Why do people still use PDFs for info products?
I've ordered a few "indie" info products over the past year, and while I've been happy with the content, I'm increasingly less satisfied with the distribution mechanism.
When you order an info product, you usually get a "package" from something like Gumroad which includes a bunch of PDFs and maybe some other files (e.g. video, some example code files, etc.).
This seems suboptimal to me. PDFs are not interactive, they tend to mangle typography and graphics, and they don't play nicely with video, code examples, etc. Plus, there's really no way you can prevent people from sharing your PDFs with others for free.
Why not just use the browser instead? Publish your stuff as webpages and then you get interactivity, crisp typography, better scrolling / navigation, and access control.
Curious what others think.
Publishing stuff as a webpage comes with ongoing maintenance and support as a requirement. If you're paying a one-time fee for a product, no matter how much it is, chances are you're going to be very unhappy if the vendor pulls the website down 2 years later because the money stopped coming in.
PDF downloads on the other hand - no ongoing costs or complexity, no chance of getting hacked/malware'd/miner'd/defaced or scraped, you get what you pay for at the point of purchase and the seller's obligation to you ends then and there.
One compromise I've seen (albeit rarely) are products that publish a folder with an index.html and have an "offline", yet still technically "website" version of their product. Those are smart, but also take extra care on the packaging and testing side - way harder than hitting Export to PDF in whatever tool you wrote the thing in.
@woganmay You hit the nail on the head. They're one of the lowest effort way to distribute information that you can guarantee anyone can open. On-top of that you can pretty much customise them as much as you want without having to worry about how it renders on the other persons end.
@markmckelvy I'd honestly question why would you need anything more? Would your sales increase enough to warrant the extra effort and maintenance.
Interactivity, better rendering of graphics / typography, ability to properly organize and structure all your materials (instead of a folder of files), better UX for the end user (e.g. much smoother scrolling, better navigation), access control.
I just think PDFs are suboptimal for consuming the info product, especially when everyone has a high quality, cross-platform rendering engine sitting on their computer.
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Yes, that last example you cite is exactly what I'm thinking. All the assets are there and everything is static. No network / login / etc. needed. Presumably there would be no maintenance.
Do you happen to recall the products you've seen do this?
Unfortunately not - it was many years ago, when software still shipped on CDs :)
That's why serious online entrepreneurs use platforms like Teachable, Kajabi or Podia for their products 😀
Interesting. What's included in the course for those? Do you log-in and work through materials / videos similar to Coursera or something? Are they available offline?
Every platform has different features, take a look at their websites.
Basically yes, you log-in and access courses.
pdf as the p indicate are for print.
Its a control question where I, as a stakeholder, want to control as much as possible the message being passed. Interactivity adds noise. (what if you dont have the font?, or a low bandwidth connection?) @markmckelvy
Well, "P" stands for "Portable", as in "Portable Document Format". Otherwise, yes :)
Include the necessary fonts with the package and make everything static. No need for a network connection at all after initial download.
People want to design the product. PDFs are easier to design exactly how you want them. I think that is a major one.
Others have mentioned a bunch of good things already.
A few other thoughts:
I dunno, I much prefer PDF as it gives me control, flexibility, less maintenance, portability, etc.
Just a guess - maybe for ereaders? I'm guessing people who write them tend to have a kindle or something, and want to make sure it's available offline (airplanes, parks, wherever people tend to read quietly).
But I agree - would be cool to see more interactivity in info products. All those worksheets could be something where you write them down in-line, could do some basic graphing or calculators, etc.
Might not even require a server - I used IndexedDB (and localStorage) in my app to make a fully functional demo that saves the info that's entered. But I'm unsure if browsers will randomly nuke the data. (Maybe a reminder to save the data and have an import option?)
PWAs should be the future of info products :) Actually sounds like a really fun project, but investigating the market for it sounds like a pain :)
If your info product is nearly all basic text then I can understand the e-reader approach (e.g. your product is something people will read on a kindle).
But if you have a bunch of illustrations, designs, code samples, etc., then I think a webpage (HTML, CSS, JS) is much, much better.
You can make everything available offline without having to go the PWA route. Just make sure all your assets are inlined or part of the package.
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