Would you rent your professional development and training? -

Just thinking out loud here…

Would tutors, trainers, and organisations purchase low-priced, but ongoing subscriptions to gain access to professional development and training.

On my wall: What's my business model again...? — On my wall: What’s my business model again…?

This is as opposed to paying out a big lump sum payment upfront like standard course fees. And I’m thinking mainly of digitally delivered online education.

This is a bit of a mind shift… Like moving from purchasing your music from iTunes to renting it via Spotify.

Advantages might include some of these:

Lower upfront costs for the organisations or individuals paying. This is kind of like the training equivalent of leasing equipment instead of purchasing.
More regular cashflow for providers. Fees would come in monthly rather than at a single point in the sales and training pipeline.
Ability for users to save money by completing the professional development or training quickly and then cancelling the subscription. The provider wins here because they get the training outcome quickly. This would work for me with our domestic training delivering the NCALNE, but wouldn’t probably be helpful if we were delivering internationally where we there is no upper or lower limit on our output.

Another possibility is that users simply purchase modular packages via a shopping cart. The packages could include video content as well as downloadable resources.

The question is whether a series of one-off purchases over time to complete a course of training is better than just paying a subscription for as long or as short as you want and having unrestricted access to everything as long as you’re subscribed.