We’re witnessing the beginning of a huge and obvious shift in online information delivery and commerce. While free isn’t going away, and people will always try to make a quick buck with shoddy ebooks, the move toward interactive training programs is getting too clear to ignore.

Let’s take a look at several examples of how selling valuable online knowledge has changed in just a few short years.

First, the story of an ebook gone wrong.

SEO Book Moves to SEO Training

Consider the story of Aaron Wall of SEO Book. Aaron has been selling one of the most popular ebooks around, but he was quite candid that his business model had turned into a nightmare.

You see, Aaron’s ebook provided step-by-step information about successful search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Because this is a rapidly evolving field, Aaron offered free lifetime updates to his ebook to every purchaser.

So, not only was Aaron doing continual work for a one-time fee, but the model required him to sell to more and more people. This led to a customer-service nightmare that almost caused Aaron to give up SEO Book all together.

I’ve known Aaron for a couple years, and we’re presenting together at the sold-out, $5,000-a-head Elite Retreat next week in San Francisco. Starting last summer, I could tell from his blog posts that Aaron was frustrated with his ebook, and I figured he would shift to a membership model at some point.

We launched Teaching Sells in October of 2007. I kept waiting for Aaron to hit me up for a free membership, but he never did. Things got crazy as soon as we went live, so I didn’t worry about it.

Sure enough, Aaron recently announced that SEO Book was shifting to an interactive training model at $100 per month. Last I checked he had over 500 members, which makes for a nice monthly income (huge understatement).

So I emailed Aaron and asked why he never hit me up for access to Teaching Sells. I guess I felt a bit hurt that he didn’t even try to weasel a free membership out of me.

“Dude,” he replied. “I joined the first day.”

Whoops.

So I checked with my partner Tony who handles all the admin, and he said “Yeah he joined. I thought you knew.”

I guess these things happen.

We’ll be doing a case study with Aaron in the next week that should be really revealing. Those who think ebooks are the road to easy riches will be shocked by Aaron’s story, and you’ll learn how he instantly fixed his problems by shifting business models.

We’ll also be doing a case study with Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz. These guys made an even more shocking transition—from consulting firm to a blog/membership site hybrid model. Case studies like these (with many more to come) make the Teaching Sells instructional content actionable thanks to real stories about successful businesses.

Internet Marketing Gurus Sell High-Dollar Online Training

There’s been a general rule of thumb for selling information products online. Under $100 could be digital, but over $100 needed to be a physical product.

And if you were selling a $1,000 product, well… you needed to ship a BIG BOX of physical products. Basically an overwhelming amount of CDs, DVDs, manuals, workbooks, etc.

If you guessed that this strategy kept product returns low, but basically guaranteed that very few would make use of the materials, you guessed right. Plus, it was a complete hassle for the publishers, who after all got into Internet marketing because digital delivery is so efficient and physical fulfillment is such a pain.

But witness the recent hoopla launch of Mass Control by Frank Kern. Mass Control was delivered completely online (with an optional live event) via an interactive learning environment.

The price? $2,000.

(Oh, get this… in an upcoming article, I’ll show you how “Mass Control” and “Teaching Sells” are only separated by positioning. In other words, both programs are teaching a lot of the same thing when it comes to content and marketing strategies, just at drastically different price points).

More recently, many of you may have been watching the re-launch of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula (which is really a formula to launch anything online). I was one of the first people to buy the original PLF in 2005, and it did indeed arrive in a BIG BOX of DVDs, CDs, manuals and workbooks.

It was great stuff, but the packaging was all wrong. This time, the updated PLF 2.0 will be delivered in an interactive learning environment. And the price is also $2,000.

How times have changed. But it’s still early in the game.

Marketing is All About Perceived Value

The old rule of the BIG BOX was simply a matter of perceived value. A big box of tangible stuff seemed more valuable to people at the time, so therefore it was.

But now that people are used to consuming all sorts of multimedia online, the BIG BOX is much less attractive. People don’t want a big box of physical junk that they have to futz around with and insert in various devices. They’d much rather get the information in the most efficient manner possible, which is now in an interactive learning environment.

Plus, learners crave true interaction. With instructors, but also with fellow learners.

“Sure,” I hear you saying, “That’s all fine and good for SEO and Internet marketing gurus.”

No, those fields are just joining the party. The membership site model started in other niches. And that’s where all the opportunity is.

See, the few existing membership sites in the multitude of lucrative consumer and business niches are often crap. They don’t use multimedia, and the content is pretty lame.

We teach people to create membership sites with higher perceived value in high-demand niches. When you look at it that way, this model is barely tapped.

Think about blogging in 2003. What if you had started a commercial blog then?

That’s how things are now with multimedia membership sites.

So, why not get started today?