Digital Products Vs. Physical Products – which is better (for membership sites or anything else)?

Thanks for the great video Jim! I also think its depends on what your market expects. If you buy a product from my site you want instant access to it. If you buy it off Amazon.com then you expect a physical product.

Personally, I love the diversification of having both. And with the tools like Camtasia, etc and combine it with CreateSpace/Kunaki it makes it super easy to develop your own physical products for very little money.

Great video Jim.

For me I think the answer is both.

As a customer, there are some membership sites that I belong to where I have downloaded the information but never actually taken the time to consume it.

But then there are some memberships who also send me a physical CD every month (along with posting it in the membership site) and I’ve listened to almost every CD.

The reason – drive time.

Every week I drive 2 hours back and forth to soccer. This is when I listen to all these CD’s. If the membership didn’t include the CD’s, I probably would have canceled long ago.

So I think it’s a real plus if you can combine both the physical and digital because it is going to appeal to a lot more people who like consuming the content in different ways.

Just my two cents.

All the best.

Stu

Thanks Jim –

Your video made us realize how we can do the physical products that we’d like to sell without having to buy the stock, do the shipping, etc. Plus – we didn’t know about Kunaki…

Your emails / videos really help!

Sincerely,
Keith Fiala

Hey Jim,
Great info and Happy 2010.

What are your thoughts on staying green with DVD download using wmv or mpeg formats? does it work or am totally out there?

Do the physical products truly imply greater value?

I have to agree with Drew above me here, however, going green seems to be very popular. I favor digital but a physical product is good to have for those who are not as savvy as some and need the actual product to use it. Interesting to see what folks have to say here.

Thanks, Jim!
~Kimberly

Jim – great video and it even rubs it in more that I wish I were on the Jim Boat. There WILL be next year or shall I say this year! Regarding physical vs digital, I also agree with Drew that it depends upon your market although if you are offering them both, you can allow them to get their cake and eat it too. Nothing like making all the options fit your customers needs.

Jim, some of my customers want physical CD’s so they can play them in their car or on the go or they aren’t computer savvy with the capability to download them. And when I do live workshops or expos it’s good to have something physical to sell. So I find it’s good to have both.

Thanks,
Leah

I agree with Stu that the portability is a big plus – I listen to things on my ipod while working out at the gym. And that’s why I like your downloads from TNR so much – both audio and video, so it’s possible to get the portability without having to have a physical product. The ‘drive time’ factor seems to be big in my market as well, where many of the professionals have travel time to their clients’ homes.
Maybe I should take the 30 day video challenge with you on my blog!

Hi Jim,

I’d prefer to have the physical CD / DVD, but you have to do what the people are willing to pay for and KEEP paying for.

Not just what they “say” they want.

F.J. Shark
“How to be the Jerk Women Love”

Dear Jim,

You wrote, in response to Suzanne’s comments, “We try to give as many options as possible? and you should too? without overloading yourself.”

You’re absolutely right. But are you aware that you don’t actually follow that advice yourself? I don’t mean deliberately. But, in fact, most Internet marketers don’t…and they don’t even realize they’re missing a potentially huge market because of it.

What market is that? The hundreds of thousands of us who can’t watch and/or listen to videos and/or audios because we have a disability that makes it difficult, if not impossible…but who are interested in buying products like those being marketed.

So most IMers miss out on selling to us because that limitation never even crosses their mind. (Which is nothing they should feel badly about.)

Instead, they do what you did. They create a video as part of their marketing efforts and invite all of us to watch it. With luck, we recipients will respond the way they want us to. But there’s no closed captioning. No text transcript of the video. Nothing that makes that video usable to a whole heck of a lot of us. So we delete the email and move on.

Now, I understand that it’s much cheaper to make and post a video without closed captioning. But a text transcript really isn’t that much more expensive to include…at least not for ads! Heck, a lot of marketers use a script in the first place when making their video, and that script could be posted, even if it doesn’t exactly match the text of the video, for free!

When videos first became popular with IMers, I emailed the first dozen or so “top marketeres” doing it over the period of several months and explained the situation. Most of the time I received no response. A few said they were sorry but there was “nothing they could do about it”. A couple were actually rude!

Sadly, not one single one of those “top marketers” did anything about it. Not a single one of their future video ads were different.

So, one by one, I gave up and unsubscribed from their mailing lists. I also gave up contacting anyone about this cuz no one seemed to care enough to do anything about it.

So…why am I posting something here?

Well, in the first place I’m hoping my comments make at least an impression since you actually read and respond to these postings! How cool is that?

In the second place, it’s because of this email comment from you: “Next week we’re starting on a “30 Day Video Challenge” We’re going to post one video per day for 30 straight days. It’s an experiment and I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

Frankly, the last thing I want to be on the receiving end of is another 30 videos that leave me clueless because of my disability.

But, since it was the great Jim Edwards saying this, I thought I’d try just one more time to get someone with credibility to understand…particularly since I believe you, of all people, could make a genuine difference in video marketing by teaching people that making sure each video is accessible to people with disabilities isn’t just the right thing to do, but it could really expand their market as well.

I believe you could show people what they need to be doing and why.

I believe you could explain to people…people who would listen to you…that there are a wide variety of disabilities (vision, hearing, attention deficit disorders, etc.) that make it pretty much impossible for people with those disabilities to get any benefit from a video.

To get people to undestand that it makes sound marketing sense to provide an alternative for the gazillion of us who *want* to know what you’re saying, but need another format to can get your sales pitch/product/information/whatever.

You could show them simple and inexpensive ways to make videos ‘accessible’. After all, we don’t need anything fancy. We just need the darned words presented to us in a way we can understand them.

Shoot…you could turn the whole accessibility issue into a huge new product!!

And you could start by requiring those 30 videos in your Challenge be accessible.

I have my fingers crossed.

Kendall

Kendall Simmons

Great Stuff Thanks For The Great insights Andrew H.

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the video. Definitely agree with the digital-physical-digital trend that’s been going on in the last decade. I think with the Amazon Kindle and Apple’s iTablet (or whatever it will be called) on the way, there will be a new bandwagon for Digital Products in 2010.

The economics of digital delivery has always been in their favor, but Physical products had a higher perceived value for a while that made the additional cost and effort worthwhile. People must have run out of room in their houses for any more 48-DVD boxsets by now.

Thanks,
Neil

Hey Jim,

Love the shirt by the way! My experience has been that while I love receiving the “Big Box” physical product initially, it’s presence in the corner or on the shelf, eventually creates a nagging reminder for everyone in the house, of money spent and questions about the ROI! It’s tough being a shiny object guy! Give me digital…and give me peace!

Thanks,

Marty

Thank Jim!:)

I know transcripts work for me. Also, a blind friend runs web pages through Dragon software which reads the web pages aloud to him, so transcripts work great for him, too.

If they’re interesting, I read them all the way through. If they aren’t, I don’t (which is the same approach a lot of people take with watching videos.)

Plus you can skim a transcript, while you can’t skim a video…so people who wouldn’t click on a video might scan the first few sentences of a transcript, giving you another chance to catch their attention.

So…yup. I’d suggest at least adding a transcript whenever you show a video. I’m glad you understand that it’s really a simple solution, one I wish more IMers would apply.

Thanks!

Kendall

Fantastic idea, Jim… THANKS!

~Kimberly

Stu… I have to agree with you. I definitely listen to the cd’s in my car when driving to and from or waiting to pick up kids at school. I also listen via MP3 too which is how I listened to the Wishlist Member info; with Pen and paper for note taking

Great ideas Stu, thanks!

~Kimberly

I like that, too, Marty!!! Give me digital and give me peace! Tend to download and listen to digital products more b/c for me it is easiest and not a reminder (like you said) of another program or product that I have purchased and may not have ever opened or completed.

~Kimberly

There are pros and cons about this subject.
With Digital product downloaded, one can read immediately but,
with Physical product, one can scan quickly and find what you
are looking for, and Digital product can not do that. You would
have to print them all out..lots of paper! There you go….

I like them both. It helps to have both available…

I prefer the physical since I can play or use it in my own time or anytime; also,physical products such as newsletters delivered to your door or dvd/cds you can play in your car,inthe office or at home offers the user more flexibility and control.However, customer(s) is always right: So whatever he prefers as long as we give them the ‘option’.

My reason for developing physical products was ignorance of the real concept behind “information products.” I now prefer pure info products. Also, a product on CD can free up space on the PC. For instance, I found that I could make my product perform by loading up only about 0% – 10% of the information onto the PC permanently. The rest of the information on my CD required only read-only memory. Since I was interested in PowerPoint presentations, CD’s were appealing since a PP presentation could never be ruined, because it was really on CD and could always be reloaded intact. I think all the pro’s and con’s have been already thoroughly stated and I agree with everyone’s commentary.