Of course, anything that you buy is a product in some sense. Services are also products. The maid you hire to clean your house is also a product. Healthcare

Of course, anything that you buy is a product in some sense. Services are also products. The maid you hire to clean your house is also a product. Healthcare is a product. And yes, education is also a product. But this is a different topic than the one we were discussing. The original article was about receiving $20 in the mail for shareware, "his first product." 37signals makes most of its money from a software product -- not a training product. The thread I'm responding to began when someone complained that you cannot charge money anymore for products and services, because so much open source software is available and services (which I take to be software-as-a-service) is free. It's not someone complaining that books or videos don't sell anymore, because so much information is online for free. Training is a profitable niche. But we can't all make 80% of our money training each other on how to do things.