Have a lawyer read it to make sure there aren't any clauses that are 'over the top'. A basic NDA should only tell you to not tell anyone the 'secret sauce' and to not talk to press without consent of the company. These aren't things you should really be doing anyways, just now there is a contract reminding you not to.
@Stealx Your previous comment is dead for some reason. Re-posting it below:
"To date we've been selling IT training courses on DVD's for approximately $400 a piece. We create the curriculum, create the content, market it ourselves, everything.
We've sold almost $35 million dollars of our own IT training one course at a time to about 50,000 customers in 147 countries. Being in business for a number of years we've built up expenses to over $500k monthly and we're risking it all to start from 0 subscribers with the subscription model.
Completely bootstrapped, no outside money."
Are you offering previous customers who purchased at least one IT training course a subscription discount? It seems that would guarantee an immediate early seed base for subscriptions, even if they are at a discount.
Previous customers have immediate access to the new site and can access any courses they've previously purchased. We're also offering significant discounts to those who've purchased recently with free subscriptions, etc.
This is a slightly ignorant claim to make. There are plenty of startup companies who have different business models than just "make a program and sell it".
Additionally, you're assuming that every startup is also a saas startup. Most aren't, meaning they might have a thousands in lets say production molds and an order of 10000 units from retailers. They'll need the investment money to help them fulfill orders and grow.
Lastly for many other startups there are costs that exceed past general development. Security is a good example of one of these large costs especially if you're dealing with money or private data in any way. These additional necessary costs could be minor but for many startups they're large and unable to be paid for by the hopeful entrepreneur.
I think you'd agree that any advice is completely universal. Selling preorders is a solution for most cases, but we of course can discuss the exceptions. If your selling process is different than "get money -> ship the product" than you will always encounter cashflow problems and maybe it isn't so wise to start such a project as a startup.
You can always try adding some type of affiliate plan to your page that has a product relative to your content.
When I was doing ad based revenue on my apps one thing we did was play around with different advertising providers. Play around with the audience who could view the ads. Placement, etc. Take a day or two and play with the ads to see which gives you the best result. Whichever placement, rotation, etc. gives you the better result is obviously the better long term choice revenue wise.
I'd like to know which site this is, seeing it always helps. I don't understand why most people ask questions but don't provide their website.
I'm going to stick to a firm no on this one. For starters, this is very expensive to some. Second, not everyone owns or has internet access. So to say "billionS of people" is already incorrect. The second problem with this is competition, you're assuming that people will just line up in droves to come learn and this super company will have no competition. When you put a pricetag on something it becomes a harder competition to fight. The example of google being used as an 'empire' is comparable to that of Facebook. They're both free services, so the idea of using them is a no brainer. People will easily sign up for something that is free.
The final problem is most people don't care. I can say myself that I get nothing out of most education programs and learn more from experiences and communication. Of the people who are willing and able to sit down and educate themselves further on a regular basis with a paid program is a fraction of the population.
In many ways though being a 'different'/'ethnic'/'cultural', whatever you want to call it, brand and marketing as such can be brilliant for a business. I come from an arab/white american background and everyone within that culture will stay loyal to anyone with a good business that is also arab(to some degrees of cultural diversity). With that comes your base market to keep your business going, then because of that loyalty you have people hear about it and come regardless of their backgrounds. If you're running a good business those people become loyal to your brand even if you don't sell hotdogs and hamburgers per se (the typical 'white american' food :P).
Add me on linkedin - Mitchell Abdullah
I'd be more than happy to chat with you about your business to hopefully help you get out of your current downward trend.
In my state you have to file to have what is the equivalent of a 'finders license' to charge a fee, as well you're required to have a private investigators license. EVERY state is different.
