Perhaps it's time to call it quits

I know this discussion is getting a little long in the tooth now but I want to add that perhaps your strategy of keeping your eLearning Community profile anonymous may not be a good choice. I just answered another one of your questions a day or so ago and only just now realized that you are who you are. My profile is clearly me, with an image of me, and my actual name. I have gotten work from my Adobe eLearning profile. Hiding in the shadows of this professional community with an anonymous profile may not be the best approach. 

Hey AnotherMe: 

Here's another story. I am an educator, a former School Superintendent, and one of the original Certified Adobe Instructors in North America. In 1995. Certification was a much more stringent process that what is required today.  I was privileged to have met the founders of Adobe and worked with them and provided feedback as how we as educators could help them growth their business by providing high quality instruction. I have seen the Adobe educational business go from high end face to face training to the mash-up we have today. Just to let you know, I personally work in Captivate and Storyline but also Photoshop, Audition, InDesign, Premiere, Framemaker, Acrobat, LiveCycle, my partner After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and my son Priemiere, Photoshop, Flash, Animate, Unity, Illustrator, Maya and to say the least we taught a few thousand class participants in public and custom classes over the last 25 years. 

I realized a few years ago that the change was afoot. Our good friends at Adobe decided to get into the training business, essentially in competition with ACI's. They started offering training and countless video tutorials on their website for products, and now of course these are right in their software. Our compatriot Lynda and her husband Bruce, started pay for video training, which many have copied. Good for them they sold out to LinkedIn. Then of course we saw the rise of the the You Tubers. So all what I called noise was occurring in the industry all at the same time.

So how did I resolve to meet the changes that impacted the training industry that I helped shape and grow for Adobe. I decided that it was time to refocus and use the broad range of skills that I possess elsewhere.  I simply broadcast my skills and availability and sure enough received numerous offers. That's one of the things that I find interesting is the skill level demonstrated on a lot of the Adobe product forums. If the level of questions that are being asked reflect the current state of the competition, if you have somewhat decent skills, you should have nothing to worry about.

Today, I enjoy the people I work with and have fun using the Adobe tools in a creative way. I still offer Adobe and Articulate training at a custom and team level. The neat part is that age is irrelevant in the digital world. Don't let that get you down. Improve your range of skills to work with all aspects of digital media. Stretch your mind as well as your skill set. I started in the industry in my mid 40's following the reorganization of the Ontario school system in the early 90's and as I said have been at it for well over 25 years. Bonne chance in your future endeavours.

In addition, how many LMS tools does everyone know?

This is not a technical question, so I unmarked it as question.

When I decided to go freelance five years ago, I was only going to focus on getting contract jobs designing eLearning. I decided to make YouTube videos that showed off my skills as an eLearning developer. I knew that by sharing my knowledge, many people would learn how to use the features of Adobe Captivate. I understood that some people would not want to build eLearning after trying it. You know, the people who at first thought it would be easy but would soon learn that eLearning is more than just a part-time gig or something they could do while doing their other real full-time job.

I kept getting questions after questions from fellow users, which at first I didn't pay that much attention. Don't these people know I'm trying to attract potential customers with my videos? It became clear that my original business model wasn't going to cut it. I chose to pivot. I started as Paul Wilson Learning Design, and then I became CaptivateTeacher.com when I realised that teaching people how to use Captivate was going to be a big part of my business model. As you know I still create YouTube videos, but now it's not only for potential contract jobs but to attract clients who want to learn as well.

What I'm saying is that maybe it's time to pivot as well. Sometimes the universe is trying to tell you something. For me, it was to broaden my potential customers. For you, maybe it's something entirely different. In either case, I think you have some reflection to do. Perhaps you don't want to work for some company. Maybe you are the company that organisations need to hire because you have that experience. You have a unique perspective that a younger person may not have — best of luck.