Why Info Products Fail to Deliver

You don’t need ready formulas, quick fixes, out-of-the-box programs to fix you or fix your life. Well, you may be in need, but they won’t help you. They work only for those who really follow their instructions both in the letter and in spirit. For those who do the job. But the willingness to do the job comes from within. From your personal philosophy. If your philosophy is not compatible with the program, you will abandon it sooner or later.

Anyone who claims otherwise is stupid or greedy. Stupid, if he thinks that can impose his concept on you no matter your personal situation. Greedy, if he doesn’t care much about your results and is focused solely on convincing you, that his magic pill will solve all of your problems.

Ideal get rich quick program

At the beginning of 2014 I joined the program for Kindle publishers. Its core idea was to find hot trends on Amazon, outsource the book writing and produce as many as possible as quickly as possible. The readers get a passable book on the interesting topics and because there are hundreds of thousands people in the target audience the pseudo books get some sales. Even one copy a day adds up to about $60 a month. Multiplied by 10 or 100 books it creates a nice stream of income.

As long as Amazon tolerates such practices, this business model will continue to work. You can outpace the attrition of your not-so-perfect books as long as you publish more and more of them. What is more, I could see, that I could make it work for me too. I had already published five books. I was familiar with the process. I needed only to learn the outsourcing. I could easily see that after about a year of hard work, investing about $20,000 and publishing about 100 new titles, quitting my day job would be feasible.

Compatibility issue

But it was against my personal philosophy. My main goal in life is my personal growth. If I had dedicated all my spare time to Kindle publishing my personal development program would be severely restricted. Of course there is the argument that once I quit my job I would have 10 hours a day to pursue my passion, but still it’s one year of my life. The time cannot be reclaimed. And what if it would have taken me two years? And what if I would have died in three? I don’t know the future. Part of my personal philosophy is not giving my time to anything that I wouldn’t have wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Also, making money as fast as possible is not my top priority. I have nothing against making money, but I much prefer to do it via providing value. I see little to no value in publishing another Paleo diet cookbook. There are already hundreds of them out there and if someone is interested in Paleo recipes, he can easily pick one of them and have his need satisfied.

I should rather channel my focus on the areas where I can give most value using my unique perspective: writing books on how an ordinary busy guy can improve his life using 10 minute long disciplines or recognizing the importance of personal philosophy. Nobody else seems to notice that this is a fundamental need in our society and nobody else wrote a good book solely about it.

Where gurus fail

So pursuing this program was not an option for me. It was not compatible with my personal philosophy.

That’s where most info products fail to deliver. They are not marketed to the right people. They are marketed to the people with thick wallets, not to the people with the right personal philosophies. “Gurus” who produce these products are interested only in revenues. Or they fall into the illusion that purchases equal results (however the disclaimers available on many sites suggest that they don’t).

If you are broken, the ready how-to solutions can only provide further damage. Sometimes it’s tiny, when you just buy three dollar book, skim it, and give it no further thought or action. But tiny or not, the damage is done. You’ve lost a few bucks, several minutes of your time and a bit of self-esteem, because you stayed passive. It’s more dangerous if you take the advice to heart with enthusiasm, start implementing it, and give up after some time. You invested much more in the latter case and you enforced all the negative beliefs you had before. “I just can’t do it,” “I’m no good at this,” “I’m a failure.”

I remember how I read a lot of personal development books in my teens and tried to apply everything I found in them. My existing personal philosophy didn’t let that happen and I decided that nothing great could come from me. I quit attempting conscious self-improvement for the next 16 years.

Develop the right philosophy

Once you develop the right personal philosophy you will get more clarity whether or not any given program is for you, whether or not you are willing to pay the price in time investment and sacrifices, not just in money. And you will be able to implement almost anything you decide is worth pursuing.