First, should you be skeptical of online courses  that offer so-called “lifetime access” to the course or lifetime support?  Isn’t having lifetime access a good thing?

Let’s think about what lifetime access means.

When a course offers lifetime access, the first question is:  whose lifetime? Yours? The creator of the course? The duration of the live website offering the course?

Further, why would anyone even NEED to return to any course for the rest of their life? (Hint: They wouldn’t!)

Any online course creator can shut down their website!

• Maybe they died?
• Did they move on to other projects?
• What if they redesigned the website and no longer offer the same course or courses you purchased?
• Maybe their site was hacked?
• Could they no longer afford to keep the course website online and active?
• Did they sell the online course to a new owner with different rules?
• Is it possible that they add new, more expensive content and don’t want to include it for prior students?

Is lifetime access just a marketing scam?

Of course, it is!

A reputable and honest course creator would (and should) offer SOME sort of guarantee to students buying courses, but it should be specific in nature as to exactly how long someone could expect to have access to the course or courses they purchased!

Oh, and by the way … free courses are just that – free! There should be no expectation that a freebie would have “lifetime access.” So we are just discussing paid courses here.

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Truth is …

Most course creators who offer “lifetime access” are gambling on students spending their money and buying the course and being long gone very shortly.  Therefore, the student never has any desire to “return to school” or “go back and check something.” 

The best courses offer some downloads of important items so that students can keep some of the materials they pay for … AND … the students gain all of the knowledge and skills they need to secure a paying job using the information in the course.

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Wait!

Sure.  What’s the question?

What about courses that offer free updates or access to new content forever?

Isn’t “forever” a good thing?  Let’s think about that for a second. What does “forever” even mean?

Once a student completes a course, is in the workforce using the skills taught in the course, why would they need or even want to return to a course to check out new material added to “fluff up” the course?

Further, who wants to return to any course and spend time digging through lectures to find changes?

To the contrary, if new material is some sort of “breaking news,” an announcement can be easily emailed to former students.

Otherwise, if a course creator just arbitrarily “adds new stuff,” that shifts the burden on students to return to the course from time to time on their own to be sure they didn’t miss anything new. Who would even think to do such a thing?

Our thoughts.

Don’t jump on board with an online course just because it claims to have “lifetime access” as a selling point.

Your thoughts?

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