Is The Digital Product Gold Rush Over?
The Big Names Are Starting to Pivot. Here’s Why.
“Digital products are dead!”
So this is the latest message doing the rounds.
The gold rush is over.
The bubble has burst.
Pack up your courses and go home.
Apparently this has been so confirmed by OG digital course creator, Amy Porterfields recent decision to close her Digital Course Academy. In fact she’s copping quite a bit of backlash over it.
Why? I’m unsure, because if you ask me, Amy hasn’t been dishonest. She isn’t ‘gaming the system’. What she’s done is super smart. She’s evolved.
Her pivot to working directly with established business owners is exactly the kind of smart adaptation we should all be paying attention to. She read the room and adjusted. That’s not pulling the wool over people’s eyes. That’s strategy.
I have to admit since getting back into the content creator game early 2025, selling traditional courses has been much harder than when I was first online 15 years ago. The old playbook that worked for me is sputtering a little. But that doesn’t mean digital products are dead.
Quite the opposite. As with everything in life, they’re shapeshifting. And if you’re not paying attention to how they’re changing, you’re going to be left selling yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems.
The Perfect Storm of Challenges
Let’s have a good look at what we’re facing:
The Post-Covid Education Boom Backfired.
Sure, Covid created a lot of buyers and many online businesses went gangbusters through 2020 - 2022, but it also created competitors.
Everyone stuck at home discovered what content creation was. They learned they could package their knowledge and sell it.
What started as a captive audience of eager learners became an army of new course creators. The students became the teachers, and suddenly everyone’s selling to everyone. (Just a quick scroll in your Facebook feed will highlight the sheer amount of courses and products on offer.)
Market Saturation on Steroids.
When I started building online businesses 15 years ago, there were just as many grifters and scammers looking to make a fast buck as there are now. The difference is that now they can launch in days, not months. The barrier to entry is basically zero.
Got a Canva account and a Stripe link? Congratulations, you’re a course creator. The market is drowning in “masterclasses” and “blueprints” that all promise the same vague transformation.
The Loyalty Crisis.
People don’t stick with one creator anymore. While everyone (including me) is preaching “community is everything,” it’s actually harder than ever to build one. Your audience is everyone else’s audience too. They’re following 50 other creators teaching similar things, consuming content like they’re speed-dating - a quick scroll here, a saved post there, then on to the next. There’s so much content vying for attention that even your biggest fans are only giving you a fraction of their focus.
And then there’s the big elephant stomping around the room: AI.
We are nowhere near prepared for how this will reshape the landscape. But we’ll get to that monster in a minute.
The “Nicheless” Conversation (And Why It’s Partly BS)
There is a lot of talk at the moment about being nicheless. “Don’t niche down,” they say, “it’s an old concept that doesn’t work anymore.”
That is true. Partly.
If your goal is to be a ‘content creator’ (in other words, only make money from the content you create), then the content IS the job. Your goal is to create content that gets the most attention. In this instance, being nicheless works.
I was on a YouTube channel earlier for a woman who teaches how to go viral on YouTube. Her videos were about everything from AI to celebrity gossip to makeup. Her goal being a headline that hooks and enough engagement that she earns from watch time and views. People watch not because she’s the ‘go to guru’ on a specific topic, but because they like her and her thoughts on things.
But, if you look through her videos, there’s a real pattern as to which videos get the most views. So slowly her niche gets tighter as she makes more videos based on audience feedback.
That strategy also works on Substack to an extent. If your only goal is to create content and make money from sponsorships or have people ‘support’ your work via a $5 monthly sub, again you can afford to be a bit broader. Although again, you’ll find your niche narrowing as you write more of what works.
(It’s actually a great strategy to ‘find your voice.’ Write about everything you love and see what gets the most views and engagement.)
However, and this is important, when it comes to selling something like a digital product, mini course, cohort etc, here is where you NEED to niche down.
These days the products that work are one problem, one solution. Not a massive 12-hour step-by-step ‘how to go from A-Z course.’ They are much more challenging to sell now unless it’s something more academic like a programming course.
Think “How to write your first Substack post” not “How to build a writing empire.”
Also, if you read or listen to a lot of the ‘nicheless’ gang, you’ll notice they have very specific niches identified by their audience. Think about it, what audience even wants advice on choosing a niche vs being nicheless? Yep you guessed it, creators and solopreneurs.
Something a fantastic mentor said to me a long time ago was: “Jo, don’t listen to what I say, watch what I do.” - That advice has aged very well!
So What Does the Future Look Like?
I’m going to be the first to say that I don’t honestly know. (Although I absolutely need to trust my gut more - I called SEO going sideways about 18 months before it did due to generative search, but I didn’t trust myself and waited until Google saw me off!)
But lets say I did have a Gary Vaynerchuk brain, Here’s where I think things will go in the next 2-5 years:
1. AI slop will flood everything (and that’s your opportunity)
Back to the elephant, I can smell an AI-written post from a mile away. Formulaic headlines, opening paragraphs that say a lot without saying much at all, the massive overuse of “not this, but that” patterns.
What’s sad is that some writers I’ve really enjoyed, even people with “bestselling author” in their profiles, have turned their articles into truly vanilla, uninteresting posts.
I started falling into the pattern myself last year. When I was rushing, I’d hand over more of my article than I should to the AI and inevitably end up rewriting it anyway because it just sounded the same as everyone else!
Don’t get me wrong. Will we eventually train AIs to take our thoughts and create brilliant articles? Probably. I actually think that’s the future (which I know is abominable to the Pulitzer Prize ambitionees amongst us).
But lazy AI - as in “here’s my idea, write an article” - will never cut it. If you want to write something and feed it to AI to improve, that’s one thing. A headline and “please produce some slop that I’m going to pass off as unique content” is not the way to go.
But so many will. They’ll believe the only way to compete is more, more, more, and AI is the tool that will help them achieve that. And that, my friend, is your window.
Stay authentic, stay truly you. Tell stories, add your idiosyncrasies. Show your audience they’re talking to YOU, a human, and you will begin to stand out against a sea of crap.
However, AI is only going to get better including videos, voices & podcasts. There will come a time where I don’t think we’ll be able to tell the AI from the human, which is scary and I don’t have an answer for when that happens, but I do believe it’s coming.
2. Information becomes worthless, transformation becomes priceless
As we all know information is ten a penny now. Supply and demand rules apply. There’s so much supply people don’t need to buy information anymore. They just fire up ChatGPT, ask it to show them how to do something and away they go (although it’s frequently wrong!)
But that’s why community and showing up personally is going to become so much more valuable.
Amy packing up DCA to focus on working one-to-one with women already running businesses is such a smart move. She can’t possibly bring in the revenues she’s used to doing one-to-one coaching with beginners. They couldn’t afford her. So to go for female owned businesses already making over £150k ensures they can pay for her time and services.
She knows the digital product industry is shifting so she’s shifting with it.
You’ve probably heard, but it’s super trendy to talk about ‘cohorts’ now. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I was doing ‘cohorts’ back in 2012/2013. But all the millennial LinkedIn bros are convinced they came up with the term (bless them).
Live, short, community-led programs teaching one problem and one solution have always worked. But now, with digital products losing their power and value, they’ve had a huge resurgence.
Why? Because it’s YOU showing up. You’re walking beside someone as you demonstrate how to do the thing, taking them to a measurable outcome in 4-6 weeks, unlike courses which no one has time to watch anymore. This way people have an appointment, homework, and a deadline.
Information alone is becoming worthless. But information plus structure, leadership, and community is super valuable.
I will add a caveat to that and that’s entertainment. Pure entertainment will hold its own on its own (although that’s really devolving to rage bait for reach and views, which I just don’t like. You can be successful building people up or tearing them down. I know which side I want to be on).
4. The abundance opportunity nobody’s talking about
Whether through automation, AI, or market forces, the cost of creating and distributing digital products (and in some cases even physical products) is approaching zero. But when everything becomes cheap and accessible, what becomes valuable?
Experience, transformation and human connection, that’s what.
Even though it’s tough out there, people have more time and disposable income than ever before. Commodities are losing their shine. Yes, people will always shop and buy more stuff, but certainly in the Western world, we have more than we’ll ever need.
So what are people starting to search for? Meaning.
If you’re positioned as the go-to person to help them get fitter, learn golf, finally write that memoir, or travel with purpose, you’re not just selling information anymore, you’re selling transformation.
The opportunity isn’t in the abundance of stuff. It’s in helping people navigate the abundance.
5. The happiness gap is your opportunity
Statistically, the world is safer than it’s ever been. Global poverty is down, life expectancy is up, violent crime has decreased in most developed nations. Yet anxiety and depression rates are through the roof.
Social media has connected us to everyone while making us lonelier than ever.
Content, products, and coaching that genuinely helps people feel better, (rather than just consume more), will stand out. While everyone else is manufacturing outrage for clicks, there’s a massive underserved market of people who just want to feel okay again.
You can build an audience by making people angry, or you can build one by making people’s lives genuinely better. Only one of those has longevity.
So, Where Should You Focus Moving Forward?
Remember when you had to buy the entire newspaper just to read the sports section? Or the whole album for one good song? That’s what’s happening to digital products right now.
The 12-hour, A-to-Z masterclass is the Sunday paper of online education. People don’t want to pay $2,000 for “everything you need to know about X” when they really just need to solve one specific problem this week.
Digital products aren’t dying, they’re unbundling. One problem, one solution. Four-week sprints, not six-month journeys. Templates that save three hours, not courses that take thirty.
Add to that a good old fashioned community, which comes from consistency, trust, and becoming known for what you talk about and do, and you have the beginnings of a very successful digital product business.
But you’re going to need to experiment with different forms of content, to see what works for your audience. From templatised solutions to mini workshops to cohorts to coaching, you can’t think your way to what works. You have to test it.
Launch something small and watch the data, rather than your feelings.
But more important than ever is finding something you love to do and sticking with it.
Never has sticking with one thing been so important, even if that thing is broad (my own niche combines travel, micro hustles and aging ungracefully - I can talk about all of these topics for years!).
One Final Thing: The Meta Game Still Works (But There’s a Catch)
And I’m not talking ‘Meta’ as in Facebook.
See all the people becoming overnight successes talking about how to grow on Substack and selling courses on how to grow on Substack? That’s because the people on Substack want to know how to grow on Substack. It’s very meta.
Just like the girl with a YouTube channel selling how to go viral on YouTube. The bros on LinkedIn teaching how to be great on LinkedIn. And back in 2010 when I started, I taught people on Facebook how to grow on Facebook.
If you want some quick wins, niching right down and becoming crazy meta is your way forward. Publish books and teach other budding authors how to do so. Become an expert on TikTok and teach other TikTok users how to do so. You get my drift.
But know, that will only work for a period, until there’s too many people selling the same thing and it gets old and dries up and you’re left boxed into a corner.
Just as the Facebook training gold rush ended, the Substack course bubble will pop too, so be mindful.
Use the meta strategy to build your audience by all means, but don’t let it become your prison.
The Bottom Line
Digital products in and of themselves aren’t dead. Thoughtless digital products are.
The future belongs to people who show up consistently, think clearly, build trust, and stay human. (Nothing new there then!)
Information on its own as a commodity is dying, but transformation is very much alive.
And if you’re reading this thinking “but Jo, you haven’t given me the magic formula” - sorry my friend, there isn’t one. Because the magic is in the experimenting, not the thinking.
So stop reading about it and go test something. 😊
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Interesting and helpful post!