I Don’t Want to Learn Anything From Videos. Have All the Experts Forgotten How to Write?
Reading is wonderful. I can do it anywhere, and I don’t need headphones. So why do more and more experts offer their knowledge only as a video course?
In the last few months, I have unsubscribed half a dozen newsletters. I subscribed to them because the makers of these newsletters are experts in a field that interests me. This area is book marketing.
I want to be up to date on Amazon’s algorithm at all times because this is what I need for my book launch strategy.
I want to know how to use Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads effectively. I want to keep learning when it comes to optimizing email lists.
As a self-publisher, there are many areas in which I need to learn. The authors of the mentioned newsletters are such experts.
I’ve discovered them through books they sell on Amazon or blog articles they’ve written.
I didn’t find any of them on Youtube or Udemy. Above all, I didn’t find anyone by offering me his self-hosted video course through a Facebook ad.
And yet, little by little, almost all of these experts have started to market their information exclusively as video courses.
I hate video courses as much as I hate audiobooks. If I want to learn something, I read about it. I don’t care whether this information comes in as a free blog post or as a $15 Kindle book.
Everyone has to earn money, that’s clear to me. And I am willing to spend money to educate myself. But if someone offers me a video course without having a book on the same subject on the market at the same time, he has lost me as a customer.
Why I don’t like video courses
When I’m not just writing, I consume information most of the day. I read on my cell phone while I watch TV in the evening, when I sit in the bathroom and when I take the bus.
I can interrupt my reading at any time and even talk during it. If I have not understood something, I simply reread the last ten pages. I can mark passages that I want to remember, and I can read as slowly or quickly as I want.
When I watch a video course, I have to isolate myself from my environment. I have to wear headphones when other people are around me. First, I hate stuffing headphones in my ears, and second, I don’t like not noticing the sounds around me.
Videos don’t take my tempo into account, either. Playing a video faster or slower makes the information it contains worthless because it can no longer be understood.
For me, videos are the most impractical medium for absorbing information. That’s why I don’t like videos.
As I said, that wouldn’t be a problem if my favorite experts were still writing books or blog articles. Unfortunately, many have completely stopped.
When I receive a newsletter from them today, I read a few introductory words on the current topic and am then referred to a link. These links used to be mostly articles on expert blogs.
Today ninety percent of these links lead either to Youtube (bad) or to an A-Weber-Click-funnel-InfusionSoft-forwarding hell (even worse), which was only made to talk me off of my email address and my firstborn somewhere on the way.
When I finally reach my supposed destination, there will be a free promotional video for an online course.
In these cases, I slowly count backward from ten and then close the tab while screaming: Why the hell don’t you write a book about it?”
If you want me as a customer, you have to write, not to film
If it has not yet become clear from what has been said so far: I do not consume video courses rarely, but not at all. So if you can’t offer written information, you won’t be able to win me over as a customer.
Those who won me as a reader months or years ago with written words lose me the moment they think they only have to make videos and podcasts because books are supposedly out.
Now it is irrelevant for the average Internet marketer that a guy named René Junge has something against videos. However, I don’t think that I am an absolute exotic when it comes to my relationship with the different content formats.
If I feel that way, then there’s a good chance that there are many others out there who see things the way I do.
Those who can do without all those customers who prefer to read rather than watch videos might have no problem at all.
But all the other experts should ask themselves if they are betting on the right horse when they put video first and stop writing altogether.
Do you have valuable information? Then please write a book or an article. Unfortunately, I will ignore everything else.
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