build a binge-worthy video brand and generate consistent sales, don’t miss my free All In On YouTube workshop. Register with the link below and let’s turn your channel into a client magnet!

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Transcript

Oh wow. This has become a very dramatic topic. Our course is dead. Our digital products dead. What. Is the online business world crumbling This is episode 80 of Video Brand Infusion. My name is Meredith. I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your online business so that you can be a binge-worthy video brand and generate consistent sales in your business. Be that go-to person in your niche, whether you're selling a course or a program, or a digital product, or a service or a book, now. I've been busy planning my all in on YouTube workshop for next week, and I wanna let you know it's completely free. All you have to do is save your spot. Just register down using the link in the description below this video or in the show notes if you're listening to the podcast. this is my, I think of it like my YouTube for business workshop that shows you how to turn your YouTube channel into a client and customer magnet for free. No ads, no webinars. Nothing funky like that. We're gonna dive into it in the All In On YouTube workshop. So again, there's a link down below this video So last week, one of the original like big names in the course creation digital product world, Amy Porterfield announced that she was no longer going to be selling or offering her digital course academy. Program, which is essentially, you know, it was a program or a course on how to create and sell and, um, make a business out of selling courses, right? Selling information, selling programs. And her announcement really sent people into a tizzy on threads on Instagram, on all of the platforms in my little bubble of the algorithm, it was every time I opened up social media last week, somebody was talking about this exact topic But I'll tell you right up front, like spoiler alert, I'm gonna tell you courses are not dead. They're just different. Just like SEO is not dead. It's just different. Just like every other marketing technique, just like every other medium on the planet, I think it's a huge mistake to see something that somebody else is doing in their business. It doesn't matter that she's been doing this for a long time. It doesn't matter how successful she is or was, if you are focusing your attention. A business decision that she is making, a personal decision that she is making and somehow making it mean something about what you are doing in your business and what you are doing in your life. I think that's a recipe for disaster, and I think it's like the quickest road to failing in your business that you could possibly take. And look, full disclosure, part of the revenue that I make in my business is from the. Selling of the couple of courses that I have, I have a video editing made easy course, and I also have a membership called Video Brand Academy, which is the, the bigger bulk of the revenue that my my business makes. So I would be crazy to come over here and be like, yeah, courses are dead. my profit and loss statement proves otherwise. Right? at the same time, I'm also not here to advocate for like, courses are the best way to do this thing, or memberships are the best way to make money on the internet, or something like that. I am an advocate for you finding a way to have a business online where all you have to do. Show up, make your videos, grow your audience, connect with your audience, and help people do the things that you help people do. If that's a course, great. If it's a membership, great. If it's a program, a digital product, uh, um, a book, fine do it. I'm advocating for you doing the thing, whatever that thing is. So that you can make a business out of helping people on the internet. Okay, So I just wanna get that out there. I'm not selling you on the idea of creating courses. I don't care if you have a course or not, or what. I want you to have the tools and the resources to help as many people as you can to do the things that you are here on this planet to do. And just like when Apple announced that they weren't making the iPod, so hear me out with this. did that mean music was dead? Obviously not music existed before the iPod, Just because Amy Porterfield announced that she's no longer selling Digital Course Academy doesn't mean that digital courses are dead because digital courses selling knowledge, selling solutions, Selling help came before Amy Porterfield did. Because if you really think about it all a course is, is a problem removal. Solution. Right? All a course is, is me transferring knowledge to you so that you can solve a problem or get some desired result that you are seeking to get. It's really no different than me coming in and solving the problem for you, except I get to do it from here and you get to do it yourself, and all you have to do is let me teach you creating digital courses, selling courses, memberships and digital products has never been about selling courses and digital products. It's been about removing obstacles, removing problems for people That's all it's ever been. That's all. Anything that exists on this planet that you can buy. That's all. Everything is. But courses, memberships, programs, digital products, services, they don't sell themselves, right? So if your course is dead, it's probably not because. Courses are dead. It's more likely that you failed to communicate effectively. You failed to communicate that this course that you have actually does eliminate the problem that people are seeking to solve, or you didn't get it in front of the right people. That your course helps to solve for people. And I think the nature of human beings, the nature of how our psychology works as human beings is we will look for anything to back up our own beliefs and our own thinking because we don't wanna be wrong. If I make a course and no one buys it, and Amy Porterfield says, oh, I'm changing my course thing and I'm not selling that anymore, of course I'm gonna say, oh, thank God courses must be dead. That's why no one bought my thing. And so we will look for anything to validate that belief because we don't want to admit that. Somehow we did something wrong, and I, I'm really hesitant to even label that as failure. I'm putting that in air quotes because creating something that nobody buys isn't failure. Right. It's feedback. Failure is inevitable. It's like the way to success is by failing repeatedly. Right. And I like, that's a whole other rabbit hole topic we can go down. I just wanna, I wanted to point out, I feel, uh, I feel a certain way about. The word failure in this sense, but the truth is we, nobody wants to think of themselves as a failure. And it's really easy to see mistakes or things that didn't go your way and label it as a failure. And then when you have somebody as well known and successful as Amy Porterfield come along and say that she's just no longer gonna be promoting her digital course academy. It is easy to make that mean must be courses are dead instead of simply making it mean that she's making a personal and business decision uh, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your niche is, people still have problems that they're looking to solve. That's why SEO is not dead. That's why SEO will never be dead. But maybe the tools that we use to search for something change. We are always going to be searching for solutions to problems. And as an online business owner, as a a, you know, essentially a professional communicator, an educator and expert, an author, your job is to effectively communicate with an audience to solve those problems. Your livelihood still depends on delivering solutions to people who have problems they're willing to pay for. so whether that is a course or. Program. I'm putting that in air quotes too, because I saw this whole like back and forth on threads about like the definition of a course versus the definition of a program and what is what, and then what's a digital product and it, none of that matters first of all. Second of all, you have to realize that everyone is approaching everything through the lens of their own. Perspective, their own experience, their own, you know, life experience. It doesn't course program, digital product. All of those things are a, like a digital way of solving a problem. whatever you wanna call it. And if you are creating content online, you are using content marketing to market something. So if you're building your audience and people like to listen to you, but they don't like to take action, they listen. They watch, they watch, they even come in your comments and they're like, you're so right. I love everything. You have to say, this resonates with me, but they're not taking action. They're not solving the problems that you are presenting the solutions to, even in your free content and then not clicking through to buy the solution that you've like handcrafted for them based on your experience, then you're probably not going to make sales of your course or program or digital product. I think a better way to approach the courses are dead conversation is to look at your own business. This is tricky because. I, I a hundred percent believe in looking at businesses that are more successful than you and saying, oh, I, I would like that for myself. How can I model that? But at the same time, you, you kind of have to keep your eyes on your own paper and realize that you're not building the exact business that they have, because you are not exactly them. you can't see everything that goes on, you know, behind the scenes of a business to make the decisions that they do. And when you make a bunch of assumptions, when you make a bunch of assumptions you use those assumptions to inform. Your decisions for your business, for your livelihood. It just doesn't seem smart to me, um, at all. So when I think, like, keep your eyes on your own paper. I mean, keep your eyes on your own goals, your own, your own desired results. If you wanna believe that courses are dead, then don't make a course. But if you want to make a living online solving problems and working with people to solve their problems, because that's where your expertise is, and because you know that you could share a lesson once and it can help hundreds or thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people. In order to make that work for you successfully to generate consistent revenue, consistent sales, you're going to have to think for yourself and not the way that Amy Porterfield says, or the way that the people who are criticizing Amy Porterfield says to think. And so if you are creating content consistently, YouTube content, short form content, if you are putting your. Expertise and experience out there if you're putting your face and your voice out there. 'cause you want to genuinely help people with the problems that you are the expert in helping them with. And you are not making sales. You're not bringing in clients and customers on a consistent basis, even though you're showing up consistently. You are in luck because that's a solvable problem. I'm also in the problem removal business. I work with online business owners to grow their audience on YouTube so they can generate consistent sales of their course, program, or digital product. And the number one breakdown that I see from people who do show up consistently to create content but aren't making the sales that they need on the back end, aren't making the revenue that they need to make it sustainable and predictable so they have a steady flow of income. isn't the content that solution seekers are looking for. Solution seekers, meaning your ideal clients and customers. Who are trying to solve a problem, they're trying to find a solution. They're trying to get to some type of a desired result that you know, you provide for people, but they don't know you exist yet. And usually it comes down to the topics that you select. To create your content about the actual topics that you make your videos about, that you publish every week. So next week I have a workshop coming up called The All In on YouTube 2026, There's a link down in the description to, uh, to sign up for it. It's completely free, and if you can't make it live, there are replays, But this is for you if you're tired of the social media hamster wheel. If you're tired of having to constantly be selling, constantly, be pitching, doing webinars, challenges, selling in the dms to get people to buy the solutions that you created for them. I wanna show you how to set up a video asset engine with YouTube that does the selling for you. For free without ads and without having to do constant launches or constant webinars. The all in on YouTube workshop is happening next week. If you're watching this after the fact, still click the link below this video because I'll have a little something for you there. if you think courses are dead because your course isn't selling, then we're going to dive into some of the reasons why that might be happening for you, and then we're gonna fix them.