Have you thought of traveling and still being able to meet your job demands? It sounds impractical but not beyond the bounds of possibility. In this episode, we get insights from Ashley Logsdon, who has been traveling full-time from state to state with her family.

Ashley takes families from surviving to thriving by helping them uncover how “the uniqueness in each of us strengthens all of us”. She guides parents through identifying their strengths – and also their triggers – to live with intention and not simply a reaction to the chaos of an ever-growing family. Through her podcast, blogging, coaching and personality “snapshots”, she provides tools and action steps to aid families in creating a life they love to come home to. Ashley, her husband (and Mama Says Namaste podcast co-host), three unschooling daughters and dog are RVing the States full-time. They focus on authenticity, awareness, and embracing love in the present moment.

My Upcoming Masterclass Training

Course Marketing Mastery – Boost Awareness & Sales Before, During & After Course Creation:

• Learn 40+ ways to sell your course throughout all the stages of course creation. I share creative ways to grow your influence and awareness of your course. While the training will be geared towards marketing courses, you can also use these strategies to promote your products and services.
• This is an in-depth training with tips, resources, and my proven systems.
• $149 includes the full training and a Q&A session.

>>Sign up for Course Marketing Mastery (& view the other Masterclass Topics)<<<

Where were you today and how long are you there?

As of the time of writing, Ashley and family are in the state of Florida for a month or so.

Why did you decide to travel?

She always dreamed of travel and most of the time she had this bucket list of things that they wanted to do one day. Unfortunately, this ‘one day’ never happened until they put a date on it and set off. Eventually, it became a lifestyle and they’ve been doing it more often.

What opportunities have opened up because of your travel?

To her, it has been a mix of social media and the actual travel. For instance, they get to meet people whom they’ve been interacting with on social media. It has also allowed them to meet people that they work with online and even fostered their business relationships further. Likewise, they get to meet up with other like-minded travelers and share experiences together.

You’re a very creative person and you think out of the box in every area of your life. How do you think and act creatively to find unique and better solutions?

First of all, Ashley grew up in an entrepreneurial family and she claimed to have learned so much from her father. She likes to think that she possesses the knack for problem-solving. For instance, the issue back then was how she could enjoy traveling and still earn a living. And so she thought of renting out their place to Airbnb and also looked for virtual assistant jobs, which she does remotely from wherever they go. So it’s always about figuring out a way from any tricky situation. And like her dad always told her, “it’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity for a solution”.

How do you earn money traveling with family?

Ashley has multiple sources of income. She has her own company – Mama Says Namaste – and she’s a family coach and virtual assistant for a number of businesses. Her house that she rents out through Airbnb is also an important asset for her.

What opportunities are out there for entrepreneurs who want to travel?

There are tons of communities out there to meet including RV entrepreneurs and digital nomads. You can do service work, virtual work, work seasonally in different places, just to mention, but there are a lot of creative activities that one can do.

Why did you decide to create an online course?

Ashley always wanted to do a course down the road but she never knew how to start. Not until her friend, who has a company that creates courses, approached her about creating a course for RVs. Together, they decided to make it happen and came up with a course called https://onlinecoursecoach.com/roadtripwebinar. Truth is, it takes 90 days to lay an old habit to rest and create a new habit. So they gave it 90 days and afterward decided they were in it for the long haul. Among the goals of their course include educating people on how to RV with family and still handle a busy working lifestyle.

Talk about the power of collaboration and how you leverage it with your network?

She does do affiliate programs with other course creators and related online businesses. It has helped widen her audience as well as the scope of her business. She also earns commissions from affiliate programs, while creating a win situation for her partners too. You may learn more about the power of collaboration here; How to sell more courses with successful Joint Ventures.

You can join Ashley’s course at https://onlinecoursecoach.com/roadtrip.

The post Teaching People How to Travel Full Time with Ashley Logsdon appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Marketing is the lifeblood of any business. Let’s face it, how can you sell your course if nobody knows about it? We’ve heard it time and again someone complains that their courses are not selling well but it usually has to do with poor marketing. They simply don’t inform many people about their course. Another reason could be that their course isn’t solving a problem that their audience has. This leads to another key element to effectively selling your course; market research.

Remember, the more knowledgeable you are about your audience and their struggles, the more specific your course can be. And because you know your audience so well it will be like you are reading their minds. You know their struggles and goals and why your course addresses those things.

Before we jump into the topic of How to Automate Your Course Marketing, I want to talk about the upcoming Masterclass I’ll be hosting on January 15th at 2:00 pm EST.
You can learn more about this and future classes at

Course Marketing Mastery – Boost Awareness & Sales Before, During & After Course Creation:

• Learn 40+ ways to sell your course throughout all the stages of course creation. I share creative ways to grow your influence and awareness of your course. While the training will be geared towards marketing courses, you can also use these strategies to promote your products and services — whether it’s an online store, consulting, or even academic assistance platforms like bachelorarbeit ghostwriter . The key is to adapt the principles to your niche and communicate your value clearly.
• This is an in-depth training with tips, resources, and my proven systems.
• $149 includes the full training and a Q&A session.

>>>Sign up for Course Marketing Mastery<<<

That said, let’s delve into the strategies of automating your course marketing:

Create a link in your email signature. Market your course with every email you send!

If you regularly send out emails, think of how you can market your course with every email. So instead of writing a ‘plain’ email or including too much of your social media links, conclude with a thank you note plus your image, graphic, or text that promotes your course. You’ll want to avoid being salesy like ”hey, here is the link to my great course”, but rather say something like, “hey, are you struggling with XYZ?” “You may want to check out this course for a solution.” It has to be something that addresses a problem. Think about rotating the text and image every few months to keep it fresh. And there are so many services that you can use for creating email signatures including the integrated email signature in Gmail.

Create lead magnets on your website that have to do with your course.

A lead magnet is an incentive that you can offer to your prospective buyers in exchange for their email address or other contact information. It can help you build an audience if you don’t have one and even generate sales for your course. Then you can create an autoresponder for your lead magnet that offers value and gives your audience compelling reasons to buy your course. On this note, you can use services such as convert and you can learn more about its benefits here; https://onlinecoursecoach.com/convertkit.

You can also create various lead magnets to determine the interest of different topics, so you know what topics to talk about in your course. See these good examples; https://onlinecoursecoach.com/resources/. And when it comes to setting up lead magnets, this service will be very useful; https://onlinecoursecoach.com/leadpages.

Create an after-post template (easy when using WP) where you create a short ad and it gets placed after every blog post (or just with the appropriate category or tag)

You can see a few great examples at https://onlinecoursecoach.com/. If you click on any podcast, you will see how Jeff integrates other courses that he’s promoting such as his masterclass, easy video for courses, coaching, and other links may even contain affiliate links. And there are so many to do it, for instance, you can use WordPress plugins, search online how to do it, or if it’s too complicated, have a developer do it or hire someone. Remember, you can as well do a pre-post template, allowing you to market your course before the actual post.

Be a podcast guest. Get interviewed. Talk about key pain points that your course addresses. Give tons of value.

Why is it important anyway? Well, in so doing, you’ll be borrowing the audience of that podcast. It’s not in a bad way, at least, if you are bringing in value to them. However, if you make it about yourself, then it’s not going to be a great interview. Talk about the struggles and success stories that your students have had and the interview will be valuable to everyone involved. It’s about putting the content in the eyes of the listener as well as your potential students. Be sure to offer a lead magnet that you have already created and speak about the course if allowed.

Partner with organizations, influencers, conferences and colleagues to sell your course. They get a percentage of the sales. There are affiliate services that work with WordPress, Thinkific, Teachable and more.

Question is, would you rather concentrate on selling one by one, or would you rather have someone sell multiple pieces at a time? Obviously, the second part sounds sweet. You can both have an agreement on profit sharing. Go here to learn more about how to sell more courses with joint ventures.

Now, you don’t really have to employ all the above five strategies to automate your course marketing. In fact, pick one that you feel comfortable and use it consistently.

So, what’s your story? Have you tried any of these strategies? What were the results?

Drop a line to ask a question or assistance.

The post How to Automate Your Course Marketing appeared first on Online Course Coach.

So in this episode, Jeff Long speaks to Paige Poutiainen about copywriting practices that sell. Paige Poutiainen is a certified funnel strategist, conversion copywriter, and founder of The Impact Copywriter. She helps growing businesses turn more web visitors into subscribers, turn more subscribers into paying customers and turn more customers into profitable long-term relationships — ultimately, reaching new levels of business growth. Paige has helped CEOs and entrepreneurs all over the world boost their sales with strategic sales funnels and conversion copywriting. Get help selling your course at https://theimpactcopywriter.com/sales-page-checklist.

Masterclass In-Depth Training

I’m pleased to announce my upcoming live Masterclass training sessions. I will go in-depth to show you the exact process, tips, resources, and my proven systems. This isn’t a fluff training that tries to pitch you something at the end. There’s no upsell, just lots of practical content to help you become a more successful course creator.

Learn about the details of each Masterclass here, or read below. Each training is live where you can ask your questions. If you sign up you’ll get access to the recording, even if you can’t attend live.

1. Course Marketing Mastery

• Learn 40+ ways to sell your course throughout all the stages of course creation. I share creative ways to grow your influence and awareness of your course. While the training will be geared towards marketing courses, you can also use these strategies to promote your products and services.
• This will be an in-depth training with tips, resources, and my proven systems.
• $149 includes the full training and a Q&A session.
• Sign up for Course Marketing Mastery

2. 30 Creative Ways A Course Creator Can Grow Their Audience, Impact & Email List

• February 12, 2019, at 2:00 pm EST.
• Learn 30 creative ways to grow your email list all while being authentic and your true self so you don’t feel like a slick marketer.
• Sign up for Grow Your Audience, Impact & Email List

3. Rapid Revenue Streams – Create 20+ additional revenue streams around your online courses to explode your income

• March 26, 2019, at 2:00 pm EST.
• Learn 20+ ways to package your services and products so you can earn more money, many of which can be automated.
• Sign up for Rapid Revenue Streams

4. Outsource Your Course – learn how to find talented & affordable people to help you create your course faster and cheaper than you thought possible

• April 9, 2019, at 2:00 pm EST.
• Learn my proven systems to know how to outsource almost aspects of course creation to someone that’s talented and affordable (around $3-$25/hr!)
• I’ll share where I go to find skilled Virtual Assistants, my hiring process, simple job posting scripts, and more!
• Sign up for Outsource Your Course

Without further ado, here’s the synopsis from the interview, however, you may listen to the podcast for more insightful comments.

What is your background? How did you get started with copywriting?

Paige is a funnel strategist and conversion copywriter, and she’s the founder of the Impact Copywriter. She got into copywriting right after grad school, taking a job at a startup where she got her feet wet in doing landing pages, websites, and content marketing, among other skills. According to her, this job was taking so much of her time and was really stressful. So she decided that if something was going stress her, then it’s got to be something she’s building for herself.

She quit the job after six months and jumped into freelancing, and one day she landed at Copy Hackers and started diving into their stuff. With time, she narrowed down her niche to find the clientele she wants to serve. Paige has always been interested in personal development and so so she started creating courses along these lines, and she does sales pages left, right and center.

How does somebody know what their audience wants?

We call it the voice of the customer (VOC) research in marketing. When it comes to course creation, it’s about going out and finding out what students are experiencing, their challenges, and their expectations. Of course, there are several ways to do this, but the most popular ones are interviews, surveys, and online conversation mining, where you get into Facebook groups, for example, and grabbing the language that they are using. The goal is to get what people are struggling with and that can help you create a course that solves their problem. If people can relate to your content, then they are more likely to purchase your course.

What are some of the keys to writing a good copy?

The first thing is to ensure you have done enough research about your audience. That is going to transform into the copy you are writing. The next step is to create a framework that you are going to use in breaking down your copy. As a general rule, you want to stick to PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve) formula.

Understanding the problem your audience is facing is critical to writing a copy that evokes a response. The more openly you can elaborate the problem, the more your audience feels that you understand. Then, agitate the problem – pour salt onto the wound that you just identified. This digs into the emotional part of your audience. Lastly, provide a solution to the problem – this is what your audience is yearning for.

How important is the length of any piece of copy?

There’s no specified length for a sales copy. Copywriting involves different stages of awareness and this determines how long your piece is going to be. It starts from the initial stage of problem unawareness to problem aware, then solution aware and product awareness. The last stage is where your audience makes up their mind whether or not to purchase the product (your course) that will help solve their problem.  So the length of your piece will depend on how deep the problem is and how much you put into addressing it and providing solutions.

Tell us about “Sales Page Persuasion”?

It’s a 60-minute or 30-minute conversion-boosting sales page review whereby Paige goes one on one with a client in guiding them to improve their sales page copy. She zeros in on exactly what a client’s sales page needs and provides suggestions on what to change, add or remove. She can as well help in creating a sales page from scratch.

Learn more about Paige Poutiainen here: https://onlinecoursecoach.com/sppersuasion.

The post Copywriting for Course Creators with Paige Poutiainen appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Needless to say, running a successful business is a challenge. Times keep changing rapidly and the uncertainty about the future grow overwhelmingly. Think about this, in just one generation, businesses have had to adapt to totally new marketing channels (web and social), decide how to put resources into and use new technologies, and compete on a universal platform – things were unthinkable to former generations.

The major side effect of these fast changes and development is that not one CEO, employee, or course creator for his matter can be an expert in everything. This is the reason, as I would like to think, the biggest challenges that businesses have today are best addressed by qualified consultants.

So today Jeff Long shares some of the lessons he has learned from being in business for 15 years. I speak about why you should hire a coach or business consultants, why you should outsource some of your work, how to find your audience, having a success mindset, and generally how you can become successful in your course.

Masterclass In-Depth Training

I’m pleased to announce my upcoming live Masterclass training sessions. I will go in-depth to show you the exact process, tips, resources, and my proven systems. This isn’t a fluff training that tries to pitch you something at the end. There’s no upsell, just lots of practical content to help you become a more successful course creator.

Learn about the details of each Masterclass here, or read below. Each training is live where you can ask your questions. If you sign up you’ll get access to the recording, even if you can’t attend live.

1. Course Marketing Mastery

• Learn 40+ ways to sell your course throughout all the stages of course creation. I share creative ways to grow your influence and awareness of your course. While the training will be geared towards marketing courses, you can also use these strategies to promote your products and services.
• This is an in-depth training with tips, resources, and my proven systems.
• $149 includes the full training and a Q&A session.
• Sign up for Course Marketing Mastery

2. 30 Creative Ways A Course Creator Can Grow Their Audience, Impact & Email List

• February 12, 2019, at 2:00 pm EST.
• Learn 30 creative ways to grow your email list all while being authentic and your true self so you don’t feel like a slick marketer.
• Sign up for Grow Your Audience, Impact & Email List

3. Rapid Revenue Streams – Create 20+ additional revenue streams around your online courses to explode your income

• March 26, 2019, at 2:00 pm EST.
• Learn 20+ ways to package your services and products so you can earn more money, many of which can be automated.
• Sign up for Rapid Revenue Streams

4. Outsource Your Course – learn how to find talented & affordable people to help you create your course faster and cheaper than you thought possible

• April 9, 2019, at 2:00 pm EST.
• Learn my proven systems to know how to outsource almost aspects of course creation to someone that’s talented and affordable (around $3-$25/hr!)
• I’ll share where I go to find skilled Virtual Assistants, my hiring process, simple job posting scripts, and more!
• Sign up for Outsource Your Course

What I’ve learned from being in business since 2003

Get a coach

A coach can help you identify and focus on what’s important in order to accelerate your success. Some of the benefits of hiring a coach include:

• You will get clear about your goals
• Identify blind spots
• Focus on development efforts
• Gain a competitive advantage
• Increase engagement
• Acquire leadership skills
• Train your brain into a winning mindset
• Boost your overall well-being

The truth is, there is someone out there who has a better understanding of whatever you want to do, and so it’s better they give you proper direction.

Network where your ideal customers/clients are

Find out where seminars, conferences, and local meetups that relate to your field are. These are the exact places where you can find clients and customers to your course. Basically, the more people know you, the more you are likely to get referrals, recommendations, and hires.

Speak whenever you can

Yes! Speak whenever and wherever you go. You never know who’s listening. One time I volunteered to speak to a group of people and it happened that one of them was a marketing manager for a certain organization. The guy hired me and we worked for a few years, which brought in several thousand dollars. So the more you can speak, the more you can network. But don’t just get into work related stuff and giving business cards because it doesn’t give a great impression. Get to know people first, where they are coming from, their motivations, their struggles; try to connect with people on a personal level so they can open up with you.

Build an email list of people that want your content

These people not only become your followers but also your friends over time. Most of the people that have done one on one coaching with me, group coaching and masterminds have actually become my friends. These are people I keep in touch with as I want to see them learn, improve and grow, and consequently they become more than consumers of my content and resources.

Don’t believe everything you think

Being an entrepreneur can be tougher in your head than outside of it. It’s a mental game. Everything you think of might not be practically true. Perhaps you are wondering whether or not your course will sell, or if the marketing strategy in place is viable. That which seems impossible in your head might not be the same to the outside world. As the saying goes, “it always seems impossible until it’s done”. So if you are most often in your head thinking about whether or not your course is going to sell, or what marketing strategy will work, for instance, never fret! Just sit down with your team, write down your different skills and see how they can serve and provide solutions.

Success or learn. Not success or fail

In business, it’s about success or learn. If your business is doing good, fantastic! If not, then learn why it’s not working. This another reason why I’m doing masterclasses is to inform you succeed with your course even if you are just starting out.

Don’t try to learn everything

You can’t solve all the puzzles in your field. Hire out the complex things and you will find yourself saving time and money as well as being more productive. Plus, feel good paying for quality content as you are not really going to get to the next level from free content. Free content is usually shallow and less valuable. So be sure to bring other experts to your business to help you solve the difficult stuff that you can’t manage. It’s very important for growth. Learn to outsource even some tasks that you can still do. Doesn’t it get overwhelming being the sales strategist and marketer, article writer, video editor – doing all these alone in your business? So it’s important to get others to do things for you while you put more focus on a few other things.

That reminds me of another masterclass I’ll be covering about how to outsource your course. Click here to leearn more and sign up for each Masterclass.

Stop doing the doing. Hire people for the doing. Focus on strategy, sales and management

Hire people out, whether for short-term or full-time, or even virtual assistants. Perhaps you want them to be your marketers, customer service, or whichever tasks you want to assign them – don’t be afraid to hire people. Feel free to hire experts too for bigger things, such as consulting, business development and project management.

Success is more about mindset than skill level

This is something have learned over the course of my 15 years in business. My success has always relied on my ability to solve problems. So as far as your skills matter, you must have the mindset for success too. In any case, you can always hire up for things are complex for you to do. Otherwise, make sure to learn skills in business, sales, and managing people.

Take home points

• Make sure that you are learning and growing your business consistently.
• Find out what your audience needs and how you can meet their needs.
• Water the gardens that you invest in; whether business, friends or family.
• Don’t grow the business for yourself, but grow to impact a million people.

Don’t forget to sign up for the upcoming Masterclass trainings. The price is cheaper if you sign up before the date of each training, plus you can ask questions during the video training. Click here to leearn more and sign up for each Masterclass.

The post What I’ve learned from being in business since 2003 appeared first on Online Course Coach.

So this episode talks about how to know if you are expert enough to create an online course. It also covers a bit of how to overcome fear and why you should not be overwhelmed. You may also be interested in how to create effective online courses that don’t overwhelm students.

How are you an expert?

First of all, think of all the things you are good at and write them down. How can you add value, improve lives, save your client/customer, help them add a revenue stream, help them be more calm/balanced, help them communicate more effectively with their friends or colleagues…pretty sure there’s a lot you can do to impact the lives of others. Having a list that you can always refer to can help reduce the overwhelm since it’ll keep reminding you how valuable you are.

Most of the time we look at the things we haven’t accomplished and totally turn our backs on the great things we have done in the past. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself of your past successes and maybe repeat on them again.

Are you struggling with imposter syndrome?

This is when you doubt your accomplishments and you have a persistent internalized fear or being exposed as a ‘fraud’. Maybe you are comparing yourself with another successful person in your field and think you aren’t good enough like them to create a course. Maybe they are making so much money or they have a huge following, then you think you are not ‘them’ to make a huge impact as well.

How do you deal with imposter syndrome then? Well, recognize it and push through it. Success usually happens when you overcome your fear. Make a list of reasons why you need to create a course. Find what you can offer differently from other course creators and embrace the fact that there are other course creators in your field.

What will happen if you don’t create the course anyway? Well, unless you are completely happy with your life or very successful in your business and making a lot of money, then there’s a need to create one. Weigh the options between the reasons to create and not to create the course and see if you should take that path or not.

How do you identify your expertise?

Start by writing down what you are good at that is unique or solves a pinpoint. Maybe it’s your experience, training, certifications, or you are good at numbers, relating to people, or whatever it is. You don’t have to the best in the world but simply what you are good at.

Then, what are you energized or passionate about in regards to your topic? You can be great at many things but it’s difficult to create a course on them if you aren’t excited with them.

In addition, think of the sub-skills you are good at in your field. For instance, you may be a web design expert but very good at marketing, course creation, or e-commerce. This can help you niche down and find your specialty.

What’s holding you back? Fear?

Let’s admit, many times we are held back by fear from delving into the ‘unknown’. Maybe you are scared if the business is going to work out. Maybe you think you are spending so much money on a project and you fear it may be in vain. Truth is, it’s okay to be afraid especially the first time you’re doing something. There is confusion and a learning curve as well.

So here are crucial steps of overcoming fear as written by J. Abraham in his book, “Your Secret Wealth: Hidden Assets & Opportunities That Can Change Your Life”. 

• Step outside your box. Envision yourself stepping out of the zone that has been holding you down.
• Don’t compare your middle to someone’s else top. This is where people become discouraged and so you have to avoid that too. Note that comparison steals joy.
• Turn your fear into motivation. Have the mentality that if others can do it, you can do it too in your own unique manner.
• Be grateful that you want more. It would be bad that you are just content with what you have and don’t want any change or challenge.

Will the course be successful?

Most courses become successful on the back of an engaged audience. It begs another question, how do you grow and engage with your audience? Just go to https://onlinecoursecoach.com/resources and learn from these two useful resources; The 3 simple ways to grow your expertise (even if you have a lot of competition), and 5 ways to build an audience for your online course. 

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need a huge audience. Identify a need and fill it. Make sure to create an email list before you start creating a course. This is how you can start growing your influence for future success.

Planning is another important factor in course creation and the 12 Week Year is one book that can guide you on this.

Are you still wondering if you are qualified enough to create to a course? How about you stop listening to podcasts, reading books, reading blogs, and watching videos. Maybe you just need to get out there and get things done.

Has this episode been helpful? Hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss future updates.

The post How to Know if You’re “Expert Enough” to Create an Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this episode, Jeff speaks with Sara Anna Powers about finding an audience for maximum online course success.

Sara Anna Powers is a Success Coach, Copywriter and the founder of The Congruent Life movement. Her desire is to equip women to pursue their powerful purpose by building impactful businesses. Anna coaches private clients, leads a Mastermind, and runs an online course called Magnetic Messaging. She also hosts the Faith Forward Online Business podcast which is available on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Anna has been a believer for the majority of her life but has experienced a deepening faith relationship with Jesus as she transitioned from practicing law full-time to running her online business. Anna wants other women to experience the freedom and fulfillment that comes from doing the work they were created to do. She can be found online at http://www.saraannapowers.com and across social media @saraannapowers.

Now that you know what she’s about, let’s get her thoughts and some of her success stories as well.

Who is your clientele and who are you serving?

Basically, I have two wings in my business; online business coaching and copywriting. I do coaching for people who have made about four or five figures in their business and they are looking to go an extra mile. On the other hand, I do copywriting for high-end clients in the bracket of 6, 7 or 8 figures.

How does coaching fit into your business model?

I am a big fan of one on one coaching, unlike most coaches who usually prefer operating remotely. I love connecting with people and serving them. I’ve got about eight one on one clients and I’m leading a mastermind of about 15 women. I also host a copywriting course and my total following is about 36 people.

How do you find your coaching clients?

I’ve covered this extensively in a course called “Magnetic Messaging”.

How long have you been doing all this full time? How have you been able to go from a full-time employee to a 6 figures business so fast?

I started the business in 2015. It was never easy but I’d say the effort I put is totally worth it. Initially, I used to practice health coaching until I met with my first coach who helped me changed my approach to doing things. I was still inexperienced by then and not fully in the alignment of building a successful coaching career, and so I made very little money – precisely just $50 in my first year. I made slightly below $2500 in my second year and then switched my focus to copywriting, which ultimately helped me surpass the six-figure mark in year three. This happened while I was working full time and the success enabled me to transition into part-time. As a matter of fact, I re-invested most of the money, which helped in growing the business much quicker.

How do you get the attention of an influencer and what are some keys to working with/for an influencer?

In my case, it has always been about ‘’being who I am’’ rather than acting the part to get an influencer’s attention. Of course, there are those who don’t like authentic and genuine people, but there’s another group who feel connected with “real” people.

Even so, if you have to get into someone’s radar, you have to invest in them, whether by purchasing their products or services. For instance, I’ve worked with Ray Edwards and it all started by me buying his book, “How to Write Copy that Sells”. I also invested in his copywriting course – Copywriting academy – and then I had the opportunity to attend his conference, where I connected with him in person.

So it starts small and there’s no specific route for that. But most importantly, be yourself in order to get the right influencer who feels you.

Would you say it was your quality of work, personality or something else that helped you gain traction with Ray Edwards

It must have been my personality. Also the fact that I was willing to jump in and help in building value, and not just there to take what I paid for.

What are some of your favorite marketing strategies?

First of all, you have to connect with people. You must get out there and do some market research. It involves talking to people and understanding their needs even before you make a course. Next up is being clear about who you are, what you do, who your audience is and why your course matters to them. Another tip is contrast. This involves making your customers/clients to realize the exact situation they are in and why they need your help. Lastly, call to action. Let people know what to do to take the next step and make it clear to them. Don’t be afraid of asking for a sale as well.

Where can we find more about you and your course?

You can learn more about Sara here; http://www.saraannapowers.com/.

The post How to Find Your Audience for Maximum Online Course Success with Anna Powers appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Do you want to travel the world consulting with companies? What if you could license your courses to these companies who pay per user? In this episode, I interview Kimanzi Constable who has built a career and a business selling online courses for large corporations. They delve into what it takes to build a successful business relationship with large corporations.

Kimanzi Constable’s Bio:

Kimanzi Constable is the author of four books that have sold over 150,000 copies. He is a writer for 14 large publications and magazines. He a digital marketing consultant that travels to 25+ countries a year for corporate consulting gigs. His goal is to help entrepreneurs a profitable lifestyle business that gives them true freedom. Join him at KConstable.com.

Kimanzi discusses how to do consulting for large corporations, how to sell online courses to large corporations as well as how one can write for large publications.

1. Tell me about your 3 divisions and how you’re helping different types of people.

Kimanzi runs a profitable business that has three major branches – the online branch, the agency branch, and the corporate branch. Each of these branches performs a different yet vital role. The online branch is responsible for setting up online courses and developing membership websites. The agency branch has seven employees and is responsible for creating training programs, podcasts, carrying out training on digital marketing as well as personal development programs. The corporate branch deals with corporate consultation.

2. Tell me about your corporate consulting and courses. What types of corporate clients are you working with?

Kimanzi works with various corporate clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies and large multi-national corporations.

3. When did you first think about creating courses for your corporate clients?

The thought of creating online courses for corporate clients did not hit Kimanzi until after his third gig. He says that he was motivated to set up an online course after a company approached him asking to learn more. From there he set up his first course and he has not looked back ever since.

4. How do you create courses for your corporate clients? How do you pitch these to your corporate clients and how do you go about creating them?

Kimanzi says that the best time to pitch online courses is definitely during the proposal period. He usually offers his clients several options ranging from one-off trainings, several trainings or even one on one sessions. He also uses follow-up surveys to propose his online course to his corporate clients.

5. What mental barriers and negative beliefs did you have to break through to get you where you’re at today?

Kimanzi has it that the biggest mental barrier he had to overcome was undergoing a mindset shift. He had to overcome his personal fear of working with large corporations. At the same time, he had to overcome his fear of not being perceived as an expert in his field. He did this by diversifying his research in order to become more knowledgeable and confident as he spoke to people.

6. Now that we’ve heard about being at the top of the mountain of success, tell us what your life 5-10 years ago? Has it always been this good?

Surprisingly, business has never been good always for Kimanzi. He has had to endure through difficult times at some point. In fact, just a few years ago, he was USD180, 000 in debt with a failing business and a troubled personal life. While he has always had the passion for entrepreneurship, his businesses have not always been a smashing success. Even when he branched into his current line of work, it took him a whole year to get to a point where it was profitable.

7. Why did you also create courses like the Get Booked Program? 

The Get booked program was created with the sole purpose of training entrepreneurs who were looking to start selling their online courses to larger corporations. While it started as a 4 session program, it has now grown into a 10 session program that encompasses various aspects of dealing with large corporations.

8. What have you learned in the past few years with your online courses?

According to Kimanzi, the most important thing is showing up and always delivering high-quality content. Likewise, in his line of business, he has learned not to underestimate corporate budgets. He continues that these big corporations always have money allocated in their budget for consultations.

9. What marketing strategies have worked best for you?

In the past, Kimanzi has tried several marketing strategies each with different results. He started off with ACL marketing but moved on to using podcasts to promote and sell his content. In the end, he says that the most profitable strategy has been creating content for large publications. Although this is not directly in the line of what he does, it has been magnanimous in building his email and audience in general.

I hope that interview was helpful to learn how to think and what to do so you can also do corporate consulting and courses. It might not be as hard as you think. And don’t forget, if you want to get his courses, go to https://onlinecoursecoach.com/getbooked to get access or get on his waiting list.

Looking to grow your audience (and email list), plan your course, market a course, build a website or create effective coures videos? Check out the Resources page with free guides, worksheets, training and more!

The post How to Create Multiple Streams of Income with Online Courses and Corporate Consulting with Kimanzi Constable appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This podcast is for beginners and experts alike. So whether you don’t have a course or have many you’ll learn something about how to 10x your online course business.

If you are listening to this podcast, I know that you are excited about planning building and marketing your online course. Whether it’s your first course or you’ve created many you want to leverage the power of online courses, build your impact and increase your income. So while you can keep listening to these podcasts and consuming content I want you to get the maximum result. Do yourself a favor, watch the video below and go to onlinecoursecoach.com/groupcoaching to learn more because the upcoming group coaching program that starts on September 18th. (if you see the doors close then you can sign up to get on the waiting list for the next session).

The Course Accelerator Coaching Group

Are you struggling to grow your audience create your online course and sell it to your audience? Perhaps you’ve been too busy to, overwhelmed with all the technical aspects, or just not sure how to create an effective course. Or maybe you already have an online course but sales have been lower than expected. I can help.

Starting September 18th, I’m leading a 6-week coaching group for only 10 people. We’ll be going through my proven system to plan & create your online course. We’ll also develop a custom marketing strategy to fit your needs. Not only will you have access to me for 6 weeks, you’ll also be with other motivated course creators. This powerful dynamic will help create and market your course in 6 weeks…if you’re willing to put in the work.

Watch the video below or click to learn more about the coaching program, look at the pricing packages and fill out the application to join.

Learn more at: onlinecoursecoach.com/groupcoaching

How to 10x Your Online Course Business

The market for online courses is growing bigger with each passing day, and showing no signs of relenting any time soon. In fact, it is even getting bigger. Are you an online course creator? Do you want to learn how to 10x your online course business? A lot of course creators are lately on the path of doing so with the hope of leveraging their power of online courses, building their impact, and boosting their income levels. So, how do you go about growing your online course business 10 times?

1. Sell the benefits and results not a course

You’re not a course maker, you’re a solution provider. First of all, ensure that you make your potential clients realize the benefits of the course that you are selling. Here, you may be compelled to carry out surveys in a bid to understand the problems that your audience is facing. You need to make sure that the content being marketed is geared towards solving a particular problem that your audience has. This can be achieved by making sure that your content is connected to your mission. You can achieve this by having a good comprehension of the needs of your audience.

2. You have to have a plan for growth and success

Planning for growth and success includes building an audience that likes, knows, and trusts you. This is very vital before, during, and after you have gone ahead to create your first online course that you intend to market to those willing to try it. Here, you may also want to ensure that you only give what is only necessary for a course as opposed to overwhelming students with a ton of material that may end up being hard to consume. By so doing, you will be planning for growth and success of your online course. This includes building an audience that knows, likes and trusts you – vital before, during and after you create your first course.

3. Borrow the confidence of a spouse, business partner, your audience, etc.

If they think you can do it you probably can. If you think you can/can’t you’re right. Nobody will attempt to interact and buy from you if they have no idea about you, trust or like you. To sell, it would be of great benefit if you attempt as much as possible to connect well with your audience regardless of the size in a bid to find out what they require in a course. This should always come only after getting some feedback from your targeted audience and not before. At this point, you really need to make sure that you are involved with an audience that is aligned with your course.

4. Build your network – the more people that know you the more success you will have with more projects and larger projects

Do things like podcast interviews, conferences, networking, videos, Facebook live videos. Check out the following guides to improve grow your network. https://onlinecoursecoach.com/marketingtips and https://onlinecoursecoach.com/buildyouraudience 

If you happen to make yourself known to a lot of people, you are more likely to realize success based on more and larger projects. But how can you achieve this? There are several platforms for doing so including using platforms such as LinkedIn groups, Facebook, Facebook Live videos, YouTube Live videos, meetups, podcasts, and other social platforms. Provided you offer valuable content, people will ultimately pay some significant attention to it.

5. Build a competent team that multiplies your efforts

Are you doing everything yourself? Then you can’t grow and 10x your business. If you are doing everything by yourself, then you can’t successfully grow while ensuring that you 10x your online course. Among other things, thinking about joint ventures needs to be high on post-marketing tactics or strategies. Grow and build your audience. Get to know them even better. Be involved in Facebook ads and meetups among other channels. Also circle back to your audience and let them know the benefits of the course that you are marketing.

6. Create systems using software to scale up

At this point, you need to come up with systems aimed at ensuring that scaling up doesn’t affect you in any way.

7. Scale up!

Once you figure out how to do something scaling can be easy. If I know that I can do a 1-day video shoot then I know I can scale up and do a 12-day video shoot. It’s like if you can read one book then it’s easy to read five. So once you learn how to do something well you can learn how to scale. The moment you learn how to do something, you will realize that scaling up won’t be a problem as such. If you happen to identify sort of a rhythm, everything else that follows will not be a challenging task that will somehow be challenging for you. Once you learn how to do something easily, scaling up will be easier than you thought.

Resources mentioned:

https://onlinecoursecoach.com/marketingtips
https://onlinecoursecoach.com/buildyouraudience

The post How to 10x Your Online Course Business appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I’ve interviewed successful course creators. I’ve also coached course creators and created courses of my own as well as for large companies and have found that there are differences in ones that succeed and ones that don’t. And it’s not their fame, money or other factors. I’ll talk about those differences in this episode.

The Course Accelerator Coaching Group

Are you struggling to grow your audience create your online course and sell it to your audience? Perhaps you’ve been too busy to, overwhelmed with all the technical aspects, or just not sure how to create an effective course. Or maybe you already have an online course but sales have been lower than expected. I can help.

Starting September 18th, I’m leading a 6-week coaching group for only 10 people. We’ll be going through my proven system to plan & create your online course. We’ll also develop a custom marketing strategy to fit your needs. Not only will you have access to me for 6 weeks, you’ll also be with other motivated course creators. This powerful dynamic will help create and market your course in 6 weeks…if you’re willing to put in the work.

Watch the video below or click to learn more about the coaching program, look at the pricing packages and fill out the application to join.

Learn more at: https://onlinecoursecoach.com/course-accelerator-coaching-group

Are you a course creator and wondering how to become successful in your business? But again, where do you begin from? Wouldn’t it be of great benefit if you had a step-by-step guide that shows you exactly how you can go about from no idea all the way when you finally get paid?

Online course creation is a good way of building passive income. Here, you just frontload your work in the beginning while ensuring that you make some money from your efforts for the period that follows. In fact, now more than ever, the market is juicy and attractive.

There is a lot of content out there that tries to explain how you can go about creating successful online courses. Sadly, a majority of them are complicated and confusing. In fact, some of them are secretive and more concerned about you paying them first. Even after paying them, they won’t provide you with a clear framework on what you can do to realize success.

In this episode, Jeff Long provides an insightful step-by-step guide of the top traits of successful online course creators. Introducing the top 8 traits of successful online course creators:

1. Successful online course creators don’t let fear get in the way. Fear of failure OR fear of success

I’ve had both of those. Do you struggle with one more than the other? But I’ve found that when I push through the fear and find success, I look back with such satisfaction that the process is worth it all. In fact, at times I welcome things into my life that scare me because I know how much success it’s helped build in my life.

While creating an online course, don’t let the fear of success or failure get in your way. You may be scared that people may not like your content or it may turn out to be a success to the extent of overwhelming you. In other times, the sales could be very few to the point of scaring you even more. But to realize success, it’s vital to go step by step by teaching a few people and growing bit by bit. Learn slowly and grow all the way while ensuring that fear doesn’t get in the way.

2. The top course creators prioritize their course because they know spending some time now will help them increase success and decrease time later

If you have an idea, it will be of great importance if you dedicated a significant part of your time now by taking a few hours to create your online course content. If you happen to have a goal of creating a lesson, you will be better off starting small while growing all the way. The goal here is to spend part of your time now since it will be a significant investment for you and a source of investment in the future.

3. Course creators build their audience and influence so they can help more people with their courses

Successful online course creators need to have a huge audience list. With a huge audience list, you will be in a position to listen, get some feedback, customize your content, and sell it more. With an audience, you will be able to connect with more people. But, how do you build your audience? This might includes building their email list, speaking at conferences, being on podcasts and becoming known outside their immediate circles. If this scares you, you might look at improving your public speaking skills, hiring a coach or just taking the time to improve in these areas.  Engage yourself in conferences, building your email list, being on podcasts and attempting to become known outside your immediate circles. Alternatively, go to https://onlinecoursecoach.com/resources/ and check out the 5 simple steps to building an audience for your online course.

4. eCourse creators aren’t too cheap. They view learning as an investment

I struggled with this when I first started my business. And while I’m smart with my money I know when to invest my money to help get me further/faster. What if you could spend a few hundred dollars and have your course created so you can sell it 24/7 and make that money back in the first month? Is that an expense or an investment? While creating your online course, don’t be too cheap. But again, don’t be too overly expensive. When starting out, you will definitely have to spend a few bucks here and there. But you need to know where to invest your money. If you spend your money on important things now, you have a chance of recouping it later. You need to focus on the growth strategies for your online course by spending some money on areas that matter, and this way, you will be creating an investment for yourself.

5. They don’t let technology get in the way. They might hire it out or learn it

Don’t let technology, software or any hurdle get in your way. You can either learn to do it yourself or find someone competent that can do it for you. You’ll never scale your business if YOU do all the work in your business. Technology can be overwhelming. There will be a time where you will find it tasking to undertake some duties that need technological expertise. But to be on the safe side, you shouldn’t let technology, matters to do with software or any other hurdle obstruct you. To avoid this, you can either learn to do something all by yourself or look for a competent person to do the job for you. You won’t be able to scale your online course if all that you do is to undertake all the tasks alone without some help.

6. Top course creators have a marketing system in place to sell their courses

This is one of the top things that separates the top course creators from the others. Do you have a marketing plan in place to build your audience and sell your courses? If not, click the links before this sentence to download my free guides on both topics. It will help you get a plan in place. Having a marketing system in place to sell your online course is an aspect that separates top online course creators from the others.  You need to have a marketing strategy or system to sell your course. Again, go to https://onlinecoursecoach.com/resources/ and learn the 7 ways to market your online course.

7. They have a network of motivated friends to encourage them

Successful online course creators do have in place a network of like-minded friends to motivate and encourage them on what they are doing. For your online course to be a hit, you really need to find a network of friends who not only share the same ideas as yours but also encourage you to go further and realize more success. With such friends, you will be able to build each other all the way. These would include a network of friends whom you can connect with to brainstorm, encourage, and share new ideas.

8. Have a network of other course Creators that will promote or do joint ventures with them

This could be affiliate groups, joint ventures, an online influencer or other people that you can approach to promote your course. You may also be interested in how to sell more courses with successful joint ventures.

There are some people and organizations that have a network of friends that you can approach if the intention is to make your newly created online course turn out to be a success. If anything, you are not the only course creator around. By having a network of other course creators in place, rest assured that you are poised to realize success in your own online course.

The post The Top Traits of Successful Online Course Creators appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This episode discusses producing courses for industry leaders such as Grant Cardone and Daymond John with LightSpeed VT. Our interview guests today are Andru Hull and Jennifer Herring from LightSpeed VT Midwest.

The Course Accelerator Coaching Group

Are you struggling to grow your audience create your online course and sell it to your audience? Perhaps you’ve been too busy to, overwhelmed with all the technical aspects, or just not sure how to create an effective course. Or maybe you already have an online course but sales have been lower than expected. I can help.

Starting September 18th, I’m leading a 6-week coaching group for only 10 people. We’ll be going through my proven system to plan & create your online course. We’ll also develop a custom marketing strategy to fit your needs. Not only will you have access to me for 6 weeks, you’ll also be with other motivated course creators. This powerful dynamic will help create and market your course in 6 weeks…if you’re willing to put in the work.

Watch the video below or click to learn more about the coaching program, look at the pricing packages and fill out the application to join.

Learn more at: https://onlinecoursecoach.com/course-accelerator-coaching-group

Andru Hull’s Bio

Andru is the Lead System Architect and Production Manager at LightSpeed VT Midwest. He has a degree in Sociology and a background in management and technologies. The aspects of his position that he enjoys most are the problem-solving elements and being able to find creative solutions for clients to help them grow their business. Andru also enjoys playing music, critiquing movies, and travel.

Jennifer Herring’s bio

Jennifer handles marketing at LightSpeed VT Midwest. Her background in graphic design, printing, mailing, marketing, and teaching made her a great fit for the business and what it offers. She enjoys networking at local events and working with entrepreneurs to help build their business. When she isn’t doing that she working on her own projects, spending time with her husband and two kids, or doing something to stretch her creative muscles. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifermherring/

Without further ado, let’s get right into the interview with Andru and Jennifer:

What are some ways to keep a course engaging so the student doesn’t get bored?

The first thing is delivering the course in bits, for instance, breaking a course into 5-minute videos. It’s important to ensure that a course offers concrete value so readers can feel the need to stay engaged.

What have you learned by producing courses for some of the top industry leaders that an average course creator could learn from too?

Most top industry leaders have dedicated individuals who put effort into their systems on a day to day basis. Liking a system is great but it’s not enough if there’s no effort being put into it. Industry leaders put work into whatever they do and that’s the key to their success.

What should a course creator think about when producing their course videos?

First of all, it has to be about establishing their goals. Course creators should learn who they are talking to and even down to their personality types. This will allow them to design content that suits their audience.

What are some things you consider when designing a course and how can the listener benefit from this?

Bird’s eye view first. Try to have a full outline of what the entire course will look like. That should be followed up with narrowing down from top to bottom, analyzing the most important things and how they can be conveyed. Having a solid outline is key to designing a meaningful course.

How do you work with smartphones/tablets?

It’s all about making bite-size materials and staying ahead of the pack. Many people appreciate the possibility of learning courses using their mobile phones just like they would do when sitting in front of a computer. Enabling courses on mobile devices is a great way of letting people learn from anywhere, anytime.

What are some strategies that you’re seeing work well?

Signing up a sales funnel has always worked as well as ads. It’s an old-school marketing strategy but still recommended for marketing online courses.

What is Lightspeed and who is it built for?

Lightspeed is an interactive LMS (Learning Management System) designed for virtually anyone; that individual who’s starting out a side hustle to large companies who want to offer internal training for their customers. What sets it apart is that it’s mobile friendly and very interactive.

For instance, students have to stay engaged in the system for a course to move forward, unlike other systems where someone can just press play, go away and come back later for a test. And if a yes/no question pops up on screen, one who answers yes will get a different follow-up video to the person who answers no.

What sets you apart from other learning management systems?

The key feature that Lightspeed boasts is accountability. It has reporting features that make it very easy for users to track their training.

What does the process look like from start to finish when you work with a client?

Most of the times it involves taking the client’s concept and building it to a whole new level. For instance, many high-profile clients such as speaker trainers have their own books that they’ve made. At Lightspeed, we would take that book and split the content into short pieces that are engaging for readers. The owner can also add anything else but most importantly we help craft the content to best suit the intended audience.

Where can we find Lightspeed?

At lightspeedvtmidwest.com

Anything else that would be important for course creators?

One last thing, always remember to address your marketing goals for your courses.

The post How Lightspeed VT produces online courses for experts like Grant Cardone and Daymond John from Shark Tank appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Are you looking to help more students, grow your impact and leverage the power of your online course? Then Joint Ventures might be something to consider. There is a dark side and a beneficial side to doing joint ventures. I’ll share how to do it the right way with practical advice.

The Course Accelerator Coaching Group

Are you struggling to grow your audience create your online course and sell it to your audience? Perhaps you’ve been too busy to, overwhelmed with all the technical aspects, or just not sure how to create an effective course. Or maybe you already have an online course but sales have been lower than expected. I can help.

Starting September 18th, I’m leading a 6-week coaching group for only 10 people. We’ll be going through my proven system to plan & create your online course. We’ll also develop a custom marketing strategy to fit your needs. Not only will you have access to me for 6 weeks, you’ll also be with other motivated course creators. This powerful dynamic will help create and market your course in 6 weeks…if you’re willing to put in the work.

Watch the video below or click to learn more about the coaching program, look at the pricing packages and fill out the application to join.

Learn more at: https://onlinecoursecoach.com/course-accelerator-coaching-group

Joint Ventures can have an ugly connotation. You might picture spammy 3 part video series where they give out limited information but a long sales pitch. I’ve been hesitant to partner with a lot of people for this reason. I see it done poorly, even though one of my first courses found success because of a joint venture.

First, if you don’t have a course or product then you can’t do joint ventures. Get off the sidelines and create the course. Don’t be shy about the value you provide and the expertise you have…even if you’re just starting out.

If you’re shy about the value you provide, take a few minutes to write out all the things you’re good at. Are you good with people, technology, business, animals, numbers, art, language? Do you have schooling, certifications, proven results, or other things that set you apart? Write down as many skills as you can think of. Revisit this for a few days and you’ll see that you’re more valuable than you might think.

On the flip side, joint ventures have revived many businesses and have worked well with several course creators such as the owner of this podcast. That’s why this episode covers the good, the bad and the ugly of joint ventures.

The Bad – why you might have a bad taste in your mouth

The most obvious one is when everyone sends out the same emails, maybe using the same template, and you all end up bombarded with a ton of non-so-useful emails.

Second, it usually feels weird to send out emails that promote someone else’s product in an attempt to make a quick buck, yet taking advantage of your own audience.

The Good – why you will want to consider joint ventures

First of all, if you don’t have a course or product, then there’s no point in doing joint ventures. If you do have a following, influence, or email list, just to mention, you could find other people that have valuable content which you can promote. So you don’t really need to have a course to start promoting other people’s content.

Another thing, don’t be shy about the value you provide and feel free to share your expertise if even you are just starting out. If you feel shy about the value you offer, then take a few minutes to write about all the good things you are good at. Are you good with technology, business, art, numbers, language, animals, etc? Do you have schooling in certain areas, certifications, proven results, or other things that set you apart? Write down as many skills as you can think of and you will realize you are more valuable than you can imagine.

Once you have a good course, be sure you have many students in your course before approaching someone for a joint venture. It’s awkward if you just approach someone for this kind of partnership when you are just launching a course. Even so, don’t be afraid to ask even if you feel intimidated.

The key to a successful joint venture is finding audiences with similar interests, especially if they are underserved. For instance, if you have a course on how to teach English to Spanish, then you may partner with travel agencies. They can then sell your courses to tourists traveling to Spain.

Ideally, you don’t want to find five affiliate partners in the same industry who share the same audience.

You also want to find ways to serve your partner’s audience. Maybe you provide consultation services, group coaching, or done-f0r-you services. Figure out how to serve them best and you’ll never know the recommendation that might result from it.

Last but not least, look for win/win/win so everyone feels awesome and not icky. This includes the audience, your partner and yourself. If something is not benefiting you, then it’s not really worth it. Determine what a ‘win’ means to you – it might be money-wise, influence, or advertisement. Simply figure out what you want to gain from a joint venture.

How to get started with joint ventures

Here are some of the ways that you can find people to partner with:

Go to podcasts, find YouTube creators, influencers, authors, social media leaders, Facebook groups, meetups, conferences, just to mention a few. Literally, anywhere there’s a trustworthy leader that could benefit from your course plus their audience as well. You OWE it to them to help people out by offering your course. Come out with an aim to serve them and they’ll see the need to partner with you.

So, how do you structure your partnership? Should you have a contract in place? Go to a lawyer to structure it? Generally, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Most businesses have sales tracking software so you can always monitor how your course is doing. Come up with a transparent structure that works for both of you.

When it comes to price split, it should be negotiable. 50/50 is common in most businesses, however, you want to make it high enough where they get value.

What next?

You have a good course, you have a track record of success, and you have a reliable partner, what do you do next?

Set up an affiliate program on your website where someone can sign up to become an affiliate. There are several software and plugins that can help on setting that up such Affiliate WP plugin on WordPress. If you wish to become an affiliate of this site, feel free to go to https://onlinecoursecoach.com/affiliate-area/ and sign up or at least check it out.

Lastly, how often should you do joint ventures every year?

You should have affiliates promoting their stuff to your audience at most 4 times a year. It’s not ideal to keep your site on sales mode throughout the year.

Would you like to do a joint venture? Does it fit your business model? What’s your story?

Shoot an email to ask a question. Don’t forget to share this episode with a friend or colleague.

The Course Accelerator Coaching Group

Are you struggling to grow your audience create your online course and sell it to your audience? Perhaps you’ve been too busy to, overwhelmed with all the technical aspects, or just not sure how to create an effective course. Or maybe you already have an online course but sales have been lower than expected. I can help.

Starting September 18th, I’m leading a 6-week coaching group for only 10 people. We’ll be going through my proven system to plan & create your online course. We’ll also develop a custom marketing strategy to fit your needs. Not only will you have access to me for 6 weeks, you’ll also be with other motivated course creators. This powerful dynamic will help create and market your course in 6 weeks…if you’re willing to put in the work.

Watch the video below or click to learn more about the coaching program, look at the pricing packages and fill out the application to join.

Learn more at: https://onlinecoursecoach.com/course-accelerator-coaching-group

The post How to sell more courses with successful Joint Ventures appeared first on Online Course Coach.

One of the top course questions people ask me is if they should build their own website and learning management system or if they should use an existing service. One of the many benefits of using something like Academy of Mine is that they take care of the technical aspects of your course.

Academy Of Mine is an all-in-one LMS platform to create, market and sell your online courses. The heart of their software is their proprietary learning management system, which allows you to create online courses that consist of lessons, quizzes, assignments, and discussions, and include certificates of completion, among other features. They allow you to create your own branded website and offer automated e-commerce functionality, as well as marketing and analytics software. They’re also rolling out an improved version of their “Course Manager” feature, which enables clients to onboard various instructors, who can then separately manage their assigned students; reporting and analytics can be broken out separately, as well.

Their clients range from individuals to small- and medium-sized businesses, and they work closely with their customers to ensure that support is top-notch. Above all else, they place a premium on the human side of the business experience. They also do customization work for their clients on an ad hoc basis.

Are you looking to grow your audience and create, market & sell more courses? What training and content will help you the most? I’d love to help! Pick what you need most at onlinecoursecoach.com/vote to share your thoughts of how I can best help you. As a thank you, I created a free training called “3 Simple but Powerful Ways to Grow Your Email List” when you fill out the survey.

Let’s jump into the interview with Yash and Brenden;

What is your background?

Yash, in particular, had always had the passion for teaching. His background is in technology and investment banking. Yash could always create software but he realized that he thrived really well in teaching customers how to use various banking systems. He later thought of how he could create a system that integrates both teaching and learning. His love for teaching led to creating Academy of Mine, which has grown to become a business.

How did you get started with online courses?

Initially, it used to be face to face teaching. With the power of the internet, we thought we can set up something online where we can teach various courses and anyone can access the platform from anywhere around the world. Online teaching is also something we have a lot of interest in.

What are some of the struggles that you’ve come across?

Course creators can have various problems depending on the stage that they are in. For instance, most course creators in the idea stage struggle to get a set of things to start with. Most of the time they want to create several things at a go instead of starting out step by step. Other creators in the marketing stage struggle with finding the best channels to promote their courses. Basically, every stage of course-creating poses its own challenges.

What are some of the marketing strategies that have worked well with you?

The most important strategy for every course creator is the ability to engage their potential audience even before a course is created. This is especially great for people who are in the idea phase because it gives the audience the opportunity to validate their courses. Other creators use traditional methods such as sending fliers, while some bank entirely on social media marketing tools, such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook ads.

Tell me about your software for course creators and why you created it?

Academy of Mine is an all-in-one learning management system. The idea behind it is that anyone can start an online academy. It includes a website builder, LMS bit and marketing section. The LMS part especially allows clients to create content in their most desirable formats. Academy of Mine basically offers clients all they need to start their online course platforms and sustain their business.

How are you different from a regular LMS Platform?

Academy of Mine is not for everyone. It best suits clients who want to invest their time in learning and getting the most out of the systems. What really sets them apart is that they offer a personalized service such as getting on the phone anytime, which is something that other platforms don’t provide.

How do you pitch corp training?

Academy of Mine have no particular approach for pitching to corporate clients but what they do is listen to client’s needs and respond to them accordingly. Most importantly, they offer solutions according to the client’s issues unlike pitching to clients what they offer. The solution has to be tailor-made for every client.

What new exciting features are you planning on adding in future?

Clients can expect to see more interactive features within their courses. There’s also the ability to run live classes. Lastly, and something that has gained a lot of interest, clients can look forward to setting up a platform and enjoy the ability to onboard other companies.

Who are your potential clients?

Anyone interested in setting up an online academy, not necessarily LMS. However, Academy of Mine would love to hear from anyone who’s into course creating and they are ready to offer ideal solutions to related problems.

Are you looking to grow your audience and create, market & sell more courses? What training and content will help you the most? I’d love to help! Pick what you need most at onlinecoursecoach.com/vote to share your thoughts of how I can best help you. As a thank you, I created a free training called “3 Simple but Powerful Ways to Grow Your Email List” when you fill out the survey.

The post How to use Academy of Mine to Build your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This article dives into how course creators can improve their online course sales. First of all, online courses are more about your students and the best way to serve them than simply looking to sell to your audience. Nonetheless, below are seven simple things a course creator can do to improve their sales.

Are you looking to grow your audience and create, market & sell more courses? What training and content will help you the most? I’d love to help! Pick what you need most at onlinecoursecoach.com/vote to share your thoughts of how I can best help you. As a thank you, I created a free training called “3 Simple but Powerful Ways to Grow Your Email List” when you fill out the survey.

[ctt template=”5″ link=”Odefd” via=”no” ]Sales is about telling stories of past client’s success, not convincing someone to buy. – Jeff Long[/ctt]

1. Get crystal clear on who your audience is, what their problems are and how your courses solve their problem

Start by defining your audience, especially if you’re starting out with your courses. Conduct surveys and try to get feedback from your audience just to understand their problem. Not sure where to start? Go to resources page and check the “5 Ways to Build an Audience for Your Online Course”. Aim your courses in solving those particular problems and make sure the content is connected to your mission. If you have been in business for some time, then you should already have a good understanding of your audience needs.

2. Only give out what is absolutely necessary for each course

Many people want to pack too much into a single course. The truth is, students usually get overwhelmed or intimidated by a ton of information. Course creators must learn how to calculate the minimum amount of content that gets the maximum amount of value. Give students bite-size chunks rather than a full bundle that would be hard to consume. If you want a detailed guide on this, follow this link to learn how to create courses that don’t overwhelm students. 

3. Build trust with your audience

No one will buy from you if they don’t know you, like or trust you. Try to connect with your audience regardless of its size and find out what they need in a course, which goes back to point number one. A course should always come after getting feedback from your audience and not before. Make sure that you’re involved in a community (s) that are in alignment with your course.

4. Build a community that grows your impact and influence

There are several platforms that course creators can utilize in building their communities. These include Facebook/LinkedIn groups, Facebook Live videos, YouTube Live videos, podcasts, meetups, among other social media platforms. As long you are providing valuable content, people are most likely to pay attention to it. When it comes to Facebook, for example, here are a few ways on how you can maximize the use Facebook Live videos to your advantage. 

5. Have a pre-marketing and post-marketing strategy in place

Course creators ought to build their courses with a plan rather than throwing everything together and hoping for success. Pre-marketing strategies are all about building your audience and growing your audience. This is where things such as building email lists, starting a podcast, creating a Facebook group, and meetups come in. It’s about getting people to know you without necessarily doing much of selling.

On the other hand, post-marketing involves circling back to your already established audience and launching your new content. Running Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and doing joint ventures should be high on your post-marketing strategies.

6. Treat your courses like a business

Be available to your students without giving too much of your time. This idea stems from one of the successful students who has benefited from the onlinecoursecoach.com. Her name is Janet. Janet has a great course, she has established a social media community for her courses and everything seems to go in the right direction except for one problem – she spends a lot of time on her Facebook group. Indeed, you want to be available for your students but the amount of time you spend with them should match the price of the course. Additionally, keep in mind the effort you put into preparing a course. If you want to learn more about pricing strategies for your course, go here; how to price your online course for maximum success.

7. Look to outserve your students before, during and after they buy your course

Think of ways of impressing your students. Do unexpected things to wow them. Whatever you do should be simple, for instance, giving them a call – something that doesn’t take too much of your time.

And there you have it! 7 simple things to improve your online course sales. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to apply all these strategies; pick one and perfect on it. Which strategy would you like to implement? Leave a comment below or shoot me a line.

Are you looking to grow your audience and create, market & sell more courses? What training and content will help you the most? I’d love to help! Pick what you need most at onlinecoursecoach.com/vote to share your thoughts of how I can best help you. As a thank you, I created a free training called “3 Simple but Powerful Ways to Grow Your Email List” when you fill out the survey.

The post 7 Simple Things to Improve Your Online Courses Sales appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this episode, I talk with Cliff Ravenscraft about the 11 proven steps to build and grow an online business. I’ve known Cliff for quite a long time now, I’ve hired him and have listened to his podcasts for many years.

Cliff started podcasting as a hobby back in 2005. A year later, he launched PodcastAnswerMan.com where he has since helped tens of thousands of individuals and organizations successfully launch a podcast through one on one coaching and online courses.

Today, Cliff mentors coaches, consultants and thought leaders through the transition from their unfulfilling day job to their own profitable online businesses so that they can live the life of their dreams and do the work they feel most called to do in this world.

Without further ado, here is Cliff’s step by step perspective on how to build a profitable online business.

Are you looking to create & sell more courses? What content do you want me to create that will help you the most? You can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/vote to share your thoughts. As a thank you, I created a free training called “3 Simple but Powerful Ways to Grow Your Email List” when you fill out the survey.

Dream big

Online business enthusiasts should determine the outcome they expect out their business. They should start by asking themselves why they want to invest in a particular business and if they have the time for it. Moreover, they should determine the amount of money the business must generate to sustain itself and whether they are willing to input the effort needed to generate the money.

Apart from the business part, one must think about the kind of life they want to live thereafter and if their business can help them live their dream lifestyle. It’s important to note every bit of it down so that they become goals that you work towards achieving.

Identify where you are already adding value to people’s life

Business aspirants ought to find their area of expertise, their talents, passion, and even their experience in the kind of business they want to start. This will make it easy for them to connect well with their target market. It also ensures that one can provide their target audience with exactly what solves their problem.

Determine the ideal customer for your business

Most people make the mistake of attracting the wrong customers to their business. Ideal customers must have purchasing power and a problem to be solved. Most importantly, they must be willing to pay something in order to get their problem solved.

Learn about your ideal customer’s problem

The best way to do this is through conversations with people who somehow fit your ideal customer. Find out what their struggles are and the pains that lie within. The goal is to find the best way to solve their problems and even learn how to communicate with them effectively.

Determine the type of products and services to offer your target audience

This is where business enthusiasts have to delve into one on one coaching. It’s more about finding out what people need and how you can offer them exactly that.

Create your value proposition statement

A value proposition statement is the elevator pitch of a business. Before creating a value proposition statement, one must answer these questions: who they are? what is their professional identity? what problem can they solve to people, how and why do they solve it?

For instance, here is Cliff’s value proposition statement:

“I mentor coaches, consultants and thought leaders through the transition from an unfulfilling day job to a profitable online business so that you can live the life of your dreams and do the work you feel most called to do in the world.”

In short, it should be intriguing and still give people enough reason to follow you.

Validate your business

A business is not valid until an actual transaction happens between a course creator and their ideal customer. There’s no point of spending time and money preparing a course for 3 months without the surety that someone will buy. Most course creators make this mistake and forget to market and sell the product first. Rather, they should prepare something like an outline for their course and see if someone will buy the idea. Once that happens, then business starters can be sure that they have a valid business.

Content creation

This is where people can create websites to help them sell their products and services effectively. At this point, business owners can create detailed content for their audience because they would already have known that people are interested in buying it – from step 7.

Grow your audience

There are many approaches that online course creators can use to grow their audiences. Check out these 5 ways to grow your audience for your online course.

Market your products and services consistently

Building an audience and solving their problem is just not enough. For a business to sustain itself and enjoy more success, the owners must continually market their products and services to their audiences. It’s more about building relationships with customers and caring about their needs. Go here to learn crucial marketing tips for your online business. 

Go back to step 1 and start over

After completing the above 10 steps, business creators should go back to their original plans and now identify more problems their audience are having and how they can solve them.

For more insights on starting an online business, growing your audience, and marketing your online course, check out nextlevelworkshop.info.

Are you looking to create & sell more courses? What content do you want me to create that will help you the most? You can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/vote to share your thoughts. As a thank you, I created a free training called “3 Simple but Powerful Ways to Grow Your Email List” when you fill out the survey.

The post 11 Step Formula for Building a Profitable Business with Cliff Ravenscraft appeared first on Online Course Coach.

One of the most important parts of online training has to do with finding your target audience, knowing how to serve them and building a community.  While marketing is important, the key is to serve your community first. Jason Van Orden has been doing that online and in person many years and is considered one of the pioneers in this space.

I first got introduce to Jason through his podcast. I later became a paying member of his membership site and have always greatly respected him.  He helps people create new income streams from their expertise. He gives personal experience from his over 60 online courses that’s he’s created over the years.

Jason talks about consulting and how he has managed to charge premium prices. I personally hire coaches and consultants to give me their extensive experience and expertise. Coaches are found in all aspects of your life from health, income and personal growth. And that’s one of the reasons I provide coaching. I know I can help you find clarity on your idea, create your course so your audience will want it and market it using proven methods. Not only do I share my processes and strategies for creating the best courses, I have a lot of industry experience so I can answer questions and help you avoid making common mistakes. If you want to learn more about my coaching, go to the coaching page to learn more.

Most people are hesitant to spend money on coaches, though. They do not view it as an investment. Yet, coaches provide clarity for our ideas and help us expand our audience. Jason will help us avoid making common mistakes in your business and help you be authentic. We are all learning how to become more effective teachers and this will help.

Jason Van Orden’s Bio

Jason helps thought leaders to reach a larger audience with their ideas, create new income streams from their expertise, and build business models that align with their goals. As a consultant, trainer, and strategist, he draws from thirteen years of researching top Internet influencers as well as personal experience gained by launching over 60 online courses, teaching more than 7000 entrepreneurs, and generating 6 million dollars in online course sales, and 8 million downloads of his podcast. His mission is to help more visionaries with impactful ideas to reach the people they serve best and the problems they are uniquely positioned to solve.

Jason’s background on how he started with online businesses with information marketing.

JVO: When I discovered information marketing, I dove into it when I was marketing for my band. I started doing consulting and it brought me to the whole world of packaging your expertise and selling it for profit.

I began with a seminar about everything I knew about digital marketing back in 2003. I made a net profit of about 8000 dollars to teach what I love. Before social media, I used to post in forums to expand my audience. I then launched a podcast and haven’t looked back from there, just creating brands from my knowledge and teaching people to do the same.

Key to business success

What would you say have been some of your keys to your business success over the years? What do you think are the keys to your success?

JVO: I used to be blocked up by having prior success. How could I keep up with what I have already achieved? When I moved on after creating my podcast, it became more of intuition, quick start and experimentation from there.

When I advise people on strategy, my approach is that it is a series of hypothesis and experiments. I ask them what feels like a good experiment to try after I have given them the factors and criteria.

Course creators should look for frameworks over formulas in the online marketing world. Keep in mind that not everything that has worked for someone else will perfectly work for another one.

Breaking down the important bits of it all, it is important to add on to the skeleton such as who people are, their business and their audience. Course creators have to create something that will keep them ahead of the game.

They should be careful, however, not lose sight of their uniqueness; what they want to bring to their world. If that happens, they will not have unique perspectives to bring to the world and they can get drowned out.

Testing of ideas beforehand

Before someone spends a lot of time on creating an online course, what strategies do you have on testing their ideas?

JVO: My predominant idea was a small eBook or a short course. It is easier for one to sell as a smaller thing and build up their portfolio from there. Also, the building of their educational business without limitations of inventory and time.  I flipped this.

Whether it is their first course or not, doing some higher level and closer-to-the-student experience has higher advantages. This is where things such as consulting comes in. The major advantage is that creators will be able to charge more money from consultations. Another point is that they won’t have to create a lot of material.

Course creators ought to learn a lot about what is valued by their audience, their needs and the language that works for them. This can help them refine their own process. There is a fulfilment in the direct approach since their unique strengths can come through. In any case, consumers can be sophisticated at times and they will need authentic content.

Ways of creating an online community

Once the course is made, how does one create that community and build upon it?

JVO: There are some obvious advantages of having the right tool such as Facebook groups. Having the platform is no longer enough though.

Course creators these days must think outside the box. They need to input the extra thought in fostering their communities. For instance, they should think about ways of improving interactions within their community and getting people stick to their communities.

It is also important for course creators to give their communities identities. A course creator should give their audience a vocabulary on how to identify themselves and how to communicate among themselves effectively.

In addition, there should be a community leader that stands in for the course creator whenever he/she is unavailable. Most importantly, course creators should encourage people, answer their questions and even pick up recognition of the success stories of their communities. This can help strengthen the bond that exists among community members.

Building your authority

As your audience grows, there is a need to ascertain your authority in the community. How have you gone about that?

JVO: When you have a network of people, you can build up by finding their first four students.

Course creators should be very clear about who they are talking to. Authority starts with conversations with their targets so as to know their unmet needs. Talking to your audience can help one create more resonate content and find their voice. To go a bit further, one should have a great point of view that draws from their own perspective.

There are three whys’ here.

1. Why is the message important to your audience
2. Why is it important to the person they are selling to
3. Why is it important to the world’?

If course creators can consistently answer these three whys’, then it’s easy to command authority in messaging, marketing and conversion.

The post Simple but Proven Marketing Strategies to Promote Online Courses with Jason Van Orden appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Today I talk with Sharyn Sheldon about how you can create white label courses for companies. Sharyn has quite a unique model compared to most other course creators. Typical course creators create a course for themselves and sell it to the audience. Others are contracted to create a course for a company and that company sells the content to the audience. What Sharyn does is quite different but very intriguing.

She owns contentsparks.com, where she offers business coaches and consultants with professional quality, brandable training programs and marketing materials. Sharyn’s content is the time-saving secret her customers use to expand their reputation, attract new leads, and raise their income.

Let’s hear from Sharyn and her thoughts on creating white label online courses for companies:

What is your background?

Sharyn: My journey to online courses began when I was working for a consulting company. They were doing learning and consulting for big companies. As a consultant, I worked with places like Mary Lynch, MetLife, UBS, JP Morgan and many other financial and insurance institutions. I used to love the job because it was all about designing learning solutions at a strategic level, and that was really where my course creation started. Gradually online became the norm with things like online marketing and content marketing booming. Then I came across Private Label Rights (PLR), where I saw the opportunity to start my business.

You have an interesting business model, how did you think of it and how has it changed throughout the years?

Sharyn:  Well, my thinking was that coaches, consultants, and small business owner shouldn’t have to waste time creating course content when they can be directly helping their clients in sharing their expertise. They don’t need to create the courses themselves but rather benefit from our team of experienced professionals, who have been creating programs for big companies and small businesses for the last 25 years.

So, we provide all the needed materials to teach various courses and all a course creator has to do is tailor it for their market. They can add their names, branding, and inject their own voice and insights. Basically, we help course creators help others.

What process do you take to find out what courses to create?

Sharyn: Picking topics is always a challenge. At the moment because I have a large customer base, I always start by requesting what they or their customers want to know. Another thing I look at is what sold well in the past and I regularly check online for those hot topics. Most importantly, I focus on evergreen topics that will last long.

How long should each lesson be and why?

Sharyn: Most of my lessons are about 2 to 7 minutes long. I would say that a video lesson shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes. The reason is that people start losing focus with very long videos, yet to want them to remember the content. That is for online but if I’m doing something like a webinar, I wouldn’t want to spend more than a minute on one slide. For offline lessons, I advise not to go more than 15 minutes before you start asking questions and getting interactions.

What are some marketing strategies that you’ve had that worked over the years?

Sharyn: I must say that the way I got my first big break was from referrals. Luckily, I had an affiliate program set up and so it was easy for my colleagues to refer people to my site. Since then, email marketing has always worked for me. My email list then led to content marketing. And when I re-branded to Contentsparks, I created a Facebook group for my existing customers. The group has helped me a lot in making repeat sales. I also create a waiting list which I use to notify customers about a new course and that way I get to close sales from the moment I launch a new course.

What is the process you quickly use to create courses?

Sharyn: Actually ours is not that quick process. But, whenever we want to do it quickly, the key is to start at that high-level outline without writing up a lot of the stuff. When we know the topic, we don’t have to write in all the details – bullet points just suffice.

What would you tell someone that’s created a course but hasn’t seen it get the results they were hoping for?

Sharyn: When it comes to results, there are two types; monetary and student success. The first one is if you are making sales while the latter is based on whether your students are getting value from your courses. So I will advise that you get feedback from your students so you know what they need to hear. Once you understand your student’s needs, then it’s easy for you to customize a course for them. When your students know they are getting value from your course, then they’re likely to buy it and, in turn, you make money too.

Where can we learn more about you and what you do?

Sharyn: You can find me at onlinecoursecouch.com/contentsparks, where I also offer my courses. We focus primarily on business coaches and consultants although we do have other people too. At the moment, we are hoping to create a curriculum that pulls together various topics. So, we’re looking to create a membership site where people will learn a wide range of things from the courses.

The post How to create white label online courses for companies with Sharyn Sheldon appeared first on Online Course Coach.

We all know that getting found on Google is critical to the success of our online course. But did you know that Google owns YouTube and it’s just as important to get found on YouTube which is the #2 most popular search engine (right after Google)? It’s important to not just have quality content on your course but also create helpful content, build an audience and provide value. And you should be doing this on YouTube. In this episode, I talk with Tim Schmoyer about YouTube, Video and how to feel confident in front of the camera.

First of all, we talk about YouTube. Do you have a YouTube channel set up yet? If not, we talk about some reasons why you might want to consider that. We also talk about how to get comfortable in front of the camera.

Tim has some very interesting things to say, some of which I haven’t thought about. I’ve been producing videos for clients since 2003 and I’ve produced a LOT of videos, but even with my experience, Tim brought a different perspective on several different topics which I really appreciate.

And since we’re talking about video today, are you like most of us that struggle with being on camera? Maybe you are uncomfortable or you don’t like doing it, and that has prohibited you from making effective course videos. Perhaps you are like many other people who struggle with the technology side or you don’t want to waste money buying the wrong equipment or software.

Online courses that use video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better!

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera. I share some of my go-to resources for creating better videos, whether graphics, stock photos or videos and even PowerPoint templates. So, you definitely want to check out easyvideoforcourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Now let’s dive right into the interview.

Tim Schmoyer’s Bio

In 2006 Tim uploaded his first video to YouTube to introduce his girlfriend to his family across the country. Others started watching, so he started digging into YouTube to figure out how it worked and in 2011 he became the first creator to start training YouTube creators. Today his company, Video Creators, has been featured by FOX, Forbes, BBC even YouTube themselves as he trains other creators to master the YouTube platform and use it as a place to spread messages that change lives. And he married his girlfriend.

So Tim, thanks so much for being on the Online Course Coach podcast today.

What is your background and how did you get started with video?

I started doing video in 2006 when I was in graduate school in Dallas, Texas. I had just started dating this girl and wanted a way of introducing her to my family back home in Philadelphia. This place called YouTube had just started a few months prior. People were posting videos and watching them, and I thought I could try it too.

We started going out with my girlfriend and making little videos together of the places we went to. I started posting those videos on YouTube for my family to see. We went on to creating videos on our engagement, wedding, honeymoon, first real job, first house, first kids, and more.

Back in the early days when we were dating to our engagement, other people were watching and commenting on our videos. I started trying to figure out how the platform worked, how people found my videos, why they were watching my videos and why they were commenting on them. I ended up on the inquisitive side of trying to figure out how the platform works, how audiences grow, what causes people to watch and get them interested, and I ended up working with Disney, Time Warner, eBay, HBO, and other companies. In the meantime, I got known as the guy who’s trying to figure out how the platform works.

So, here I am today, on a full-time business to help people create online businesses and audiences around their YouTube audience and channels.

What do you like about YouTube creators and why do you focus on that audience?

In the past, there used to be no money involved. People were just creating videos out of the passion to tell stories, to reach audiences, and to express themselves creatively. A lot has happened since then, including YouTube’s change of ownership from a group of guys to Google, and most people coming in these days with the aim of making money out of the platform.

Even so, the people I like on YouTube are those with a mission behind what they are doing. The people who get excited about reaching people and changing their lives, notwithstanding the need to make money and make their practice sustainable.

Why did you create your first course?

There are different reasons as to why. The truth is, if you have videos embedded into your website and people click on those videos and watch them, that’s more time spent on your page. This is a factor that Google looks for ranking web pages. Pages with videos in them that people watch tend to rank higher than simple text pages.

There’s also the fact that a YouTube video itself can rank outside any website. I’m not sure about the current stat but back when the stat came out, it was that making a video with the same content of an equivalent blog post, the video was 52 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google or YouTube than a blog post.

I think the principle is still true that it’s easier to get videos to perform than it might be to enter into a big sea of other bloggers who are trying to get attention.

What is the process you used to create your online courses?

The first I made was actually an e-Book, which was like a lead magnet for me. The second was an EBook called, “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel”, which is still my number one selling product. It’s kind of an e-course but in a book a format. Later on, I started creating videos of the same content.

What are some ways someone can get comfortable on camera to be truly authentic?

I actually have a whole course on that. Truth is, there’s always a starting point. For instance, my first video was so awkward and I improved over the course of doing about 4,000 videos. Many people tend to think that you have to be outgoing to perform well on camera but surprisingly most YouTubers I know are actually introverts. For me, the focus should be on presentation rather than trying to be comfortable on camera. And just like any other activity out there, you get better at it over time.

Should a course creator create a Youtube channel to build their audience?

It depends on what you want to accomplish. Of course, there are other ways you can build your audience including podcasts, blogs, and others. The biggest advantage that YouTube has over any other medium is its ability to not only tell but also show. I would say that if your aim is to create a deep connection with your audience on a personal level, then YouTube is the best platform to use.

What are some strategies you recommend for someone to grow their audience on YouTube?

My expertise on YouTube is organic growth. I’ve not done any promotions on YouTube or Facebook but growing my channel the best way I can. When it comes to promoting my courses, I’ve always relied on email campaigns. By sending out emails, I try to integrate my audience into my courses just to make them feel part of it and find value in whatever I’m offering them. In so doing, they also help promote my courses to other people, which leads to a larger audience.

What is VideoCreators.com and the courses you provide?

It’s the website that packs all my YouTube course videos including videos, podcasts and even consultation services. Check out the Find Your Voice courses that teaches you how to feel confident in front of the camera.

Online courses that use video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better!

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera. I share some of my go-to resources for creating better videos, whether graphics, stock photos or videos and even PowerPoint templates. So, you definitely want to check out easyvideoforcourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post The Importance of YouTube for Course Creators with Tim Schmoyer appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this episode, I talk about the top questions that get online creators stuck and how to fix them. I’ve been creating courses and helping clients create courses for almost 10 years and get asked the same questions.

1. What platform should I use? Where should I host my online course materials?

This is probably the most popular question. The truth is, it might not matter that much as you think because many of the available platforms primarily do the same thing. The two things you might want to consider are whether you want a hands-off approach or flexibility in control.

If you want more control or you’re a techie person, you might consider a WordPress website or using something such as LearnDash to deliver your courses. On the other hand, a software service is a great solution to those who want hands-off perspective.

Generally, your content and course requirements, of course, will determine the ideal learning management system for you. I recommend you go to the Resources section download the 7-step checklist to know which LMS is best for your online course.

2. How do I build an audience for my online course?

Building your audience is the most critical part of the success of your online course. Some of the ways I recommend in doing this include creating guides, tips, quizzes, checklists, assessments – literally anything that can provide value to your audience so that they can give you their emails for you to build your email list.

Podcasts and Facebook live videos are also a great way of introducing yourself and influencing others to follow you. If you are doing Facebook videos, make sure they are short and up to the point. Don’t forget to give a tip at the end of your video – quiz, guide, assessment – which guys can follow to your website and download. Again, check out my resources page to learn the “5 Ways to Build an Audience for your Online Course”.

3. How do I get started creating an online course?

The first thing you want to do here is gathering all the ideas for your course. Then, determine the 20% of those ideas that will give the 80% most value.

Next, you will need to find your ideal students and pitch them the idea of your course. Sell your idea to them as beta testers and custom create a course just for them. Obviously, your students are going to give feedback about what they want to learn in the course. This way, they help you refine the content, which you can later sell to a wider audience.

4. How do I protect my course?

This is where a Learning Management System comes in. Basically, you can a WordPress plugin or a software service to protect your course. These methods allow students who pay for your course to access your content while it restricts those who haven’t paid for your course. Depending on the platform, you can put your audience in groups based on various factors. Perhaps you have different stages of your course and you want to ensure that students are only accessing the content they have paid for – some platforms can allow you to do this.

5. How do I make effective online course videos?

I’ve covered this section in details on my course, Easy Video for Courses. The big question is, what type of videos would make your content the most engaging and help your students learn the best way possible? Some people prefer to do screen capture videos, whereby you show your audience your screen. Others go to the field and capture the events of what they are teaching to their audience. So choose a method that engages your audience best.

When it comes to devices, use what you are comfortable, whether your iPhone, Tablet, Webcam or DSLR. Just don’t be afraid to start no matter what you have. Make sure you are getting good audio, about good lighting too and ensure that your camera is stable.

6. What is the difference between a membership site and an online course?

An online course generally has a beginning and end for the learner. You might add lessons or modules to it over time and even replace the content if it changes. A course usually has a one-time fee.

On the contrary, a membership site has a collection of content. The site might contain multiple courses on a single subject or various subjects. It usually has a monthly or annual fee to continue being a member.

Watch this short video for more details on this topic.

Get the 7 step checklist to know what type of LMS is right for your online course

7. How do I get more sales?

It all starts with building your audience and knowing what they really want. You then need to promote your course and the best way to do that is through your email list and even your email signature. Another strategy to get more sales is by using Facebook Ads. Speaking of FB ads, sign up for my upcoming Facebook Ads for Online Courses program and I will alert you when that will be about to happen.

Doing content marketing on your blog can also create an avenue for people to buy your courses from your site. Let’s not forget the power of videos such as tutorials, FAQ’s and about me. Add as much value as you can and teach more people and you will see them asking for your course. Last but not least, do some partnerships and joint ventures such as affiliate relations and other profit-sharing programs.

The post Top Questions that get Online Creators Stuck and How to Fix Them appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This show will be talking about various aspects of WordPress with Carrie Dils, a Lynda.com trainer. We will talk about things like why you should consider it and even the pros and cons of building your course on the WordPress platform. If you’re confused with what I just said, we’ll go in with some more details in a minute.

I’m a big fan of using WordPress and I have a few resources that I want you to know about. The first one is a resource that will help you learn the best plug-ins, themes, and hosting for your WordPress website. I also have a 7-step checklist to know the best software to use to build your course. You can find both of these resources on the resource page of my website.

Easy Video For Courses

This episode is brought to you by Easy Video for Courses. Did you know that online courses that include videos are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better? But as you know, one of the hardest parts of creating a course is knowing how to create effective course videos. I found that most people struggle with all the confusing equipment and software that’s available, the cost of buying the equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. My background is in video production and I’ve done it all as far as creating high-end videos and even simple videos using an iPhone. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time. Go to Easy Video for Courses to get the course.

Background of Carrie Dils

She is a developer with 20 years of experience in web development and deep experience in full-scope WordPress projects. She has worked with various clients, from small locally owned business to Fortune 500 companies including Disney and Nvidia, to deliver creative and successful digital solutions. She is passionate about education and empowering others to do the work they love. She hosts the OfficeHours.FM podcast for digital freelancers and small business owners. She also teaches WordPress and front-end development courses for Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. She also offers business courses for freelancers at The Fearless Freelancer.

When Carrie’s not working, she’s probably reading a book, playing with her dogs, drinking a craft beer, or eating a tasty meal with her husband.

What is your background and how did you get started in the business that you’re in?

Carrie: Sure. I kind of came in through the back door. I started out just working in software and desk jobs. But at some point, I became tired of living the cubicle life so I took an almost decade-long respite and went to work for Starbucks. I had this crazy idea that if I could learn the coffee business, then I could open my own coffee shop. After nine years, I determined that I never ever wanted to own a coffee shop.

Right before I left Starbucks, the manager was telling me about WordPress. He was describing a lot of things that WordPress could do and these were the thing that I’d done manually in the past like creating a Content Management System, database relationships, and all those not-so-fun development work. When I found out that WordPress coulddo that out-of-the-box, I was all over it. So from there, I started finding clients that needed simple marketing websites. I did that for the past five or six years and eventually migrated over to teaching.

Is WordPress good to build and host online courses?

Carrie: I would say that Disney, MSN, and some of the top Fortune 500 and even top 50 companies are using WordPress. It started out as a blogging platform but it has really matured over the years into a fully featured Content Management System. That is not to say that it is right for every web project but it is certainly a great choice for a lot of them.

How did you go from knowing nothing about WordPress to knowing so much about the code, the backend, and everything else?

Carrie: I think it’s just because of my background as a developer. As a kid, I would unscrew everything I could find to see how they work. When you want to learn something, you just consume all the materials that you can find about it. That’s one of the things about WordPress. There is no shortage of information online, from learning how to use and work with WordPress.

It took me a while to figure it out because WordPress is broad. There are the underlying code base and themes that control the appearance. And there’s this other thing called plug-ins that add some sort of specific functionalities. I tried to educate myself and inserting myself into conversations about WordPress in social media by following hashtags. To supplement that, I went over to Lynda.com and started watching their WordPress training videos.

Why would a course creator want to use WordPress versus some other software? What are the benefits of using WordPress?

Carrie: It all comes down to money and sharing money for your creations. There are a lot of platforms where you can upload your courses in a guided way. But the price that you pay for that is a certain percentage of your income from these courses. With WordPress, it is an open-source software. It is an “inexpensive” way to get started in publishing your own content. While it’s all free and ready to use, there is a definite learning curve.

What should somebody look for when finding a theme?

Carrie: The one thing to know is that not all themes are created equal. Even because a theme is more expensive doesn’t mean that it’s higher quality.

There are two things to look for when finding the theme. First, does it try to include every feature under the sun? Those sorts of themes are code-heavy and it takes a long time to load. Second is search engine optimizations. Google loves clean, well-formed codes. Some themes come with schemas automatically.

How were you able to become a Lynda.com instructor?

Carrie: Lynda.com had one WordPress instructor whom I’d spend hours learning from him. When I get to meet him in person, he and I just struck up this dialogue. A year or so later, he asked me if I would be interested in teaching WordPress courses. So I did, and I’ve been doing it for three to four years now.

What is it like to be Lynda.com instructor? How do you prep and deliver courses?

Carrie: Lynda.com has a physical location with a recording studio, equipment, and people who are working on their videos. They handle all the technical aspects. My job as an instructor is to come up with a course outline. Then I work with a content producer to make sure it jives with what they want. After that, I would script the entire course. It usually takes me about a week to record what eventually boils down to a three-hour course.

How can a non-Lynda.com instructor create better courses?

Carrie: Before you ever start creating a course material, start by writing an objective. Start by having a clear expectation of what your students are going to accomplish when they finish. From there, you can work backward by creating a table of contents.

How did you get started with online courses?

Carrie: WordPress draws a lot of small business owners or people who want to leverage it as a service to sell to other people. There are a lot of service-providers on WordPress, but there aren’t a lot of people making a living doing it. I may not have all the answers but I have been doing WordPress for a very long time and I make a good living out of it. And I would like to teach other WordPress developers and designers how to do that.

Tell me about The Fearless Freelancer and what courses you have available?

Carrie: Right now, there are five courses that cover Freelancing Foundations. The first is Business 101. It’s about money management, budgeting, and all that. The next is Finding Your Focus. When it comes to focus, who is it that you want to serve? And how are you going to solve your problems?

I also have a course about basic marketing and legal matters.

How are you using masterminds and Facebook groups to add value to your students?

Carrie: What comes naturally for me is building relationships. I do have little pockets of communities. My Facebook community is fairly new and needs to be nurtured. But my email list is the number one place where I get sales from.

So if you don’t have an email list yet, get one. From the beginning, start segmenting people by their interests and why they signed up to your list.Segment your email list according to their interests.

Where can the audience go and find your courses?

Carrie: You can buy my courses at The Fearless Freelancers website and get a free e-course. You can also go over to The Fearless Freelancer Facebook group and let’s have conversations about issues that matter to people.

If you’re not sure where to host your courses or you want to learn more about WordPress, you can go to my website. I have a few resources that can apply best to this topic, such the best plug-ins and themes for WordPress as well as the 7-Step checklist to know the best software to use for your course.

I also have other interviews related to this topic on my website. You can search WordPress and you will find my interviews with people like Joshua Millage and Corey Miller. I also have several other podcasts like The Best WordPress Tips for Online Course Creators and Seven Ways to Pick the Perfect LMS for Your Online Course.

If you are in the process of creating a course, check out Easy Videos for Courses and you’ll be up to speed in no time. I purposefully made the content easy to learn and efficient to go through.

The post The best online course creation tips from a Lynda.com trainer appeared first on Online Course Coach.

SEO and getting your online course to the top of Google rankings can make or break the success of your e-course. Rebecca Gil has some common sense approaches to boosting your SEO and getting more traffic to your website. She gives helpful tips that are search engine friendly.

I have been a big fan and user of WordPress for many years and Rebecca and I talk about SEO, WordPress, WordCamps and so much more. She shares why you should consider using WordPress and how adding content to your website will help improve your SEO rankings and get you higher in the search engine results.

I have taken many webinars over the years with Rebecca and she knows her stuff! I met her at Social Media Marketing World and knew that I had to get her on the show to share how SEO relates to marketing and selling more online course, membership sites and e-courses.

Online Course Resources:

• Find all the tips, resources and guides I’ve created on the Resources page.
• Want to learn how to create effective online course videos? Check out Easy Video For Courses.
• Do you like short videos that give tips and tricks? Check out the videos on the website

Questions about SEO, WordPress, and Online Courses:

1. How did you get started with WP?
2. What are some of your favorite aspects of WP?
3. Why would a course creator want to use WP instead of a software as a service?
4. What are some simple techniques that people can do to boost their SEO?
5. How did you get started with online courses?
6. Tell me about the courses you have available?
7. What are some of your top strategies you’ve used to market your course?
8. How have you used masterminds, FB groups and other strategies to market your services and build your audience?
9. Where can people find you and your course(s)?

Download Rebecca Gil’s free ebook and learn more about here at DIYseoCourses.com/occ

Do you want to take your idea and create a course from it? Or perhaps you want to improve the sales of your e-course. I’ve been creating courses and coaching people on the process and can help you too. Simply fill out the coaching form to see if we’re a good fit. If we are, I’ll reach out to you with the next step and together we’ll build, improve and market your online course.

Rebecca Gil’s Bio

Rebecca Gill has a well-rounded business background and over twenty years of experience in sales and online marketing. In addition to running the day to day activities of Web Savvy Marketing, Rebecca also provides full-service SEO consulting, one-on-one SEO coaching, publishes online SEO courses, hosts a weekly SEO podcast, and teaches onsite SEO Bootcamps. She loves to teach the latest SEO strategies and help businesses grow their online footprint.

As an early adopter of blogging, her online marketing efforts have been highlighted by media outlets such as Wired Magazine, Ziff Davis, and IT Toolbox. Her writing has been featured in a variety of publications that range from technology outlets such as Backbone Magazine, Social Media Today, and Search Engine Roundtable. Her SEO work and training have been mentioned in Ahrefs, Dynomapper, Marketo, mangools, Hongkiat, iThemes, and Liquid Web.

Rebecca has appeared on Detroit2020, spoken at WordCamp Miami, DFWSEM Meetup, WordCamp Toronto, Higher Ed Web, WordCamp San Diego, WordCamp Las Vegas, WordCamp Ann Arbor, WordCamp Chicago, and Girls Are IT Conference. She is also has served as a WordCamp organizer. Rebecca has been a guest speaker on a variety of WordPress podcast series and has also guest lectured and presented at the Grand Valley State University, and Michigan State University and the University of Toledo.

The post How to get an online course at the top of Google with Rebecca Gil appeared first on Online Course Coach.

There are so many conferences out there that it’s hard to pick which ones to attend. But Social Media Marketing World is one of my favorite conferences to attend each yet. While I LOVE industry conferences that specialize in courses and eLearning, I love more general conferences that focus on different aspects of marketing, video, and social media.

I’ve gained so much value after going that I thought it would be helpful to hear about it, what I learned and some takeaways that you can learn. I was even able to pull aside a course creator with an awesome accent and get some tips from him and I’ll play that clip in a few minutes. Lastly, I want to share some creative marketing strategies you can use to build your audience and sell more courses.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

First, in prep for the conference, I listened to my friend Nick Pavlidis’ podcast about conferences. He posted a podcast on Feb 13, 3018 about how to crush conferences. I won’t give away all the secrets of the podcast but Nick talks about why you shouldn’t go to sessions and what 3 groups

you should serve at a conference. I put his strategies into place and I had one of the best conference experiences I’ve ever had. You can listen to it by going to onlinecoursecoach.com/crushconferences

I met more people in the hallways, at lunch, and outside the sessions that it was very valuable. I even got to meet Jesse Cole whom I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts. He runs the Savanah Bananas baseball team. You can also learn more about Jesse at Find Your Yellow Tux.

The opening keynote was all about the FB Apocalypse. I haven’t talked much about this because there’s some really good info out there that goes in depth.

Opening Keynote – Social Media Marketing in 2018: What the Newest Research Reveals By Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner

1. FB pages are getting less traffic and attention
2. They’re prioritizing content posted by friends/family over a business page – in fact, business pages will see a dramatic decrease in being in the news feed
3. Signals like reactions, comments, and shares. Long comments are more important than short comments

Use Video to gain traction on Facebook

• Do a breaking news show, ask for feedback from the audience
• Go live at events
• Weekly tool/tip
• Talk strategy
• FB live
• Use Vertical video (for ads too)
• Get personal. It’s all about connections

Online Course Creators Table

• I got to sit with other course creators, brainstorm and give ideas on how to create and market online videos
• In the coming weeks, I’ll have a show about the top questions course creators ask and I heard these same questions asked at the conference. I’ll be answering these top questions and more in an upcoming show.
• Teachable sponsored a happy hour and I got to meet with course creators and some people from Teachable
• It was so fun to meet beginners who don’t have a course yet, people that are very successful and people who are in between
• I’ll be interviewing several experts that I met at the course creators tables so stay tuned in the coming weeks.

Dr. Dave Nicol

Dr. Dave gave some tips that he’s found helpful in his own course. You can find him at drdavenicol.com

Creative marketing strategies to promote your online course

1. Find a local community college or technical school to offer your courses. They get a percentage of the sales.
2. Approach companies that have a similar, parallel or matching audience and offer a referral program
3. Create white label courses where you create the content and then resell it to others who offer it to their audience
4. Put a promo link in your email signature

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post Why an online course creator should go to Social Media Marketing World (and 4 creative marketing strategies to promote your course) appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Do you get scared knowing that there are other courses on your same topic? Or do you feel intimidated that there are people who have a larger audience than you? Here are some ways to outsell your competition.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

1. You are unique and that means your course is different…and that’s a good thing

What can you offer that’s unique to other courses? Is it your background, your experience, your personality or something else. It’s ‘ok’ if your course is different, just figure out what’s unique about your course and then use that to promote your ‘uniquability’.

Check out http://findyouryellowtux.com/ for inspiration on what Jesse does with his baseball team. No one ever said wow, that person is professional…they only are impressed if you’re different. If you don’t stand out you won’t be remarkable

2. Outserve your students

Most courses are mainly digital content delivered with a hands-off approach. Don’t get me wrong, those are nice but they probably won’t be truly 100% hands off. You’ll need to interact with students, answer questions and help your students succeed.

Here are some ways that you can outserve your students

• Send them a gift – Giftology book
• Offer more personable customer service. This could be with a forum, Facebook group, regular webinar, email interaction
• Personally call each one of them. How cool would it be for your students to personally hear from them! I bet they won’t forget that. And who knows, it might turn them into raving fans.
• Send a personalized card to each student. With services like SendOutCards.com and other similar services, you can easily send out personalized cards to a lot of people. For an even better approach, handwrite and send the cards yourself.

3. Pick a niche and create a course for that target audience

If you think that there are too many courses with your same topic, think of ways you can go deep into a niche or topic.I did this with some of my first online courses. I found industries that could use my training and created customized training for their industry. This became very successful and separated me from any competition that made a course for a general audience.

A strategy to consider if you’re creating courses for multiple industries it creates anchor content that’s industry-specific but uses the general content for all courses. So you might have some intro lessons for each industry but then everyone takes the main content. Then your final lessons will have specific applications to the given industry.

4. Go deeper – pick a few parts of the process and go deep.

There are a lot of courses that serve course creators but I found one that is usually ignored. We all know how vital effective course videos are but there isn’t any training on how to create effective course videos. I created a step by step system that takes people through my process, shows what equipment to use between free and professional, gives them the tools to feel confident in front of the camera and even supplies ideas on how to create videos if you don’t want to be on camera!

Imagine if I had created a general course? It probably wouldn’t be as successful as EasyVideoForCourses.com. Find supporting topics or problems your students have and create courses about that. You’ll find much more success than just creating a general course where there is a lot of competition.

5. Partner with your competition to find gaps in each other’s courses and serve each other’s audiences

This might sound crazy but what if you approached your competitors and found ways to serve each other’s audiences? There might be things that they don’t want to do that you do and vice versa. You’ll have more success if you serve more people than try to protect yourself from expanding. Plus, I can almost guarantee your audience knows who your competitor is!

Find how to make the simplest course that only gives the most valued content. Most people don’t want extensive courses that teach them EVERY aspect of the topic. Think of the 80/20 rule. What is the 20% that you can create that will give the 80% most value? Don’t make your course over complicated – most courses are too complicated.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post How to make your online course outsell your competition appeared first on Online Course Coach.

We all want to create effective online courses but most courses are too complex and complicated for students. And that’s why most students don’t complete online courses. Here are 6 ways to create effective course videos without overwhelming your students.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

1. Don’t pack EVERYTHING into your course

Think of your course as having 101, 201, levels, just like at a university. Your students will be able to learn at their own pace and not be overwhelmed. Don’t overcomplicate your content. Remember that your students are coming in at a basic understanding. Your job is to give them what they need to know now, not 10 steps down the road.Additionally, you will be able to make more money because you offer different courses for different skill levels. Your students will like it and you will like the additional opportunities for more income.

Is your course topic complex? I also recommend that you find a niche and make a course just on one part of the overall topic.

2. If your topic/process is complex, have everyone go through lesson 1 together before moving to lesson 2

While some courses are open for students to jump around to any part of the course they want, you might want to limit the course progression so everyone goes through the course content together. This alone may help your online course become more effective. Just think, everyone will go through it together and have similar questions. They can ask you or if you have a private Facebook group or forum then your students can also ask each other.

3. Keep stressing the importance of having them learn and master the first lesson before going to the next lesson

Course abandonment is high and one of the reasons is that students want to go quickly through the course content without thinking about the material and how to apply it. Ask them to reflect on the content, share what they learned with a friend or post in the Facebook group their key takeaways.

4. Give templates, scripts, etc that give step by step instruction for the students to follow which helps them to avoid overwhelm

Students want step by step instructions. They want to learn from someone with more experience and success. Students don’t want all the variables but the exact process you took to get success and they want to follow you. Sometimes little things like cheatsheets and templates are easy to create but provide the biggest value and allow the students to move ahead faster.

5. Use video in your online courses

Online courses that include videos are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better. We all know that video content is the best content for your course but what if you don’t want to buy a camera or use complex software? Use your Smartphone or tablet to record your course videos.

I teach a full module just on how to effectively use your smartphone and tablet to record your course videos. I also give you my the best apps and software to use to film and edit directly on your phone or tablet. You can find the course at EasyVideoForCourses.com.

6. Think about other ways to provide more access to you

One of the biggest factors in both the success of the course for your students as well as how much money you make is what access you provide. While it takes more time to provide more access and you might lose money, you might actually get more students because they want to learn directly from you.Plan out how much time per week you’ll be there and make sure you’re not losing money on your course. Consider offering:

• Recurring webinars
• An in-person conference
• Giving them email access for a period of time
• Provide a private FB group for students to interact with each other and you – make sure it doesn’t take all your time.

If your course is inexpensive then don’t offer a private FB group.

Use these tips to create an effective online course that doesn’t overwhelm your students.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

You may also like the podcast episodes:

How to Avoid the Overwhelm of Creating an Online Course

https://onlinecoursecoach.com/avoid-online-course-creation-overwhelm-answering-questions/

The post How to create effective online courses that don’t overwhelm students appeared first on Online Course Coach.

One of the key factors in the success of an online course is how well put together the course content is in your videos. If it’s thrown together or isn’t done properly you could lose students and income. In this episode, I share 7 Tips to create effective course videos.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

1. Keep your ideas, script and course content outlined using Evernote or Google Docs.

By having your notes on these devices you can sync them anywhere on everywhere on any device. And that gives you peace of mind knowing that if your computer crashes that you haven’t lost everything.

2. Survey your audience using Google Forms or Survey Monkey

We all know how important it is to survey your students to ask them what they want to learn and what their biggest struggles are (this is where your best course content can come from). But you can also ask what type of video they like most and would learn best from. You might learn that this type of video will take some time and work for you to complete but that will actually help you stand out from your competition who only created basic course videos and didn’t go above and beyond like you will.

3. If you use slides, don’t have your slides be a brain dump of information.

Put a few key points, or even 1 statement that you talk about. Just like Ted Talks only have one thing per slide, your slides shouldn’t have too much content. Use a mix of stories so you’re not just reading from slides. Your students will engage more with your course content if you relate stories throughout your course videos.

4. Use the Know, Feel, Do method to reach different learning styles

Are you only putting information in your online courses or are you engaging your students with different learning styles? Don’t forget to use this method to improve your courses. For more information on this method, check out 3 Simple Teaching Tips for Better Online Course Videos.

5. If you don’t want to be on camera get creative with alternative videos.

While I recommend being on camera for some or all of your course videos, you can get creative. Create a video where you only show your hands or have someone ask questions to you off camera.  But the main thing is to not underestimate the expertise that you provide. You don’t have to be a world famous expert. You just have to be 1 step ahead of your students. Keep your focus on your students and not on you. Know that you are your worst critic. While you might think you look or sound strange, your students will not…I promise you!

6. If you’re filming with your iPhone or webcam, turn off notifications and put your phone in airplane mode

There’s nothing worse than a distraction while you’re filming so put your phone in airplane mode and turn off any notifications on your computer. This will make your course videos go a lot better and you won’t be distracted by anything.

7. Buy an external hard drive to store your course videos

You never know when a computer will crash or fail. Plus video content will fill up your computer quickly so buy an external hard drive to store your videos. Even better, use Dropbox or Google Drive to store the files and sync them in the cloud. You want to be able to access these files in the future if you need to change something and having them synced online will greatly help. I recommend having a local backup AND a cloud backup. That way you reduce the risks.

The post 7 Tips to Create Effective Course Videos appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Online Course Video Tip of the Week – How to get on camera without feeling like you’re on camera

1. conduct a demonstration (like a cooking show isn’t a lecture but a demonstration)
2. Do an interview with another expert – interviews take the pressure off you!
3. Make a picture-in-picture video with your PPT slides (get funny b-roll of me being trapped in the PIP)
4. Have someone ask you questions and have it be more conversational…like an off-camera interview. Just make sure to keep it interesting and engaging
5. Have fun with it. Take the pressure off yourself by making jokes, singing songs, and just having fun. It’s ok if you mess up a bit, in fact, it will show you’re a real person!
6. While you may want to use a teleprompter, write out your main points and tape it near the camera

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

3 Simple Teaching Tips for Better Online Course Videos

These are 3 things that every course video, module, and lesson should contain. It will help your students better learn, remember and apply the course content.

1. Know

This is typical where course creators start….and end. It’s the easiest to do because it’s where you convey your knowledge. It’s one of the most important…but it’s not the only thing your course should contain

2. Feel

This is usually overlooked but it’s very important. The student may not truly learn if they don’t feel anything. This might be hard for some personality types to think about the emotional aspect of the course content. Think about what the content will make your students feel. How will that impact their life? How will it motivate them to continue the course? Tony Robins says ‘change your story. Change your life’ and emotion is a big part of that. What can you do to help change the student’s story, so they know and feel it?

3. Do

One of the most important pieces of your teaching is to help the student transform what you know, so they know it. And what they can feel with that knowledge but most importantly, you want them to change their lives with this information. You want them to DO something with your course content. What do you want them to do?

So how do we do this? Here is a simple layout that I help my students use when their creating course videos. Teach what you’re going to teach, teach it, review it, ask them to put it into practice

• Prepare
• Teach (know and feel)
• Review
• Consider
• Do

If you follow the advice above then your online course videos will be more effective, your students will have more success which will make your online course more profitable. Everyone wins when you spend a little more time preparing your course content.

Which tips did you like the best? I’d love to hear what you’re working on and learning. This entire website is to help course creators improve their online courses. Send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.

And don’t forget, if you want to create more effective online course videos in half the time, sign up for the free video and get on the waitlist for Easy Video for Courses.

The post 3 Simple Teaching Tips for Better Online Course Videos appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this podcast, we will talk about anything from marketing, building your course and audience, and how to create a successful and effective course videos.

Video tip of the Week

If you are doing a video and you are talking about technology or anything that has to be updated regularly based on new laws, rules, and regulations, this tip is for you.

Try not to mention any specifics and be as vague as you can with what you’re saying on camera.

Instead of saying, “Use your iPhone 10,” just say, “Use your iPhone to create course videos,” and show the newest model with a photo or slide. It can get really time-consuming to update your video whenever a new model or law comes out. It is easier to be a little broad in what you say and then just show the specifics on the slides.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing Easy Video for Courses, an online course that teaches you how to make effective videos. I’ll be sharing more about it in a week or two, but for now, you can get a free video on 7 tips on how to create better course videos. I plan to give discounts just for my podcast listeners. So make sure to subscribe to the podcasts and listen to future episodes to learn more.

Also, I will be at Social Media Marketing World on February 27-March 2. If you are there, make sure to chat with me or tweet me via @jeff_long so we can meet and talk about online courses.

I have a front-row seat to talking to a lot of people by going to conferences, trade shows, and networking events. I also have this podcast and I correspond through social media and emails. A lot of times, these are the reasons why courses fail. So, I want to talk about how to fix them.

Why Courses Fail and How To Fix Them

1. You did not take the time to build your audience.

The first reason why a course fails is you did not take the time to build your audience. This is probably one of the biggest frustration for people who want to build a course, but did not sell very well. You can put it on Udemy and let them market for you. You might get some sales, but then Udemy sends out coupons regularly and you can’t control the price. You have to be fine with that.

What I recommend is building it on your own website and then build your audience.  One of the first steps that I do with my coaching clients is to talk about how big their influence is. That includes the email lists, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter followers, and YouTube fans.
The next step is to spend at least 90 days to build your audience. If you are just getting started, the first step is to build your audience. Download my free guide to deliver bonus material to your students and collect their emails. You can learn my strategy of how to deliver bonus materials to your audience and how to build out that system. I can give the software and systems that I use for myself and my students.

Tip #1: Go on podcasts.

Be a podcast guest and borrow their audience. Do interviews within your circle of influence and about your course topic.

Tip #2: Do Facebook Live videos.

You can do this on your personal or business Facebook page. Personally, I like to do them under 5 minutes. People don’t have time to watch 10- to 20-minute videos. You can take 1-3 very short tips and at the end tell my audience about my website and free guide.

Tip #3 Create a blog.

Blogging is something you should consider. You can blog about successes, tips, technology, FAQs, industry news, and other things related to your online course. At the end of your blog post, put in something free that you are giving away.

Tip #4 Answer questions in Facebook groups.

If you are not involved in FB groups, I highly recommend that you do. There is so much value in FB groups. You can ask and answer questions, as well as learn about different things. People have grown their audience significantly by giving answers on FB groups.

Tip #5 Give guides and checklists away in exchange for email addresses.

Tip #6 Make tutorials.

Your tutorials can be in the form of a podcast. They should be simple to understand and to follow.

Tip #7 Start a podcast.

If you don’t have a podcast, start one as soon as possible. Even if there are the same podcasts in your industry and area, don’t be intimidated.

Tip #8 Make phone calls.

If you need to call influencers, organizations, agencies, and potential clients, then make a phone call or send letters.

Tip #9 Create tutorial videos.

You can put these videos on YouTube and Facebook.

Tip #10 Reach out to influencers and ask how to serve them without selling to them.

2. Your audience wasn’t well defined.

You did not take the time to go through and think about who your audience is – their ages, income levels, likes, dislikes, goals, struggles, and questions.
A course that is very broad will not sell well.  The more you define who your audience is, the easier for you to speak to them. If you want some helpful tips on how to plan and build your audience, I’ll be coming out on a mini-course on planning your course. You can sign up for that and get alerted when the course is available.

3. You view your course as a single event as a launch and not as a marathon.

1. A launch can work with a large audience because you can package all the effort in one event. But it is not the only way to a course. You are there to serve your student before, during, and after a course. Check out this podcast where I go in-depth about how to serve your students, during, and after a course in a different podcast.
2. Think about your course as a marathon.
3. Find out what your audience is struggling with and then offer course content for it. Think of ways you can package your course in different offers.

4. You view your course launch as a singular failure.

I love and recommend John Maxwell’s book “Failing Forward”.  See failure as temporary. Maybe your course didn’t sell well, so what are you going to do to turn that around? John Maxwell also talked about rejecting rejection. Achievers have a healthy self-image that’s not dictated by an external stimulus. If you made a mistake, just learn from it and move on.

5. You compare yourself to gurus who market massive success.

Don’t get discouraged just because there are people out there who are better than you. Instead, think about what they did to achieve that success. Are there any ways you can partner with them? Maybe you are comparing yourself to somebody who has more success than you. All you need to do is to readjust your gauge of success.

I’ve been doing this podcast for two and half years and it’s a marathon. If you are just starting out in your course, don’t get discouraged. Keep coming back to my podcasts, videos, and other resources.

Remember, I will be re-launching the Easy Video for Courses in the next couple of weeks. Also, check out my free video on 7 simple tips on how to create course videos.
Keep coming back for more podcasts and I love talking with people from around the world. It is my goal to help to teach many to impact millions.

The post Why Courses Fail and How To Fix Them appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Outsource Your Course

I have worked with many course creators over the years and one of the top struggles is the amount of work it takes to create a course. There are various ways to create an online course – you can do it yourself, you can hire an agency or a coach, and you can outsource some portions of your course. This can help you save a lot of time, frustration and enable you to make a professional looking course. There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle where you could outsource, like graphics, website design, LMS setup, video editing, management, website hosting, and so much more! You can only grow your business if you have a team around you to help you succeed, and it all starts with outsourcing your online course.

I will be conducting a specialized training for a small group of people called, “Outsource Your Course“. If you are interested in learning how to outsource parts of the course creation process, you get on the waiting list to get a personalized training course built just for you and with you. I am only accepting a few people to this initial phase, so if you are interested in learning how to outsource some parts of your course, sign up now. I’ll be reaching out to you to see if it’s a fit and if it’s something you want to participate in.

1. Know your why.

When you’re thinking about your course, you have to know your why. One of my why’s is to help you to teach many that will impact millions. If I can help you, then you can teach many who will also impact millions. The domino effect is pretty cool.

It is my goal to teach 5 million people in 5 years, but I don’t have to have 5 million people in my course. I just need good people who are passionate about what they do. They are the ones who will teach who are also going to teach others.

Know your why and that will make things easier.

2. Get off the sidelines.

Some people have a lot of ideas for a course It can be frustrating at times because you can get easily sidetracked with all that you want to do. If I don’t have a solid plan, I will not be able to execute. So if you have a lot of ideas, take the best idea and move on with that.

A lot of times, people are on the sidelines because that have a lot of fears – the fear of failure or the fear of success.

Let’s say you spent a lot of time and money, yet the course does not sell. You can modify the course or survey your audience why they did not buy the course. All the things that you learned from a course, you can apply to your next course. Once you have learned what works, you can serve your audience in multiple ways.

When your course gets too big and you get to hire people, I’ll bet you’ve figured it out. Face your fear and get off the sidelines.

3. Know that other people are doing this and they are having success.

If other people can do it, why can’t you?  I have worked with a lot of people since 2003 and most people aren’t any smarter or better than you. I know that you can make a difference. If they can overcome the challenges, you can do it, too.

4. Think of what it will cost you if you don’t make your course.

Probably, you’re going to spend another year hoping, dreaming, and wishing you had a course. So, what will it cost you if you don’t make a course? You won’t make an impact and influence that you want. You won’t have the income that you desire as well.

If you don’t make a course, you’re going to save a couple hundred or thousands of dollars, but you’ll never know the impact and influence you can have if you don’t make a course.

5. Stop in being a cheapskate.

Invest in yourself and your course. I read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts, and buy a lot of courses. It’s going to take some investment of time and money.

6. What are the little things that you can do on a regular basis that will bring you towards your goal?

They could be marketing or you can write more content on your website. Maybe you need to plan your course or market better. Making a course is a lot of work and there’s going to be a lot of things that seem overwhelming. But when you take one step towards your goal every single day, you will go higher towards the completion of your course.

7. Build your audience and influence.

What are the things that you can do to build your audience? You can do Facebook Live sessions, podcast interviews, blogs, video content, and ebooks. You can also reach out to partners and social media influencers.

If you are looking for those, you can go to my website and search for marketing topics. I have several podcasts and videos that you can listen to and watch. The most important thing is you implement what you have learned.

8. Survey your audience.

Once you have built your audience, find out what they need and want. Ask them what are they struggling with. This can be both exciting and scary. When you know what they want, then it’s time to deliver.

9. Plan your course.

I always recommend people to offer their course alongside their audience. Sell your course/idea to your audience. If enough people buy it, then you can walk them through your course as a group and they can get individual attention. Make sure you build your first course with the people and you sell it for something. It doesn’t have to be hundreds of dollars.

10. Build your course.

A great piece of advice is your course doesn’t have to be perfect before you launch it. You can always change and improve it. It has to be good with solid content. It needs to be out there.

Take these ten steps and implement them this year, this month, this week, or even today. Get off the sidelines.

Send me an email and let me know your thoughts or what you are working on. I love to get your emails and chat back and forth.

Outsource Your Course

I know making a course can be a lot of work. Maybe you don’t have the money to hire me or somebody who does this professionally, I have a system and strategy that I use for outsourcing the different parts of your course creation process. You can sign up to get on the waiting list and I’ll build a personalized training just for you. We’re only going to be doing this for a small group of people.

The post How to Finally Launch Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Today, we are going to talk about the differences between private and public courses – courses for companies vs. courses for individuals. There is a huge untapped market with private, corporate e-learning courses. This podcast episode interview is with Aditi Ramchandani where we will talk about sales and marketing. She is a digital marketing strategist who works with businesses and entrepreneurs to build strong brands through strategic brand communication, online visibility, and expert positioning.

Sales is simply helping people, sharing the benefits of your services, and solving problems. It does not have to be a complicated thing where you are begging people to buy your course or to hire you. Based on my experience, listening is the easiest way to sell.

Another thing I want you to hear Aditi talk about is how many times she created momentum for herself. When you hear what she talks about, listen for ways on how you can create momentum in your own business.

I also want us to go over how to get corporate clients. It can be intimidating especially if you haven’t been in the corporate world. There are many different strategies on how to find corporate clients. If you would like an in-depth course on finding corporate clients, feel free to send me an email.

Now, on to my interview with Aditi.

J: Tell me about your background and who you serve?

A: I have been in marketing for 14 years now. I was literally marketing things before I even know what marketing was. I did both my undergrad and Master’s Degree in Marketing. I did six years in Corporate America before going back to Grad School and then started my marketing business full-time. Now, I’ve been working with entrepreneurs and mid-sized businesses. I help them with their marketing, online visibility, brand communications, as well as helping them position their company as a leader in the industry.

What is the difference between a private and public course?

A: A private course is a course that is not publicly advertised. It is only for a select group of individuals. A public course is a course that is promoted and everybody knows about it.

J: How did you launch your first public course?

A: A lot of times, companies provide on-the-job training for different roles that they have. Online courses are great for companies to use internally with their employees and externally for their customers. When I was in Grad School, I had friends who are entrepreneurs. I knew that they were seeking marketing help and I’m in school. So, I thought why don’t I put some things together based on what I’m learning. At first, I did two private courses and just taking donations because I was afraid of charging. After that, I launched my first public course.

What do people need to have to get started with their first course?

A: People need to have a course outline. They have to have some sort of sales page. They should also have a payment method and a way to deliver the content to the clients. An email marketing system to keep in touch with people who enrolled is also important. It does not have to complicated when you are just starting out. Also, have a free content that leads to your course launch.

J: How much does it cost to run a course?

A: In general, I found that costs $0-300 to organically run a small-scale course without Facebook Ads and stuff like that. With my first course, it was zero cost because I used Google Hangouts and Google Drive. Running a public course would cost you a little bit more money.

With my third course, I spent only $300. I did not use Facebook Ads, I just did it with people who were connected to my network. I contacted my past clients if they wanted to jump into the advanced one. I also made a platform and videos uploaded, so I was able to charge a premium price for it. I’m always encouraging people that to start off, you don’t need a lot of funds.

What is your favorite marketing strategy to enroll people in a course?

A: My favorite marketing strategy is doing a pre-sell. If you are anxious and if you have a few people enrolled in your course before publicly advertising it, you’re gonna feel confident. In order to do that, you’re going to literally reach out to people in your network. You can charge a cheaper price for a pre-sell. Also, you don’t have to have the whole course created before you start selling it.

J: What do you find that people struggle with the most in terms of creating and running a course?

A: I found that people get really overwhelmed about what to put on the course. First ask yourself, what is the end goal? What will people get from taking your course? Be clear about what your customers are going to get out of your course and then work backward. Like, what are the five main areas or steps that can get you from point A to point B? You can break them down further, if necessary.

I also like people to make shorter videos rather than longer videos. A good timeframe is 5-15 minutes.

I’ve also seen people stuck in not feeling like they are the expert. They feel like they need to wait to have all the information ready. I always tell people to start making outlines and pre-sell the course. Pre-selling is also one way to validate your idea for your course. If you’re not getting any presells, you can go back to the drawing board and see if you are offering what the customers really want.

J: Aditi, I appreciate you being here on the show today? Where can the customers know more about you and your services?

A: Everyone can head over to my website and I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you.

Whether you are just starting out or whether you have been doing courses for a while, I’m sure you have picked up some good strategies from Aditi Ramchandani.

As I have said, sales is all about serving. Let me know how you are doing with your sales and marketing as well as your questions about getting corporate clients.

If you haven’t gone to my website in a while, there are some new things that you might want to check out. Go on there and check out some of my new videos and some of the past podcasts. I would also be honored if you can leave a rating or a review.

If you need coaching, you can go to the website, fill out the form, and see if we are a good fit.

The post How to Market Online Courses with Aditi Ramchandani appeared first on Online Course Coach.

My background and expertise is creating and marketing online courses and my superpower is helping people create effective online course videos. I have plenty of podcast episodes and videos on onlinecoursecoach.com. Today, we are going to talk about something that affects us all. It’s called “How to Price Your Online Course”.

If you are wondering about this, it’s either you are about to launch a course or you already have a course out there, but it’s not getting the sales that you want. If you’re trying to find out how to find that perfect price point, you can download my free resource, “7 Ways Marketing Tips to Market Your Online Course”.

Regardless of what phase you are in your online course creation process, marketing is key. So, let’s start at the beginning with how to price your online course.

1. You and your knowledge are valuable.

There is a lot of worth in you and your knowledge so, do not undervalue what you have. There is value in your expertise and experience of the topic that you are teaching. There is also value in gathering information and putting it together into a roadmap or recipe for success. You may not have decades of experience, but the content that you gather is still valuable.

You can listen to one of my latest podcast episode ”10 Creative Ways to Add Value to Your Students” to find out how you can increase the value that you provide to your students.

1. Look at what other people are selling similar courses for.

Doing so will give you a baseline and a minimum of what you want to charge. I do not recommend going to Udemy.com because they are always experimenting with the pricing. They also give away coupons, so the number of students in each course can be deceptive, especially for some of the higher ones.

Instead, you can do some Google search and find podcasts and Facebook groups where people are promoting their courses. If there’s nobody in your industry, know what people are selling courses for in a broader parallel industry. Do not be the one to give the cheapest course. Be in the middle to upper levels of what you charge, so you can get better customers. Students are more likely to complete and take participation in a course and get more value out of it if it costs more. In return, they can give a better testimony.

2. Find out how much time a student currently wastes without a course and determine how much this is costing them.

Position your course as something that helps them save time and money. Your course cost should be a no-brainer compared to how much time and money they are spending without it. Show your students that your course may come at a cost, but it is lower than what they are spending with their time, money, and frustrations.

Paint a picture of the benefits of taking your course. It might not be money or time saved, it can be something more valuable, like memories and family time.

3. Price your course based on the value it provides.

The value can be time or money. It can also be things that you cannot quantify, like happiness or enjoyment. Think of pricing that reflects that value.

Do not think of your course as a one-priced item. If it’s a mini-course, you can charge it for less. If it’s a 10-lesson course that has a lot of content, you can give three package levels. I like to think of it as good-better-best. You can see this in electronics where they have iPhones with 16gb, 32gb, and 64gb hard drives. A lot of other industries have this kind of pricing levels.

4. Create pricing tiers and packages.

Think of what you can do to create a good-better-best pricing. Let’s say your cheapest course contains just the basics with not so many bonus content. The middle package can be a digital course with three bonuses. The most expensive package can provide more access to it. It can have a webinar, a group coaching session, and email access for a period of time with more bonuses. You can even give a certificate of attendance.

For discussion purposes, the good level can cost $100. The better should be 1.5 times more than that and the best should be twice or thrice as much. Keep in mind that the more expensive the course is, the more access and bonuses you give to your students.  You can use fun names for your pricing levels.

5. Limit the direct access you give to your students.

Think of what can give more value to your course content, but do not offer it for the rest of your life. This is one of the benefits of having open and close enrollments.

6. Test your price points with each update or release of your course.

Do not be afraid to test the price points of your course every time you release an updated version of the course.

If you still need to improve the marketing of your course, check out my marketing tips on how to grow your audience, build your influence, and sell more courses. By getting more students, you can better test your price points. This can also help you offer more value, bonuses, content, and even courses in the future.

Also, let me know what you are working on. I love your emails and tweets. If you have questions about online courses, marketing, video creation, or anything course-related, feel free to contact me. Don’t miss out on new podcasts episodes and videos at onlinecoarsecoach.com. You can also fill out the coaching form if you need more coaching.

The post How to Price Your Online Course (for maximum success) appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this episode, we will be talking about How to Avoid the Overwhelm of Creating an Online Course.

My background and expertise is creating and marketing online courses, but my specialty within that is helping people create effective online course videos. I am also pretty talented at seeing ways to leverage the power of courses and technology to better teach, market, and sell. But that’s a topic for another day.

I have been coaching a lot of people and this is one thing that is a big roadblock that people can’t get over. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the details. There’s not just the idea and the outline of what you’re going to teach, but there’s also the technology that you need to learn. There are a lot of technical hurdles and once you’ve created a course, you also need to know how to market it.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we hear about course creators who made it big. A lot of times, these successful course creators might not talk about the teams of people that it took to create and market their course. They might have a team around them – people to brainstorm the idea and an audience to get feedback from. How do you stand a chance against them? You have to understand that at one time, these people weren’t big names at all. Seth Godin talks about not being the Seth Godin he is now.

When you see these big course creators, you only see their success. That is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t see what’s underneath – their hard work, struggles, failures, and the teams they have. So, let’s start at the beginning.

1.  Keep your goals in mind

A lot of people have big hopes and dreams. They want to sell a lot of courses and make a lot of money, but you have to know what your main goals are. It’s easy to get frustrated when your courses are not selling. But more importantly, you should start thinking how you could serve your students. How can you serve a small number of students?  You should keep your goal in mind. Is it only money? Do you want to make an impact or grow an audience? Do you want to serve more people? What is that one thing that you want your course do? I highly recommend Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. In his book, he talks about how you can focus on that one thing.

2.  Think of your course as the first round of your first version of the course

Your first course does not have to be the final version of the course. A couple of years ago, I used to interview a very famous sculptor and he told me, “When I was starting out, it was just an ugly lump of clay.” It took him about two full days of molding the clay to create the eagle. It didn’t look like an eagle on the first day. As a matter of fact, it looked like an ugly chicken. And he said, “But I kept going. I trusted my creativity and my experience. I trusted that this ugly chicken will turn into a soaring eagle.”

Maybe your course right now looks like an ugly chicken and you hate it, but as you work on it and refine it, it will get better. It’s okay if you only sell one course when you release it. Again, think of it as the first round of the first version of the course. It’s okay as long as it does what you needed it to do, which is to teach.

Related Resources

How to Pick the Best LMS for Your Course
How to Build Your Email List and Audience
Marketing Tips for Course Creators

3. Find people who will go with you on your journey as you build your course

You don’t have to have the course built out before you pre-sell it to these people. I recommend that you charge for it so that when you ask them how you can refine the course, they will give you a good feedback. It will be like creating a custom course just for them and their needs.

4. Fear can keep you from releasing your course

Fear will tell you that your course should be perfect before you release it and you will waste time trying perfecting it. You should only spend a minimal amount of hours in refining the version one of the course. (Disclaimer:It’s not about releasing low-quality courses.) It’s about focusing on what would give your course content the most value, not the little things that make it pretty. You have to get over your fear, because it won’t do you any good if you won’t release your course.

5. Break the bundle one stick at a time

When I was in Junior High, I remember coming home from school overwhelmed with my schoolwork. My parents saw it and my dad told me to go out in the yard and bring in a big pile of sticks. So, I went into the backyard and brought the big pile of sticks. He told me to try and break the sticks. I tried with all my might but I couldn’t do it. So my dad told me to break the sticks one at a time and I did as he told me. One after the other, I’d break the sticks and before I knew it, I have already broken all the sticks.

As an application, think about that one thing that you need to get done for the day in order to move your course forward. Also, you can write down one thing that no one else can do on your course. Write down the things that you can outsource and think of that as an investment.

Think of the things that you can simplify. These are the most important things that your students should know first. Creating a beginner-level course can free some of you who are intimidated by others who know more about the course. All you need is a little bit more knowledge and experience than your students.

You can also create a mini course to grow your email list. Take the top three things from your course and create a simple course on those topics. You can offer it on your website or you can approach people from a lead generation list.

6. Learn about the tech side of online courses

If technology is a big hang up for you, think about what you can do yourself and what can you outsource. You can also check out my Tech Guide for Online Course Creators at onlinecoursecoach.com/tech and you can download that to learn more.

Related Resources

How to Pick the Best LMS for Your Course
How to Build Your Email List and Audience
Marketing Tips for Course Creators

7. Think about the niche where your online course fits

Create a course specific to your niche. This will work very well because you are going to serve a specific group of audience. Think about who you can serve. If your audience is on Facebook groups, go in there and offer tips, answer questions, provide useful articles. By offering help, you can build your email list and even your income.

Think about people who you can connect with. If you serve them, they might promote you. This may take time, but would you rather serve influencers who have large audiences? Or would you rather try to sell one course at a time and keep struggling?

8. Think of people whom you can leverage for maximum results

After you’ve launched your first course to your initial students, you can go to different influencers and build a partnership with them. Reach out to people from similar industries to gain good leverage.

In conclusion, don’t look at the huge gurus who have thousand of followers and a huge team around them. Remember that they weren’t that big when they started. So, think of ways that you can focus your course on. Find the things that only you can do and outsource the rest. Just get that course out to the first 10 or 20 people and get their feedback. Think of creative ways that will give the most value to your course content. Again, if you get overwhelmed by the technology side, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/tech and download my top tech tips and resources. Focus on what your goals are. Lastly, realize that your course is going to improve over time.

If you have trouble with marketing your course or any of these topics, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com and go to the Videos tab and Podcast tab where there are topics about marketing, creation, or building your learning management system.

Related Resources

How to Pick the Best LMS for Your Course
How to Build Your Email List and Audience
Marketing Tips for Course Creators

Know that you’re in good company, so keep coming back for more podcasts and keep sending in those questions.

The post How to Avoid the Overwhelm of Creating an Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Learn 10 effective ways to surprise your students and give them something that they would not expect that will turn them into raving fans. This will help you stand out from your competition.

Before getting into the podcast, I want to know what content you want me to create in the future. You can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/survey and let me know your thoughts. You can get a free guide called “The DIY Video Studio Guide” when you fill out the survey. Also, a heavy discount will be given out to podcast listeners soon. So, stay tuned for that.

I am also creating short, but powerful online quick tips every Tuesdays at 2 PM. You can find them at onlinecoursecoach.com/facebooklive and feel free to leave a comment. Also if you want to learn more about running Facebook ads, you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/fbads.

1. Offer a free 15-minute call before they purchase the course.

This will help your students know if the course is right for them. Do not be afraid to tell them that a course is not right for them. If you have hundreds or thousands of potential students, think about how you can manage that. You can have 20 slots available. You can answer questions. You can have open office hours. This is not an easy thing to scale, but it is something that would definitely surprise your students. This would allow your students to know you a lot better. This would also let you know what the common questions are from your potential students.

2. Create free private Facebook groups for your students to join.

Even before you start to market your course, offer a free private Facebook group for your audience. This is a place where you can let them ask questions, get to know each other, build trust, and grow a community. The more they get to know each other and you, the better. You can also run promotions, giveaways, and other content to this group as a side benefit.

3. Offer free webinars before, during, and after the course to ensure your students are learning and doing the content.

You can set up a Q&A webinar before a course. You can do a check-in webinar during the course. Have another check-in webinar after 30-60 days to get any questions, see that they’re doing, or offer additional tips.

4. Offer free Q&A sessions.

You can do this through your Facebook page, Zoom calls, podcasts, or private Facebook group to make sure that your students can have continuous access to you. Also, make sure that the more that you charge, the more access to you that they have.

5. Send them something physical.

This could be food or a journal as a surprise. You can do this through sendoutcards.com/. Make sure though that the price of the course has enough margin for your gifts. You might want to do this to your top 20 students. This gets the ball rolling on how you could offer something unexpected to better serve your students that would turn them into raving fans.

6. Highlight successful members.

This encourages students who haven’t put in the time or the effort to learn the material. Once they see other people’s success, they would want to join them. Also, it makes those whom you are highlighting feel proud about their accomplishments. This could be done through podcasts, webinars, Facebook live videos, or typed out interviews. Interview them about their story, their problems, their solutions, their successes, and their future goals.

7. Offer a live event as part of the course.

This can be expensive, so you can do this to top-tier courses. It is a way for students to know each other and you. It also helps to make the content sink in more.

8. Create additional modules after the course is launched.

Add bonus materials that you can keep adding content to. You don’t need to overwhelm your students with 15 modules, but you can just add occasional updates.

9. Send them a book that you really like.

You can send your students a book that you like even if it does not fit within the course. It could be in the same industry or topic, but it does not have to fit your course. Make sure to ask your students for their mailing address when they are signing up.

10. Offer prize drawings for people who complete the course and post the results.

You can do a free 30-minute conference call or webinar for people who completes the course. That will help with engagement and completion. There are many courses that the completion rates aren’t that good. Incentivize your students to complete the course and verify if they really completed the course.

These ways can help you stand out from the competition, because you will raving fans and raving students. You’ll build a community and you’ll have deeper relationships with your students.

If you want more online strategies and tips to help you in marketing your course, go to onlinecoursecoach.com/marketingtips. Learn how to plan your course, build your course, how to pull the pieces together, and how to market your course.

Want to watch a summary video of this content? Watch my Facebook Live video I made about this topic.

The post 10 Creative Ways to Add Value to Your Students appeared first on Online Course Coach.

A popular strategy for building and planning your online course is creating a membership website for students. This can be done in conjunction with a learning management system that could house your course content, or as an alternative means of growing your membership base, interacting with your members and providing them new material. Membership sites are a really great strategy for building community and a great tool if you plan on having ongoing content.

How to Pick the Perfect LMS – the pros and cons of using self hosted or independent software for your online courses

Download the “Pick the Perfect LMS” Checklist

In this episode I spoke with Travis Northcutt of Member Up about the pros of using a membership site and what you should keep in mind if you plan on using one for your online course.

Travis Northcutt Bio:

What is a Membership Site and Why Should You Consider One?

1. It’s just a label and a lot of the time the lines are blurry. A membership site has a subscription component, with ongoing payments. Usually it’s an open ended relationship, where you can be a member for a set amount of time. A helpful aspect of many membership sites is the community component you get with discussion forums or Facebook groups and the like.
2. Membership sites are particularly great if you have continuous content and not just a set course that needs to be housed and easily accessed. A membership site will generally have content that is available every month. Whether it is new content like webinars, or private Facebook groups, it is ongoing content.
3. If you would like to engage directly or have a more personal relationship with your members.

Travis: “You come for the content and you stick around for the community”

Membership sites often have discussion forums and other types of community engagement. Forums can be used to market a membership site or to help with optimization through constant user feedback.

When Should You Have a Community Forum or Community Aspect?

• If you have the capacity to devote time and resources to it. If you need to nurture your community.
  If you need help building loyalty and commitment.
  If you would like feedback on how to improve your content.

Membership Websites Best Practices and Pro Tips

1. The core of most membership sites is the learning and training, so your content needs to be strong and regularly updated. However you do it, you need people to feel like they are getting value for their money. Your members should tot have to navigate a complicated site that needs them to be to prescriptively guided so they lose autonomy. Nor should it be too easily digested and then not beefed up with continuous opportunities to learn and develop.
2. Have an audience already. While you are creating the content for your online course also be building your audience. You don’t want be in the situation where you launch a membership site and then have to climb a mountain in order to create an audience to consume all the information you have spent hours compiling. You need people who have trust in and value your platform.
3. Study how other people connect with their audiences.

Areas That Are Often Untapped for Established Membership Sites:

1. Churn reduction: Travis believes that one of the biggest opportunities for churn reduction is tracking member engagement over time. This allows you to know when member engagement dips so you can do something to reactivate members who may be at risk of churning.
2. Upsells: You may find that on your site you have so called Super Members. These are the members who engage heavily, consuming all your content, writing regularly on forums etc. It is important to have something more to sell to these members, who are eager and committed. This could be one-on-one coaching, a private mastermind, personal invites to live events, or converting Super Members to an annual plan.

Membership Sites Give You Options and Create New Opportunities

Not every community is huge. There are many niche communities that are perfect for membership sites to tap into. These are opportunities for you to have a site that may cater for a small group of people within a narrow field of expertise. You could create a membership site for communities that may never have been brought together were it not for the forums on your membership site for example.

A huge benefit of membership sites, especially if you are selling to corporate customers is that you can sell group access. This allows a single client to buy your content and make it available to an entire office or workspace.This means that you can capitalize on the amount of revenue you can gain from a single member. You could also create a membership site for a single company or branch of a company that allows you to create content for the needs of industry specific clients in a personalised manner that has value for you and value for your client.

How to Pick the Perfect LMS – the pros and cons of using self hosted or independent software for your online courses

Download the “Pick the Perfect LMS” Checklist

The point here is that with membership sites your options are not necessarily endless but they certainly become more prevalent. The opportunities a membership site can provide are limited only by what you can imagine and the knowledge you have to provide.

Don’t Become Overwhelmed by Content

There is no need to become overwhelmed by needing to create content. Start with a strategy for creating ongoing content for paying members such as a content calendar. If you need to be creating ongoing content then a consistent steady drip is probably the best way. Be dependable. Keep having something for people to look forward to. This will help with engagement and again aid in reducing churn. Don’t worry too much about how you are going to keep creating content in the long run. Focus on keeping the content up to date and consistently available now. Further, it is important that you have a good library of content before you start your membership site to allow you breathing room and to ensure that the content does not dry up early on.

Common Mistakes People Make With Sales

Most people will try and direct traffic to their signup page in order to get someone to join their membership site. This is simply another type of cold calling that banks on peoples’ immediate engagement. A better strategy for sales funneling is to direct people to a landing page instead and get them onto an emailing list first. This gives you more than one chance to sell to them. An emailing list also gives you a good sense of who it is you are trying to sell to. Rather than having a potential client land on your signup/sales page, bounce away, and never be heard from again, an email list allows you the opportunity for personalized feedback and engagement with a definable individual.

Marketing Strategies that Work for Membership Sites

Along with Facebook Adverts, another avenue for marketing is webinars. Weekly live webinars can be an excellent way to capture signups and engage with a whole new audience. Although this can be a time consuming endeavor, the potential increase in revenue may make the arduous task worth it in the end.

Conclusion

If you are looking for an effective way to get ongoing content out to a dedicated audience that you would like to grow then a you should definitely consider a membership site. Membership sites allow you to create community spaces, create new opportunities for your online course, and ultimately grow your revenue.

How to Pick the Perfect LMS – the pros and cons of using self hosted or independent software for your online courses

Download the “Pick the Perfect LMS” Checklist

For daily tips on running membership sites you can sign up to Member Up’s email list memberup.co/list

Visit memberup.co/online/course for book discounts for listeners to The Online Course Coach Podcast and use coupon code “Memberzen”.

Watch the Online Course Quick Tip Videos here.

The post How Online Course Creators Can Use Membership Websites appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Download My Guide of Recommended WordPress Themes, Plugins and Themes

Your website is your home base

Regarless if you use your website to host your online courses, your website should be where everything starts. And WordPress is my recommended website platform. WordPress is flexible, easy to use and allows you to control your home base, even if you don’t host your online courses there. You can blog, share videos, post podcasts, give course promotions and share it all out to your social media channels.

Good hosting vs. cheap hosting

A bad hosting provider and cost you in many ways even if you think it is priced cheaply. It can cause your website to slow down dramatically, increase the risk of getting hacked and many other issues that you are not even aware of.

Being on cheap hosting, which generally means you are on shared hosting is like being in an apartment complex. You don’t know who your neighbors are and what nefarious things they are doing. Shared hosting is the same way in that you might have the same server as hundreds of other people and you don’t know what they are doing.

Themes versus plugins

At the very Foundation of WordPress are two things that are very important. The job of a theme is to give the overall layout, and design of your website and nothing else. The role of a plug-in is to give you increased functionality. This might be something like a form, slider, or any other thing that helps make your website more functional.

A common mistake I see is when people purchase a theme for their website but it also includes things that I plug in should handle. So they’re theme might include things like short codes, sliders and many other things. but this is a bad thing because when you want to change to a different theme your website will break because you will lose all the functionality that was built into that specific theme. That’s why you want your themes and plugins to be different.

Cheap themes versus paid themes

While there are thousands of free themes in the WordPress theme directory I prefer using paid themes. I want to ensure that there is a developer that is getting paid for his work which means they will include support updates and other benefits in the future. By only going with a free theme you don’t know if there will be a bug in it that will never get fixed. So it’s worth the investment of purchasing a paid theme. I like the Genesis framework by Studiopress And have built many websites both for myself and my clients with this theme.

When thinking of new themes make sure to read reviews, ratings, and see when they were last updated. That way you know if the developer continues to improve the theme or if the developer released it but are not interested in supporting it in the future.

Download My Guide of Recommended WordPress Themes, Plugins and Themes

My Recommended Plugins for Online Course Creators

Plug-in Repository

This is the best place to find free plug-ins. They are all vetted by WordPress but still read the reviews, ratings and when they were last updated to ensure that it will work with your version of WordPress and that it is reliable to use on your website. Well I have many paid plugins that I highly recommend I still use many free plug-ins that I find directly in the plug-in repository. I don’t recommend finding free plug-ins outside of the plug-in repository unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and how to find quality plugins by a reputable developer.

Backupbuddy

this is my favorite plug in and a must-have if you are running a business with your website. It allows you to back up your website two places that are not on your server like Amazon S3 and Dropbox. The key thing to remember with a backup plugin is that you need to know how to restore a backup once you need to. I find that some of the free or cheap back up plugins are very difficult to restore from the back up when needed. So it’s well worth the money for me to purchase this plug-in.

iThemes security pro

This is another must have plug-in since there are constantly hackers trying to attack your website. This plug-in allows you to monitor the health of your website and block people that want to hack into your website. It is simple to setup and use.

Gravity forms

This is another premium plug-in but it is one of my favorite plugins and I use it on all my websites. It allows you to create customized forms. So whether you want to create a contact form or customize something for your students this is the best form builder available today.

Leadpages plugin for WordPress

I highly recommend Leadpages for building simple landing pages and sales pages and this plug-in makes it easy to install on your website and create a custom URL that allows you to send students to your landing pages.

Yoast SEO

This is a free plug-in but is one of the best available. It gives you a grade based on your SEO score. This plug-in has been around for awhile so it is very stable and one of the most downloaded plugins for WordPress.

PrettyLink

I recommend creating shareable URLs for your content and in order to do that this plug-in allows you to quickly and easily create short sthatredirectbacktoyourcontent.thisisperfectforblogging,podcasting,videos, course promotions and anything else that you create and want to share.

Bluberry power press for podcasting

I love podcasting and have used this plug-in on many websites over the years. It’s easy to set up a podcast.

Disqus for commenting

While most people have become accustomed to commenting via Facebook I still recommend the website allows comments on your blogs. this will help build your community and keep people on your website so you can continue to teach them and add more value.

Learning management system plugins for WordPress

While there are many third-party solutions that offer a software-as-a-service I highly recommend having your course hosted within your website. While it does mean you have to be a little more technical the benefit is that you pay for the plugin once and perhaps update the license each year but you don’t have to pay an on-going monthly fee or a fee per transaction like you do with many software-as-a-service solutions.

LearnDash

This is one of my favorite learning management system plugins. They are always creating new Integrations and features. Plus, they are highly invested in the WordPress Community as well as the education sector.
Listen to my interview with the LearnDash creator here.

LifterLMS

This is another good solution especially if you want something free to begin with. They do offer paid upgrades and Integrations but this might be a good first step if you want to test the waters of your online course.

Listen to my interview with the LifterLMS creator here.

WPCourseware

If you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles end this plugin is a great solution.

Download My Guide of Recommended WordPress Themes, Plugins and Themes

The post The Best WordPress Tips for Online Course Creators appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Do you struggle with building your audience, influence and email list? I created a strategy for using Facebook Live Videos that will not only grow your audience on Facebook, but it will also send traffic to your website and build your email list.

Here are 7 Ways to Use Facebook Live Videos to Grow Your Audience

Before we get to the content, I want to get YOUR thoughts. I was planning my next free mini-courses that I want to create but I want to know what YOU need me to create first. I have several great ideas that I’m excited to do but I want to know which items you would like me to create first. I’ll be taking the top vote and creating that mini-course first and giving it away to you. Go to onlinecoursecoach.com/survey to tell me what I should make first. Additionally, as a thank you, I’m giving away my free guide called, “The DIY Video Studio Guide”. It gives my recommended gear and software to create easy videos.

Facebook has said that video content will get more traction and favor throughout their platform, and Facebook Live Video is no different. If you haven’t seen any of my live videos, go to onlinecoursecoach.com/facebooklive where you can first, “like” my page so you can get alerts each week when I go live.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

1. Start by Creating Your First Facebook Live Video

I recommend creating a short video each week where you give tips and resources to build your credibility and promote your online course. The key is to keep it under 5 minutes. I personally only watch short Facebook Live videos and I’m guessing most people do the same thing. So don’t feel pressure to make these long pieces of content.

Have your videos be at the same day and time each week. I do every Tuesday at 2pm EST for the Online Course QuickTip Tuesday. Ask your audience to engage, but know that if you have a small audience it will take a while of promoting it to get any traction.

I use Ecamm Live to schedule my FB Live videos, add graphics and make it look more professional…but you can use your iPhone or the Facebook app.

2. Create giveaways, checklists, and content that you give away to grow your email list

It’s one thing to get video views on Facebook, but how do you get them to your website or build your email list? By creating supplemental content you will greatly benefit them and grow your email list. This will allow you to contact them to give additional content and even sell your course.

The key is to create a system that automatically delivers the bonus content without you having to manually send it. I created a video tutorial on the exact steps and services I use to set up each giveaway, and it only takes a few minutes to set everything up. And it’s even easier to duplicate for each new piece of bonus content you give away. Go to onlinecoursecoach.com/freeguidesetup

3. Put the videos on your website

It’s one thing to take the time to create the Facebook Live Videos, but you should also leverage this video by embedding it onto your website. Simply grab the code from the Facebook video and add that to a new blog post on your website. I have a category on my website that has all my FB Live videos. You can see it at onlinecoursecoach.com/videos

4. Download them and put them on your Youtube channel

Now that you’ve create amazing video content and put it on your website, you can also download the HD video from Facebook and then upload to your YouTube channel. This will help with your SEO. Additionally, a different audience will watch the videos on your YouTube channel that wouldn’t have seen them on your website or Facebook. Plus, this only takes a fe minutes to do…so why not do it!?!

5. Create a podcast from each Facebook Live Video

You can take the video and make a video podcast as well as an audio podcast, by simply stripping out the audio. You’ll reach a new audience that watch or listen to podcasts. However, keep in mind that you might be showing people or interacting with your audience on the FB Live video so it it might seem strange if you have it as an audio podcast and are asking your audience to “comment below”, like you would in your FB Live video.

6. Use this to market your upcoming course launch

While I don’t recommend that you only use these Live videos to promote your courses, it is a way to grow your audience and trust. So don’t be afraid to occasionally promote your material. Let’s say you are launching your course in 3 months. I recommend doing a Live video each week but barely mentioning your upcoming course launching during the first month. You may want to do a brief promo during month two. And then in the third month you may want to do a behind the scenes or showcase the benefits of your course. Just make sure you’re adding value with any Facebook Live video that you do.

7. Use the Facebook Live videos as Facebook Ads

While there are many ways you can promote your Facebook Live Videos, start to get comfortable by “boosting the post”.

You can also use these strategies:

1. Create an ad from your FB Live Video that only people who “like” your page will see
2. An ad that only people who visited your website will see
3. Create an ad based on age, device, income, location or interests
4. Create a custom audience for anyone who watches at least 20% of a video and send that audience additional videos

If you want to learn how to use Facebook Ads to promote your Live videos and courses, go to onlinecoursecoach.com/fbads to sign up for the course.

While there are many other ways to leverage the power of Facebook Live Video, here are 7 to start with. The key is to get started and get comfortable. And the only way to do that is to practice. You’ll only get better and if you have a smaller audience then you can grow in your skill level as your audience and influence grows. Whether you want to make better online course videos or Facebook Live videos, go watch this free video to learn my tips for being on camera. So get started today.

The post 7 Ways to Use Facebook Live Videos to Grow Your Audience appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about their courses. From my podcast guests, to coaching clients, to online educators, many of them tell the same story of success and failures. And many times the failures could have been minimized or avoided altogether. Here are 3 reasons why your online course isn’t successful and how to fix it.

I am working on creating some free mini-courses but want YOUR input. I have several good ideas but want to know if you need this content too. I’ll be taking the top vote and creating that course first and giving it away to you. Go HERE to fill out the short (2 minute) survey. As a thank you, I’m giving away my free guide called, “The DIY Video Studio Guide”. It gives you my recommended gear of how to set up a mini-studio for your course videos and where to buy it.

Knowing The WHY of Your Online Course

I was at my mastermind group in Nashville last with with friends like, Dan Miller, Aaron Walker, Jevonnah Ellison, Jim Cockrum and others are in the group. We talked about our “Why”. My passion is leveraging technology to teach online and my superpower is helping create effective online course videos. My why is not about teaching you how to become a better internet marketer, but how to get to know your students better, be a better teacher, teach effectively online and promote your course without feeling icky. That’s why my tagline at the end of the podcast is, “helping you, to teach many, to impact millions. I want to start a movement with online education that blends entrepreneurship, education and technology.

Here are the 2 videos from Simon Sinek and his Ted Talk about starting with Why.

• https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action
• https://youtu.be/IPYeCltXpxw

3 Reasons Why Your Online Course Isn’t Successful and How to Fix It

These are all things that I’ve seen with my coaching clients and have experienced them myself. We get excited when people talk about their success with their course but if you haven’t done the work up front, you won’t have the success later.

1. You don’t have a large audience, email list or influence

If you don’t know your why, I believe you won’t reach the level of success that you want. Your course isn’t (or shouldn’t) just be about making more money. It’s (should be) about the impact you have with your students, the influence you are creating and the life change that should happen in their lives. But if you don’t have an audience, email list or influence it’s going to be VERY HARD to sell your online course. Just because you have a great idea for a course or have the experience to create one doesn’t guarantee success, in fact, I can almost guarantee limited success without a good following.

If you don’t have a large audience, email list or influence, start today to grow your email list. I have a podcast coming up that talks about specific ways a course creator can grow their list. Subscribe to the podcast to download it when it comes out.

2. You haven’t surveyed your audience and don’t know what they truly want

3. You haven’t put any marketing or promotions into it

The post 3 Reasons Why Your Online Course Isn’t Successful and How to Fix It appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Who doesn’t love a monster, created or robot in the movies? Now you can go to The Stan Winston School of Character Arts to learn how to create these yourself with their webinars and online courses. I’ve always loved big, blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park, The Terminator movies and more! And, I’ve known about Stan Winston through the countless DVD special features I’ve watched over the years. So when I was able to have Matt Winston on the podcast to talk about how a Hollywood practical effects master teaches online courses I was elated.

Matt talks about creativity and how his team plans the course content. While they have the names of famous movies to help market and promote their courses, they still do a lot with social media marketing. I was impressed with how personable Matt is and devoted he is to the online training community. It’s not just a way for him to make money, but a way to teach the next generation how to make physical effects for movies and television. And more important than that, it’s a way for him to extend the legacy of his father, the late (and great) Stan Winston.

Click Here to Watch “7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos”

Matt Winston’s bio

About Stan Winston and The School of Character Arts

For over 40 years, the name Stan Winston has been synonymous with iconic fantasy characters, including the killer cyborgs of The TERMINATOR series, the extraterrestrial monstrosities of ALIENS, the alien hunter from the PREDATOR series, the prehistoric giants from the JURASSIC PARK films, and the iconic suits from IRON MAN. By relentlessly pushing the limits of art, technology & imagination, Stan Winston Studio continually set new standards of excellence and innovation for character creators worldwide. After Stan’s untimely passing in 2008, the Winston family founded Stan Winston School of Character Arts to preserve Stan’s legacy by inspiring and fostering creativity in a new generation of character creators. Through connecting the world’s finest artists and technicians with students worldwide, our mission is to empower aspiring artists and technical wizards to push the boundaries of character creation for years to come.

• Nominated for 10 Academy awards and won 4
• Known for Terminator series, Aliens, the first 2 Predator films, Jurassic Park 1-3, Iron Man
• The Stan Winston School of Character Arts
• Instructors have 24 Academy nominations with 12 Academy awards
• Stan and his company have worked with James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and more!

Questions for Matt Winston:

1. With a background as fantastic as your father’s, how was it growing up to get a front row seat as Stan developed characters for the Terminator series, Aliens, Jurassic Park and many more?
2. Since Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies and I know you were able to work on set with the all the live action dinosaurs, do you have a favorite memory about that movie and how it was created? \
3. You’ve been in some very popular films and television shows like Fight Club, Little Miss Sunshine, Scrubs and Star Trek Enterprise. Why did you decide to start the Stan Winston School of Character Arts?
4. Take us behind the scenes of these courses, how many people does it take to produce a single course, like how many camera operators, writers, etc or is it a simple operation?
5. Do you have a template you follow to create each course for the online school?
6. Since many of the courses deal with creating a monster or effect while learning from the instructor, how did you remove the barriers to entry so users can not only follow along online but also use the same materials as the instructors use?
7. What lessons have you learned with creating your courses?
8. What types of marketing do you do?
9. What would you tell someone who wants to start an online school that’s as ambitious as The Stan Winston School of Character Arts?

Click Here to Watch “7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos”

The post How a Hollywood special effects master teaches online courses appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Self hosted LMS options vs hosted LMS options – the pros and cons of using either learning management system for your online course

Download the “Pick the Perfect LMS” Checklist

All Learning Management Systems should include the following:

• It should teach well
• Allow you to communicate with your students before, during and after the course. Some of this is done with email, social media and other channels and some of it should be done within the LMS
• Make it easy for the student to learn
• Have the ability to use video, audio, images and text to teach your students

But remember, an LMS isn’t a one size fits all and there are new LMS providers emerging each year.

Self Hosted LMS Options using WordPress:

• Listen to my interview with Cory Miller of iThemes on why WordPress is best for creating online courses
• LearnDash – Listen to my interview with the owner of LearnDash
• LifterLMS – Listen to my interview with the owner of LifterLMS
• Sensei
• WPCourseware

All-In-One LMS (SAAS) Options:

• Teachable – Listen to my interview with Teachable
• Thinkific
• Ruzuku – Listen to my interview with the owner of Ruzuku

Download the “Pick the Perfect LMS” Checklist

7 Ways To Pick The Perfect LMS for Your Online Course

1. What is your Your technical level?

• Do you want to build it yourself, hire someone to do it or use a platform with templates. This will help you know what direction to go.

2. Would you rather  pay monthly or per sale vs up front?

If you’re just starting out, you may want to find a cheaper alternative, but don’t sell yourself short. If you plan on making this a business, then you need to treat it like one. Don’t shy away from an LMS just because it’s expensive. Keep in mind the all in one solutions pay for hosting, security, updates, support and more.

If you build it on WordPress, you pay a minimal fee for plugins, some of which are annually, but you get the support community of those plugins and the flexibility of creating your website and learning management system all within your website.

3. Do you want to customize everything about your course or you’re happy with what the LMS allows?

• Is the LMS you’re looking at easy to create the course itself?
• Are there options for payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, etc)?
• How much can you or a developer modify the html or css?
• Can it be on your domain easily?

4. How easy it is to get your content in and out?

There’s nothing worse than going “all in” with a learning management system and then it goes out of business or doesn’t innovate.

5. Are you able to monitor the student’s progress throughout their learning path?

If you can track the student’s path throughout their course, then you can engage with them, congratulate them and help them learn faster.

6. Does it offer various learning styles (self directed, scheduled group learning, hybrid, offline, etc)

The type of online course you want to create should be compatible with your LMS.

7. What features and integrations does it have? (The more the better)

• Does it have payment gateways like Stripe or Paypal
• Quizzes and tests
• Membership systems
• Zappier
• Email marketing platforms (if build in, how easy is it to customize student emails before, during and after the course)
• Google Analytics and Facebook pixel
• Landing pages like LeadPages
• Coupons
• Badges and gamification
• Video hosting (built in or 3rd party)
• Certificates
• Mobile friendly (especially if your audience is mobile first)
• Is it white labeled?
• Does it look attractive?
• Are forums built in or do you use 3rd party solutions?
• Does it have an affiliate program to market your course to other affiliates?
• Lesson timers
• Selling options – one time, subscription, memberships, course bundles

Download the “Pick the Perfect LMS” Checklist

Would you like an in depth coaching session on how to pick the right LMS for your online course? Fill out the form below and we’ll set up a coaching session.

REFERENCE : http://public.pilot.ly/

The post 7 Ways To Pick The Perfect LMS for Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Meet Facebook Ads Expert Jon Loomer, The ‘Accidental’ Marketer and Online Course Creator. He shares his experience with, tips on, and insights into both marketing itself and online training, he calls himself an “accidental marketer” and revealed that he started providing online courses just to see how’d it go. Despite being a successful Facebook marketing coach, author, speaker, and strategist, he didn’t set out to be a marketer at first.

His first “real job” after graduating from college was as a telemarketer. But he was always uncomfortable doing it. “Any sales-related job I’ve ever had I absolutely hated it.” he said. He was “hung up” on sales people, whom he considered as “deceptive.” A self-confessed honest person by nature, he didn’t see himself as a sales person at all.
Even though he didn’t like sales people in general and never took a business course, he got good at sales.

He moved up along the corporate ladder and landed a high-ranking job working as Senior Manager at Fantasy Games for the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 2007. This was when he was first exposed to Facebook. The NBA partnered with the social media giant to create its Facebook group and an app. He was the admin of the group.

Want to use Facebook Ads to Market and Sell Your Online Course?

Sign up to get more info on my upcoming training

His first major job involved marketing, but he didn’t realize it at the time. Nevertheless, he became so good in it that the person who hired him at the NBA suggested he apply for the job of VP at Strategic Marketing for the American Cancer Society Great West Division when he moved on from the league. He did. He oversaw all of the digital marketing planning, experimentation, piloting and execution in his division, including social media strategies, email marketing, Facebook applications, and mobile application development and strategies. He also led the development of the first ever ACS iPhone app, More Birthdays.

In the fall of 2011, he decided to use his expertise in Facebook marketing to start his very own business, “Jon Loomer Digital”, with the goal of “helping other businesses maximize social media that makes a difference.” In less than two years, he built a profitable, self-branded business around JonLoomer.com, his very own website that serves as the most complete online resource of advanced Facebook marketing tips and tutorials which is updated almost every day.

His site has been just as successful. Not only has it gained over four million page views, Social Media Examiner recognized it in January of 2013 as among the top 10 social media blogs of the year. In February of 2014, he decided to start his very own online training program. Despite having a thriving business and a popular website, getting into online training scared him.

He was unsure and worried that no one would take his training program. He didn’t know how he was going to do it. He didn’t know if there were any legal issues he needed to be aware of. He stressed over all of the uncertainties until the day he decided to send his email list of 5,000 people a message with a PayPal link asking whether they would pay for his training program in advance. More than 1,000 of them did.

Fast forward into the present, he now has the Power Hitters Club (PHC), a growing online community for Facebook marketers to share, learn, and help one another. To better serve his community, he’s working on turning PHC into three websites:

1. PHC Basic for first-time Facebook marketers
2. PHC Elite for seasoned professional Facebook marketers
3. A website for entrepreneurs

Jon Loomer’s Tips for Facebook Marketers and Online Trainers

Build a long-term relationship with your audience instead of just selling to them.

Having been in business for 10 years now, Jon has learned that people really respond to transparency and not being pushy.

Being able to convince someone to buy something now gets you money right away, but it doesn’t let you build a genuine connection with the customer where you gain his trust. Without it, there’s no guaranteeing he’ll buy from you again and again and again or promote your business. An effective way you can gain your audience’s trust is by providing them with helpful content without expecting anything in return. It shows how sincere you are to help, encouraging them to put their confidence in you.

Promote your product(s) or service(s) to people you know

Selling to strangers his hard. Increase your chances of making a sale by promoting your product(s) or service(s) to people who have shown interest in them. They include those who have visited your website, signed up to your newsletter or online program, or liked or shared your content.

Be in it for the long haul

Whether you’re doing a Facebook campaign, providing an online course, or both, know that seeing results takes time. It requires a lot of work. For example: Jon has been writing a blog post every week for over five years now. He writes the content and promotes it to the people who have visited his website by sharing it to his social networks and email list. When they visit his website, a lot of them subscribe to his email list or like his Facebook page. He didn’t achieve this overnight. He only saw results after repeating the process and making tweaks until he got it right.

Learn as much as you can about targeting

Before marketers targeted potential customers based on such general information as age and location because these were what they could get. Now there are tools that can give you much more granular information on your audience.

On Facebook you can target the people who:

• Have visited your website
• A specific page or section
• Engaged with your posts
• Watched your video(s)

Having such specific information lets you send your audience a very specific message based on their actions, instead of blasting everyone and hoping someone responds, improving your chance at getting a positive response.

Find out what works for you

Jon started online training by offering static courses. Everything went well until the members of his community complained that the content was outdated. Facebook and Facebook marketing change so much so fast, so he started offering live trainings that he can tweak every month to keep up. This and membership have completely changed his business for the better.

If you’re just starting out with Facebook marketing, run three campaigns:

1. One campaign promoting your content that’s useful and helpful with no strings attached to build your audience
2. One campaign building your email list of the people who have visited your website
3. One campaign promoting your product(s) or service(s) to the people who have subscribed to your email list or visited your website

At first, focus most of your budget on your target audience who don’t know you yet. As your connections, network, or following grows as more and more people visit your website or get included in your email list, start shifting your budget to them.

Last Take-Away

Looking back, Jon learned how important it was for him to figure out what he was good at, what he was passionate about, what he wasn’t good at, what he hated to do, and what is really the reason he was doing everything he was doing—his wife and three kids. These are the driving factors for his business, pointing to even more success for him in the future.

Aside from JonLoomer.com, you can connect with Jon through Facebook and Twitter.

Want to use Facebook Ads to Market and Sell Your Online Course?

Sign up to get more info on my upcoming training

The post Facebook Ads for Online Courses with Jon Loomer appeared first on Online Course Coach.

With my background in video production and having produced thousands of hours of video content over the years, I’ve been able to help a lot of people improve their online course videos, tutorial videos, training materials, software screen capture walkthroughs and many other types of video training. In this podcast I share 4 tips to improve your tutorial and training videos.

Check out my marketing tip to better sell your courses through your free content. Whether you have a free course, a book, a blog, are a speaker or anything else, I talk about The Pepper Principle. Check out the beginning of the podcast to learn what The Pepper Principle is and how to best use it.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

4 tips to improve your online course videos and tutorial videos

1. Tell the audience what you want to say, say it and then remind them what you’ve said.
2. Get to the point
3. Practice your material in front of the camera
4. Just ship it!

Additional Resource:

Here’s an article with similar content titled, 3 tips to improve your eLearning and Online Training

Podcast Transcript:

00:01 In this episode, we’ll be talking about four ways to improve your training tutorial videos.
[Welcome to the Online Course Coach podcast, brought to you by truefocusmedia.com. whether you’re a beginner or expert, this is the podcast for the latest in online course creation tips, news, interviews, and ideas. And here’s your coach, Jeff Long.]
00:23 Welcome back to another episode and I know we’ve had a lot of guests right one after another, and I’ve just had so much fun that I almost forgot to post some of my own shows here, which I’ll be doing in the coming weeks.
00:37 But today, I want to talk about four tips to improve your tutorial videos, your online course video content, even some of your free promo videos or YouTube videos or any other tutorials that you might be creating.
00:51 But before I get into that, I want to give a tip of the week. And this is a marketing tip that I’ve seen used over and over that I really recommend. And it’s something I’ve self-coined, I guess, the Pepper Principle.
01:06 So this work extremely well, especially if you have a free course, a free content, even a podcast or a blog, and I’ve seen this done really well—and I’ll talk about some examples—but let’s talk about this.
01:22 So let’s say you have a free course. It could be on Udemy, it could be on your own website. Make sure to pepper in different comments throughout the courses that talk about your premium upgrade. So you might have a basic course that teaches somebody how to build a WordPress website. Well, maybe you have an advanced course that goes into more the development techniques or the design strategies or things like that.
01:46 Well, you can pepper in different things throughout the course, and just briefly mention “Hey, for the premium course, check this out, you’ll get this tip. You’ll get this strategy that’s not in the free course.”
02:00 However, when you do this, make sure it’s not in every single video, make sure you’re not overly promoting it, because you want that person to see the value that this free course provides. So you want them to walk away and be excited and knowledgeable, but in a way wanting a little more.
02:19 So with the Pepper Principle, make sure—let’s say your course is ten videos long, maybe twenty videos long. Maybe every third video, you just briefly mention “Hey, for more in depth techniques like this, check out the premium course,” and then you can give the URL, you can give the location of where that would be and direct them to that.
02:40 You’re just wetting their appetite. You’re getting them hints, clues—because a lot of times, people will want to upgrade their account. They’ll want to improve their knowledge. They’ll want to get those tips and tricks. And so that is a fantastic strategy, which I call the Pepper Principle.
03:00 One of the places I’ve recently seen this strategy implemented was through the learnscrivenerfast.com site. Now, this course has been around a while. It’s fantastic. I have many authors—several New York Times bestselling authors that are friends of mine that use this, swear by it. Michael Hyatt uses it. Dan Miller—I mean the list goes on and on as far as they use Scrivener and his course has really helped them.
03:34 So if you’re a writer, an author, and you want to improve your writing, especially, Scrivener sounds like a good tool for you. And learning it can be confusing and so the author created learnscrivenerfast.com.
03:51 Now, it’s been a paid course for a while, for several years. But recently, the author, the creator released it for free on appsumo.com.
04:04 And I took advantage of that course, that offer. I got the free version just to see what it was like, and it’s a great course. He does a great job. We’ll have to get him on the show here sometime to explain a little more in depth. But from my understanding, the free version just gives a lot of content, a lot of value, compared to the paid version. So this is maybe a—we’ll call it Learn Scrivener Fast: Lite Edition.
04:28 So it had a lot of good tips, but if the student, the viewer wanted more, he would pepper in these little comments about the—I think he called it the “ninja tips and trick” and that you can upgrade to that.
04:44 He also has some different bonuses, some different—Blogger’s Paradise and things like that that he talks about, that if you want to upgrade, you can do that for the other premium course that he offers.
04:57 And so he does a really good job. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine, Tom Schwab, the other day—and Tom has been on numerous podcasts, he’s a great guy, he has a course that we’ll be talking about here in the coming weeks—and Tom said that he was so impressed with Joe’s course and the content that he—the first course, the Learn Scrivener Fast free version—that he upgraded because he thought he wanted to reward the author by buying the premium course. So he bought that premium upgrade.
05:29 And that’s actually a common thing. When you offer the free version, you’ll have a lot of people upgrading.
05:36 So let’s kind of talk about this. So let’s say you’re an author. This would be putting hints in your book, putting different things where you call out—maybe it’s giving a URL, maybe it’s talking about bonus items for your course. This is a very effective strategy with authors. I’ve seen this done very well where you pepper in different things in your book—I know Dan Miller does this, a lot of other authors I’ve worked with and talked to do this either at the end of the chapter or they just mention it throughout the book that they have this course.
06:08 And maybe it’s a course that only is open twice a year. Well, they mention “Hey, to get on the waiting list, go to this domain, this URL, and sign up to get alerted when the course is live.”
06:21 If you’re a speaker, this would be mentioning it in your talks and promoting it at the back of the room. So while you’re giving your talk, just mention “Hey, we have a course that goes through this more in depth if you’re looking to do a deep dive into this topic.”
06:37 And as a speaker, a lot of times, even if you’re paid, you can pepper in different soft sells to your books, to your courses, to other content that you can then obviously upsell or sell to your listeners.
06:54 Now be careful if you’re a speaker. I know several professional speakers and there’s a fine line between over promoting yourself and being tacky, and just mentioning it because you want to add value. And so the more subtle you are about this—maybe in a thirty minute talk, you might mention it once, maybe twice, and then obviously at the back of the room where you’re signing books, selling books, etcetera, you can always say “Hey, if you liked my talk, you’ll love my book, and you’ll even love my course a lot more because it goes in depth.” And if you offer bonuses like a live webinar once a month or once a week for a period of time, they have additional access to you, which is even a better upsell.
07:37 And then lastly, if you’re an entrepreneur, this might be talking about your course on your podcast might be talking about it in your blog, on social media, and things like that so give them great content in your channels, but let them know that there’s more in depth content in your full course.
07:55 So there’s a lot of ways you can apply this. In fact, I would love to hear how you might apply this to your marketing strategies. I’ve had a lot of you contact me through email, through Twitter—so look my up. On Twitter, it’s @Jeff_Long. Or shoot me an email, jeff@onlinecoursecoach.com. Let me know how you’re going to use this Pepper Principle in your marketing strategies.
08:24 Well, there you go, that was my strategy, my marketing strategy. Let’s get into the main content for the show.
08:32 We’ve all seen bad training videos, bad courses, bad teaching products or whatever that just don’t quite hit the mark. They’re not effective, they don’t do it for us. Maybe they’re too basic, they’re too complex, and we’ll talk about some of these simple things that you can do to make your online courses a lot better.
08:54 So it’s really interesting—we’ve seen an explosion in online courses over the last several years. And the term eLearning, it’s not a new term. In fact, I think it goes back to even 1996, something like that, 1999. So it’s not a new term, yet it is a growing industry. And that’s what excites me. There’s always room for improvement, there’s room to grow, and there are different people and companies and organizations that can use online learning in creative ways.
09:23 My background is actually in video production. And so these tips come out of not just watching a lot of videos—which I do. I watch a lot of training videos, a lot of course content and videos, so I see a lot of…room for improvement, I guess I should say, but I’ve also produced hundreds of hours of training, promotional, teaching content, as well as other marketing and other types of videos. But the training videos is where I want to focus on these four tips here.
09:56 Because there’s—there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I think that we can all do better as we’re teaching and training. And especially as people are expecting video content.
10:08 You know, it used to be you could have a flash training or you could do different CD-ROMS or different things, or maybe it was only text based or image based. Well, we’re all getting lazier to some capacity, but we’re all expecting to watch videos. And so that can be entertaining in nature, but it can also be educational in nature.
10:31 And so I want to make sure that when you are making tutorial videos, training videos, whatever training content you’re creating for your courses, that you use these four tips, because I really see a lot of these mistakes as I’ve worked on a lot of different projects over the years.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

10:49 So these tips that I’m about to give, these four tips to making good online courses can apply to many different types of training. So maybe you’re doing an eLearning course for educators in schools, this will apply. Or maybe you’re doing a product review on YouTube. It’s maybe not even an eLearning or online course, this actually applies to you as well. Or maybe you do screen capture videos that teach software or showcase something else online. You could even do a whiteboard explanation, certification courses, video product review—any type of online education could use these four tips.
11:25 And I’m about to get there, but I want to set the stage. And the reason I want to give these four tips is I see a lot of bad training products, a lot of bad videos. And, you know, we’ve all been there. We’re cringing. We want the information, we found it through paid training, maybe just in a Google search, and we’re excited to learn and then the teacher, the trainer, the person on camera, just doesn’t deliver what we thought that they were going to deliver.
11:56 So the first thing, the first tip that I recommend is—and this goes back to your days in speech class there in high school or college. It’s tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve said.
12:10 This is actually a Dale Carnegie quote that he gave decades ago. So one of the things I see with this is when people are going into a training product or they’re giving a tutorial is they ramble for thirty seconds. They don’t tell the person exactly what they’re going to cover. They shoot the breeze or they just—they don’t know what they’re talking about, and so that way they’re rambling.
12:40 So make sure the beginning of your course, even if you have, let’s say, ten modules in your course, each one of them, tell the student, the viewer, the whatever what you’re gonna say. So “In this episode, we’ll be talking about…” blahblahblah.
12:56 And then get your content. Don’t waste time. Especially if you’re giving away content for free, people are going to click away within seconds. They’re not gonna stay around thirty seconds or a minute or longer if you’re just not getting to the point.
13:14 And then once you’re done, recap. Crystalize in their mind what you’ve just taught them. So make sure to tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then afterwards remind them what you’ve just said.
13:28 Secondly is get to the point. And this kind of has to do with rambling. One of the biggest issues with video reviews and screen capture softwares and all that is people just ramble. They just turn on the camera and they just go.
13:43 So make sure you have an outline in your head. Write it down if you need to. And don’t just speak off the top of your head, but rehearse it. Get to the point, create an outline of what you’re trying to say. Build supporting points that all lead up to that big idea, and keep your points short and sweet.
14:05 And this goes, again, back to speech class. Make sure to have that overall point. What are you trying to convey? Supplement it with ideas, with illustrations, with examples, with stories, and then remind them at the end what you’ve taught them, and then leave.
14:25 Thirdly, practice until you’re comfortable with the material. And this is something that I see a lot, especially when we’re doing video based training. And it does take some coaching. A lot of people aren’t comfortable in front of the camera, and that’s to be expected.
14:39 This is something we see when we do video based training. A lot of people aren’t comfortable in front of the camera, and that’s to be expected. A lot of people aren’t in front of the camera all day long. They’re not actors and actresses. And so when you get a normal person, whether it’s a college professor or medical trainer or whatever, it does take some time to kind of find that groove. Should they be looking at the camera the whole time? Should they—when should they look off camera? Or should they pretend that they’re looking at an audience if there’s no audience there?
15:11 So it takes a lot of practice. And so don’t be intimidated, don’t be worried if you run through it once and you look at it and it’s terrible. That’s to be expected.
15:25 So maybe start with one piece of your course. Go through it. Film it a couple times and critique yourself. Have your wife, your family member, a friend, coworker look at it and critique it. Because there are all things that we—there are things that we all do. Little ticks, little things we do on camera or when we’re recording audio that we don’t even realize. And so the more practice you do, the better you’ll get.
15:53 So if you do practice one of your modules, you’re gonna be really comfortable with that. And then you can move on to module two. Practice that. Even hit that record button. Pretend this is a real recording. And here’s the good thing: If you record the first one as a practice and it’s really good, you can use it! And that’s great. You can move on to the second, the third, and so forth.
16:16 So make sure to practice. Because I’ve seen it time and time again where somebody releases a training product and you can tell they’re just kind of winging it. They’re going off the seat of their pants, they don’t really know what they’re talking about, and it’s frustrating for the student.
16:32 And you know what, it’s not as effective and the student might not come back. They might not go through the course because they feel “Eh, this is garbage. This isn’t really teaching anything. It’s too rambling, it’s too—I don’t really know where we’re going.” And so this also affects customer that doesn’t come back anymore.
16:50 So if you have future product you’re wanting to sell, make sure that especially that first product, that first online training course you’re giving, you’re selling, is amazing.
17:02 Michael Hyatt talks about the Wow! factor. He always says “Start with Wow.” So what are some things you can do to start with Wow! in your online course?
17:11 These first three of these four help you to start with Wow!. Tell the audience what you’re going to say and say it and then tell them what you’ve said. Get to the point. Don’t ramble, don’t shoot the breeze forever and then finally stumble upon the main points. And then practice what you’re comfortable with with the material. I can’t stress these enough.
17:37 The fourth and final point is important. And especially if you’re a certain personality type that likes to be a perfectionist, that likes to have all your ducks in a row—and trust me, sometimes this is me, so I’m kind of preaching to the choir here. But the fourth thing that you should—the fourth tip to making good online learning courses is to just ship it.
18:03 Seth Godin made this popular when he talked about shipping a product, shipping a project, shipping whatever you’re working on. So if it’s a course, yeah, you definitely want to—want to do these three things. Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it, tell them what you said. You want to get to the point and you want to practice, but you also want to get that course into the hands of students.
18:29 Now I’ve seen some people where they release it to a limited number of students. Maybe the first twenty, maybe the first fifty students are free or discounted, and then the teacher could get some feedback. “What parts of the course were confusing? What didn’t make sense? What was too rambling? Where could I improve that course?” And then the students will give feedback because they might be raving fans, they might’ve gotten a discount, they might have been incentivized to take that course.
18:59 So make sure, if you have a training course you’re thinking about doing. Don’t sit on the sidelines. Get in the game, make it happen, and use these four tips to making online courses better than you even thought possible.
19:15 But I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. What do you think about this? Have you used these four tips? And have you found that some training courses and products just don’t cut it for you?
19:27 So leave comments in the show notes below and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Also let me know what your struggles are. What courses are you working on? Are you struggling with content creation? With marketing? With selling? With promotions? Where are those roadblocks that you’re experiencing and maybe we can all help each other take your courses to the next level.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post 4 tips to improve your online course videos and tutorial videos appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Ryan’s department helps professors by teaching them how to use software, get online and use the LMS, so the professors can more effectively teach their students. He works with the professor of crafting a course for online consumption, which usually means restructuring the in-class content to be more effective online. While some people don’t like online learning, Ryan gives a compelling reason for eLearning in all sectors, including in the university setting.

Ryan shares some of the tools and resources they use to help their professors build their eLearning courses. Many of these tools are the same ones that are used outside a university settings, which is good to hear that various screen capture tools can be versatile across industries. The good thing is that while many of the tools they use are robust and expensive, there are many tools they use that are free of very affordable and Ryan talks about them in the interview.

The University of Dayton has many types of online classes and Ryan shares some of the differences between an online course without instructor led training and one that has it. I find that the courses that we create for our clients have much better retention if there is a video of the instructor’s face, or if the students have access to the  instructor through private chats, forums, weekly calls or other such ways. While it’s easier to create an online course to “set it and forget it”, the students actually learn best, when an instructor is involved in some way. What are some ways that you can be a part of your online training, so that students can have access to you and your experience? This could make all the difference in the success of your online course, tutorial videos and eLearning.

While most of the interviews on this podcast have been with business or entrepreneurial applications, it’s nice to hear how the masters of teaching (universities) have been doing it best both in person and online for hundreds of years. I enjoyed my time with Ryan and learned a lot through our conversation.

About Ryan Allen:

“Ryan Allen is the Associate Director of E-Learning Systems and Support in the University of Dayton’s Ryan C. Harris Learning Teaching Center.  He has eleven years of experience working in the field of educational technology with a focus on distance education pedagogy and the use of Learning Management Systems.  Ryan manages the development, training and support of the UD’s open source Learning Management System – Isidore.  He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Business Administration from Heidelberg University.  He is also a Project Management Professional.

Tools he uses to help the professors:

• Blackboard Collaborate to help him teach the professors
• Screencasting software (Snagit or Camtasia)

Find Ryan Here: University of Dayton

Fun Delta Airlines Safety Videos that take a boring topic and make it engaging and funny.

The post How The University of Dayton uses eLearning and online classes appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I had the privilege of attending FinCon in Charlotte, North Carolina recently. And while this conference is primarily for those in the financial industry, I loved attending. I share my thoughts and takeaways. I also was able to interview 6 people at FinCon who have online courses or membership sites and they gave a favorite tip and tool that they use in their online courses.

What I loved about attending FinCon

• It is the most well run conference I’ve attended
• Everyone is willing and wanting to help
• It’s a great place to meet awesome people
• I got to listen to and meet people like Pat Flynn, Jeff Goins, Noah Kagen of AppSumo, Chase Reeves of Fizzle, Grant Baldwin and learn from many other awesome speakers.
• The organizer actually recommended to skip the sessions and network the entire time
• I was glad to see many people are creating online courses and got to interview a few of them for this podcast and I lined up some people you may know, with large audiences to talk about their successes with their online courses
• I was amazed at how many people want to create an online course and I was inundated with questions about the tech, strategies and marketing of online courses. I plan on addressing these questions in coming podcasts…so subscribe to the podcast and stay tuned

Registration is simple and the more you share it out, the more chances you have to win! I would be honored if you were my guest to FinCon 2016.

The 5  types of online courses that you may want to consider

While there are many different types of courses that you can create for your audience (I like to call them students), these 5 items below are some options I like to start off with when I’m coaching someone who wants to create an online course. I go more in depth in the podcast, so listen and think if one of these would work well for your students.

1. Email driven course where they sign up and get dripped content over time.
2. A short self study online course that focusses on one area from start to finish. The benefit is that it’s short and actionable. People are willing to pay for a short course that solves one problem.
3. A screencast walkthrough of software, presentation or other content.
4. A video driven course with you on camera, powerpoint slides, pdf downloads, Facebook private group, monthly webinars. Include multiple tiers with more items added to the course with each increased paid tier.
5. A certification course – create content where students walk through the course, get help from you, are awarded points and badges for each module they complete and are awarded with a certificate at the end.

Tips and Tools for Online Course  and Membership Site Creators from FinCon

Click to Register to win a *FREE FinCon 2016 ticket (contest is closed)

Brian Mikes

Brian is a serial Entrepreneur. He loves to start, run, and invest in small businesses. With experience in online marketing, sales, and corporate finance, he wears many hats! Currently, he runs Hyperion Financial Group, an online financial publishing company. He also sits on the Board of Betwext.com, a cutting edge text message platform for small business. Brian also invests in and consults with small businesses in a number of different industries. You can reach Brian here.

Kirk Du Plessis

Option Alpha is an online education and coaching platform for investors interested in learning more about the financial markets and derivative options. We provide focused training covering options strategies, risk management, trading psychology, option pricing and portfolio allocation. In addition, we offer a Premium Membership with access to weekly workshops, one on one coaching and video commentary/analysis.

Option Alpha has become one of the industry’s leading options education website with more than 30,000 daily readers. I am responsible for everything from maintaining the business model, revenue strategies, marketing, strategic partnerships with brokers, writing, design, and website development. It’s truly been a passionate entrepreneurial journey.

optionalpha.com

Gabby Wallace

Gabby helps people build their online teaching business to bring more freedom and opportunity to their lives. Why wait until you’re retired to enjoy life? Create the life you want through a job that works for you.

laptopteacher.com

Steph Halligan

Steph Halligan is the entrepreneurial cartoonist behind Art To Self. She’s also the creator of You Deserve More, a 7-day course to help freelancers and entrepreneurs charge what they’re worth. Get her free 6-lesson mini course and free scripts for raising your rates at YouDeserveMore.co

David Stein

David Stein is host of Money For the Rest of Us, a weekly personal finance show. He also runs the Money For the Rest of Us Hub, an online educational platform on money, how it works, and how to invest it. Previously, he was Chief Investment Strategist and Chief Portfolio Strategist at Fund Evaluation Group, a $35 billion institutional investment advisor. At FEG he co-lead the 20 person research team and managed assets for endowments, foundations and financial planners. You can find him at www.moneyfortherestofus.net or on Twitter @jdstein

Deacon Hayes

Deacon Hayes, now a personal finance expert, managed to successfully eliminate his debt in just eighteen months. Having once been overwhelmed by debt himself, Deacon understands first-hand the effects financial strains can place on one’s life and has a passion for helping laypeople rid themselves of debt. 

18 months later he has able to pay off all $52,000 and it was truly a liberating feeling. It took a couple of months to sink in, but once he realized that he didn’t have to make those debt payments anymore, the weight was lifted from his shoulders.

They were featured on the US News and World Report which then lead to a live interview in New York City on Fox News.  Today he spends his time doing Financial Coaching and speaking at different venues about various topics related to managing money. If you have a question about your financial situation, contact Deacon to help out.

wellkeptwallet.com

The post 5 Types of Online Courses, FinCon Course Creators Tips & Free FinCon Ticket Contest appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I had a lot of fun with Anna on the Online Course Coach Podcast and her engaging personality comes through in the interview. It was my goal to find someone to bring on the podcast to talk about Instructional Design in simple and easy to understand terms, and she did just that. I work with a lot of people who don’t consider the learning process that a student will take and what all the student will learn throughout the course. It’s easy to breeze through the course creation process and packing the course with all the knowledge you have. But, it might be more important to step back and determine the few things that the student wants to learn. The best way to do this is through beta testing your course with your ideal student base. The more feedback you get throughout the process of course creation, the better your course will be. This process works similar to the Lean Startup model and can be applied to your online course and eLearning projects. Use the coupon code “coursecoach” for her Instructional Design course for 40% off! Go to onlinecoursecoach.com/skillagents to learn more about her online course.

Anna Sabramowicz’s Bio

Anna Sa•bra•mo•wicz  is the founder of ElearnerEngaged, an boutique elearning studio, responsible for award winning scenario based learning like “Broken Co-worker: Interactive eLearning Scenario.” She published her own online course on learner centered instructional design, Skillagents.com, which has been described as “eating a box of chocolates”.
Anna makes no claims to be a technology expert, but loves to empathize with the learners’ experience. Oddly enough, her advocacy for learner centered design and results driven education—where training time really matters—has made her a complete contrarian.

The Online Course Coach Podcast Questions

• What is your background?
• How did you get started in creating online courses?
• What is instructional design?
• What are some things you can do in the Instructional Design phase of the course creation process?
• How important is instructional design to creating online courses?
• How can a beta student help improve the course for the instructor?
• What are some things an entrepreneur should keep in mind with instructional design in their own courses?
• What are some struggles you’ve had along your career in regards to online courses?
• What are some successes you’ve had along your career in regards to online courses?
• What are some marketing strategies that you’ve had that’s worked?
• What is Skill Agents and what does it provide?
• onlinecoursecoach.com/skillagents

Show notes from the interview with Anna Sabramowicz

• She started out as a school teacher and moved to adult education
• Anna worked in the corporate world first
• She has worked with Rubbermaid and other Fortune 500 companies
• Most people don’t know what Instruction Design is and it’s a fairly new concept in online educational
• Ask the student why they are taking this course…it’s a good way to hear their motivation
• Use reflection within a course. Ask deep questions to the student throughout the course to get them to think deeply about the subject they are learning
• Offer your course to a group of people to review your course and give you feedback
  • Ask: how are you using the material in your life?
• She uses her Youtube channel as her best form of marketing
• Use coupon code “coursecoach” for online course for 40% off! by going to onlinecoursecoach.com/skillagents to learn more about her online course

Have a question for the podcast?

The post Why use Instructional Design in your online courses with Anna Sabramowicz appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I’ve been using LearnDash on several projects over the years, so I wanted to get the founder on the podcast to talk. In this week’s Online Course Coach Podcast, Justin Ferriman talks about what this LMS plugin is, what markets can benefit from it and some good marketing strategies. I like this LMS for its flexibility, quiz features, gamification (badges, points, leaderboard, etc) and that they are constantly coming out with new features. I’m using LearnDash on a current project which will have 5 full video-based courses on it and we’ll be adding more courses in the future.

Click to Register to win a *FREE FinCon 2016 ticket

Bio of Justin Ferriman of the LearnDash LMS Plugin

Podcast Questions Asked of Justin Ferriman

• What is your background?
• How did you came up with Learn Dash?
• Please give a brief overview of what LD does. (not the best way I asked this…cut out the first part of the question)
• What industries can LearnDash be best used in?
• What’s one of the most creative uses for LearnDash that you’ve seen?
• what’s a success story that you can share of someone that used LearnDash?
• What are your tips for making elearning courses?
• What are your tips for marketing courses?
• Where you are going with LearnDash in the future?
• Where do you think eLearning is going in the future?
• What are you most proud of with LD?
• Where can people learn more about you?

The Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes

• Justin started as a consultant and doing eLearning setup and creation
• In corporate training it’s hard to make the eLearning courses engaging and interactive
• He wanted a WordPress based solution for an LMS but didn’t find any
• At the start, it was small and he educated people on what an LMS is and why someone should use it
• They launched in 2013 and they haven’t looked back
• LearnDash is used in colleges and universities but also in industries like bloggers, certification agencies, digitalmarketer.com, medical training, etc.
• Tips to make an online course – Start planning your course with Word, PowerPoint or other basic software to get the outline
• The marketing strategy depends on your industry and online course. Create your course and have beta testers who can review it and give you feedback.
• He contributed to blogs, elearning sites, and more to build his brand and list
• They did a pre-launch which gave him the early adopters
• MOOCS are becoming the next big thing and will be the industry standard

To learn more about LearnDash and it’s features and benefits, click here.

Click to Register to win a *FREE FinCon 2016 ticket

The post How to build online courses with LearnDash and WordPress by Justin Ferriman appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Erin Chase of $5Dinners.com shares insights about her membership site and online courses on The Online Course Coach Podcast. I was able to get to know of Erin a bit at FinCon and knew I had to get her on the show. Oddly enough, she used to live a few miles away from where I currently live and we know some of the same people. You will be able to hear her heart and how she loves to save money and help others. She loves helping people save money and stretch their dollars so they can pay off debt, be more wise with their money and find space in their budget.

This episode is being released before Thanksgiving and the Christmas season. I think having Erin on The Online Course Coach Podcast at this time is the perfect timing. What better time to have someone on the show, who specializes in saving money and creating $5 dinners! We went into a lot of the history, details and vision she has for her membership website, online courses and business.

In this episode you’ll learn how Erin has become so efficient and productive, if she has a team supporting her and how she gets so much done during the day.

In this episode, I share how I recently worked with a well known New York Times Best Selling author, speaker and consultant to help her create a 7 day video course. We had our video crew on set and did a full day shoot. Our schedule consisted of filming 15 videos for her upcoming website launch and online course. Once it’s launched I’ll release the details of it and share a link so you can see it. The content is fantastic and I learned a lot while editing the course content, so I know you’ll learn a lot too!

Online Course Coach Interview Questions:

• Give us a background of how you started with $5 dinners?
• When did you roll out the membership site side of your business?
• How have you been able to create a community around your website?
• Do you consider yourself an educator?
• What excites you about your services?
• Tell me about your online course.
• What are some ways that you’ve marketed your membership site?
• What have you learned along the way that’s helped improve your membership site and services?
• Where can people learn more about you and $5 Dinners?

Click to Register to win a *FREE FinCon 2016 ticket

The Online Course Coach Podcast Shownotes

• She spent a lot of time putting together good content and recipes
• Jim Wang and her put together a pilot test with 300 people
• They do a lot of surveys with their audience to see what works and what doesn’t
• She’s passionate about helping people spend less on groceries
• She has the Grocery Budget Makeover Course
• Erin schedules different things for each day so she’s the most efficient
• She does her own video work and has a small team doing other work
• To help market, she advertises her membership site and courses on her website, blog, social media and newsletters
• She only releases her course 3 times per year
• Erin does a modified version of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula

Click to Register to win a *FREE FinCon 2016 ticket

The post Membership sites & Online Courses with Erin Chase of $5Dinners.com appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Keith Perhac has been working with some of the top names in the online course, membership site and internet marketing space. In this podcast he shares his tips on creating online courses from existing blog content or email campaign material. He also gives advanced strategies for tiered pricing and why you should never release an online course or membership site without offering tiered pricing.
In this podcast we cover in depth the following:

How to create a course from your existing blog content or email course? If you have a blog with 3, 6, or 36 months of content or an email course, you have a goldmine full of content to harvest for your course. In this conversation, Keith will teach your audience how to take their existing content from their blog and turn it into a high-quality, high-value, revenue producing course.

The Benefits of Tiered Pricing. If you already have a product, an eBook, or a course, have you considered the benefits of adding Tiered Pricing? In this conversation, Keith will teach your audience on how offering different ‘tiers’ of the same product will dramatically increase the amount of revenue that your course can generate.
Get the free bonus audio interview – Keith Perhacs’s top marketing strategies for online course creators.
Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Online Course Coach Podcast Questions:

Talk about some ways that you’ve helped the big names in the optimizing their courses
We all know the importance of adding content for SEO and customer value, but how can someone create a course from their existing blog material?
How do you know what content to use and what content that’s not good enough for an online course?
How can you piece together you blog content that may not have a natural bridge between the blog posts?
What are some other steps you recommend from taking blog content to an online course
What are some marketing strategies you’ve seen to successfully sell online courses?
Why is tiered pricing so important?
How important is the naming of your tiers
What are some good names to use?
Tell me what SummitEvergreen.com is
Where can people learn more about you?

Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes:

http://keithperhac.com
He works with conversion to make existing content convert better into a sale
The best way to promote your course is to give 80% of it away for free

This is becoming the industry standard

All course content is available online, but your custom narrative is what makes it different and unique
Blog content is divided into personal and informational or educational
Turn yourself into a personality, which draws people into the narrative
Ask your audience what they want to learn by creating a course with your content. Send an email asking what they think about a blog post to see what their response is.
Start with an outline of what the course will include in each lesson
If you have 4 blog articles on the same topic, ask your audience what they think about it. Then create a PDF or webinar around that topic. Offer it as an opt in where they get access to the content. If people give positive or negative feedback, then you know what direction to take.
**Release small content first to test the market
Online Courses can be tweaked and modified along the way. You can even improve it as you go as students give you feedback.
YouTube has a mywebcam to record your own videos and edit them within YouTube
Use a drip feed to deliver the content to have each lesson build upon each other
An online course has more value, even over a 100 page PDF
Do interviews as part of your course
Have a lead up to the launch of the course. A two week lead up is recommended. Get people engaged with what you’re going to sell.

The post Keith Perhac on creating courses from blog content & tiered pricing appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Cory Miller, the owner of iThemes, shares his experience with online training, tips for online course providers and valuable insights into the industry’s future. iThemes is a tech company based in Oklahoma that has been offering premium WordPress plugins since 2008.

Three of iThemes most popular products are:

BackupBuddy

Backup Buddy helps protect your content by letting you create a backup off servers on offsite locations, like Google Drive and Amazon S3. Backup Buddy lets you easily restore your lost content if:

• Your server crashes
• Your site gets hacked
• The computer where your content was saved breaks down
• One of your teammates accidentally loses the content

BackupBuddy by iThemes is my #1 most recommended plugins for all WordPress websites.

If you would like to learn more about iThemes, BackupBuddy, Security and Sync, click here.

iThemes Security

iThemes Security helps keep your content protected from potential security breaches through a variety of easy, practical measures, including two-step authentication.

iThemes Sync

iThemes Sync lets you manage multiple sites easily with just one dashboard.

With users all over the world enjoying iThemes’ excellent plugins, you could be surprised to know that it didn’t start out making premium WordPress plugins. iThemes first offered custom-made WordPress themes designed by Cory himself. He was inspired to learn HTML and CSS to build his first WordPress theme when he discovered the platform shortly after he started blogging on Blogger in 2007. People impressed with Cory’s designs hired him to make the theme of their WordPress site, launching his freelance web design career.

Cory chose WordPress over Blogger and stayed with it because for him, not only is it the easiest website creation and management platform to use. It also has the most diverse set of built-in software tools which are free or affordable. Once you find good hosting, launch WordPress, find the plugins that can do what you need, pick out the theme that you want, and your online business, course, or training will be up and running in just a few days.

About one year into his web design career, Cory thought of creating simple but great-looking WordPress themes that website owners without any knowledge of coding could use, like those that Template Monster used to offer. Thus, iThemes was born.

Having turned nine in 2017, iThemes has grown from a one-man team to a thriving organization that still has much to offer. While continuously producing terrific WordPress themes and plugins, it has spent the last couple of years shifting to a software as a service (SaaS) business model. iThemes has always successfully kept pace with important trends in tech. For example: In 2009, only one year after it was established, iThemes formed its training division that created one-hour webinars to train its new hires and teach its customers how to build websites using HTML or CSS.

iThemes’ webinars now play an important role in marketing its products and the company itself. It now holds several hours or days long, summit-style live events that it records and uploads online for those unable to attend. This showcases its products and expertise even better, lets it engage with its customers even more and improves its capability of attracting even more customers.

To make its webinars stand out from the numerous webinars online, iThemes has been growing its team of trainers to include those with unique voices, perspectives and expertise in various areas of tech that can share their knowledge with iThemes’ community. The members gain diverse skill sets and perspectives, ensuring they become the best they can be at their chosen specialty. Cory is optimistic about the future of online training. He said it “has been exploding and will continue to explode” because:

• Everything you could ever want to learn will be readily available online
• Online training gives users a richer learning experience by providing them with metrics and detailed statistics
• It allows for truly interactive needs-based training
• It caters to virtually every learning style
• It will become more convenient and affordable as technology becomes better, faster and cheaper

If you would like to learn more about iThemes, BackupBuddy, Security and Sync, click here.

Cory Millers’s Tips for First-Time Online Course Providers Build your confidence by:

1. Giving your online course the best structure possible
2. Learning from your peers and doing research online
3. Following the best practices
4. Writing down your goals
5. Constantly measuring your progress and improving

Establish your following

If you take care of your audience by helping them with their issues, understanding their goals and aspirations, and making a sincere effort to help them succeed, they will be loyal to you and always support your business.

Do email marketing as soon as possible

Marketers have been trying out alternatives to search engine marketing (SEM) due to the rise of ad blockers. Among the most effective is email marketing. Unless it gets sent to their Spam folder, your message is guaranteed to reach your audience with hardly any distraction.

To give your email marketing efforts the best chance at success:

• Start making your email marketing list, which is basically the list of your customers’ email address, right away.
• Write your emails as if you’re talking to only one person. Your message will be personal and much more engaging.
• Provide value, like a part of your online course that you can give your customers for free. It shows how sincere you are to be of service to them, encouraging them to trust you.
• Avoid being sales pitchy. You’ll come across as out to just make a quick buck and turn your audience off.
• Always respond to their messages to demonstrate that you really care about them.
• Make your online training sessions only three to eight minutes long. Any longer and you risk losing your audience’s interest. The attention span of an average person is now just eight minutes.
• Show your passion. Being authentic endears you to your audience significantly, improving your chances at connecting with them.

Asked what inspired him lately, Cory said it was the positive impact he made in the life of the people he has helped that inspired him the most. Clearly, we can continue to expect great things from him.

Cory Miller’s Bio

Cory Miller is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time entrepreneur. In 2008, he started iThemes, which builds web design software and offers cutting-edge web design training for thousands of customers around the globe.

Named the 7th fastest growing company in Oklahoma City in 2011 by the Metro 50, iThemes employs over 20 people around the globe with headquarters in Edmond, Oklahoma.

In 2011, he co-founded The Div, Inc, a nonprofit tech foundation aimed at inspiring and training the next generation of web developers through its kid’s program, Div Jr.

He is the co-author of WordPress All-in-One for Dummies (Wiley, 2011) and is a member and current communications chair of the Oklahoma chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a network of over 8,000 entrepreneurs in 40 countries with companies that have revenue over $1 million dollars annually.

He is married to Lindsey Miller, who leads the Education Program at iThemes aimed at helping provide school and educators with professional web design tools and training.

Please note: Recommended products above are affiliate links and I may be compensated for them.

The post Online Courses and Training with Cory Miller of iThemes appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Teachable is one of the best learning management systems available. It’s easy to use, attractive and they strive to make the learning process easy for your students. A learning management system is an online platform designed to facilitate e-learning. Once they sign in, every student will have their own username and password that they can use to log in, access your lessons that you’d upload and track their progress easily. You can build, launch and manage your online course using WordPress or on platforms like Udemy and Lydna.com instead. But these don’t provide the ease of use or degree of control that Teachable does. Wordpress is a great online course builder and manager if you’re comfortable with handling the entire potentially complicated process yourself.

If these items are too technical for you and take away from you teaching, helping your students or creating more content, then you may want to consider Teachable:

• Picking the right video hosting, payment and membership solutions among the many available online
• Finding the right plug-ins
• Integrating them altogether
• Troubleshooting when the plugins inevitably update and cause a compatibility issue

Teachable, on the other hand, handles the vast majority of the things you need to do to build, launch and manage an online course for a monthly fee that is, more or less, the same amount as what you’ll need to pay WordPress for, basically, the same service.

Sign up for your own Teachable.com account

Why you should consider Teachable to build online courses:

1. Teachable Offers Unlimited video hosting

This is done with a standard industry video provider that was carefully selected and that works very well for massively scaled online courses.

2. Teachable Offers Payment Gateways

You don’t need to set up your own payment system if you don’t want to. You can integrate the one you prefer.  All you have to do to start doing business is set the price. Teachable will collect all your payments for you. Teachable can handle your payments completely and simply send them to you each month. If you have affiliates that send traffic to your virtual school, Teachable can pay them monthly for you. If you also have contributors, like authors, Teachable can handle their payments as well. They also provide the option to do your tax paper work at the end of each year.

3. Teachable Provides Simplicity of Design

Teachable guarantees no problems will be had using it on a mobile device or even through a slow internet connection. The better the user experience (UX) for your students, the better their learning will be, the more they will take your lessons and the more students you’ll have.

Platforms like Udemy and Lynda.com provide pretty much the same range of capabilities. But you’ll be required to comply with their requirements, which may or may not be in your best interest. For example, there are Udemy users who have experienced having their lessons discounted without being told and without their consent, causing them to earn much less. There has been no such incidence among Teachable users. The older learning management platforms are also much more expensive to use. Teachable will only charge you a flat fee, like a dollar per month per user, preventing your costs or overhead from skyrocketing.

Tips to Make Your Online Course a Success:

1. Make sure your content is engaging

Features like video and audio give your students a better learning experience than if you gave them typical text-based lessons. There are now plenty of online tools that let you create videos for your lessons with hardly any difficulty. Examples of such tools are Screenflow and Camtasia.

2. Avoid making your lessons too long

Lessons that are brief (e.g., five to 30 minutes) do better than the one that are one hour long or even longer because they aren’t hard to finish and are easier to retain.

3. Give as much thought to promoting your lessons as to creating them

Not only will it ensure your audience finds your lessons, it lets you improve your online course based on their feedback.

4. Find out what your audience’s pain points are

Pain points are the information your audience need, not simply want to learn about. For instance, while lawyers practicing family law always want to learn more about it, they need to know, say, the specific actions they need to take as a result of the changes to the California Penal Code as it applies to this section of the Family Law. There are numerous regulations and some of the lawyers aren’t sure what to do with them. By filling this gap in their knowledge, your online course will stand out among the multitude of free information online on the Law.

5. Offer a good transformation

Most people who take a course aren’t just looking to learn something new. They are also looking for the transformation that the knowledge they will gain will enable them to experience. For example, majority of those studying computer science aren’t just trying to learn more about computers. They are doing so to also reorient their career and apply new skills to their job or personal life to build their own projects. By enabling your students to have the transformation they want, you’re sure to gain a loyal following—ensuring the success of your online course.

Sign up for your own Teachable.com account

Questions asked during the interview with Cameron Mattis of Teachable:

1. Tell me about your background with online course and your position at Teachable.
2. Why are you excited about online course and where the industry is going?
3. What elements make a good online course (content, the teacher, visuals, or something else)?
4. What do you see people struggle with the most in creating their online course?
5. What separates the successful course creator from ones that don’t have a lot students (is their existing audience, course quality, marketing or something else)?
6. What are some successful marketing strategies that you’ve seen work?
7. What are the benefits of having a hosted LMS vs someone building a website and LMS themselves (Teachable vs WordPress)
8. Why would someone use a WordPress plugin to create their own course? If you are comfortable with WordPress, e-commerce, video hosting, and course creation. If you’re able to trouble shoot issues that come up, then building your course with WordPress may be for you.
9. Most people aren’t technical and don’t want to set up a learning management system and all the potential headaches.
10. How does Teachable give teachers the best tools to create and market their courses?
11. What are some obscure course topics that have had success on your platform?
12. Some of the most successful courses are with Chinese Feng Shui, The Foundations of Card Magic, How to pass the FAA drone pilots license test.
13. Where can someone learn more and get your offer (we’ll create a redirect from my website to your landing page at OnlineCourseCoach.com/teachable)
14. What is a feature of Teachable that’s a competitive edge?

Get 1 Month of Teachable for Free (see bottom for notes about the offer)

Teachable 1 Month for Free Offer Fine Print

The post How to Use Teachable to Build Online Courses appeared first on Online Course Coach.

There is only so much valuable, useful information you can give your audience within an average 30-minute or 1-hour talk. If you have more knowledge to share, instead of limiting yourself to each live speaking session, you can start by offering virtual coaching. Doing so lets you easily make your additional, supplementary or complementary content or lessons available to your audience virtually anytime, anywhere. You have more for back-of-room sales.

Download 4 Bonus Interviews on Marketing Courses

After speaking you can make a majority of your money with selling relevant products and is common practice for speakers as an additional revenue stream.

Common ways a speaker can sell product at the back of the room:

• Your book(s)
• Training modules
• Workbooks
• Audio CDs
• DVD videos
• Branded items like tee shirts, coffee mugs, and other items that have slogans or other sayings that match the topics of the talk
• Online Courses

While it may seem easy for someone who is already a speaker, you can become an industry expert by following these steps. And who knows maybe you’ll go from doing free speeches to being paid top dollar to deliver keynote addresses to large audiences.

How to build yourself as a public speaker:

1. Claim and master your topic. After you master 1 topic, then you can diversify and add additional topics
2. Make sure you already love this topic and are always learning about it.
3. Choose a topic you already love to do
4. Think about what you’ve always wanted to learn.
5. What have you been through in life and have succeeded out of struggle
6. Choose a topic you’re willing to live and speak about for the next 5 years

Why a speaker should create online courses?

By having your own online courses, you can increase your influence and impact to your audience. You can also benefit from these 6 things.

• You can continue serving their audience
• It creates residual income
• It gives you something else for back of the room sales
• It has a higher perceived value then a book, DVD series, etc.
• It keeps you top of mind to your audience, even after you leave the event
• It builds you as an industry leader

Download 4 Bonus Interviews on Marketing Courses

5 types of online courses a speaker can create to leverage their business

While there are many types of online courses you can create, here are 5 that you should consider, from free to top-tier.

1. A simple free text based course

Do you think an online course has to be complex to make and deliver to your audience? A simple text or sms based course that you send out every day or week that is easily readable by your audience may be a good start.

2. A free mini online course on your website

I highly recommend that you create something of value to get people to give you their email address and a freed mini course is the best way to go. A free mini-course delivers high value to your audience but is simple for them to go through.  Carrie Wilkerson of the Barefoot Executive has a free 7 day business blitz video series that walks the viewer how to be more productive. I highly recommend you go through it to learn from her and see how simple a mini-course is. I produced the videos for her mini course.

3. A cheap paid online course

Have a cheaper paid course that fills in the gaps to your talk. Think of it as an expanded version of your talk. Surely you can’t give all the information in your 30-60 minute talk, why not create a course that’s under $97 that you can offer on stage or at the back of the room? A basic, paid course is best for offering your audience the information pertaining to your live talks that you weren’t able to discuss. Think of it as an expanded version of your in-person speaking sessions that fills in the gaps. It can be a five-series, five-chapter or five module course where you explain more.

4. Middle-range paid online course

This type of course is more valuable than a basic, paid course. A middle-range course teaches your audience a new concept that’s related to your talks. Consider it as a movie sequel. For example, if you discuss self-motivation in your basic-paid course further, you can talk about how to turn positive thoughts into action in your middle range course. The ideas are endless because once you have your main topics you speak about on stage you can create additional material that can be easily updated and improved with any of your online courses.

5. A Top-tier paid online course

A top-tier course is the most valuable type of paid online course you can offer. It features more content, giving your audience a richer online learning experience than a basic, paid course or a middle-range course. It can include a copy of your book or merchandise, a number or group coaching sessions and access to a private Facebook group. Think about how to add the most value which will allow you to increase the price on this top-tiered course. You can offer more valuable content than most other types of content. Just make sure that you aren’t creating more work for yourself with monitoring a private Facebook group or coaching calls. Think of ways to streamline and create value while reducing your time commitment.

Download 4 Bonus Interviews on Marketing Courses

Being able to give your audience even more content ensures their learning experience is satisfying. You stay at the top of your audience’s mind. An online course can be described as an intimate way to engage your audience. Unlike a live speaking session, where you communicate with them as a group, watching and listening to an online video of you giving a talk at the comfort of their home makes each of them feel as if you’re teaching only him or her. You can even make it interactive by letting them leave comments and replying. Taking your online course this way makes it much more personal, letting you create a deeper connection with your audience. Since they can access your videos whenever they want, they are more likely to keep you in mind than speakers who don’t have an online course.

Having an online course also positions you as more of an industry leader. Credibility is one of the factors that dictates whether you succeed as a speaker. You won’t make any progress without earning the trust of your audience. While giving live talks still works, having an online course is now more effective given its accessibility, reach and the rapidly increasing number of netizens who are also potential students. As long as you offer the best content possible and make as many meaningful connections as you can, you’ll gain a following and become recognized or popular in your field or niche.

Listen to other Online Course Coach Podcast interviews with acclaimed speakers

Dan Miller – How Dan Miller uses online courses and digital products

Tom Ziglar – Selling Tips and Building Ziglar on Demand

Jane Atkinson – How speakers can leverage their knowledge with online courses

Michael Kitces – Innovative Membership Sites

Grant Baldwin – How speaker can create online courses

These are only a few examples of how a speaker can leverage the power of an online course. If you would like to learn more about my coaching packages, please contact me below. I would love to help you create additional revenue streams for your speaking business!

The post 5 types of online courses a speaker can create appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Almost everybody wants to start their own business, like an online course.

Take Millennials in the USA, who now outnumber the Baby Boomers, for example. A 2015 Bentley University survey of this generation revealed that 66 percent of the respondents “have a desire to start their own business,” 37 percent “would like to work for themselves,” and 25 percent “would like to own their own company.” However, as of 2013, only 3.6 percent of all businesses in the country were owned by someone under 30, according to Forbes Contributor Jared Mayer in his July 20, 2015 article on this topic.

This comes as a surprise to us, considering entrepreneurs make more than employees. In fact, there are online course creators or coaches who are making tens of thousands of dollars per month, but more importantly they’ve impacted and helped their students! If you have not yet acted on your idea for an online course, now is as a good a time as any to take stock and ask yourself, “why haven’t I gotten started”?

If you don’t know how or where to start, you think you don’t have enough time to do it, or you’re worried about failing, stop worrying over being stuck anymore, because it just takes three easy steps that are all focused on visualization.

Visualization is mankind’s powerful way of creating a mental image of things we want to see or have that we are yet to reach or attain, like our goals. Indeed, visualization enabled the residents of the Marshall Islands learn to navigate the surrounding waters by canoe in the daytime 500 years ago—without looking to the stars as guides. By harnessing your visualization capabilities with our surprisingly simple 3-step exercise, we’re more than confident that you’ll be able to successfully kick off your online course.

The first step is determining want you want to achieve with your online course.

Are you trying to teach a certain number of students? Are you trying to build your very own platform? Do you want to make a certain amount of money each month? Knowing for sure what you want to get out of your online course makes focusing on it easier—significantly improving your chances of keeping at it even if the going gets rough. The most effective way of visualizing that goal is not coming up with just one but three: an easy goal; a slightly harder goal; and a big, hairy, audacious goal.

Breaking up your main goal—launching your very own online course—into three makes it easier to achieve by dividing the difficulty of succeeding into levels. Say your easy goal is getting 10 students; your slightly harder goal is getting 100 students; and your big, hairy, audacious goal is guesting on podcasts as a thought leader. By achieving your two easier goals, not only have you succeeded at launching your online course; you already have the experience, credibility and confidence to go after your big, hairy, audacious goal. Now that you have a clear idea of what your goals are for your online course…

The next step is coming up with a strategy for your online course.

You can create a detailed action plan to launch your online course, put dates of completion for each item (i.e., creating the course itself; choosing a web host; creating graphics, or hiring someone to create these; shooting the videos; etc.) and allot budgets for them.

Creating a detailed action plan ensures you are on the right path and you can get back to it if you veer off course by simply reviewing your plan. Setting a deadline for each item of your plan (e.g., 6 months or 1 year) ensures you accomplish them in a reasonable amount of time. You will need to spend some money for tools to create stunning graphics, tools to shoot engaging videos and coaching.

The last step is getting rid of the negative thoughts or behaviors that have you stuck.

If you do not have enough time to create your online course, you can begin clearing up your schedule by lessening the time you spend on your low-priority tasks and doing away with your tasks that are not important at all. If you do not know how to go about doing an important part of the process, like marketing or reaching out to potential partners and affiliates, start reading up on it, or get help from a professional.

Launching an online course is a very rewarding business to start. Yet many are discouraged from doing it, assuming it’s harder than they can handle. Actually, achieving success hinges largely on how well you can visualize the goal and how committed you are to it by removing the things that are preventing you from your life. By knowing for certain what your goal is, figuring out the best way to arrive at it and ridding yourself of the obstacles, you’ll succeed.

The post The Easy 3-Step Exercise to Finally Launch Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Are you trying to sell more online courses but don’t have an audience or platform? In order to sell more courses, which means you need an audience to serve. In this podcast episode we talk about 5 Strategies to Grow Your Audience for Your Online Course.

The online course market is on a tremendous upswing. For example, in 2015 it increased to more than $100 billion, according to Forbes. In the fall of 2014, according to the Babson Survey Research Group’s annual report “Online Report Card: Tracking Online Education in the United States”, nearly six million students were enrolled in at least one online course. This figure increased by more than 3.5 percent the following year. On Udemy, one of the most well-known online course platforms, there are currently more than nine million students from 190 countries.

No matter your niche or field, you are sure to benefit by engaging the large and growing potential customer base through your very own online course. To improve your chance at success, you need to focus on building your audience as much as you need to make your episodes or lessons as well as possible. You may have the best ones that the world is yet to have, but your prospective students cannot benefit from your course if you do not figure out the most effective ways to give them access.

To help you make a great start, here are 5 tried-and-tested strategies.

How to Grow Your Online Course Audience – Strategy #1: Start a Podcast Around the Topic of Your Online Course

Starting a podcast is among the increasingly potent strategies to engage your target audience.

Between 2008 and 2015, according to copyblogger, the number of podcast listeners increased from nine percent to 17 percent. In 2011, Adam Carolla, an American comedian, television host, actor, radio personality, director, and podcaster, broke the record for the most downloaded podcast with almost 60 million downloads. In 2013, Apple announced that it had one billion podcast subscribers.

Why are podcasts so engaging? They are rich. In digital advertising, this refers to the use of advanced features, like audio, video, or other elements that let viewers interact with the content, ensuring engagement.

For instance, starting a podcast builds your credibility. Say you have a decade of experience in marketing. You can share your expertise through your podcast. You can offer tutorials, how-to’s, and tips. The more people you help, the more you will be seen as an expert in your niche or field. The more credibility you gain, the more people will be encouraged to take your online course.

Starting a podcast also lets you connect with your fellow experts. You can interview them and post the interviews as episodes. Doing so will be mutually beneficial. Each episode promotes you and the expert you interviewed. If he or she is well-known, your online traffic is sure to increase. The more visitors you have, the more customers you could gain. Aside from that, each episode is a learning opportunity for you that lets your expertise grow.

How to Grow Your Online Course Audience – Strategy #2: Be Guest on Other Podcasts Where Your Online Course Audience is

But if you do not want to start your own podcast, you can guest on a podcast instead. Manage to get on one with a lot followers and you are sure to gain your own following, each of whom could be a potential student.

To get the desired result, start with the popular podcasts in your niche or field; do not just pitch, sell, or promote; and try to guest on podcasts unrelated to your expertise.

Guesting on podcasts related to your expertise that have a large following improves your chances of reaching out to your target audience significantly.

As the rise of ad blockers show, people are becoming more and more averse to being sold to. To get your prospective customers’ attention in a positive way, be of service to them instead. Offer them something valuable while guesting on a podcast, like a free course or tutorial. Once you gained their trust, they are more likely to take your course.

To find out which podcasts outside of your niche or field you ought to guest on, ask for referrals. The followers of each are potential customers whom you might never thought of engaging.

How to Grow Your Online Course Audience – Strategy #3: Write Guest Blogs For People in the Same Industry As Your Online Course

While podcasts are on the rise, many still read blogs. As of March 2015, companies that blog get 97 percent more links to their website, according to HubSpot.

Engage the readers by writing guest blogs. To reach as many potential students and customers as possible, try to get published on blogs related to your niche or field with high traffic. To ensure you engage them, make your guest blogs unique, well written and researched, and personalized, or tailored just for your intended readers.

How to Grow Your Online Course Audience – Strategy #4: Answer Your Target Audience’s Questions Online

Having painstakingly crafted your podcast episodes and guest blogs, the viewers and readers will want to learn more from you and possibly even get to know you by asking questions online. You can find people gathering in places like forums, open or private Facebook groups as well as in paid membership groups. Serve them even better by giving answers. Not only can you deepen and solidify your connections, you will be able to showcase your expertise even more, which will gain yourself even more credibility.

How to Grow Your Online Course Audience – Strategy #5: Attend Industry Conferences Where Your Online Course Students Will Be

While more and more people can be found online, you ought to still network at events like industry conferences. Many still like to meet face to face as part of forming a connection or relationship. By putting yourself out there, you will be able to do interviews for your podcast or guest blogs as well as promote your online course.

But do not just hype yourself up. Get involved. Tweet, retweet, post, and reshare about the conferences. Give away freebies. Get acquainted with other podcasters, bloggers, and online course creators. The more connections you make, the more exposure you gain.

Conclusion

It is a great time to start teaching an online course. But your chances at success are slim if you do not build your audience. To gain a loyal following and customer base, launch your very own podcast or guest on popular ones; write terrific guest blogs; answer all of your audience’s questions online; and be present and involved at industry conferences. Your online course is sure to take off in no time.

The post 5 Strategies to Grow Your Audience <br/>for Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

10 simple ways to make your online course videos less boring

1.  Smile

You will come across more friendly and approachable by simply smiling. The more you smile, the most upbeat and fun the online course videos will appear. So put a big smile on your face

2. Laugh right before you start each take

While it might feel strange to do this, it helps loosen you up and make you relax a bit before you start teaching your online course.

3. Tell some funny stories

This can be hard to do when you are looking at a video camera and talking to your students, it’s important to bring levity and humor into your online course videos. Think of funny jokes, stories and other ways to bring humor into your course videos. This will lighten the mood and make you seem less boring.

4. Do a demonstration or experiment

The goal with any online course is to hep the student learn the material and demonstrating the material is more effective than lecturing about the material. Think about ways to show what you’re teaching. That might mean bringing your video camera on a “field trip” or having props. Look at Will It Blend and how they create engaging video demonstrations with their product videos.

5. Include some funny videos from youtube

Do you want to bring in something funny or even a complex demonstration? Find other videos and add them into your content. You should do this to supplement your course, not create the entire course out of these videos. But they will serve as a way to bring in other voices or experts to your content.

6. Use graphics, cutaways, b-roll or other things to showcase what you’re talking about

By using other images, videos, or graphics you’ll not only have a more effective online course video, but you’ll also make your course look more professional. I give several resources in my free 3-part video series at EasyVideoForCourses.com. You can use these resources or hire a graphic designer to create custom graphics for your course videos.

7. Talk with your hands and don’t be too stiff

Most people put their hands to their sides for the entire course video, but I don’t recommend that. Show some excitement and let your hands move as you teach your course lesson.

8. If you think you’re being too goofy/silly with your smile and expressions, you’re probably just about at the start of actually looking friendly on camera

You think you’re being more pleasant than you are. Just go back and watch yourself on camera. Do you seem friendly, kind and upbeat? Usually, people think they are being more upbeat than they really are. So don’t be afraid to loosen up and act a little more silly than you usually would.

9. Go on a brisk walk before you record yourself. Studies show this will give you a positive attitude, make you more upbeat and it will loosen you up

According to The Magic of Thinking Big, walking faster can improve your outlook on life and help you become a more positive person. So go on a walk, do jumping jacks or do your morning workout before you begin recording the videos for your online courses. You will feel more energetic and probably look more excited on camera.

10. Have someone sit behind the camera so you can feel like you’re talking to someone (or have your cat or dog sit there)

Feel like you’re talking to the wall (or a camera)? Have someone sit in the room with you. Or better yet, imagine your ideal student and talk directly to them.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post 10 simple ways to make your online course videos less boring appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The 3 Effective Ways to Use Video in Your Online Courses

1. Be on camera

the hardest to do, but it will showcase you as an industry expert. Michael Hyatt does this well.

2. Screen Capture Videos

-This is easier to do than on camera videos, but is easier to do in many cases. You simply record your computer. This might be your PowerPoint slides, the software you are using or anything else that’s on your computer screen.

3. The Interview Style Video

You can use Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, etc. This strategy is easier to do, but you will need to prepare properly. Don’t treat this is a shortcut. Put in the work to plan and ask the proper questions so the students can learn effectively

The post 3 Effective Ways to Use Video in Your Online Courses appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos (click the button to watch the video)

Want to create effective videos in half the time? I just released a new video that gives you 7 tips to create better online course videos. These tips are great if you feel intimidated by video, think it’s complicated or you think it is too costly. You may be surprised at what you learn that helps you create better videos in half the time!

Click Here to Watch The Video – 7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos

1. Get on camera without feeling like you’re on camera

Most people get intimidated with getting on camera for their online course videos. While I don’t think you have to be on camera for all your videos, I do think you should consider being on-camera in some of the e-course videos. Here are some ideas on how to create videos without feeling like you’re on-camera.

• Conduct a demonstration (like a cooking show isn’t a lecture but a demonstration)
• Do an interview with another expert – interviews take the pressure off you!
• Have someone ask you questions and have it be more conversational…like an off-camera interview. Just make sure to keep it interesting and engaging
• Make a picture-in-picture video with your PPT slides (get funny b-roll of me being trapped in the PIP)

2. Have fun with it. Take the pressure off yourself by making jokes, singing songs, and just having fun. It’s ok if you mess up a bit, in fact, it will show you’re a real person!

While you may want to use a teleprompter, write out your main points and tape it near the camera. This will allow you to glance down at your main points without reading paragraphs of text. This will come across as more natural to your students who are watching the videos. You don’t want to look like a robot who’s just reading material.

3. Use the camera you have

What is the one camera that most people have in their pockets? You may consider starting out by using your iPhone (or any Android or smartphone). You can create some fun and effective videos for your online courses just with your iPhone. However, make sure you use a tripod to steady your shot. If you don’t have a tripod, consider bracing your phone against some books.

Any good video should have quality audio to listen to. Consider buying a cheap lav mic, or at the very least position the camera close to you so it can pick up your voice.

4. Start with simple and cheap editing software

Most of editing is finding the best takes and removing the bad ones, so you don’t need expensive video editing software. Plus, editing video is easier than you think. In fact, you might already have iMovie or Windows maker installed on your computer. If you have ScreenFlow or Camtasia, then that will be able to handle most of your editing needs. If you want to upgrade consider Premiere Elements or Premiere Creative Cloud.

5. Don’t underestimate the expertise that you provide.

You don’t have to be a world-famous expert to create an online course and video based training. Don’t get distracted with people who know more than you do. You just have to be 1 step ahead of your students.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post 5 Strategies For Effective Online Courses Videos, Even If You Don’t Want To Be On Camera appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Get the free video – “7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos”

If you want to create an online course that’s effective, you must use quality video content. But, if you’re like most people, you think making video is too complicated, costly or time-consuming. I just released a new video masterclass to help you create videos that truly teach, but don’t take a long time to create. I’m conducting a short survey and as a thank you for taking the survey, I’m giving this video away for free. I’ll also be sending out several other new video lessons in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Click here to get the FREE Video Lesson

I often get asked if having video content in your online courses and eLearning projects is necessary. It absolutely is and here are just 5 reasons why you should use utilize the power of video in your training material.

1. People learn by seeing & hearing

Studies show (see stats below) that students learn more by seeing and hearing the educational content. This works in your advantage if you are creating videos…espcially if you are in the videos. Your students can see your emotions and intentions, which builds trust and helps the learning process be more engaging.

2. Video is versatile

There are many things you can do with video content. While it is the best way to teach, you can also take the audio out and make it available for your students to download and listen on the go. They may listen in the car, while working out or anywhere else of their choosing. Additionally, you can  make a transcription of the content for people to read. This helps people follow along during your presentation and it can even help your SEO (if the course is freely available online and not behind a paywall).

3. People would rather watch something rather than just read it

Studies show how video is better than text only (see stats below) and is more effective for helping people remember the content. You owe it to your students to have quality video content, so they can retain the information.

4. Video gives more perceived value

Let’s face it, video is harder to create than writing copy, making images or recording audio. But it also has a more perceived value to it. Just see some of the benefits and value that having video in your courses, on your sales pages, and on your website can bring.

1. The amount of time online users spend watching online video has grown 38.5% in the past 2 years. – Nielsen
2. Websites with video content enjoy 88% more time spent on pages by visitors. – Buffer
3. Product videos increase the likelihood of purchases by 85%. – Buffer
4. Overall, employees are 75 percent more likely to watch a video than to read documents, emails or web articles — Forrester Research
5. Corporations save between 50% and 70% when they replace instructor-based training with eLearning — IOMA
6. Microsoft used video to cut classroom training costs by $303 per person, from $320 to just $17 — Microsoft
7. Microsoft calculates that over 3 years, its video portal for employee training and knowledge sharing resulted in total costs saved and avoided of about $13.9 million per year. The ROI for the period was estimated at 569% — Microsoft
8. Caterpillar found that e-learning yielded a cost reduction of between 40 and 78 percent, based on the size of the audience — Caterpillar
9. Presentations that include visuals like video along with text are 9 percent more effective than text alone when comprehension is tested right away — but are 83 percent more effective when the test is delayed, implying an improved ability to help learners remember the information better later — Rusted and Coltheart

5. It builds trust, especially if you’re on camera

Since your students can see you, they will get to know, like and trust you. This will help them engage with you and learn more effectively from you. The students can connect with you and tell when you’re telling a joke versus a serious story. You owe it to your students to be on camera, even though most people don’t like the idea of being on camera.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post 5 reasons why you MUST use video in your online course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Get the bonus video – “7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos”

If you want to create an effective online course, you HAVE to have effective and quality video content. But so many people think video is too complicated, costly or time-consuming. I created a new video masterclass to help you improve the videos in your online courses. I’m also conducting a short survey and as a thank you for taking the survey, I’m giving this video masterclass away for free. I’ll also be sending out several other new video lessons in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Click here to get the FREE Video Lesson

Should you have an online course that’s available at all times, or should you have a launch with an open and closed cart? While there are many reasons for either option, in today’s podcast, we’ll be talking about 5 reasons an online course should launch with an open and closed cart.

Here are a few things you’ll learn in the video masterclass:

• How to use “The 30 Second Rule” in your screen capture videos
• My #1 tool organize & plan your course
• The simple tip that you might have overlooked of using an iPhone for course videos
• How to get better audio quality

5 reasons an online course should launch with an open and closed cart

One of the mistakes I see with most online courses is that they are available for purchase year-round. And the owner usually feels sad that they’re not selling very many courses, so they get discouraged and quit.

1. A dedicated launch period allows your students to go through the course at the same time

By having students move through the material at the same time, they may all have similar questions, ideas and can share in the excitement together. This can motivate you as the course creators and it can serve as momentum to the students.

2. It allows you to improve the course, content, marketing, and support for the next time you launch the course

By having a dedicated launch period, you will be able to refine the course, not be in hyper-sales mode at all times and plan other ways to serve your audience.

3. You can have a dedicated Virtual Assistant working with you during the launch period

Instead of paying someone on a weekly basis, or doing the work yourself, you can hire someone to help you with the website development, customer support and other areas of the pre-launch, launch and post-launch process. This can save you a lot of money and hassle.

4. It creates more buzz and excitement with your students, affiliates and yourself!

Would you rather have a few sales here and there throughout the year or a BUNCH all at once? By doing a product launch, it makes you feel good to have a lot of sales come in within a short timeframe.

5. It’s easier to get affiliates to help promote your course

It will be easier to get affiliates to work with you if you have a specific window when your course is open. One trick is to do joint ventures throughout the year with different affiliates. This allows you to sell your online course throughout the year, but you’re not bugging the same audience every month.

Get the bonus video – “7 Tips to Create Better Online Course Videos”

If you are creating an online course, you know how important it is to have quality videos that are effective. These videos represent you, your brand, and the quality of content you’re teaching. Many people think creating video has to be complicated or costly, or they don’t want to get in front of the camera. But what if there was a way to create quality videos without the hassle? I created a new video masterclass to give you the tips you need to get started. I’ll be releasing some other free training in the coming weeks, so stay tuned

Click here to get the FREE Video Lesson

The post 5 reasons an online course should launch with an open and closed cart appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I’ve been reading The Millionaire Messanger by Brendon Burchard, and he lays out some good points on how to increase your expertise.

1. Become a research expert

Want to learn more about a subject? Study a topic. Read books, listen to interviews and conduct your own interviews. After you’ve conducted several interviews, find common themes or best practices and turn them into your own advice. Please don’t blindly copy what the experts say but put your own spin on it, improve it and make it teachable.
Are you sceptical of this strategy? What if a person had interviewed the 20 billionaire real estate investors and broken down their success principles? Wouldn’t that person be considered an expert in their field, now that they have interviewed 20 other experts? Yes. An example of this is Napoleon Hill who wrote, Think and Grow Rich. He interviewed wealthy people, found common themes and applied it to the reader’s life in simple steps.

Keys to the Research Expert:

• Don’t do this too quickly. This shouldn’t be a fast process.
• Create action steps, acronyms or other ways for the student to learn the material

How to become a Research Expert:

1. What are 5 books you can read on the topic?
2. Who are 10 experts that I can interview? This can also be turned into a product or bonus material for an upcoming product or course
3. What are 5 videos you can watch on the topic?
4. Who are 5 industry leaders that you can follow and read their content?

2. The Role Model Expert

People listen to those they know, like and trust. But how do you get people to know, like and trust you? You have to serve them, help them and give people a chance for them to know you. You can’t sit in your office all day without interacting with others and expect people to get to know and trust you. The more people who know you, can refer you and vouch for your expertise, the more success you will have. And this applies to your online courses too.

3. Niche down the topic of your expertise for your online course

Want to become an industry leader but feel discouraged that there are too many competitors? Determine a small niche where you are the expert and serve that audience. Don’t sell to them immediately. Listen to their problems and see how you can best serve them.

Practical ways to market your expertise

Once you’ve built your expertise (and your confidence), it’s time to make it known what you do. It’s easier than you think to grow your platform and demonstrate your expertise. These 6 steps will help you build a platform and showcasing your expertise quickly. The key is to get yourself out there and serve other people. Find like-minded people and connect with them.

1. start a podcast (see my friend Aaron Walker at ViewFromTheTop.com) Aaron was able to quickly grow his business to an impressive level.
2. be a guest on podcasts (see InterviewValet.com) Whether you use a service or do it yourself, when you’re a guest on other podcasts, you serve other audiences and can promote your message.
3. leave comments on forums, FB groups, etc.
4. write guest blogs
5. speak at conferences
6. attend industry conferences

How are you building yourself into an expert so you can create or improve your online course? I’d love to hear from you.

The post How to Become an Expert for Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Michael Alaniz specializes in copywriting and Google Adwords, but the his path to success has been full of twists and turns. I met Michael at a mastermind conference in Southern California. He comes from a background in copywriting and using Adwords. He has great experience in creating online courses that we can all learn a lot from.

During that conference in Southern California, a topic came up in the group that many of us can benefit from talking about. That topic is sales. Most people said that they are no good at sales or hate it because they don’t want to be pushy, slimy, or become the stereotypical “salesman.” I agree.

However, we need to change the way we think about selling our online courses. Instead of thinking that you have to sell this many courses, tell yourself that you are simply filling a need. How can you help your audience? In what ways can you serve them? Sales will always come out of service, but sales will always suffer without service.

In this episode, we talk about how Michael lands about 90% of his meetings with prospective clients.

Be a collaborator, not a competitor

Don’t assume that because someone else is in the same industry or niche as you, that you can’t work with them. In fact, great things happen when people collaborate. You will bring your individual talents, abilities, and creativity and mix with the other person’s to create something unique and mutually beneficial.

Be okay letting go of things

Success is not linear. Sometimes, in order to move forward, you have to move backward. Life is not “win or lose;” it’s “win or learn.”

Learn more about copywriting

• Start with the right perspective. Remember that it’s one person who reads your copy. Be sure you hold their interest, but then align that interest with your product.
• Learn about direct response advertising. The best places to start are with Dan Kennedy’s sales letter resources, as well as books from around the 1970s or before, written by various authors. Specifically, books that talk about the power and technique of direct response advertising.
• Remember that the more invested someone gets with something, the more likely they are to get involved with it.

Learn about paid ad strategy

The magic happens outside paid traffic. This type of traffic is a vehicle that takes someone to what you are offering. The people who end up coming to you are those who already want the solution you offer.

• If you try to force people to solve a problem they’re not yet ready to solve, you will waste money.
• Make sure you focus on the audience who wants what you offer.
• There are two sales that have to be made for the person to be “sold”:

• The solution: the person has to decide that they want to solve the problem.
• The who/what: who or what will solve the problem they have?

Before actually getting started with a paid ad strategy

• Ask yourself, “Does my product actually solve a problem?”
• Understand that there is a path to follow to get to the right audience

Local Co-Pilot

This is Michael’s course about paid traffic search using Adwords and the power of copywriting. Although there were struggles in creating the course, Michael knows it is a great tool to help anyone needing a deeper understanding of how to market.

Moral of the story

Even if your knowledge of a subject is basic, don’t be afraid to teach others that knowledge. There are people who will pay to know what you know. You don’t have to take people deep into the topic right away. Get people comfortable in the shallow end (basics) and then take them into the deep end (more advanced material).

To learn more about Michael’s course, visit localloopmarketing.com. He gives away free stuff and has tons of great info for anyone who signs up for the mailing list.

And remember, the road to success is a windy one.
REFERENCE : BATOTO

The post Why Copywriting and Google Adwords are Important for Online Courses with Michael Alaniz appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this episode of The Online Course Coach Podcast, Raymond Mogdlin shares how he teaches live classes and online courses for those seeking real estate CE credits. He also shares why he created his own LMS (Learning Management System). I find a tremendous opportunity for growth in markets that require CE credits, like realtors, nurses and many other professions. If you already teach in these fields, now is the best time to start creating online courses for CE and CEU credits.

Real University – Live Classes and Online Courses for Real Estate CE Credits

Raymond Mogdlin is the Director of Real University, the online university for the continuing education (CE) of real estate professionals. Having taught live classes until the middle of 2013, he taught real estate to students at Purdue University. When Purdue switched to having online classes, Raymond moved along with the times and began teaching online training courses as well. From there, Real University, which is accredited for real estate agents in the State of Indiana, was born as a way to reach more students throughout the State. His unique style of teaching CE training courses is inspiring and he shares his thoughts and tips with us.

There are so many advantages to administering CE classes through an online course. Not only can more people be reached through this medium, but students can complete the training wherever they are, no matter the time of day. Online courses need to be updated from time-to-time, but do not require constant maintenance. The only downside, Raymond says, is if someone needs the accountability factor that goes along with attending live classes.

As part of each course, Raymond uses a screen capture software that will display a PowerPoint slide, while the audio of his voice plays over it. He also uses the app DrawMe for iPad, which allows him to draw on the screen, recording what he draws. This method is especially useful for concepts that are more complicated, that would be too static to put on a presentation slide.

Raymond says that his content takes center stage, as opposed to him as the instructor being in the spotlight. During the times where he needs to be in front of the camera, he uses two-70” television screens to display content on the video. When he uses a white board, he will keep notes of what he does, supplementing with an extra video of that information, using his methods on the iPad.

Different methods work for different people, but Raymond says that the best method for him in releasing a course is to complete the entire course before students consume it. Some like to use what he calls a “drip-drip” method, releasing a little bit as they go, but he doesn’t think that’s the most effective way. Because what Raymond does is regulated by the State, he has to ensure that all students are taught the same information. Doing it ahead of time helps him to be sure he’s releasing the correct information prior to getting it authorized by the State.

Marketing Online Courses for Real Estate CE Credits

In terms of marketing, Raymond uses the website for Indiana’s real estate board. The site lists all the accredited CE course providers in Indiana, which gives him free marketing. To piggyback on that, however, he uses a lead gen technique. For that, he will offer some courses for free. After each free course, the listener will have the option to send it to someone else they know could benefit from it. Raymond’s hope is that when someone passes it along, the recipient will become a client for the paid courses he offers. His thought is that when his training courses are something people pay for, that limits the likelihood that someone will take his information and put it into their own portfolio.

It may be obvious in today’s world that social media plays a part in almost everything we do, especially in marketing. Knowing this, Raymond uses what he calls “The Big 3:” Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Facebook Live is a tool he uses to interact with his audience on a weekly basis to either keep them engaged or bring in new audience members. He found that using paid Twitter advertisements were not especially beneficial to him, but they may be helpful for others.

Many of his marketing efforts feed into themselves. Specifically, he offers a real estate license online course through Real U called “Get Your License.” Because this is the first course many take, Raymond can count on at least a few years of his audience members coming back to him because they will need those CE credits.

This leads us into pricing. Raymond’s pricing model for a 12-hour online course is low enough with the hope that he will sell it 12-1,300 times. In order to do this, he has had to become well-versed in overcoming objections, therefore convincing his potential students that these real estate CE courses are better done online, rather than in person. Because CE is something they have to do, as opposed to something they want to do, he doesn’t think that developing pricing tiers is beneficial for this type of online course.

Raymond says that sometimes a learning management system (LMS) like Moodle can be beneficial, but there are times where it’s best to pave your own way. For instance, he had a hard time managing his courses with Moodle and scheduling live classes. Looking for a better way, he hired a developer on his own.

As of late, Raymond is starting to offer his LMS to others, for use by license. He has 40 hours of approved material, which gives his audience a library of topics to choose from. This process is currently in beta. This can be found at rootlevelup.com.

To get in touch with Raymond, visit myrealu.com. All of his contact information is on that page and he is happy to help however he can.

Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes

• Raymond started in nuclear engineering but transitioned into real estate
• He was told that he was a good teacher and started to teach live classes
• he started out with in person training classes
• Most of his training is live training while capturing his computer and that creates the online course content
• He uses an iPad app to do more intricate writing, calculations during the class and then puts it as bonus content
• Raymond has learned to have the live class perfected before he tries to do an online course. He has to know exactly what content the student will need for the online course.
• Legally in Indiana, real estate agents have to do 12 hours of continuing education credits.
• He uses free classes as a lead generator, so real estate agents can take the free class
• He prices his live classes and online courses affordably to get more students
• He built his own LMS since his business is live and online. He started with Moodle but it wasn’t robust enough for his needs. He outgrew Moodle and decided to build his own Learning Management System.
• He can assign a course to the live class or an online course (or both)
• The LMS can track CE credits within the system
• RootLevelUp.com is where his LMS is available
• There are only 9 schools in Indiana that does CE credits for realtors and they recommend him
• He uses Facebook Live to broadcast to his audience
• He’s used paid Twitter but it didn’t work well
• He speaks to national audiences for keynotes
• Raymond Modglin has a radio show in Indianapolis with him talking about real estate, real estate investing and more
• He transitioned his radio show to a podcast but put it behind his website

Questions Ray Modglin Answers on The Online Course Coach Podcast

• What is your background?
• How did you go from Nuclear Engineering to real estate and online education?
• How did you get started in creating online courses?
• How do you create your online course content (screen capture, on camera, PPT, etc)?
• How do you use free classes as a lead generator?
• Why did you decide to develop your own LMS instead of using something that’s already on the market?
• What is a challenge you’ve had with your online courses over the years?
• What are some successes you’ve had?
• What are some marketing strategies that you’ve had that’s worked?
• How have you leveraged your platform to speak

REFERENCE : BETTOTO88

The post How Raymond Modglin Teaches Real Estate Online Courses for CE credits appeared first on Online Course Coach.

A couple weeks ago, I was featured in the Online Course Creation Summit, which further fueled my podcast fire. I’m excited to share my knowledge with you. July 6-8 is Podcast Movement in Chicago, where I will be learning even more, networking, and bringing that knowledge back to you. Let me know if you’re going because I would love to talk more with you with the hope that we can learn from each other.

Five ways to use podcasting to promote your online course

1. It reaches a different audience than blogging, making videos, or using social media.

These mediums have their limits, most of the time requiring someone to read. My background is in video production and I love what video does. But podcasts give you the ability to talk directly to someone while they are exercising, traveling, working around the house, etc. This is an innovative and effective way of marketing your online course to an audience that you can be sure is interested in what you have to offer.

2. Interview guests in your space to build your network and audience.

Because of this, I am always meeting new people and giving them the chance to meet people who are new to them. They get to build their audience and teach my audience at the same time. It is mutually beneficial to a degree that we may not even see until further down the road. You get to build your network and vice versa. Everybody wins. Also, it’s easier to interview guests than to come up with new topics week after week.

If you’re worried about people stealing your ideas, you’re not alone. However, it’s important to look at it rationally. People are usually too busy with their own lives to take someone else’s idea. If they do, chances are they won’t do as well with the idea as you will because you are the original creator and you know more about it. My advice is to not be afraid to get your ideas out there. You never know what possibilities unfold when you take a chance.

3. Answer questions directly from your audience

This begins the interaction, letting them know you listen to their feedback. This also gives you the chance to find out what content you can create that will serve them. Perhaps more important is that you will be able to let them know that you value their time and are trying to serve them, as opposed to sell them.

4. Discuss industry news and applicable topics

First, determine if your content is evergreen or industry news. If it is news, your podcast will be dated and you should be aware of that when creating your content. Some podcasts combine news with evergreen content, giving their audience the chance to learn more from you, as the industry expert. Always be in the pursuit of knowledge yourself so that when you are looking like an expert, you will genuinely become an expert.

Personally, I have found the more I study and learn, the more I grow, which in turn helps me teach you, my audience. I encourage you to do the same.

5. It will give your website content and SEO value

First off, title matters. It is what draws your audience in and tells them what they are about to learn and that you have something to teach them.

It’s best if you create show notes, putting the title of your podcast into the notes. Turn those notes into a blog post on your website. But when you do, make sure your post is at least 500 words in length. For Google to even register a post as having any content, it typically needs at least 500 words in that post. Words are the easiest way to get Google’s attention, which increases your SEO. Also, make it engaging content. Since you already have that podcast, the show notes/blog should be simple. For me, I create bullet points and some basic notes before recording my voice.

BONUS: Podcasting is an effective and free way to promote your online course

If you’re looking for free ways to promote your course, podcasting is for you! As with anything, you should weigh the benefits versus the sacrifice. Are you able to put the time into editing the podcast, developing the show notes, and making them ready to be published? Or are you able to just record the podcast and let your team go to work on turning that and the show notes into a beautiful, finished product?
Podcasting is free, but it does take some time. Personally, it has opened many doors and given me an outlet that I find valuable. I hope it does the same for you!

REFERENCE : DIAMOND4D 

The post 5 Ways Podcasting Can Promote Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the steps to plan, create, promote and market you online course, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Use my simple steps as outlined in the podcast to take each step in chunks. I use this strategy in my business and life to make things less overwhelming. I recently did this with an upcoming course I’m creating. It was easy to look at the big picture and feel like I could never create all the content. I had to step back, break the project down and see what I can do in simple steps. This made it much easier and it became a game as I checked off each step of planning, creating and producing the new online course (details coming soon!). What steps can you break your project into to make it easier to create and less overwhelming?  Listen to the podcast to learn my exact steps.

The Online Course Creation Summit

The Online Course Creation Summit will feature 40 top entrepreneurs & course experts, like Pat Flynn, Ryan Lee, Danny Inny and myself. We are coming together to share our best-kept secrets on how to design, build and launch your own online course! I’ll be speaking about how to use videos in your online courses. We talk about the 3 stages of every great course video, as well as tips to make your videos look professionally made. I’ve been producing videos professionally since 2002 and I’ve worked with Dan Miller, Carrie Wilkerson, The Ziglar company, Fortune 500 companies and many more. And I give a ton of tips and tricks in my interview. You can learn about it and sign up for free by going toOnlineCourseCoach.com/summit

Listener Questions:

I get a lot of questions from the podcast listeners. Below are 3 questions that I was recently asked.

1. A lot of people in the podcasts and with online courses in general, really take the approach that the class is closing soon, my next one will be in X weeks, etc. I realize that’s to motivate people but it really has me confused. I thought that online courses were delivered “on demand”. Is that true? Are there some creators who instead approach it in a more traditional way – classes start this day, and finished on that day? I see a lot of marketing material that is geared this way, as if I’m taking the course with 40 other people. If it’s not a live course, and there is no “assignments” which are viewed by the teacher, why do these courses have a start and end date rather than being self-contained courses to be consumed when needed?

2. Exactly what material can I use and how do I attribute it in my course? Say I wanted to become the expert on a topic, optimism for example. To become an expert, I would do a literature review of sorts. Read all the current research, books, etc. then bundle that together in a way that became a coherent course. Am I allowed to use “exercises” that an author recommends in their book? Can I say, “John Jones recommends this approach for changing your minds set in two minutes.”?

3. Am I allowed to create a course that steps someone through the book? That digests it, pulls out the important points, etc. I guess similar to a book club where people discuss a book or a college class where the professor is teaching from a textbook. I wonder if one way around that would be to essentially purchase a copy of the book for everyone in the class.

REFERENCE : MENANG333

The post How to avoid online course creation overwhelm & answering your questions appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Saya senang berbicara dengan John Highly tentang bisnisnya dan saya yakin Anda bisa mendengar hasratnya terhadap apa yang dia lakukan, motivasinya untuk melayani, dan usahanya untuk berkembang.

Episode ini dipersembahkan oleh ” Video Mudah untuk Kursus “. Tahukah Anda bahwa kursus daring yang menyertakan video 83% lebih efektif dalam membantu siswa mengingat informasi dengan lebih baik?

Namun, kebanyakan orang kesulitan dengan peralatan atau perangkat lunak yang rumit, biaya pembelian peralatan, atau mereka tidak merasa percaya diri di depan kamera. Itulah sebabnya saya membuat Easy Video for Courses. Saya telah menghilangkan semua kebingungan dalam proses tersebut sehingga Anda dapat membuat video kursus yang efektif dalam waktu setengahnya, bahkan jika Anda tidak suka tampil di depan kamera.

Kunjungi EasyVideoForCourses.com untuk mempelajari lebih lanjut dan mendapatkan kursusnya.

KTT Pembuatan Kursus Online

Online Course Creation Summit akan menghadirkan 40 pengusaha & pakar kursus papan atas, seperti Pat Flynn, Ryan Lee, Danny Inny, dan saya sendiri. Kami berkumpul untuk berbagi rahasia yang kami simpan baik-baik tentang cara mendesain, membangun, dan meluncurkan kursus online Anda sendiri! Saya akan berbicara tentang cara menggunakan video dalam kursus online Anda. Kami membahas 3 tahap dari setiap video kursus yang hebat, serta kiat-kiat untuk membuat video Anda terlihat dibuat secara profesional. Saya telah memproduksi video secara profesional sejak tahun 2002 dan saya telah bekerja dengan Dan Miller, Carrie Wilkerson, perusahaan The Ziglar, perusahaan-perusahaan Fortune 500, dan masih banyak lagi. Dan saya memberikan banyak kiat dan trik dalam wawancara saya. Anda dapat mempelajarinya dan mendaftar secara gratis dengan mengunjungi OnlineCourseCoach.com/summit

Pertanyaan Podcast Pelatih Kursus Online

• Ceritakan tentang diri Anda dan bagaimana Anda memulai industri ini?
• Kapan Anda memutuskan untuk mulai mengajar & membuat pelatihan video daring?
• Bagaimana Anda memulai mengunggah konten Anda secara daring?
• Apa saja tantangan yang harus Anda atasi dalam menjangkau audiens dan membangun merek Anda?
• Apa strategi pemasaran Anda untuk meningkatkan efektivitas Anda?
• Jenis video apa yang Anda miliki di situs web Anda untuk mengajarkan orang cara memperbaiki penyok?
• Ke mana arah masa depan Anda dengan situs web dan platform Anda?
• What are some of the tools, software you use for you online training?
• What advice would you give someone who wants to start creating online courses or membership website?

 Podcast Show Notes

Here are some notes that I took during my conversation with John Highly. What impacted you the most?

• John grew up with a dad that owned a car dealership. He has always loved cars and vehicles.
• He started working for $4/hr.
• John Highly does pointless dent removal, which is a unique technique to remove dents and dings from vehicle bodies.
• He went through a tough period of time where he had to pay his bills but wasn’t able to get easy work, like others. He found that dent restoration was a niche that wasn’t being fulfilled, so he began having other auto body places refer work to him and became known locally as the person for this type of work.
• John started doing before and after videos and posting them to Youtube and forums. This helped grow his business as a dent repairer and become an industry leader in that niche.
• He didn’t want to travel so he started a local business to have more stability. It’s this flexibility of doing both local repair work but also online video training that sets him as the industry leader.
• John knows how hard it is to start a business and learning to succeed.

How John Highly has Created a Video Training Library for his Membership Site

• He has a business partner that does video, podcasting, and a membership site. They have 300+ videos on DentTrainer.com since they started and are continually adding more content to their website. This makes it increasingly more difficult for competitors to try to overtake them as the industry leader.
• When they launched, they had months of content in “the can”, which helped them quickly propel themselves and offer a lot of valuable content. This justified the price to the customer since there was so much video training content.
• They looked at Lynda.com and Kelbe training as examples to use and then customized their own site. This allowed them to see what was working in other industries and take pieces of it for their own audience.
• The website has a lot of various types of training content on it including videos, PDFs and other resources for the paying member to watch and download.
• The website has free videos and content, where people can get info. This helps them get new leads, build trust and grow their audience.
• John and his company are able to truly help people, impact them and make a difference. Create value in other people’s life is important to John and he views this as more than just a business, it’s a way to make an impact.
• They’re launching Dent Trainer live for their members soon, which will be an interactive look at the shop, allow people to ask questions and get involved even more. This helps grow the community so they aren’t all relying on John Highly for leadership but can interact with each other.
• He uses Final Cut Pro X, Canon 7D, Canon XA10, lav mic for his video training.
• John recommends using a good membership plugin and is looking at MemberMouse.com. He recommends spending money for a really good membership plugin, rather than a cheaper plugin. He also loves and uses WordPress.org. Check out WP Courseware by Fly Plugins.
• Create a “value ladder” with your free content. Know where you want to take them. Build your tribe and listen to them and what they need. Survey your tribe, see what they want

The Online Course Creation Summit

The Online Course Creation Summit will feature 40 top entrepreneurs & course experts, like Pat Flynn, Ryan Lee, Danny Inny and myself. We are coming together to share our best-kept secrets on how to design, build and launch your own online course! I’ll be speaking about how to use videos in your online courses. We talk about the 3 stages of every great course video, as well as tips to make your videos look professionally made. I’ve been producing videos professionally since 2002 and I’ve worked with Dan Miller, Carrie Wilkerson, The Ziglar company, Fortune 500 companies and many more. And I give a ton of tips and tricks in my interview. You can learn about it and sign up for free by going to OnlineCourseCoach.com/summit

Bio of John Highly: A lifetime of Automotive Repair with 20 years of experience.

John Highley has been working in the automotive dent repair industry since the age of 13. His father owned a body shop and a small car dealership where he taught his son how to paint, detail, and how to do body work. John also learned the hammer dolly technique of paintless dent removal. Later in life John continued his journey by managing a million dollar auto reconditioning center at the age of 20. Soon after that he received his first set of PDR rods, it didn’t take much to his imagination to realize this was the way to refine the technique.

In 2001 John and his wife Angela had their first child John Jr.

After years of employment, in 2003 John decided it was time to go out and dedicate 100% of his energy building the DentMagicJohn brand. John then started his dealership service route, he dedicated his days in the wholesale industry doing dent repair at auto dealerships. At one point John serviced over 50 dealers. Looking into the future and seeing the wholesale industry in a decline John decided to leave the dealership route and become a storm chaser within the auto hail damage industry.

In 2006 John left his dealerships and went on to his first hailstorm in Indianapolis, Indiana. The experience was truly humbling with cars coming in that had hundreds of large dents and busted out windows. This storm was truly a baptism by fire. After working in Indianapolis for nearly a year John refused to give up while repairing some of the worst damage in the country. After chasing the hail circuit for another year it was time for John’s son to start kindergarten, It was time to begin another journey.

Baru saja keluar dari jalur hujan es pada tahun 2008, John dihadapkan pada pilihan untuk kembali ke industri grosir yang sedang menurun atau mengambil ide baru untuk menjual perbaikan penyoknya ke publik. John kemudian mencurahkan seluruh energinya ke bisnis ritel PDR seluler, tahun pertama merupakan kesuksesan tetapi tidak ada apa-apanya dibandingkan dengan apa yang akan segera terjadi. Setelah 3 tahun mengembangkan bisnis seluler yang sedang berkembang. Pada tahun 2011, Centerville, Ohio, kota di dekatnya dilanda hujan es besar, saatnya untuk membuka Gudang Perbaikan Kerusakan Akibat Hujan Es DentMagicJohn yang pertama.

Setelah badai es melanda, John memindahkan usahanya ke gudang seluas 25.000 kaki persegi dan mempekerjakan sebanyak mungkin tukang bongkar muat kendaraan. Tahun itu, perusahaan DentMagicJohn memperbaiki lebih dari 1700 kendaraan termasuk armada dari tiga kota setempat, kantor polisi, dan empat bengkel. Dengan hunian selama satu tahun, usahanya tidak pernah sebaik ini dan itu adalah waktu yang tepat bagi John untuk membuka lokasi ritel pertamanya. Lebih jauh lagi, selama badai es ini, John mulai memfilmkan pekerjaannya dan membuat DentMagicTv.com .

Setelah menerima ribuan penayangan dari videonya dan ratusan permintaan pelatihan pada tahun 2012, John memutuskan untuk memulai perusahaan pelatihannya sendiri. Orang-orang menyukai kemampuan unik John untuk menyampaikan pesannya melalui sistem pelatihan berbasis prinsip. Pada tahun 2012, John terpilih menjadi anggota dewan dalam organisasi nirlaba sedunia yang disebut PDR Nation, yang tujuan utamanya adalah untuk mendidik teknisi di seluruh dunia. Ia mengepalai komite etika dan standar, membantu menulis kurikulum I-Car, dan saat ini menjabat sebagai Manajer Pemasaran mereka. Ia kemudian menyumbangkan teknik stabilitas kaleng oli dengan menulis artikel untuk salah satu surat berita industri terbesar, surat berita PDRN.

2014 kami meluncurkan DentTrainer.com yang diakui di seluruh dunia

Pada tahun 2013, John meluncurkan lembaga amal yang sukses, Dents For Kids. Ia juga menjadi pembicara dan koordinator dalam seminar pemasaran di Mobile Tech Expo 2014. John memiliki banyak prestasi dalam industri PDR dan ingin sekali memberikan keahliannya kepada Anda. John menekankan bahwa terhubung dengan perusahaan bereputasi baik yang menawarkan pelatihan satu lawan satu dan memiliki semangat untuk keberhasilan siswa mereka adalah KUNCI saat menerima pelatihan PDR yang baik.

Kutipan, “Kesuksesan Anda adalah Kesuksesan Saya”

Episode ini dipersembahkan oleh ” Video Mudah untuk Kursus “. Tahukah Anda bahwa kursus daring yang menyertakan video 83% lebih efektif dalam membantu siswa mengingat informasi dengan lebih baik?

Namun, kebanyakan orang kesulitan dengan peralatan atau perangkat lunak yang rumit, biaya pembelian peralatan, atau mereka tidak merasa percaya diri di depan kamera. Itulah sebabnya saya membuat Easy Video for Courses. Saya telah menghilangkan semua kebingungan dalam proses tersebut sehingga Anda dapat membuat video kursus yang efektif dalam waktu setengahnya, bahkan jika Anda tidak suka tampil di depan kamera.

Kunjungi EasyVideoForCourses.com untuk mempelajari lebih lanjut dan mendapatkan kursusnya.

REFERENCE : COR777

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PENGUNGKAPAN: Saya mungkin berafiliasi dengan produk yang saya rekomendasikan. Jika Anda membeli barang-barang tersebut melalui tautan saya, saya akan memperoleh komisi. Saat Anda memesan melalui tautan saya, itu membantu saya untuk terus menawarkan banyak barang gratis kepada Anda. Terima kasih sebelumnya atas dukungan Anda!

The post How to Create a Video Training Library for Your Membership Site with John Highly appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Brandon Lucero gives us a peek behind the scenes of an online course launch with this interview.  He has a successful course called, Local Video Academy, which teaches people who to leverage video to get leads and sales for clients. Brandon is a seasoned veteran of video, SEO, online marketing and is an entrepreneur at heart. Since my background is in video production, I thought it would be fun to talk with Brandon, not only about the video part of his course, but also about the process of building and launching an online course. We talked about how to promote an online course, how to market an online course, some strategies for using webinars and even a cool Facebook group trick that helps him build trust and value.

We not only go through the various steps of the course marketing and launch, but Brandon also talks about what happens after a course is complete and what to consider for a course that has a lot of touchpoints.

Since my background is in video production, I know how challenging it can be to continually serve clients with video content. Many production companies specialize in creating large marketing videos, but clients may only need that type of video once every few years. Brandon Lucero shares his strategies on how to find clients, how to serve them by ranking their videos and even how to help those videos bring in leads each month. This system will help both the video producer and the client by adding more value.

During the introduction, I talked about creating a push goal. A push goal is something that if you achieve it, will make other goals possible. What’s something you can do today to move your online course ahead? Perhaps it’s something below or that one thing that you’ve been avoiding for weeks. Send me an email (see the form at the bottom of this page) and let me know what your push goal is.

• creating an outline for your course.
• thinking of your target audience
• sending out a survey to your list
• learning how to run a webinar
• asking to get interviewed on podcasts in your industry

Questions asked to Brandon Lucero About His Online Course Launch:

1. How did you got started creating videos?
2. tell me about the concept of how a client doesn’t care about the product (a video) but the results that a video provides?
3. you talk about being a problem solver first rather than a video producer why is that an important thing to realize in any business?
4. What are some marketing strategies you use in Local Video Academy?
5. What is a simple way to get started in testing out an idea for an online course?
6. What is the process you take in creating and producing a webinar?
7. What is Local Video Academy
8. Why did you open up a private Facebook group before launch and how successful was it?
9. What happens after the launch is complete?
10. What are the pros and cons of hands-on course versus online courses that are more self-contained?
11. How have you created online courses for multiple industries?
12. Do you have employees or freelancers in your company?
13. What would you say to someone who wants to find an employee or business partner?

The Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes:

• Brandon Lucero got started creating videos out of necessity.
• when selling an online course, talk about the benefits rather than the features
• Don’t be a best-writing author…be a best-selling author
• He has several course, with one being marketed towards real estate agents
• His marketing includes webinars, evergreen training courses,
• A simple way to test your market is via a webinar. Use Facebook ads to drive traffic
• Brandon does a 6 part question to know who his audience is and how to best help them
• The first 15 minutes talks about the problems they have
• They take 45 minutes to talk about something deep and then offer a course at the end
• He’s launching Local Video Academy
• It teaches people how to start, grow and scale a video production business
• He teaches how to use Facebook ads, Youtube, SEO and smart Google tactics
• He has a pre-launch private Facebook group that’s open before the course is open
• Brandon is able to help people through the group, respond to questions,
• If your course is hands on, then there will be more work for customer service. But if your course is hands off, then there will be a little less
• He’s seen a lot more success with people who have live calls, a mastermind and more in depth services
• He uses partnerships to help him fill in the gaps of what he doesn’t know or do well
• Brandon has employees that allows him to focus on sales

Check out Brandon here and his company.

LocalVideoAcademy.com
Sold with Video Website
Follow Sold with Video on YouTube

REFERENCE : HOKI638

The post Inside an Online Course Launch with Brandon Lucero appeared first on Online Course Coach.

The key thing to do in your marketing is not to be in sales mode, but to get to know people and learn how you can serve them. The sales will come only when you show genuine interest in what can truly help them succeed. This isn’t an extensive list, but it’s a place to start…and it doesn’t cost you any money to do these things. In future episodes, we’ll talk about paid strategies for marketing your online courses, but these will get you started.

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

1. Market your online course by blogging about things surrounding the topic of your course

We all know important it is to add regular content to your website, but are you doing it? I’ve seen tangible results when I regularly add content to my website. Think of creative ways to blog about the overall topic, industry or news that your online course is about. Additionally you can add the following types of content to your website.

• Blogs
• Videos
• Infographics
• Audio clips/podcasts
• Whitepapers
• Case Studies
• Testimonials

2. Be a guest on podcasts that has in the same target audience

I’ve seen this quickly propel people to success and know it can work for you too. Search iTunes or other podcast services for podcasts that are in a similar genre to your online course. Reach out to the podcast host and write a compelling reason why you should be on their podcast. Once you’re on the podcast, offer as much value as possible. Check with the host, but try to give away a free bonus by giving a website link to the audience. This could be a free lesson to your course, a checklist or some other valuable piece of content.

3. Start a podcast about the topic of your online course

Create your own podcast and become the industry leader. You can talk about whatever you want to talk about, have guests on your show and build your brand with each new podcast episode. It does take more commitment and technical expertise to start and run a podcast, but the benefits are well worth it. Give yourself a 6 month to 1 year window to build your audience. Just like with anything in life, it will take time to grow your audience, so keep working at your podcast and release a new episode each week.

4. Create a YouTube channel and make tutorials and FAQ videos

Youtube is the second largest search engine behind Google and Youtube is owned by Google. So harness the power of Google by creating short videos, tutorials, FAQs and explainer videos. Then, once your video is uploaded to your Youtube channel, embed the video on your own website and write a blog post about that same topics. Ideally you’ll want a blog post of 600 words or more, to get the maximum ROI from your efforts.

5. Speak at conferences about the subject of your online course

Few things will instantly give you credibility than being a speaker at a conference. I’ve spoke at several and it’s a chance to showcase your knowledge, teach your audience and position yourself as the industry leader that you are. As a benefit some of the audience may use social media to share out your key points, so make sure to have “Tweetable” quotes.

6. Attend conferences, meetups, networking events and other places where your target audience is

There’s nothing better than face to face interactions. What better place for people to get to know, like and trust you than by attending conferences, going to meetups or networking groups and any other place that your audience is.

7. Host webinars, get on Blab or Periscope to talk to your audience about your online course topic

If going to a conference and meeting people in person is valuable, than you can leverage that even more by going online and sharing your insights by hosting webinars, getting on Blab or Periscope. People want to get to know who you are and your expertise.

REFERENCE : CUANMAX

The post 7 Free Ways to Market Your Online Course appeared first on Online Course Coach.

In this episode I talk about my recent Wordcamp Dayton session about Online Courses. It will be going up on the Wordcamp.tv website, but I’ll also try to post it on this website. I share why YOU should consider creating an online course, and I give several case studies from different industries. I truly think that any entrepreneur and company should consider creating online courses to help systemize their intellectual property and to better serve their audience.

Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes:

• He’s an “accidental personal finance expert” as he didn’t intentionally get into the personal finance industry
• A bad credit card problem kept him in debt for years
• He read a lot content on personal finance
• He started GetRichSlowly.org in 2006 to help teach others how to have success in their own personal finances
• It grew organically which made it more authentic and it grew to one of the most trusted and viewed websites in the personal finance space
• He’s a story teller, which helped increase his traffic and gain trust
• He was open and honest in the mistakes and successes he was having and put this on the website, which made him more trustworthy to his audience
• JD interacted with reader questions and posted it on his site, which gave a lot of good interactions with his audience. Instead of his website being a one way dialoge, he was able to create a way for his audience to communicate with him
• He eventually sold the website but kept working on the website
• J.D. partnered with Chris Gilliabeau to create a course called the Unconventional Guide to Money at http://moneytoolbox.com
• He views creating a course like a marathon but blogging is more like a sprint
• If your course is more of an ebook, don’t call it an ebook as that has a cheap connotation. There is more of a percieved value with an online course versus an ebook. So think of ways that you can package your ebook into something more substantial, like an online course or membership site
• J.D. Roth was asked to teach a live class on the Guide to Money and discovered he still loves teaching finances and wanted to start a new website and business, so he began thinking of way to do this
• He started a new business and website called MoneyBoss.com
• Some things he recommends are, finding work that you love, which is rewarding. This is what I teach as well. It’s easier to be passionate for the long term with something you love, than trying to “find where the money is” and build a business around that. You will enjoy your work if you are excited about the topic. This applies to online courses too. Find a topic you are knowledgable and passionate about and create a course around it
• It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the big picture and focus on the one thing you need to focus on today. This is important because so many of us struggle with trying to find the “next thing” but we really need to focus on working on the best things that will move us forward in our lives and business, in order to help us achieve our goals.

Questions asked to J.D. Roth of MoneyBoss.com

• What is your background in the financial industry?
• What was Get Rich Slowly Course and why did you create it?
• What did you learn along the way?
• how has education played a role in your business?

The post J.D. Roth the Money Boss and His Online Course Experience appeared first on Online Course Coach.

What small business owner or the person doing freelancing doesn’t want to get paid more for doing their craft? In this episode, Brennan Dunn talks about his course, Double Your Freelancing Rate and Double Your Freelancing Clients.

Podcast Listener question:

I was listening to your latest episode “Why You Should Create an Online Course & How to Plan One.” First, I have to say that I found it very informative and full of great content, so thank you for recording it.

I own a small business currently, and would like to start another business creating some online courses. I have a great idea for one in a niche that I currently am working in. I have an idea and the curriculum for a great online course that I know would sell. However, I have no social media presence, email list, or following in any capacity. I know a lot of the information I have found on starting an online course is geared towards people who already have an email list or something.

My question for you is it possible for me to have a successful launch of an online course without already having some sort of following? If so, what would be the way to do it? Where would I launch or promote it?

– Michael

A summary of my answers:

• Ask as many people in your target audience what they think, how much they would pay and would they find valuable.
• Then, create a test group of VIPs and require them to pay in order to get early access into the course. Many people get excited about being able to craft the course with you.
• It’s not a big roadblock that you don’t have an audience or large platform…do you know someone in the industry that does? You could have them be a part of the training, especially if you do videos. You can have them promote it as an affiliate and/or give recommendations.
• You can start a podcast on the topic and interview industry leaders. You can get on other podcasts as a guest to speak to the pain points of your target audience. Go to onlinecoursecoach.com/podcastcourse to learn the exact forumla for success.
• Where you build the course depends on your audience and your long term vision. Should it be on your website or hosted on another platform?
• Do you want to use something pre-existing and pay a monthly fee (or a percentage of your sales), or do you want to have your own website where you control all aspects of the course? This will determine where to host it.

The Online Course Coach Podcast Questions:

1. What was your background before your first online course?
2. Why did you create the Double Your Freelance rate course?
3. What did you learn while creating it, is the current course the same one as you originally launched?
4. What systems, tools or websites do you use to house and deliver the courses?
5. Now that you’ve create multiple courses, what have you learned along the way?
6. How have your courses gotten better as you’ve created more courses over the years, or what have you done to make them better?
7. Tell me about Double Your Freelancing Clients and why you decided to create it.
8. How has building your courses helped impact more lives and increased your success (success could be financially, time freedom, etc)?
9. What marketing strategies have you used to promote your courses?
10. Who all do you utilize throughout the course creation process? Is it just you, or do you have a team that supports you along the way?
11. Where can people learn more you about you and your courses?

Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes:

• He started an agency as he moved into a new town and grew it into a agency
• Brennan then left the agency and started a software as a service business, called Planscope.io
• This first course, Double Your Freelance Rate was originally an ebook, before he made it into a full fledged course
• There is an auto responder within the course to help with accountability
• The name of his course was originally the title of the course but then it became the name of the course
• He used pricing tiers to help improve his sales, and better help his students learn better
• Don’t assume a self study course is enough. Make it high touch for maximum impact
• Within his course, he has upsell opportunities that helps the student, and increases Brennan’s revenue
• Double Your Freelancing Rate using Gumroad to deliver the course workbook content in pdf and mobi files. He then delivers the videos within a local environment so they can watch it on their computer.
• He gives a free email course that takes 2 weeks but afterward, he offers the course at a discount to buy DYFR
• Double Your Freelancing Clients is 57 videos lasting 5 hours of content. It’s different in that he’s available for office hours to ask any questions
• He only markets to his own audience with the DYFC and mainly for those that have taken his DYFR course.
• Brennan uses paid ads as well free traffic that comes to his site, takes the free email course and then buy his paid course
• For the most part, Brennan does most of the work himself
• Go to FreePricingCourse.com to see Brennan’s system and flow
• Go to DoubleYourFreelancing.com for more blog posts, articles, and podcasts on the topic of increasing your rates

The Online Course Coach Podcast Transcript

The Double Your Freelancing Course with Brennan Dunn

Jeff: In this episode we talk about the Double Your Freelancing Rate Course with Brennan Dunn.

Female Narrator: Welcome to the Online Course Coach podcast brought to you by truefocusmedia.com. Whether you’re a beginner or expert, this is the podcast for the latest in online course creation tips, news, interviews and ideas. And here’s your coach Jeff Long.

Jeff: Thanks for coming back to the Online Course Coach podcast. Again my name is Jeff Long and we have a great episode here today and I get a chance to talk with Brennan Dunn who I’ve known about for awhile and I wanted to get him on the show. He was definitely on the top of my list and I’m glad we were able to get him on. But before we get into the interview, I have a couple announcements and a listener question. So just this week it’s been great to have several of you email me, ask questions and just show your support.

And I had some really good conversations with Michael and Adam and a few other people, and so I want to read a question that Michael submitted because I thinik we can go into more depth than an email can have and to be honest it just takes too long to write an answer that would satisfy. So Michael, this is an expanded answer to your question. So the question that Michael put in, he said, “Hey, I’ve been listening to your podcast and your latest episode on why you should create an online course and how to plan one.” So if you haven’t listen to that, go to onlinecoursecoach.com and that should be one of the more recent ones. And then Michael continued and he said, “First I have to say I found it very informative and full of great content. So thank you for recording it.” And Michael, my pleasure.

He continues and says, “I own a small business currently and would like to start another business creating some online courses.” And then he said what his industry or niche that he’s looking at going into. He says, “I have a great idea for one in a niche that I’m currently working in and I have an idea and the curriculum for a great online course that I know I would sell. However, I have no social media presence, email list, or following. And I know a lot of information I found on starting an online course is geared towards people who already have an email list, a following or a platform.” So Michael says, “My question for you, is it possible for me to have a successful launch of an online course without already having some sort of following? If so what would be the way to do it? And where would I launch or promote it?”

So we’ve covered some of these topics in past episodes. I know Grant Baldwin and I go into some details, so again if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com I believe if you search Grant or Grant Baldwin, or you might even go onlinecoursecoach.com/grant or /grantbaldwin you will be able to be taken there immediately.

But these are my recommendations. So the first thing to do, and I kind of ran into this trap early on when I was creating my first courses years and years ago was I didn’t ask anybody. I didn’t get anybody’s feedback. I didn’t talk to my target audience, my target student. And so I went into this cave as it were. I created the course and when I emerged I had what I thought was going to be a good course, but I didn’t really know.

So the first thing I would do and the first thing I highly recommend is ask as many people in your target audience what they think, how much they would pay, and what would they find valuable? Because if you can ask them what they want to learn, what they’re struggling with, what would help them, you’re going to learn a lot, you can also start asking what they would be willing to pay. Now that’s kind of a dangerous question because we’re all cheap skates so of course they want it for free, but if you can find and if you can determine the value that this course would create. So let’s say it’s a course for nurses and they pay gobs of money to go through nursing school, well, what if they could have a course that would help them walk through some of the complex test, and certifications they need to get by an industry leading trainer? I mean, how valuable would that be? Well, it’d be amazingly valuable, it would put your mind at ease, you wouldn’t have to stress about reading this huge text book, etcetera, etcetera. So whatever your niche is and Michael and I had talked a little bit about his niche, ask those questions, go to your target audience.

And then this is the next step is create a test group of VIPs and require them to pay to get early access into the course. Now this goes against a lot of people’s logic. They think, “Well, why would somebody pay for something that hasn’t been built yet?” Well, believe it or not there are a lot of people that would love to get in on I guess that ground level that could help you answer questions, and you can give them personal access to yourself, you can give them a discounted rate for the course. So let’s say you’re going to sell it for $300 or 297, maybe you would sell it for 149. So they get it for half the price. They get full access to you for the duration of that course building process. So a month, 2 months, 3 months. You can get that feedback. I’ve done this myself. I’ve been in other people’s test groups and it really helps because it gets more eyeballs. So the more eyeballs you can have the better.

And since they’re paying they have a vested interest in this course. If you just ask your brother or your mom, your friend, your cousin, “Hey, would you buy this course?” They’re all going to say yes. Even if you ask your target audience, chances are most of them will be like, “Oh, that sounds great. Go for it.” But if none of them pay money they’re not invested in the course.

I know it’s hard. And for those of you that you feel like, “Hey, I’m not a sales person.” Well, I don’t think you’re really having to sell this. It’s more that you’re creating value that you’re giving them access to you, that they can help build the course that they want, you’re not going to create a course that solves I don’t know not your target audience’s questions, you’re going to solve those specific VIPs questions.

So those are how to really get out of the gate and determine if your course is viable or not.

Now one of the second questions you asked, Michael is, “I don’t have an audience. I don’t have a platform. What can I do.” So and that’s common, a lot of people that either are industry experts or they have an idea for a course, they don’t have that audience. So here are a few things that you can do that I’ve seen worked very well.

So one thing is you can … you can start a podcast where you interview industry leaders in your area. So you could start a podcast, you could send out an email and ask those people that are in your industry. And to be honest I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’ve been shocked, even with this podcast, I’ve been amazed of the caliber of individuals we’ve gotten on the show just like Brennan Dunn here today that are they’re willing to come on the show and we’re not doing this hard sell, they kind of gently sell maybe at the end, but really it’s about providing value and so you can build relationships there by interviewing people on your podcast as well as it sets you as an industry leader yourself, because throughout those interviews you pepper in your own advice, your own recommendations, your own thoughts, and you are seen as that industry leader.

Now if you don’t want to start your own podcast, maybe it’s too time consuming, or just technically you’re not able to right now, you could ask to be a guest on other people’s podcast. So find podcast in your area, in your niche, and ask to be on their podcast. Now make sure that you are providing a lot of value, make sure you’re not just selling stuff, but go there to serve.

Now there is a system when you’re going on other people’s podcasts and you can actually learn that system. My good friend Tom Schwab created a course. So if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/podcastcourse you can learn more about that and sign up for his course. He really walks you through the steps of finding your ideal target audience, how to find the right podcast to be on, getting booked, getting listeners back to your website, and his proven 6 step method. And I’ve gone through this course, it is fantastic.

I know Tom personally, he’s in my mastermind, he is one of the most helpful guys, one of the most outstanding guys. In fact I’ve actually been to his house where he lives. He had some donkeys, my girls love petting them and actually riding one of his donkeys. So anyway, he’s a great guy. I could go on and on. But go to onlinecoursecoach.com/podcastcourse to learn more bout that system that he created.

Now another strategy if you don’t have an audience is partner with an industry leader. I’ve done this before where it’s more of like a joint venture type of thing where maybe you can do the technical and they can do the content or vice versa and partner with them, make sure to have everything in writing and make sure it’s all legal and on the up and up. But that’s a way to do it as well. If you don’t want to do that you could pay an industry leader to be a part of your training, maybe they are in front of the camera giving the training, you could do that, or you could have that industry leader promote your course to their audience and have them sign up for an affiliate, so maybe they get 40%, 50%, whatever percentage you agree on for selling it.

So find those industry experts, find those websites, find even the podcasts or other resources, Youtube channels. Reach out to them and say, “Hey, I have this course would you like to do a joint venture?” Talk to them about the affiliate plan, so anytime they sell one they get 50%, that is a huge up sell, a huge bonus, because they don’t have to do much work, they don’t have to create the course, they can just promote it to their audience. And that’s actually where I made a good chunk of my money on one of my courses early on. At the beginning I didn’t talked to my ideal audience, but it was a fantastic course. So I made out for it with affiliate sales. I think the first affiliate push, I think we sold a little over $6,000 of that course so that was, maybe it was 12,000, I think it was 12,000. My cut was 6,000. So that was a great deal for me and I was happy and that really got me off and running with selling that course.

Now one of his last questions was, “Where do we put this course? How do I sell it?” So there’s 2 options. One is you put it on your own website, and this is what I recommend because you control the platform, you control the fees, you get a hundred percent, you’re not having to pay a commission, you’re not having to pay a monthly fee, it’s all there for you. In a future podcast maybe we’ll talk about different learning management systems or website integrations that work with your website, whether it’s WordPress based or not.

Now there are other 3rd party solutions. There’s Udemy, there’s Ruzuku, I mean, there’s hundreds and thousands of 3rd party platforms or ways you can host your online course. And these are good especially if you’re not technically savvy. However, they all come with a monthly fee, a percentage, or both. So some of them might be a hundred dollars a month or 200, or 300. So are you willing to give that much up of your sales? So if you’re going to make a lot of sales then maybe that’s worth it. But again I’d rather have it be on your own website where you can get all of the sales.

So Michael, I hope that helped with your questions. I know we’ve gone back and forth with email, but I wanted to go more in depth with this podcast because I know a lot of you listeners, the other listeners here have similar questions. Now the last thing before we get into our interview is we have announced the Fin Con giveaway, a few months we did that sign up where you could sign up to get a free ticket to the Fin Con Expo in I believe it’s in September of 2016. I think the ticket, I think you can get them for 300, 400, something like that dollars. So it’s a high value ticket and I wanted to give that away to somebody that had never been.

So I did the raffle, I did the drawing, and Adam Leech came up as the winner so I’ve already contacted him, he’s really excited because he is kind of in that space, he’s already interviewing and doing some different things with people in the financial markets and again this conference is fantastic. So I’m not going to go into more depth because I’m already promote it, rambled it, rambled about it, and told you how awesome it is. But anyway, congratulations to Adam Leech who won the free Fin Con ticket giveaway.

Now today’s interview is with Brennan Dunn and his course is Double Your Freelancing Rate. And I’ve been aware of this course for awhile now, I’ve been listening, I’ve heard Brennan talk on different podcasts, so I knew I had to get him on the show. Because what he talks about, for those of you that are in either a service industry maybe you’re a web designer, maybe you have some different knowledge, but you struggle with how to price your products or services. This course is fantastic. And I’m actually … I’m going through this course right now. I purchased it. Brennan didn’t give it to me for free, I don’t really ask for those freebies because I want to go through and take it just on my own and it is amazing. I started reading it on the plane the other day when I was flying to do some work at a conference and I found myself almost highlighting every page. So I’m definitely going to go back, do it more detail and more depth. I’ve watched a lot of the videos, gone through a lot of the content, so it is awesome.

So some of the things that Brennan talks about are the mindset that you need to take. Even his background and how he got into this Double Your Freelance Rate course is really interesting. And then he goes into a new course that he only offers once a year and he just touches on it towards the end that is really intriguing, it’s called Double Your Freelancing Clients. So for those of you that do client work, this is something I highly recommend.

So if you’re somebody that is struggling to find clients, maybe you’re over worked and don’t have enough time to hang out with your spouse or kids, maybe you’re afraid to charge what your worth and barely getting by. Brennan Dunn addresses that in his course and a lot in this podcast. So Brennan, thanks so much for being on the Online Course Coach podcast today.

Brennan: Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jeff: So Brennan, what was your background before you started diving into building online courses?

Brennan: So the first company I really started that was successful was an agency. And that was more accidental, I had started out as a freelancer out of really necessity, we had moved up north to Virginia from Florida and didn’t really know any local companies so I just did freelance from out of work, and eventually that’s gone to an 11 person agency that did … I mean, that was kind of my business training experience, I learned a lot about working with clients, getting clients, pricing and everything through that. And I kind of got bit by the bug of wanting a lot of customers, paying a little bit instead of a few customers paying a lot. So I exited the agency to start a software service company called Planscope which being an engineer that was what I thought was the only really acceptable alternative besides consulting.

And the interesting thing that happened was I got a lot of people through the support channels. So this is a project management software product and people would write in the support which I thought was going to be used for, “Hey, this is broken or how do I do this or whatever.” But instead they would write in and ask things like, “Do you have any advice on getting clients or do you have any advice on … Hey, I noticed in your tool I can plug in my hourly rate, do you have any advice on how I could that hourly rate?”

So I started getting these questions which at the time I thought was a little out of the scope from what the goal of the software product was, but one thing lead to another and I did a lot of these one on one kind of over Skype or over email helping people and then I realized just from having friends who were creating more evergreen, more turnkey methods of really achieving the same thing which is helping somebody be better than they were before, packaging it into … Well, before it was a course, I just marketed it as an ebook, this is 3 years ago or so. And this was my first product which is called Double Your Freelancing Rate which is all about pricing and proposals and things like that, but it was just an ebook. And then I release the second version a year and a half ago which was … or is a course. So it’s got videos, templates, scripts, a lot of additional things. So that’s kind of how I got here. I just got here out of people writing me and asking me questions and responding to them at first manually and trying to come up with themes and creating products around those themes.

Jeff: Well, I love that you recognize that you’re getting the same questions over and over. A lot of times you feel and think, “Man, I want to teach somebody or I have this expertise, but I don’t know where to start or even what to teach sometimes.” But a lot of times if we are an industry leader or if people are asking us questions, that’s where to start. So whenever I kind of coach people on that process I say, “Well, tell me what questions do people ask you?”

Brennan: Right, and that’s how … I mean, that’s the best way to validate, right? I mean, if people are asking, actually looking for something that’s affecting their business ideally, then you respond to that, make the product.

Jeff: Yeah, now why did you go from that original ebook for the Double Your Freelancing ebook into a full pledge course? Were people asking for it? Was there a specific reason?

Brennan: Well the big thing for me was just in serving a lot of people and I’m guilty of this myself where you could go to this store, you see a book that seems really good, you buy it, and then it just kind of collects dust on your bookshelf. So I wanted something that was a little more Double Your Freelance Rate not high touched, but more … had some built in accountability elements which just didn’t … I mean, when you think of a book you don’t really, it’s more of like a self serve sort of thing, right? So with the redo I not only redid all the content and like I mentioned expanded it by adding bunch of stuff. But I added a 2 month accountability, really just an autoresponder. But what it ended up doing was it would walk each person through the book, the book part of it at least, the book part of the course, section by section, theme by theme, a few days in between each with follow up, like of like additional context and insight into each theme along with the worksheet that the purpose of it was to apply what you just read to your business.

So I started doing this which from like a do it once and forget about it sort of thing. It wasn’t really a lot of work to get it up, but in terms of the feedback I’ve received, especially from people who have done both V1 and V2, I mean, it’s huge in terms of … I mean, I’ve got somebody now who her full time job is just writing case studies that we publish multiple times a week on students. So I mean, it’s night and day in terms of success from … cause I think people treat it a little differently too, if it’s just an ebook, it’s like, oh, it’s kind of how is it any different than any of like the pop fiction books on my bookshelf versus if you’re going to invest in a course you’re actually typically hopefully invest in that course with your time and attention.

Jeff: I think the title of your course itself, I mean, Double Your Freelance Rate, like that’s appealing obviously. But it also, there’s a reason somebody is taking that course because they want to double their freelancing rate. So there’s’ this motivation, a self-motivation. They’re not just learning for kicks. They’re wanting to increase.

Brennan: Right, and it’s very focused on the outcome in the title, right? So doubling rate, but if you actually dig inside it’s how to write proposals and how to stir the sales discussions. So that’s how you end up getting to that benefit, that outcome. But if I wrote it, if it called like the consultant’s course for sales, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting I think.

Jeff: Now was there this long process or a process of finding that title of Double Your Freelancing Rate? Did it just kind of happen or did you?

Brennan: It actually used to be called … it actually used to be the headline of a sales page, cause I wrote the sales page first before I even have the book. And the title or the H1 tag at the top was Double Your Freelancing Rate in 14 Days. So that’s where I guess the title came from. It’s kind of like if you think about like a lot of, I mean, I studied classics in school and one of the interesting things is all the old like music for instance the title of it would always be the first few words of the piece. So when we think of Ave Maria or whatever. It’s really, that’s the first 2 words of that piece.

So it’s the same thing I guess in my end where I wrote the sales page first and I was like, “The headline is actually a pretty good title.” And I think that’s a good way to do it too, because the point of a headline is draw somebody in. I’m a big fan of figuring out … I mean, the benefit of writing the sales copy first is really get a feel for like what are … how am I positioning this? Who is it for? And then if you have this and you do this before, you actually have a product. When you actually create the product you can make sure it’s right, each part of it or filling each part of it or whatever, you can think, “Am I actually adhering to what I was selling?” Right, so yeah, so I guess the easy answer is the title came from the original headline of the sales page.

Jeff: Yeah, now you mentioned you’ve had different versions. Is it 2 versions or more?

Brennan: I’ve had total versions. The first was just the book, second is … and the second actually has tiers. So the second is the low end, it’s just the course book along with an accountability program and a membership site access and as you go up … the high end includes a coaching call with me. But it’s really meant to just price anchor the middle option which is what 85% of people buy which is the low end plus videos templates, scripts, things like that.

Jeff: That’s interesting, you mentioned that 85%, you said 85 buy middle tier, is that correct?

Brennan: That’s right.

Jeff: Yeah, I had Keith Perhac on the show recently and that one of the things he talked about was the benefits of tier pricing. And so we had in depth discussion, he was awesome.

Brennan: And depending on how you price it can kind of channel more people toward a certain tier. Actually one of the … I’m sure he’d mentioned this in his interview, I didn’t hear it. But the benefit tiering is, it’s do I pick option A, or B, or C, or A or B versus do I buy or not buy, which is a good position to be and if you look at some people like Shaun Desouza when he sells his courses, his pricing is almost negligible. So like the low end option is like $110 and then the high end is a $115. And the high end includes so much more. I asked him, I’m like, so this is a little odd, right, who in the right mind wouldn’t spend $5 more at that price point to get a bunch of stuff. He’s like, “Well, everyone buys that.” But it forces people to read the line items about what’s different, what’s included, and on top of them it has them choose A or B instead of buy or not buy.

Jeff: That’s interesting. Now we’ll talk about your newest course here in a little bit, but tell me what are some things you learned while creating Double Your Freelancing Rate? Where there mistakes made? Or did you stumble across things or get consulting or how did you … what are some things you learned as you have that course?

Brennan: So the biggest thing that I learned which is a result of V1 which was don’t assume handing over bunch of information is enough. So I had to really figure out how could I make this short of being really high touch which the new course, which we’ll talk about in a bit. It is a lot more high touched. But this Double Your Freelancing Rate is evergreen, meaning you can buy it anytime. There’s really not a lot of high touch elements outside of community access and the membership site. But the way it’s designed in terms of autoresponders and natural follow-ups even for things like touch points for soliciting referrals or testimonials or touch points for upgrades. So if they buy a low end option and you talk about one of the emails, for instance I send out is all about, “Here’s additional insight into the section on writing proposals that close.” And if I realize that they’re on the baseline which doesn’t have a template for a proposal template, I can then up sell them on the spot, “If you pay the difference you can get  the exact template that I use in my own consulting.”

So both from like a helping me be both financially more successful and reputationally more success, that’s been helpful. But more importantly by really learning like, actually talking with people and asking them where did you, first of did you … end of the day did you get anything? Has your business, have you received a return on investment? And working backwards from that like if they say no, in terms of trying to figure out why they didn’t. And a lot of people what they say is, “Well, you know I bought it, I was really…” They don’t say this bluntly, “But I was very convinced by the sales page and what you’re saying and I decided to buy it, but then it sat on my dad’s Ford, I never did anything with it.” So that was a lot of the feedback I was receiving early on. But by kind of forcing them into remembering their purchase by emailing them literally every other day it really increased the results that people were getting which is obviously what matters most.

Jeff: No, that’s good. And that’s so important because, yeah, so many courses are … both the … we’ll call them the instructor, the course creator and then the student, we think this hands off approach is best. And really it’s generally not. It might be easier for everybody or cheaper for the student, but it’s not really the best because I even I mean, I have a course sitting on my desk that was hundreds of dollars and I’ve barely gone through it. And for me some of it was more just seeing how they built it and it was a pretty high end course and pretty cool. But because there’s not as much interaction or accountability I haven’t put that on the front burner as much as some of the other courses that I’ve taken.

Brennan: Yeah, and you don’t want to be in the business of just selling something that makes people not successful, because well you’re not going to get many word of mouth referrals from that. So that’s not the proper way.

Jeff: So but again we’ll talk about your upcoming course here in just a second, but what systems or tools or websites that you used to create the courses and then deliver those online?

Brennan: So Double Your Freelancing Rate which is my main course I guess, in terms of construction it’s really … I’m using Gumroad to sell it, so it delivers natural zip file and in that are the PDF, the Mobi, and ePub equivalence of the course work book and then I always have really a folder full of both PDF, Word, and Pages file which are for all the different templates and scripts and everything. And on top of that I also have … I’m not bundling the full high def videos of the course inside of the download, instead it’s a static pages, static web pages that can be run locally that embed from Wistia all the different video aspects and you can download them too if you’d like to your drive.

Jeff: Interesting. So it’s not like it’s an online course type of thing, it is local on your computer.

Brennan: Correct, yup. Although with Gumroad I might transition at this, they actually have now … their platform is getting more advanced where they have like Netflix style streaming if you upload video files and actually PDF reading, cause they have a mobile up too, so you can read directly from your purchase or on your desktop. And one of the benefits for course graders is if you have let’s say a work book or something they’ll give you analytics on how many people read what percentage, which you can’t really get with let’s say a PDF. So that’s what I’m using now. I think with V3 I might move it to be more of like Wild Garden membership site, actually my new course is like that. But right now it’s download.

Jeff: And do you happen to remember how large of a download that is?

Brennan: Say probably 20 megs or something.

Jeff: Okay, wow.

Brennan: It’s not huge cause it’s really just a lot of more text based documents and the … maybe it’s actually more cause the PDF is pretty high quality, it’s 160 page, very high quality output. I forgot exactly, I’d probably tell you. But it’s negligible in our age of program.

Jeff: Sure. One of my first courses back in the day was a video based course and I had people download it, it just made more sense and had to do multiple downloads and zip files and all that. It ended up working fine but in a way it was kind of a mess because if somebody had bad internet connection or they weren’t tech savvy enough to know that, “Hey, I can’t close my laptop while I’m downloading something.” So a little bit issues there, but that was because they were such large video files.

Brennan: Right.

Jeff: So now that you’ve created multiple courses, what are some things you’ve learned along the way? Have you made a lot of mistakes, or do you feel like you’ve been able to find success and find a path here?

Brennan: I think it’d definitely been successful. I mean, in terms of the 2 courses I have now, one is evergreen which is Double Your Freelancing Rate, and I can talk a bit about how I kept it so it sells reliably in the tune of a few thousand dollars a week without any or much ongoing involvement on my part. And on the other end I have a once a year course which I’m actually launching right now. It launched yesterday. And that’s Double Your Freelancing Clients which is more of a once a year course and I’ll tell you about why it’s once a year in a bit.

But in terms of Double Your Freelancing Rate which is inarguably my most successful course. It’s had almost close to 7,000 buyers and price point is 300ish, average, I mean, that’s not middle tier. So what I’ve done successfully is … and we all know how efficient or not efficient, but how good kind of like a big launch process is in terms of driving sales. So what I’ve ended up doing is I have an email course which precedes Double Your Freelancing Rate and that’s the call to action across my entire site. So if you opt in to that email course you’d get … it’s a 9 lesson course, it takes about 2 weeks to deliver and what it is, is it’s a very high level overview of the same concepts and themes that are taught in the premium course. And then after that email course what ends up happening is there’s a few more emails that are really prepping somebody for launch.

So I’m hitching it, “By the way, mark your calendar to the next Monday morning at 10:00AM. This is going on sale for 4 days for 33% off.” And so I’m starting to prep people but I’m still delivering more. At this point I’m sending, the course is over … or the email course rather is over, but I’m sending things about getting over imposter syndrome, like a lot of the recent people don’t end up charging more is not that they don’t know how, it’s just they don’t feel like they are worth it. So helping people overcome that which are really links to case studies of mine. Like 15 different case studies up, like you have full in depth profiles of people.

So I’m really prepping people and telling them that this is coming and then the week after I do it in the launch, just like I would to my entire list. So Monday morning, it’s on sale, there’s countdown timers and everything, the FAQ emails, is this right for me? That last call emails, they’re there too. So there’s an evergreen launch for me happening every Monday through Thursday on autopilot and the cohort are people who joined this email course about 3 or 4 weeks beforehand and that’s a few hundred a week. So I get a few thousand in revenue each week on autopilot just from organic traffic hitting my blog, reading an article, opting into the free email course, and then being up sold and really having people self select to join the premium course.

Jeff: Well, that’s great. And we could spend a whole interview just on that topic alone. But tell me about your Double Your Freelancing Clients course and why did you decided to create it?

Brennan: Right, so it’s Double Your Freelancing Clients, so you probably can see a theme. My site now is doubleyourfreelancing.com. So it’s slash rate, slash clients, there’s the respective product pages, so a lot of people went through Double Your Freelancing Rate and it’s all about how to sell, how to price, how to write proposals, how to handle pushback, everything like that. But the overwhelming request from people was, this is all good and well, but if I don’t have quality leads this is, you know, what am I supposed to do? If I don’t have anyone to pitch, what do I pitch?

So I knew I needed to create something that was really the other half of being successful a consulting as learning how to sell once you have a prospect, the other half is getting reliably these prospects. So I drill on my own agency experience, cause when I was running my agency we had a hundred thousand dollar a month plus payroll, so I couldn’t really just wait for referrals or wait for people to find my site and contact us about projects. So I had to really get good I think at learning how to proactively get work. So that’s how the course was created, format wise it couldn’t be more different. It’s 57 video lessons that span a little over 5 hours of time and that’s kind of what I call the library of the course. That’s the encyclopedia that details every single tactic and strategy I used to get clients.

But what’s really different about it and this is why it’s once a year is I make myself available depending on how many people would join, last year it was 190, I’m hoping for double that this year. And I make myself available every week at least a few times, 2 students for what I call office hours where I’ve created this custom course where you can go to in RSVP for office hours and you can jump in and say, “Hey, Brennan. I watched your module on using webinars and seminars to get clients. I want some advice from you on how I can apply it to my freelancing writing business that is situated in France or something?” Right, and I can talk with them about how they can actually apply with some more generalized which is the content that everyone gets and I help them apply it to their business and it’s 6 months long. So for 6 months you have basically multiple times a week access to me to ask anything related to building systems for getting clients.

But on top of that I have something additional which is every single student is paired with a paid mentor. This is somebody who I trust, this is somebody who I’ve worked with, and their job is to lead small mastermind groups. So if you join your … you get to pick a mastermind, you select the day, time and mentor that you want to work with and you join this mastermind and every 2 weeks you show up and you say, “Here’s what I’ve been working on for the last 2 weeks. I want to show you guys maybe the sales copy I’ve been working on or this ad campaign.” You can kind of go around that “room” and get feedback and advice from your mentor and your peers and then you plan your next steps for the next 2 weeks.

So there’s a lot of hand holding I guess. There’s a lot of high touch, whether it’s from, from the guy who created the course or these kind of trusted delegates who are there helping people individually say, “Here you are now. Here’s where you want to be. And let’s figure out how to get connected to. And then every 2 weeks let’s make incremental movement toward that goal.” So all of this combined is by far, I mean, I did the first version last year and in terms of success, in terms of results, in terms of student, everything, like this is by far … and I know why. I mean, it’s not … you can’t be left, you can’t slip through the cracks cause your mentor will be like, “Hey, Jeff. You haven’t shown up at the last mastermind, where have you been?”

Jeff: Right.

Brennan: And also if you keep showing up to every mastermind let’s say and you’re like, “Yeah, I’m working on redesigning my website.” And then the next time, “Yeah, I’m working on…” You keep saying that again and again, you start to feel a little stupid after awhile, right? So it’s a great way to really just say out in the open, “Here’s what I’m working toward for the next 2 weeks based on my availability, based on what I want to get to.” All of that combined, the evergreen video library of tactics, you can actually ask the guy who’s behind the camera or in front of the camera rather in these videos specific how do I apply what you said to me and then you have this by weekly small groups. So think of it like an actual course. You’ve got the curriculum, the text book which is the videos, you’ve got the professor’s office hours, and then you have your study group. And that’s basically how it’s set up.

Jeff: And I love that because it hits on different learning methods and people learn differently. And so that’s fantastic. I can’t wait to hear some of the success stories. Now I know you had this last year, so what are some success stories of people that have gone through the program, and maybe double their freelancing clients?

Brennan: Yup, so the one that I just actually filmed a case study with is a guy in Germany who has a team, I forgot how many, it’s about 10ish people and now they’re booked through … so right now, or I recorded this in October, his booked through late March for his entire team. So I don’t know how many months that is, but that times 10 is how many futures clients he’s already … So the real pain I’m getting at is a lot of people who just don’t have a system for getting clients, it always seems like, “Oh, it’s great. I’ve got clients right now all paying the bills.” And then one of them completes and you don’t have anything lined up next you start to panic, you start to get stressed out and so what the course really focuses on is how you can really just be a little more proactive and a little more strategic and systematic about getting clients. So that’s the real focus.

And yeah, so France who I just referenced, he’s a huge case study I think in terms of like 18 months of future work already. So he’s by far like the one I’m shouting left and right now. But we’ve got a lot of other people who are creating systems, I mean, the real other goal is just I’m pretty good with automation so how can you use automation in inquiring, qualifying, and conditioning new leads so that you can be billing or hanging out with your friends and family or whatever else you want to do, while a lot of this happens more in the background so you don’t need to be selling as much.

Jeff: Man, that’s so good. That’s so good. I love it. So what are some of the marketing strategies that you’ve used to promote both of your courses throughout the years?

Brennan: So my Double Your Freelancing Clients which is what I just mentioned, that’s primarily and only being marketed to my own audience. So I’ve been building … the big difference with this and I realized this the first I ran it was people were expecting another Double Your Freelancing Rate which is 300 bucks, well instead the price is sometimes double that with this new course cause it’s a lot more immersed. So there’s the budget thing. But then there’s the 6 months and you’re asking me to do a bunch of work on my business every few weeks. I don’t have the time, I’ve been planning for that, I got all this pushback last year. So what I’ve been doing instead is for the last 6 months I’ve been planting seeds whenever I email list saying, “Hey, it’s coming up again don’t forget to really … it’s going to be January through July. Start to make those habit changes now.” I’d even write about ways you can start to do that. Again this course is primarily being marketed to my list.

What I did for Double Your Freelancing Rate though is like I mentioned I’ve done organic traffic into my blog who the convert into this email course, who then convert into sales. I’ve also done paid acquisition for that same thing where I’m targeting people who have either been to my site and bounced through retargeting, or through Facebook ads primarily, people who liked Smashing Magazine or like kind of like a lot of the websites and big blogs that freelancers tend to visit and that’s worked well too. It started deteriorating in terms of results, then I realized it’s not as easy as set it and forget it usually with ads. So just after this course is done launching, I’m going to go back and revisit that.

But I’ve also done a lot of joint venture webinars where I would go to other people’s lists who have similar audiences and we would do it. It wouldn’t just be a big pitch. It would be kind of like my email course which is valuable in it’s own right, but as a webinar and then I would announce a limited discount window for Double Your Freelancing Rate and I did that not this summer but the previous summer with about 8 different partners and profit wise, personally did about a hundred thousand in a month just from that little rodeo tour.

But the benefit though was I also added like 15,000 people on my newsletter doing that. So we would get … and I got it all down to a science almost where I would basically approach somebody and say, “Got a PDF that shows you exactly depending on how big your list is, what you can probably expect in terms of a profit share if we do this together.” And I had all these documentations, white copy, past case studies of all the different 8 people that I’ve worked with doing this. How many emails they sent, how many clicked in to opt in, how many of the opt ins actually showed up, how many people showed up actually that bought. And I have all these data points where I could basically say like for every click you send me I can reliably give you about this much money.

Jeff: Wow.

Brennan: So I did a lot of that. And that worked really well too. I just haven’t had the time to reboot that.

Jeff: Well and in speaking of your processes and time and all that, tell me about who’s on your team? Are you primarily creating all the content and doing all the marketing and blogging and podcasting? Or do you have a team or how does that work?

Brennan: So I do all the content creation, so every … just about every blog posts on my site except for the student success stories which is what Gina does who works with me. So I do most of the … I do all the podcast, obviously I record but I have Ganim Kai who does all the booking me and pre-interview stuff. But in terms of like the public face of the company and the creation of it, like with the courses it’s all me. Although actually for the new course I did have somebody. I was going to try to like hook up a DSLR camera and learn Final Cut Pro and try to edit it myself, but then I was like, “You know what? If any of your students tried telling you they were going to do this, you’d be like, ‘You’re an idiot. You’re not a video person. Hire somebody.'” So I did hire somebody and it turned out great. I mean I spent a lot of money but it was so worth it. So now I’m starting to get to the point where at least the production part, in terms of the creation of the content still all me, always will be me. But in terms of like making the PDFs free, or making the videos well edited or whatever I’m delegating a lot of it out now.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s good. Well, Brennan. I have a ton more questions I’d love to ask you. But I want to respect your time. So lastly where can people learn more about you and your courses?

Brennan: So the best place to go is doubleyourfreelancing.com, although if you like to see that funnel I mentioned at the beginning of the email course to Double Your Freelancing Rate up sell, especially if you want to kind of reverse engineer it. You can go to freefreelancingcourse.com which a just redirect to a page on my site. But yeah, that course is called Charge What You’re Worth. So those are probably the 2 best places.

Jeff: Awesome. Well, Brennan. Thanks so much for being on the Online Course Coach podcast today.

Well there you, I had a blast talking with Brennan. He was so kind and accommodating and had a lot of good information. So make sure, even re-listen to this episode because he gives a lot of good information, a lot of good … Yeah, just info on not just why you should charge, how you should charge, but even that we talked about pricing tiers, there’s a lot of good info in there. So I don’t have a long conclusion here. I know this podcast went a little long. I wanted to answer Michael’s question and have the full interview with Brennan on the show.

So if you could one thing for me, share this episode with a friend, email it to somebody, post it to Facebook or Twitter or wherever, LinkedIn and tag somebody and say, “Hey, this would really help your business.” In fact, I’m going to do that as well with this episode because there are several people in my circles that could benefit from Brennan’s content as well as his course. So thank you so much for listening to the Online Course Coach podcast where it is truly my goal to help you, to teach many, to impact millions.
REFERENCE : RAN303 

The post The Double Your Freelancing Course with Brennan Dunn appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Why create an online course?

Online courses seem to be the big emphasis right now, and I get a lot of people asking if it’s just a fad. While we’ve all seen things like social media, membership sites and other things get promoted by the “gurus” come and go, I believe the importance of an online course won’t fade. I believe that to truly impact the world and make it a better place, that we need to change how we educate people. As more people go online for shopping, dating and most importantly, learning, we need to consider ways to make the learning process more engaging and successful for the student.

Get the free bonus – My detailed notes from the book, The Magic of Thinking Big

Click below to Get My Notes on The Magic of Thinking Big

Click here to get the download

How to plan your next online course

Most people that I coach get overwhelmed with creating an online course. They don’t know where to start or how to build the lessons. Here are some tips to plan and create your next course.

Write down what it would be like if the online course (or project) was a success. This is where you dream of the success your course will achieve. Look back at this list when you get discouraged.
Write down, “why I am the one to create this course”. This will help you focus on your strengths and why YOU (yes, you) should create that online course.
Create an outline of the course and think through the overview of the project.
Create goals and then work backwards. Think “what must be true or what must happen to lead up to this goal?” Think in small attainable steps. – break a stick
The best way to gain clarity on your goal is to take 1 step towards your goal
Know your “why”. – it will keep you going when you get discouraged. Write it down and look at what’s at stake if you don’t create your online course and publish it?

You protect yourself from failure, you can say it’s something you’re working on, regret of not doing it, etc

What’s at stake of you do publish your online course?

You help a lot of people, you create life change, you create impact on others and income for yourself, you’ll build your platform that you can leverage in speaking, authority, more courses, etc. you create something big
make a target deadline for starting, creating each chapter, marketing and launch

How to Think Big With Your Online Course or Project

• Don’t make excuses. That’s for small thinking people
• Don’t underestimate the value that you provide
• See what can be not what currently is
• Don’t worry about little things.
• Waste your time keeps you from thinking big positive
• Use words that are positive and big thinking
• Practice adding value to people, clients and family

Do you struggle with thinking big about yourself, your projects and the importance of your work? I highly recommend the book, The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J Schwartz. It’s a classic and has so much wisdom packed into this book. I read it at least once a year and update my notes each time. I’m giving away my detailed notes, so you can read the book and follow along. Click the link below to quickly get access to these notes and start thinking big about yourself and your work. It is one of my top 10 books, and you will see why after reading.
Get the free bonus – My detailed notes from the book, The Magic of Thinking Big
Click to Get My Notes on The Magic of Thinking Big

Books referenced in this podcast

The Magic of Thinking Big
Start with Why (is that the title?)

More Resources
REFERENCE : MEWAHBET

The post Why YOU Should Create an Online Course & How to Plan One appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I was first introduced to Grant Baldwin a while back as he joined my mastermind group, which is based in Nashville, TN. While he’s an accomplished speaker, he’s also a great guy, who’s funny, but is as genuine personally as he appears when he’s on stage. I was able to hear him speak at FinCon2015 and was greatly impacted by his message, which he shares about in this podcast.

I knew that Grant had put out some online courses but was really impressed with the article that he wrote for Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income blog, titled, “From Course Concept to $141,659 In Sales In 6 Months”. He shares the process he took when he build, sold and marketed his online course. In this podcast he goes in depth on this topic and additional insights.
5 reasons why a public speaker should create online courses
I’ve worked with speakers over the years and respect what they do. Speakers have a message to share and are passionate about their topic. Many times they motivate or encourage life-change in their message. While most speakers have books, CDs, DVDs and other programs,  many don’t have online courses to provide to their audience for back of the room sales, or on their website. If you’re a speaker, you’ll love this episode of the Online Course Coach Podcast, I share 5 reasons why a public speaker should create online course.

1. It allows them to create an additional revenue stream
2. It gives something else for back of the room sales
3. It can supplement your talk, book or other media you sell
4. It allows you to build your platform, email list and fan base while giving them long term value
5. It lets you build a community, which can 10x your success and significance

Online Course Coach Podcast Guest Questions:

• Give me background of your speaking career
• Tell me about your first course and how it didn’t meet up to your initial expectations?
• Why was the title of your course a reason for poor sales?
• Why did you decide to create a new online course, rather than just improve your original one?
• Why is the validation phase of the process so important?
• How did you sell to the beta tester group?
• Was it hard to sell to the beta tester group?
• How was the new launch compared to the original launch?
• What marketing strategies have worked the best?
• What lessons have you learned in your joint ventures to sell this course?
• How do you use your free 9 part email course?

Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes:

• I heard him talk at FinCon 2015
• He is an accomplished speaker but wanted to create a course
• His first course was called, “Clarity Course”, to help people find clarity in their work and find or create work they love, but it wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped
• You need to find where your target audience is and serve them
• Think about what questions you constantly get asked and develop a course on that topic
• His second course, to speakers, was very clear in what it offers
• He wrote an article that outlines some of the details of his process http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/from-course-concept-to-141659-in-sales-in-6-months/
• Sell something before you create it to validate your course idea by polling your audience and telling them what you’re planning on building it.
• There’s a difference between pre-selling your course vs doing a free beta
• Grant did Facebook ads to direct people to webinars to drive sales
• He uses LeadPages, Google Hangouts and Chatroll for his webinar
• He has a free 9 part email course at bookedandpaidtospeak.com
• His website is found at GrantBaldwin.com

For another podcast interview with a highly respected speaker, check out the interview with Jane Atkinson.
What online courses are you working on? I’d love to hear what you’re working on.
Have a question for the podcast?

REFERENCE : GENKPOKER

The post How speakers can create online courses with Grant Baldwin appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I’ve had the privilege of meeting Tom Ziglar several times and have always been impressed with the content that they share. I look to them for honest and integrity based sales training. In this Online Course Coach Podcast interview, Tom Ziglar shares a behind the scenes look into building Ziglar on Demand & why removing audio and video content made their membership site better. He also shares success tips for entrepreneurs and course creators.

I find it interesting that many course creators want to put ALL their information into a course. And I get it, we want to add value and teach everything we know. And while that’s a good thing, it might overwhelm your audience. There is also value in create an online course that delivers high quality content, but only what’s needed to master a topic. Think of how much your audience would pay if you offered a course that saved them time and only taught the necessary tactics? Plus, the students would probably finish it and find more value in the rapid learning they were able to do. Tom talks about why they originally put a LOT of content on their Ziglar on Demand online learning center, but then found out that more is not better. They looked at their website analytics and determined what their top content was and removed the rest. The result is that people are able to find the best content on their site and don’t get overwhelmed with all the additional content that is there within the site. How can you use this same strategy in your membership sites and online courses?

Get the free bonus audio interview – Tom Ziglar’s top sales and marketing strategies for online course creators.
Click to Download the Bonus Audio

The Online Course Coach Podcast Questions

1. What is something that you are learning and excited about right now?
2. The listeners to this show are teachers, entrepreneurs and creators. What encouragement and hope can you provide to them?
3. Some of the listeners are in the planning stages of their online courses and unsure of many things from course content, technical setup, and what success to expect. So how can someone move past the fear of the unknown?
4. What is a success tip that has meant a lot to you over the years?
5. Give us a background of Ziglar on Demand is?
6. Why did you decide on putting Zig’s library of content online?
7. Explain the process of putting Zig’s content online for Ziglar On Demand?
8. What are some successes stories you’ve seen with it being online?
9. Where can people learn more about you and Ziglar on Demand?

Online Course Coach Show notes

• Tom is building a strategy for his upcoming online course and program
• Live to Win – 7 weeks to balanced success
• He gets up early to do a “time capsule” to think through and plan his day
• Use your most creative time of the day to create…not answer emails, phone calls, etc.
• For Ziglar on Demand, they removed a lot of the content that they originally had, so that their best content is online, and not every single piece of Zig’s training
• http://ziglarvault.com has a lot of additional content

Get the free bonus audio interview – Tom Ziglar’s top sales and marketing strategies for online course creators.
Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Podcast Transcript:

The post Tom Ziglar on Success Tips and Building Ziglar on Demand appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I’ve had a passion for working with speakers since high school. While I’m not a professional speaker, I know that creating an online course can add tremendous value to the back of the room sales for any speaker. I had the privilege of talking with Jane Atkinson of The Wealthy Speaker University. Jane shares some of her success tips to creating an online course for her audience of speakers, but she also shares the times she learned what didn’t work for her audience.
Get the free bonus audio interview where Jane shares her top marketing strategies for selling her online course.
Click to Download the Bonus Audio
Jane Atkinson’s Bio
Jane Atkinson has been helping speakers catapult their businesses for over 20 years. As a former speaker’s agent, she has represented numerous speakers, celebrities and best-selling authors.

Today, Jane coaches some of the industry’s hottest stars, who have vaulted to the top 3% of the field. Her clients are the who’s who…. Executive VP’s of Fortune 100 companies, Editors-in-Chief of Top Magazines, Bestselling Authors, Adventurers, Ivy League Professors and regular everyday people who have a strong message.
Learn more about Jane and her services at SpeakerLauncher.com
Questions asked to Jane Atkinson during The Online Course Coach Podcast interview

What is it about working with speakers that first intrigued you over 20 years ago? (did you admire their success, their impact, or something else?)
What are some ways that you have helped speakers succeed through your materials (books, coaching, courses, etc)?
Why did you create WealthySpeakerU? (did you find you were reaching your capacity in how many you could help at once, or wanted more leverage…or something entirely different?)
Give us a peak behind the scenes at how you created the course. (not just the nuts and bolts, but something that other online course creators would find intriguing)
Tell me how your beta release went and what you learned from your audience?
Why did you chose the course formats including course content, coaching calls, Facebook group, etc. (was it an easy choice to include these or were there other items you thought about including?)
Do you offer a Facebook community in your course?
What is a tip that you can offer to the listener who has an online course?
What are the productivity tools you use in your business and online courses?
Where can people learn more about you and WealthySpeakerU?

The Online Course Coach Podcast Show Notes

She helps speakers create products they can sell so they can speak less and make more
She created the Wealthy Speaker U course to avoid trading time for money
Her goal was to leverage what the speaker knows
Jane used surveys to learn what her audience wanted and they told her that they wanted the course
She saw a Facebook ad that said something like “Is your calendar full without adding more time”
They use a hybrid course with teaching online and doing some live training
There were too many people, the course was too cheap and it was a problem so the first course didn’t go well
She made a mistake with her evergreen webinar that her students bonded and she wasn’t live during her webinars. From now she’ll be live
While she can use Facebook ads, she learned that she had to sell the course herself and not rely on ads
Jane knows her list and audience are her best customers
The price point has to be inexpensive so people will sign up
A tip is to have a platform, ask what they want and serve them
An online course is an evolution
She uses an online calendar to schedule meetings to systematize her business

Get the free bonus audio interview where Jane shares her top marketing strategies for selling her online course.

REFERENCE : NAGASLOT99

The post How speakers can leverage their knowledge with online courses by Jane Atkinson appeared first on Online Course Coach.

One of the things that many people struggle with are not just creating the course material, but how to put it online for their students to access it. While some people have the technical expertise to create their own website and sell the course through it, others want an easy solution, and that’s what Ruzuku does. Abe Crystal talks about this platform, how it got started and why you may want to consider using it.

Abe offers some solid advice on how to best market your online course and recommends similar strategies as to what I recommend, so pay attention to those in the interview.

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Abe Crystal Bio:

Abe Crystal, Ph.D. is a co-founder of Ruzuku. Ruzuku’s online platform makes it ridiculously easy for you to create your own online course or coaching program. Ruzuku has hosted over 10,000 courses serving over 80,000 students around the world. Abe specializes in learning design and user experience research, and earned his Ph.D. in human-computer interaction at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Podcast questions I asked Abe Crystal:

• what is your background in eLearning?
• why did you create Ruzuku?
• why do your users choose Ruzuku over your competitors?
• what are some trends you’ve seen in eLearning?
• where do you see eLearning going in the future?
• what are some of the best marketing strategies?
• If someone wants to get started with Ruzuku, where can they go?

Podcast Show Notes:

• His background isn’t originally in eLearning but in user experience
• He wants to help learn and grow
• Ruzuku is a platform that pulls all the technical aspects together and makes it easy
• http://pcosdiva.com/ is a good example of a good online course that has a niche audience and is able to serve the community with an online course, which is built on the Ruzuku platform
• Build an audience, find a need, listen to what they want to learn and then build the course
• Create a pilot or beta phase of the course where people can test out the course
• Use LinkedIn to promote the course
• If you have an audience, it’s much easier
• Start by building a fan base of 1000 fans, as outlined by Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine. http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
• A 4 week live-course with is easier to run versus an evergreen course and it gets more engagement and sales (generally speaking)
• Ruzuku allows the teacher to add text, video and audio and let’s the teacher not have to worry about the technology side of building a course

Click Here to Register to win a *FREE FinCon 2016 ticket

*In order to win the FinCon 2016 ticket, you must be a new attender to FinCon.Free ticket contest only covers the cost of one ticket to the 2016 FinCon conference and not travel, meals, or other expenses.

Transcript From This Episode of The Online Course Coach Podcast

The post An interview with Abe Crystal of the Ruzuku LMS platform appeared first on Online Course Coach.

If you’ve been online for any period of time, you probably know who James Schramko is. I like his simple and down to earth style in teaching. He doesn’t use hype or extreme marketing language. James has taught a lot about online courses, membership sites and joint ventures, and in this episode we talk about each one in depth. One of the things that surprised me was his reasoning for taking his online courses and combining them into a membership site, and James goes into the details of why he did this and how it’s helped his audience.

Interview notes with James Schramko

• His first course were simple notes that he created. It was a simple checklist
• He opened it as an affiliate and offered bonuses
• James likes checklists and thinks it’s an easy to create online courses and products with checklists
• He wants to create value through his products and courses
• Create a product based on what you want to learn…and teach others how he did it
• Use the format of Intro, Why, What, How, What if, Action Steps to create an course outline template
• Some of his mistakes he’s made is how he’s packaged his products.
• He offers his online membership, where he offers his courses, products, etc.
• Since most students don’t go through the whole course, it makes more sense to offer a membership site with a lot of information
• He doesn’t do many joint ventures
• Joint ventures might be bad if you’re too scared to do all the work and hope that the other person will do all the work
• He recommends buying traffic instead of doing joint ventures
• Don’t do joint ventures with friends…be accountable and have a plan before
• when he does a video and audio, he gets twice the downloads with audio, versus video
• Another great interview on the topic of membership sites: http://www.superfastbusiness.com/business/how-to-jumpstart-your-membership-forum/

Questions I asked James Schramko:

• Tell me about your first course and why you decided to create it.
• Why should someone create an online course?
• What are some good ways to select a topic for an online course
• Explain your course outline template?
• What’s the ideal length of audio/video content
• What are some mistakes you’ve made with your online courses?
• What advice do you have for joint venture opportunities?
• What are some success stories you’ve heard from your students?
• **What tools do you use when creating courses or products?
• How do you determine what medium to use? Audio, video or text only?
• Besides  your website, SuperFastBusiness.com, where can people find you through social media?

Online Course Coach Listener Review

Jeff knows his stuff

August 19, 2015 by Xprtlstnr from Australia

Just listened to why one would want to create an online course and if you hadn’t wondered about this; maybe you should. Don’t be selfish and keep all the good stuff to yourself. Listen to Jeff for encouragement and expert tips on how to get your show on the road!

Transcript:

Jeff Long: In this episode I talk with James Shramko about online courses, membership sites and joint ventures.
Welcome to the online coach podcast brought to you by truefocusmedia.com, whether you’re a beginner or expert, this is the podcast for the latest and online course creation tips, news, interviews and ideas. And here is your coach, Jeff Long.
Jeff Long: Welcome back to another episode and oh man this one is so good. I had the opportunity to talk with somebody that I’ve been following for quite some time. And I forgot where I first got introduced to James Shramko. I’m not sure if it was his website where he blogs or his podcast but they are a great resource. So his website is superfastbusiness.com and we talk a lot about his online courses, his products, as well as why he moved to a membership site and he gives some really good advice on joint ventures.

Well let’s get right into the show and I’m really excited to have James Shramko on the podcast. I’ve been a big fan of his for quite some time and he’s been online doing courses on membership sites and training products for years. A matter a fact he talks about his first product and how he got his start. And I’ve been listening to his podcast, I’ve been reading his website, reading his blogs and articles and he shares a lot about online courses and tips and tricks and some of those we’ll talk about in this episode. But I first got to introduce to those on his podcast and his website, so as I was reading those I knew we had to get him on the show because of all his experience. So we actually talk about his first training product. He also shared what he did with all of his courses and the reason behind it. And I think you’ll find it really interesting because he has or had a lot of content, a lot of training material, a lot of courses and he did something maybe surprising that would help not just himself, but more importantly help his audience that you’ll really love. And then lastly, James shares some very wise advice on doing joint ventures or some advice for people who are considering doing joint ventures. You can find James Shramko on superfastbusiness.com where he helps people grow a successful business online and his website has some really good video, podcast and blog articles about things like websites, traffic and other elements required for success online. And when he’s not doing all that stuff to help us, he loves to surf. Just before we hit the record button on this podcast he shared with me how he’s going to a surf tournament and I’ll be honest I sound a little jealous, I’ve gone surfing just a few times in Hawaii and it was awesome. I don’t have a chance to do that much where I live but since he lives in Australia it sounds like he get a lot of time to surf and that sounds like a lot of fun. So James thanks for being on the online coach course podcast.
James Shramko: My pleasure, thank you for having me.

Jeff Long: So tell me a little bit about your first online course and why you decided to create it.

James Shramko: The first online course I created was very humble beginnings. It was actually a ten lines in a excel spreadsheet and it was a checklist I was using for myself, when I was building a website using a particular software program because I found that the software program was good but I’d learnt a lot about SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization and I knew that there was some modifications I could make when  I built the site to make it rank better in Google so I started using this checklist and then I realize that I could promote this software as an affiliate which meant that I could make some commission and to internalize people to buy it from me. I offered them this cheat sheet and the first cheat sheet is when I took this ten lines of excel, turned it into a little word document. I can’t remember how big it was but it’s only a few pages and effectively that was my first information product because people would buy through my affiliate link and they would send me their receipt and claim their cheat sheet.

Jeff Long: That’s cool. Now where did you get this idea, were you following other people or were you just kind of thinking, you know what if I had this cheat sheet and check list, I’m sure other people would want to purchase it
.
James Shramko: Well at that time I was a General Manager at a Mercedes Benz Dealership so I was very up with checklist and standard operating procedures and systems. And I had therefore created a system for myself and I used to have a system when I was a sales person. That I would do every single time and I’m a big fan of frameworks because I think you can get maximum results by going through a framework and even good pilots have checklist when they fly and airplane and doctors and surgeons have checklist in the operating theatre. I think it’s a good idea, so the idea to create was pretty straight forward. It was a natural instinct, but when I also realized that other people would also get value from it that was helpful. And I think I probably got the idea from a guy called Steven Pierce who had this idea of complementing a niche rather than competing a niche and I thought that was a good idea and I also discover the possibility of being an affiliate online. I didn’t really understand how it worked 10 years ago from the time of recording this, but has I sort of felt it out I realize that I could come to the market with something of value that was the opposite of a discount which was something that I really despise people who go into the market place offering rebates and cash back, think that’s a race to the bottom. I want to create a value ad that added more value to the buyer that allowed me to get my full commission. So it seemed logical and it worked out great. It’s actually how it evolved into a membership and 100 and 30 something page cheat sheet that I sold a lot of. In fact I made my first $100,000 online as an affiliate for this product and the cheat sheet became so popular that people who already had the software were contacting me saying I’ve already got the software, “can I buy the cheat sheet from you?” And I thought well if you send me $40 PayPal I’ll send you the cheat sheet and they did.

Jeff Long: Wow!!
James Shramko: And then someone got it and they went into a forum and they said to these other people, “hey if you have this program you absolutely have to get this cheat sheet if you send him $40 through PayPal he’ll send it to you”. And the next day I came home from work and there was all these emails from the forum members, just like 20 or 30 emails from people trying to send me $40. So I ended up putting it up on its own website and I sold more of the cheat sheet then I was selling as an affiliate so that was when the sales tipped across to me selling my first information product. I actually launched it in the warrior forum as a warrior special offer and that wake I was moving house. And for that wake I was making $1000 a day in sales and that was when I thought if I could just put out information products instead of working then I could do this full time.
Jeff Long: Yeah, that’s so good. Isn’t that so exciting when you make your first dollar, $10, $100, you know or $1000 online, it’s like wow this is real. I’m really helping people. I’m serving a need and people are wanting this, that’s such a good feeling to have.
James Shramko: I still think it’s bizarre you know. If I have any reoccurring nightmare it’s something about me working in a job and I quit my job about 7 or 8 years ago. I’m well past that point but you almost have to pinch yourself to think what a different life you can have and that’s in part because it’s the leverage that comes from being able to sell ideas, literally electrons. People are paying for electrons and bandwidth, that’s sort of an invisible asset.
Jeff Long: Yeah I know that’s brilliant. So a lot of our audience has online courses already. They’re in the mix teaching people. There are a hand full of people that are still contemplating, how do I teach or what do I teach. So James what are some ways that somebody recommends select topic for an online course. Maybe they don’t have the exact topic or maybe they are trying to choose from an array of topics. How do you select a topic for an online course or product?
James Shramko: Mine always usually driven through my own self need. You know if I was trying to figure out how to rank websites and how to build a website with the software it’s logical to think that other people would also be having the same challenge and by solving my own problem through research and try in an area I was actually creating an information resource that is valuable. So I’m seeing all the courses on niche research, keyword research and determining competition and all of that but that’s not really how I roll. I really usually just solve my own challenges first and then as customers come on board they are pretty quick to tell you what they need or ask for things and that helps you innovate. So if you were to look at my business today, 10 years after I started it’s actually extremely simple business and it’s just helping people out with things that used to be a challenge for me but they are no longer a challenge for me because I solved them and made the solution available to other people.
Jeff Long: That’s great. Yeah that’s so good you’re not overcomplicating things, you know it’s like you’re saying, “hey what do I either already know or want to learn and how can I make that knowledge available to other people, it’s pretty simple.
James Shramko: And I think one of the core things is you got to be at least interested enough in it to surround yourself with it for a number of years.
Jeff Long: Sure.
James Shramko: That’s why I feel contrary to a niche research and you decide you want to do and info product, a model train operators or gold fish earners, I mean that’s very commercial maybe but it’s not really that exciting or interesting.
Jeff Long: Sure.
James Shramko: To think about, so…
Jeff Long: I don’t know gold fish earners. That’s pretty out there.
James Shramko: Look I mean no offence to gold fish earners but like it doesn’t float my boat.
Jeff Long: Sure.
James Shramko: I want to make sure that I’m able to face this subject and have discussions on that topic for some time to come so I’ve built businesses around areas that I have a natural leaning towards. So this board is on that sort of passion versus commercial thing. And sometimes I will do things that are commercially good but might not be amazing for my level of interest. But I pretty much weighted those out over the last few years because I have the choice now.
Jeff Long: Yeah, now one of the ways I was first connected to you through your blog and your podcast, which I’ve been following religiously is you talked about an online, a course outline template, you know this grid system. You might want to walk through that a little bit, explaining what that course outline template is.
James Shramko: Yeah it’s called “Format” and some smart lady invented it years ago and I first discovered it when I went to a presenter’s course and the short version is that it covers different modalities and it sort of open up topics to put it into an easy digestible and actionable method. The format is…why, what, how, what if and then I’d added action steps. So if we were to use the example of the format, we could go through the framework, why. Why do you have a format? Because it gives you a really easy framework to use every single time you create a piece of training material. What is it? It’s just a simple step that you fill out on a piece of paper or on a whiteboard before you start training. How do you do it? Once you’ve drafted out your ideas then you can take all the good ideas, cross off everything bad then you’re pretty much ready to roll. And the what if, is to cover off objections. What if you don’t like frameworks or you’re worried about it being formulate or you don’t understand how it works. Well just try it and see how you go and ask questions if you don’t understand it. I know people sometimes ask questions on my blog where I post at least 3 different versions of this on my blog. The reason we keep publishing it is it’s by far one of the most popular subject on my entire blog at superfastbusiness.com. And then the action step is to post question. What someone should do as a result of going through that training module. So having this framework means that I’m able to interview an expert or deliver a training subject on any topic with about a minutes worth of preparation. It’s just so easy to follow. It’s actually step by step system and it really does cover the subject in good detail.
Jeff Long: It’s interesting as I’ve been reading that and studying that and thinking about that template or that format I see you use it in your podcast, in your blogs and so it’s really cool to almost learn from the master doing it. You’re not just saying, “hey you should do this everybody”, but you’re doing that in a lot of your materials which is really cool to see you do it in different formats.
James Shramko: It really helps when you interview someone who you’re not that familiar with. You can go through that format, it doesn’t seem like you’re punching through a template. I may not use the actually word, why or what or how or what if, you know spell it out. But I’m usually always going through that framework.
Jeff Long: That’s good. That’s really good, good advice. So what are some of the mistake you’ve made with your online courses, the products you’ve made, I’m sure you made a couple right. You’re not infallible there?
James Shramko: I don’t make too many mistakes. I just think it’s easier to learn from other people than to make the mistake firsthand. I’m not a big fan of that fail fast or fail big school of thought I’m much more strategic than that. I think the main mistake that I’ve made and other people make is the way they package their products. Generally it’s tempting to start off with one information product, that’s a onetime product. And I just told you that’s exactly how I started but I quickly moved into a membership scenario where the only way to buy my products now is to join subscription membership. And I do that because it’s better for the consumer. Instead of being able to have a low investment in themselves, say $39, download a PDF and some videos and some mp3s and maybe or maybe not ever look at it again. Now they join a gated community where they pay a monthly subscription fee or membership fee. They can now access all of my information so they can get the information they need right now because it’s all in their like a super market and they can have support, they can ask questions. And because it’s somewhere where they go they can also network with other people who are also at the same pace or even a little further down the track than them. So they get the advantage of having a peer group pulling them through and some action and accountability, so for that reason whenever I record my live events and whenever I put out a new monthly training it all gets put into the membership and that’s the only way that people can buy my products now.
Jeff Long: That’s great. When did you get to that point where you said, “you know what I think I could be more affective if I bundle it all together”. Was that a process or is that a fast thing that you just decided to do one day.
James Shramko: It was about three years ago and I was mapping my business up on a whiteboard which I do every 12 weeks and I recommend everyone listening does this. And I was drawing up my products and one of my products was a membership forum and I drew this big circle of my products and then outside the circle was joint ventures and this membership was a joint venture so it was half in the circle and half out of the circle; then I realized that all of my products in the circle were feeding this membership and it was literally leaking my revenue to a 50% share partner who was an amazing character, honest, impeccable person however was not contributing to the marketing or the delivery or fulfillment of the membership to the same extent that I was. So I was probably answering 75% of the questions but I was adding 99.9% of the members through my own information products. So I recognized that this is a mistake so I repackaged it, I pushed the whole thing into the circle and I put all of my products into this one thing so I was able to package it better for my customers. So instead of buying separate things now, my customers could buy one thing and get everything and it’s much easier to understand the offer, it’s much easier for me to fulfill and to deliver. It’s creates a lot of power and leverage of the networking between the customers and also when I looked at my sales and if you’re familiar with the AD20 principle; what I realized is that basically the bottom 20% of my products were driving about 1% of my sales because I realized, to my horror that I was giving people an easy option that doesn’t really serve them well. They could just pay $39.00 or $29.00 and they thought they were getting a bargain but they were ripping themselves off because they’re not paying me the money, they’re investing in themselves and I was only letting buy a very small snack and they were not utilizing it as well and I was astounded at how many people don’t make it through a multi-video training sequence in a single product format so I recon if you were to cast your survey around your own members, I think you’d find that the people who deliver one time information products, if they look at their analytics, very few customers ever make it through to the end of the product. And then of course you’re in this constant feast and famine mode, you have to do a launch and you have to drive sales and you got to set out the next product and you got to put up another sales page and you have to drive affiliates and you’ve got to have JV contests and you’ve got to bang the drum and own the market. Instead, I’ve just got this one omnipresent information portal that people can join and stay a member of for life. So the average customer value is astronomical.

Jeff Long: Yeah you brought up some really good points that I want to hit at. The first one is; you mentioned the analogy of a snack and a meal. You know a lot of times consumers, students or whoever, they are going for that cheap hey I just want to learn this, and they think that the smaller, cheaper product will help them but they don’t even make it through the course and so like you said, they’re shooting themselves in the foot, they’re doing themselves the service by in a way being cheap but they’re not helping themselves in the long run so I like your attitude on that.

James Shramko: And on the flip side of that you get these ridiculous $2000 and $3000 courses that have thud factor and only a fool measures information products by the pound but marketers have made people think this is how I should measure an information product by how big the box is and how much it thuds down on my desk; it is not consumable. I’ve got a hard drive here on one of my shelves that is stuffed full of gigabytes of information products. I’ve got someone’s entire back catalog but I’m scared to plug it into my computer because I just can’t commit the time that’s going to be involved to digest that; it’s really like eating an elephant but when you give people a subscription membership, you think of it more like a Netflix where you can just go in and consume what you need right now. You can go and watch a TV series on Netflix and go through episodes and they queue up for you and when you finish that you go on to the next one and you’ve said, you know what, I’m happy to pay this monthly subscription ongoing as long as I feel I’m getting value and support. The information product can’t support people but a subscription membership with a networking factor really can support people and it helps people choose what to consume and it’s always available for them when they’re ready.

Jeff Long: Yeah, that’s good. And I love that you have that community aspect built into your membership because as you know that’s some of the power there is multiple minds getting together to sharpen each other. Do you have any success stories on some of your students that have gone through your membership site and plugged in or helped other people? I’ve got tons of them. A lot of people would know some of them. My first millionaire student was James Dyson; we pretty much invented optimize press and then I’ve help other people from Clay Collins through to Kevin Rogers, a copywriter. His forum that we set up as an information product has just turned one and he’s absolutely flying. But we also help people in the fitness market. One of my students just made $100,000 in a month, Chris Dufey in the fitness niche. So this works for different markets; in fact one of my best to students right now is launching an information membership, Andre Chaperon and he’s been doing that under my guidance each week for the last year or more and he was a one-time product I was doing affiliate promotions each month and he also believes.., you know I’ve convinced him that it’s better for members to be a part of a community where they’re accountable and they can get support. So those are some names that you would be familiar with and maybe some names you weren’t.

Jeff Long: Yeah, I’m a big fan of optimize press by the way. I’ve used it several times, very good theme, good system there. You mentioned a while ago a little bit about joint ventures and I know we could do a whole podcast interview or episode on the topic of joint ventures but what are some tips that you would offer the listener if they’re thinking about doing JVs or if they’re getting asked to be a part of the JV?

James Shramko: So, I don’t do many JVs anymore with the exception of my podcasts. They have genuine joint ventures where I will pair up with a co-host and we produce something together as a marketing tool but I don’t do financial backend joint ventures often because I don’t need to. Often you’ll need to do a joint venture in the beginning if you’re missing something. If you can’t drive traffic, it makes sense to find someone who’s got your customers and do a joint venture with them. So joint ventures can be very powerful. One of the reasons not to do a joint venture is if you’re being a complete wuss bag and you are petrified of doing something on your own and you secretly wish that your business partner will do everything for you and you can piggyback them and hang on to their coattails; that is a very common reason for people to joint venture because of their just scared and they can’t man up and step up and be courageous enough to do it on their own. So if you can buy traffic or if you can get out of having to do a joint venture I much prefer 100% ownership so be very careful when you joint venture that you are not giving up too much of the pie, make sure that it’s a very, very clear agreement, upfront, so that it’s clear on how the partnership will and. You need to know how will end before you started. Be very wary of doing joint ventures with friends. It’s better to have a business contact who becomes a friend than a friend who becomes a business contact. Especially, be accountable to yourself. If you know you’re doing a joint venture because you’re just being a scaredy-cat, that’s a really terrible idea to do a joint venture. It’s not going to work out.

Jeff Long: You just packed a lot there, that’s fantastic. I was taking a little bit of notes and I’ll have to go back and listen to that part because it is easy to think that a joint venture will just easily bring success you know, two mines are better than one and all the clichés that get thrown out there.

James Shramko: But you know, at the very core it means that you’re half the profit. Just to put it in perspective, I paid about $400,000 in partner tax for my joint venture and when I turned on that joint venture.., and I try to do it in a very amicable way, offered to buyout, offered to sell out, offered to adjust the split but none of those were met with any sort of response so in the end I just had to start my own thing. But it was literally worth $15,000 per month back into my pocket for getting the structure correct and if I’m honest about why I started the joint venture it really is because I wasn’t being responsible enough to set up the technology that was required to get it started so I wouldn’t of had it without the joint venture but it was pretty expensive in hindsight. So if you can learn anything from my for eye it’s, be super careful about what the deal is and how it’s supposed to work and in fairness when we started, it was supposed to be 50% each driving traffic and 50% each fulfilling on the product and it just didn’t work out that way and a lot of partnerships don’t because it’s so rare that two people will move through life at the same pace. Someone might have a change in relationship, someone might move country, someone might have a different business division that’s taking off and I think that’s what happened in my case. My partner had different translation businesses all sort of exploding and foreign translation markets and had great businesses on the side but it meant that our business was sort of neglected. So the chance of people moving at the same pace are slim and that’s why you need to know how it ends before you start it.

Jeff Long: Yeah, that’s so good. I had a business partner for several years, great guy, I trusted him but like you said we were just moving at different paces, kind of in different directions at the time and we did decide to part ways and that was a great decision. I still bring them on, I hire him for some projects and that definitely has well worked that way.

James Shramko: I have partnerships like that where we did things together and then I purchased his halfback and then I still have a joint venture with him where he supply services in lieu of you is for you to use a self, I guess we call it a barter or trade, contra deal where he does things for me and I do things for him and that’s great. So you can have really successful joint ventures but you need to be very clear why are you doing it. I think that most people fall over with the motivation. Why they’re doing it is often the wrong reason and then of course everyone’s Pollyanna and optimistic when they go into a joint venture, it’s really easy to talk about a joint venture when there’s no money coming in but once you’ve got several hundred thousand dollars coming through the front door, it changes people.

Jeff Long: That’s so good, that’s such a good advice. So to the listener, you are thinking of joint ventures or if you’re stepping towards that rewind this episode, listen to that; such good advice James. What are some tools that you use when you’re creating some of your courses and your products?

James Shramko: Mostly just a pen and paper were whiteboard, I’m not super fancy. Also my team, I might ask them to do stuff and then I’ll just curate it or compile it. So for example, I’m going to be speaking at an event in Colorado soon and I just briefed my team of what I would like and they’ve gone and created 20 or 30 illustrations to use the slides based around a podcast that we’ve already done before and I’ll basically just order them and put some notes in the presenters notes and the presentation will be all good to go. And I’ll be able to record that with screen flow and make it an information product for my customers.

Jeff Long: And how do you coordinate with your team? Is it email, is that a certain system?

James Shramko: Slack, we all use Slack. You don’t need to use email anymore or Skype.

Jeff Long: Last question here is; with some of your courses, I know that you’re a big fan of podcasts, you blog, you do a lot of video stuff so with the course or with a product how do you determine what medium to use, if it’s audio or video or both or text-only? What are some of the guidelines that you follow and think you through that process?

James Shramko: Well I always think about the customer and is going to help them if they have multiple modalities available to them because people learn differently. Some people like to read.., I’ve got one customer who will only read, he will not listen to audio, you will not watch videos, he’s a pastor really but he’s also a gift because we transcribe everything that I do. Every single monthly webinar that I run we transcribe in full most of my podcasts. Certainly everything one superfastbusiness.com gets transcribed. So we provide PDFs, we provide the video and the audio so when it comes to information products I like to me the video version because it’s easier to make keynotes, it’s really easy to record a keynote with screen flow and once I export that into a video and loads up to whistier which is our video player and we embed it into our forum my people come along and they’ll strip out the audio and they’ll transcribe every word of it into a PDF and it will be available for customers in whatever modality they like to learn. See, I preferred to read or listen than watch videos for some reason. When it comes to creating content for my podcasts I really like the audio medium; it’s significantly easier to just talk to a microphone, don’t have to do here in makeup and lighting and camera, it’s really just the easiest possible modality. So the thing that’s important to me is working in the medium that’s easy for me to create content. In fact, recently I just created a six part business case study series with a co-host and it took us about 2 1/2 hours in total to create that so it’s a very effective medium for creating good quality content, it’s got a huge distribution platform with platforms like iTunes and stitcher and your own website and it’s working for you 24/7. These things get downloaded like 2000 times a day which is phenomenal when you think about how much it would cost to buy ads on Google or Facebook and you know, you could just keep doing that so I like the audio medium and really helps people hear your tonality and decide if they trust you and if you know what you’re talking about or not so it’s a very personal medium as well.

Jeff Long: That’s fantastic. I have a background in video; having this podcast as well as other audio formats, a lot of times there such a benefit to that you know, you’re in people’s ears with the podcast with audio and it’s almost this intimate thing where people feel this connection to you.

James Shramko: Plus you can listen to a podcast in an airport or on a plane for jogging or doing things to where you can’t necessarily watch a video so think of it as a little bit more portable and I noticed that when I put a video and audio there’ll be twice as many audio downloads as they are video views. And the other thing is I don’t type, I literally hardly type so I’m not sitting there blogging off like some wannabe writer you know, I just talked and my team transcribes, that’s how it works for us.

Jeff Long: Well James, I could ask you questions all day but I want to respect your time, I know you’ve got a lot going on including surfing; you were telling me a little bit about that. So James, besides your website which is superfastbusiness.com, where can people find you through social media or other outlets?

James Shramko: I’ve got a Facebook page and I also do Twitter but that’s about it. I don’t care much for LinkedIn or Pinterest or Instagram, I want to keep it simple actually, I’m a pretty simple guy. Most of the time I spend in my own community answering people’s questions, that’s the thing I like to do the most.

Jeff Long: Well James, thanks so much for being on the show giving so much good advice on these online courses, membership sites, joint ventures. I’m going to go back and listen to this again and I hope the listener does as well so James Shramko thanks so much for being on the show.

James Shramko: Thanks for having me.

Jeff Long: Well there you go. That was the interview with James Shramko. I know personally, I’m going to go back and listen to that episode again because there were so many good things he pulled out. Just the wisdom that he had joint ventures as well as the membership sites so if you’re considering some of these things whether it is a joint venture or a membership site, definitely rewind, is that what you do with the podcast these days? Rewind, go backwards, whatever it’s called to those parts and relisten to those. Hey they could do one thing for me, share this podcast out on your social media channels whether it’s Twitter, Facebook you name it. I would be honored if you were to share this episode out. I think it was a great episode, it helped a lot of people and so I want to harness the power of you on a listener base to share this out so if you’re listening to the podcast on your phone just did that share button and send it out to your social media channels. If you’re listening to it online go ahead, copy that URL, post in Facebook, post in Twitter etc. I would be honored for you to post that out and include me on it if you don’t mind. If you’re on Twitter my Twitter name is @Jeff_long and that will help me see you treated that out. So if you’re listening to this in time I will be at FinCon which is September 17-20 so if you’re at FinCon, if you’re going to FinCon definitely let me know if you’re there will have to connect or if you’re listening to this after FinCon and maybe you didn’t go definitely ping me, let me know that you were there and will chat about the conference. If you’re not going definitely check it out next year, it’s something that I’ve heard is a really good conference and so that’s why I’m going this year. Well hey, keep coming back to the show is my goal that this podcast helps of you to teach many to impact millions so keep coming back to the online course coach podcast.

REFERENCE : RECEH

The post Online Courses, Joint Ventures and Membership sites with James Schramko appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I had the privilege of talking with Michael Kitces of Kitces.com and Nerds Eye View in preparation for us both attending FinCon (“a conference where money and media meet”). This interview will give you an inside look into his business and services and show you the steps he took to become an authority in the personal finance market. The best thing about this podcast is that you don’t have to be in the financial industry or go to FinCon to get a lot of good insights from this interview. In fact, Michael shares how to duplicate his success in  your own industry. Some of the tips and insights that Michael gives have me thinking of how I can apply similar techniques in my own business, as well as the clients that we serve by creating their online course content and membership sites. There is a lot to learn in this interview, so whether or not you’re in the financial services industry, you can take a lot from this interview and apply it to your membership site, CE courses for credits, and online courses.

Get the free bonus audio interview where Michael shares his top membership website resources and productivity tools.

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Podcast Questions with Michael Kitces

1. Give us a background of what your business does.
2. I see the word Educator all over your website, while most people would classify themselves by their degrees or other accelerates, it looks like education in one of your priorities. Do you consider yourself primarily as an educator?
3. Why did you start offering Continuing Education services on your website?
4. How are you uniquely qualified to help accelerate the growth of people’s own financial planning knowledge?
5. How has this business model positioned you as an industry leader?
6. What are some ways someone in the financial industry can help more people and increase their revenue by creating online courses?
7. Bonus: What are some of the technologies used on your website to developer the members only content? (click below to download the bonus audio interview)
8. Bonus: what are the productivity tools you use in your business?(click below to download the bonus audio interview)
9. Where can people learn more about you?

Get the free bonus audio interview where Michael shares his top membership website resources and productivity tools.

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

My Notes During the Podcast with Michael Kitces:

• Michael has a B2C and a B2B business
• He considers himself an educator
• The financial industry is 5-10 years behind with technology (there could be some opportunities here)
• He went through a process of being able to offer Continuing Education credits
• The CE provider has to give a quiz or test to show the student went through the content and passed the quiz
• His business is growing 5%-10% per month since he gives his content away for free, but they have to pay for the CE quiz and credits
• He was a speaker, then had a newsletter service, then added blogs, and then added Continuing Education services, and not he’s adding more services and businesses to serve his audience.
• If you want to create an online course in the financial services industry, be more focussed and niche, not broad and general. There are too many people doing generic courses.
• He offers the content for free but charges for the CE quizzes
• He loves Evernote to plan, blog and organize his life and business
• Don’t make your business model, the content portion. Make the monetization strategy the implementation and strategy portion
• Get the free bonus audio and hear Michael answers to: “What are some of the technologies used on your website to developer the members only content” and “What are the productivity tools you use in your business?”
• Another great interview on the topic of membership sites: http://www.superfastbusiness.com/business/how-to-jumpstart-your-membership-forum/

Michael Kitces’ Bio:

Michael E. Kitces, MSFS, MTAX, CFP®, CLU, ChFC, RHU, REBC, CASL, is a partner and the Director of Research for Pinnacle Advisory Group, a private wealth management firm located in Columbia, Maryland that oversees approximately $1.3 billion of client assets. In addition, he is a co-founder of the XY Planning Network, the practitioner editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, and the publisher of the e-newsletter The Kitces Report and the popular financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View through his website www.Kitces.com, dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning.

Beyond his website, Michael is an active writer and editor across the industry and has been featured in publications including Financial Planning, the Journal of Financial Planning, Journal of Retirement Planning, Practical Tax Strategies, and Leimberg Information Services, as well as The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNBC PowerLunch, NBC Nightly News, and more. In addition, Michael has co-authored numerous books, including “The Annuity Advisor” with John Olsen (now in 3rd edition), the first balanced and objective book on annuities written for attorneys, accountants, and financial planners, and “Tools & Techniques of Retirement Income Planning” with Steve Leimberg and others.

Michael is one of the 2010 recipients of the Financial Planning Association’s “Heart of Financial Planning” awards for his dedication to advancing the financial planning profession. In addition, he has variously been recognized as financial planning’s “Deep Thinker,” a “Legacy Builder,” an “Influencer,” a “Mover & Shaker,” part of the “Power 20,” and a “Rising Star in Wealth Management” by industry publications. These awards were presented to honor Michael’s active work in the financial planning community, which currently includes serving as a member of the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Financial Planning, national chair of the Financial Planning Section for the Society of Financial Services Professionals, and numerous other boards and committees for the Financial Planning Association and the Society of Financial Services Professionals at the local and National levels. Michael is also a co-founder of NexGen, a community of the next generation of financial planners that aims to ensure the transference of wisdom, tradition, and integrity, from the pioneers of financial planning to the next generation of the profession.

Transcript:

Jeff: In this episode, I talk to Michael Kitcess about his continuing education membership site, and the innovative business model that he uses.

[Intro]

Jeff: Welcome back to another episode of the Online Course Coach podcast. And in preparation for FinCon, that I’ll be attending this week—and FinCon is a financial conference for people in the financial services industry that might want to use blogging, media, social media, etcetera—I had the really cool opportunity to talk with Michael Kitcess. Now, he is doing some really innovative things, and he’s actually speaking at the conference, so I wanted to sit down with him and chat about his business, sis continuing education membership site, and he uses a really innovative business world that, to be honest, has kind of rocked my world or changed the paradigm that I think about membership sites. And so I’m kinda thinking through some of those things that he talked about.

Now, if you’re listening to this before FinCon—if you attended FinCon, that’s fantastic. And if you didn’t attended FinCon, that’s also fine. This interview isn’t specific only to people in the financial services industry, and it’s not specific to people that attended FinCon. So if you’re thinking “I’m not in this industry. I didn’t attend the conference,” this episode is fantastic.

And I’m not just saying that. I told Michael, this was a really good interview because he had some really good insights. And, like I said, things that I’m still thinking through how I want to—or how I might be able to apply his business model to my own clients and their courses, as well as to some things that I have as well.  So I wanted to get an authority in the financial market who is doing some things with teaching online with his membership site, and his continuing education services.

But before we get into that, I want to answer a listener question. So Don Gonzales actually asked this question a while ago—and I actually emailed him back—but I wanted to bring this up on the show. Don said, “I’ve been listening to your podcast and find it extremely helpful.” Thanks, Don. He continues by saying: “I am working on starting an eLearning portion of the website for training those who want to learn leather craft. I’m currently selling digital downloads of patterns for  artwork and it’s going really well, but I’m looking for advice if I should go the membership route, or offer the classes individually for purchase. I’m also wanting to offer a lot of free content through our blog. Thanks in advance for the advice.”

And, Don, you’re gonna love this episode, because this is exactly what Michael talks about. But let me go through some of my insights and recommendations, because Michael talks primarily about the membership side. We don’t really get into the online courses. So let’s talk about the differences and why you might want to go with one verses the other.

So some pros verses cons. Pros of online courses is you can create single courses based on a single topic, or it could be a 101 course, beginner course, advance course, or anything else that would fit within just one single course. So since you’re doing something like leather craft—and, to be honest, Don, I don’t have much experience with—maybe there’s a certain component that would be its own course and you could sell that.

Another reason you might want to lean towards an online course is you don’t need as much interaction with your customers. And this could be a good or bad thing. Some people are introverts, or they don’t want to do the customer service or they just want to sell the course and let the students go through it. And this could require less of your time over the long run by creating single online courses. But it might be less money, too, so you have to kind of weigh those.

Now let’s talk about the membership site side. These allow you to create reoccurring revenue that you can count on. So you can know every single month that you’re gonna make X amount of dollars. And that is good—for your bottom line, for your planning, etcetera.

One of the downsides of that is you have to create content on an ongoing basis. So every month, you have to have something to give. Maybe it’s an article, maybe it’s a video, maybe it’s a mini course or a part of a course within your membership site. It could be a webinar, it could be anything that is ongoing. And then generally in a membership site, the ones that I have seen that just take off and just explode with members and interaction and value are the ones that have forums or a private Facebook group. Just some way the members can add content and interact.

And, to be honest, sometimes those are the best ones, because it’s not dependent on the organizer—like you. A lot of the students, or the members, interact with each other, they help each other. I’m involved in several paid membership sites, or membership groups, and that’s, to be honest, the value of the membership sites. We’re all helping each other succeed. And yes, the organizer, the main person is in there adding value and content, but if it weren’t for the community, each one of those groups would probably die pretty quickly.

So there’s no right or wrong answer here, Don, but creating a single course might be the best route to start, if you’re trying to figure out which one and maybe the membership site, creating content, is a little overwhelming. Just start with a single online course and then ask your students what else would help them to see if creating ongoing content would really help them. So maybe you could ask what they’re really struggling with and create a course on that. Ask what they need help with. A lot of times it’s easier to ask the negative—“Hey, what’s your biggest struggle with your leather craft?” and they’ll tell you that, verses “Hey, what do you want to learn?” They might not know what they want to learn, or they might not have the best idea.

So think of a pain point. What’s the thing they struggle with most? What’s one of their most frustrating aspects, and go from there.

So, Don, I hope that is a good insight to your question, as well as those of you that also have a similar question. Maybe you’re thinking “I’m leaning towards online courses, but what about this membership thing?” or vice versa. That will be a great way to think about the pros and cons of both.

Now, before we get into the interview, I want to pull out some things that I learned or that I think are compelling about this interview that I want you do listen to or focus on. So, in this interview with Michael, it’s really interesting that he started with his expertise, and he built businesses around what his customers were requesting. And you’d be pretty amazed at the things he was able to build and the businesses he’s able to add on to that. It’s pretty impressive.

And he gives away almost all of his content! And he talks about that, and that is one of the things that was surprising in how he does that. And he’ll explain that in depth.

He has an interesting business model that really flips traditional membership sites on its head. And he’ll go more in depth with that. So I want you to focus on that if you’re thinking of a membership site, or even if you’re just considering it or want to know the pros and cons. He has some really good insights.

Michael and I had a great interview, and it was actually really long. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to put everything into the podcast. I wanted to keep it within a certain time, but I am offering a free bonus download of two of his questions. So I asked Michael: What are some of the technologies used on your website to develop the members only content? He walks through what he uses—some of them, maybe you’ve heard of and researched. Some of them, maybe you haven’t and maybe haven’t even thought of how to use this in a membership site. The other bonus one is what are the productivity tools you use in your business? And I love asking this question because the people we get on the show are high achievers, they’re doing a lot of great things, and it’s interesting to hear what their productivity tools are.

So if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/michaelk—that’s the letter K—you can get access to this bonus audio. Again, that’s onlinecoursecoach.com/michaelk and you can download that bonus audio for free.

Alright, well, let’s get into the interview. And today I have Michael Kitces on, and he is a partner and director of research for Pinnacle advisory group, a private wealth management firm located in Columbia, Maryland. It oversees approximately 1.3 billion dollars of client assets. In addition, he’s the co-founder of the XY Planning Network, the practitioner editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, and the publisher of the e-newsletter, The Kitces Report, and the popular financial planning industry blog, Nerd’s Eye View, through his website kitces.com. That’s K-I-T-C-E-S-dot-com.

And he’s dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning. In 2010, Michael was recognized with one of the FPA’s Heart of Financial Planning awards for his dedication in the work advancing the profession.

So, Michael, thanks so much for being on the Online Course Coach podcast!

Michael: Thanks, Jeff. Good to be here!

Jeff: So, Michael, give us a background of what your business does.

Michael: So I really actually have kind of two different channels of businesses. One, I actually work as a financial advisor. I’m a partner in an advisory firm. We do financial planning, investment management, wealth management services for folks. And then the other half of my business world—you might call that a B2C business, we go directly to consumers. I also have what effectively is a B2B business, or a couple of them that are kid of blended together, that work with other advisors. So I started out as an advisor in my industry working with consumers, and then over the past several years, I built a series of businesses working with other advisors, my peers, actually seeing that, ironically, there’s a lot more competition amongst all of us reaching consumers and there’s remarkably little competition serving us.

The actual market of B2B services in serving financial advisors is not actually that competitive. And so I built a couple of my businesses in that space, including one around education and course content.

Jeff: I see the word “educator” all over your website. And while most people would classify themselves by their degrees or other accolades or description of their business, it looks like education is one of your priorities. So do you consider yourself primarily an educator?

Michael: I do. I think that’s really how my personal path has evolved. I suppose to some extent, I lived that role even in doing financial advising for consumers for individuals. A lot of what we do is educational. But I happen to be one of those folks who likes reading tax code for fun on a Friday night, I’m a little bit of a nerd, so I—as I was getting going with my career, I went out, I got a bunch of professional designations, two Masters degrees. I really immersed myself into the education world for sort of my own fulfillment very early on in my career, and then found a little bit later that I actually kinda liked talking about this stuff. So I started doing a little bit of speaking at industry events—educational events in the industry, live events.

And I did some of those, and I did more, and I did a little more, and I got really good feedback and people were really interested. And so that slowly grew into—actually kind of morphed over time. It started out as just doing live events. Then I decided to launch a premium newsletter service, or kind of a premium content service, just doing very advance technical educational content for a small subset of people in my industry that just really like ready hardcore, gory sorts of contents. Like my niche within my niche.

And that grew relatively well, and then I started doing more writing. Not only in my premium content, which was a newsletter service I called the Kitces Report, but I started blogging in my industry as well. And, while obviously blogging’s been out there in a lot of industries, financial services lags five to ten years behind the rest of the world at pretty much everything related to technology. So when I launched a blog in my industry in 2010, I was like thirteen years late to the blogging movement relative to the general world, but I was an ultra-early adopter in our industry getting started with blogging.

And so as blogging has become more accepted in our industry, suddenly I found myself with this very large blog with all this traffic and people coming in, reading both free content that I had outside of the paywall, the member wall section, which was simply the stuff I was blogging about, and then this premium content service that I had built inside the wall. And the lightbulb moment that I had for myself—I sort of operate with two philosophies.

One, I’m just one of those people that believes information wants to be free and should be free. I actually like—as someone that’s kind of wired to be an educator, I actually hated the fact that some of the content I spent the most time and energy working on was the stuff that was hidden behind the wall that very few people could see. Because I’m like “This is my best stuff! This is the stuff that helps the most people! I want it outside the wall, not inside the wall!” Except I need a business model, I need to get paid.

Kind of the lightbulb moment I had a couple years ago was to say “Look, as long as I’m working in a B2B context”—my readers really come to me for two reasons. One is they just want the raw education, the want to learn. There’s—I figure, about 10-15% of the advisor audience are hardcore enough to like the kind of stuff that I produce. There are a couple hundred tohsuand advisors, so that’s more than enough of a market place, even if I can get 10% of them.

But I realized the second reason they actually come to me is, not only is education kind of an aspirational thing in our industry, it’s a required thing too, as with many professional services industries, we have continuing education requirements for people who have opted into voluntary advanced designations in our field. Things like the Certified Financial Planner or CFP designation. So they actually have a requirement every year, kind of like attorneys and CPAs and doctors that they have to get a certain level of continuing education credits every year. And that, to me, kind of opened up some new business model opportunities and paths.

Jeff: That’s great. And so how did you pursue going from what you were doing to offering CE credits? Was it a big ordeal? Or was it easier than you thought?

Michael: I think, ultimately, the transition was not very difficult. The hard thing about creating content for getting CE credit is the creating the content part. And like, that I had down. I know how to make content, I’m kind of a content machine. I put lots of stuff out there. So the process of getting it qualified for CE credit, frankly, was not terribly difficult. For our industry, you have to register as a CE sponsor, so—and it’s like a couple hundred dollar a year nominal fee. You’ve got to register each course for units. You go through an even more nominal fee of twenty-five to fifty bucks.

And then you just have to make some structure to the course and how you’re submitting it. So you need to create an outline, you need to have a formal description of what the learning objectives are going to be, you need to be able to document what the educational process is going to be—which, frankly, is not terribly difficult as well. You kind of do it once, the course is built, it’s out there, and you don’t have to come back and spend a lot of time on it again. And, frankly, I ultimate found that that’s even something that I can delegate, that I can outsource. So I have a research assistant in our industry. He’s in a Master’s program in one of the financial education programs. He wants to be an educator someday already, so I said “Fantastic! How would you like to write outline and learning objective summaries?” and he’s all excited for it. I don’t enjoy that part at all. So win-win for everybody.

And then the one other piece that you need to do for actually turning course content into something that is eligible for CE credit, around which my business model hinges, is you have to, in some way, test that people have actually read the material. Because otherwise, people could kind of skirt their continuing education requirement. “Oh, yeah, yeah. I read things on the internet! I spent time!” doesn’t really cut it. So the way it’s done in our industry—and really, I found, in almost all industries out there—is if you want to get credit for online self-study, self-directed educational material, the provider has to create some kind of test, some kind of quiz to determine that you actually comprehended and assimilated some of the content, and you have to take the quiz and get a reasonable grade on the quiz, and that’s what actually confirms you have completed the hour of content.

So, on the one end, I have to make a quiz—which was, frankly, not terribly difficult. My grad student actually does that. And what it allows from the business end, though, which was kind of the big deal for me, is you have to take the quiz. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts. You can read all you want and educate yourself all you want. The mechanism for the industry is if you want the credit, you have to take the quiz and pass it. And what that means is it allowed me to start rearranging how I actually deliver content out there. Because it allows me to do something that’s kind of unique in the CE course space that I know is certainly more difficult than other course spaces—it means I can actually give virtually all my content away for free, and nobody can abuse it because they still can’t get the credit without getting in the members section, getting behind the paywall.

So in a traditional world, I know for most of us that do course content, you maybe have some teasers outside the wall, but you have to put all the good stuff inside, then then you have to put the payment to get inside the wall—like that’s the model. “Hey, you’ve seen a little of my stuff. Come check out my super awesome stuff and pay me this much money to get access to this course content,” and that’s kind of the marketing process.

I get to approach it form a completely different end. I go out there and I say “Here, have basically all my content for free!” Read it because you think it’s helpful. Maybe you’ll just think it’s helpful and move on, more power to you. Maybe you’ll read it, you’ll think it’s helpful, you’ll go ‘Geez, I already spent the time reading this, it’d be nice if I could get CE credit as well.’” In which case, I say “Oh, we’d love to have you CE credit! That’ll be a couple of dollars to access the quiz.”

And so now, my content gets shared. My content goes—I was gonna say viral. Viral within our industry, which is not really that viral in the grand scheme of things. It gets to go viral within our industry. And so that actually becomes like a self-perpetuating marketing machine. So now I’ve got a mailing list of people that I can do business in the future with, that’s growing by 5-10% a month, compounding for two years now. So I’ve gone form like a list of two hundred people to a list of almost twelve thousand now. Because they’re sharing the content with each other. They’re forwarding it to each other saying “Hey, check out this article Kitces did. It’s really interesting.” All the content’s getting out there, it’s building a great brand, and I don’t undermine my own business model, because if they want the CE credit, they still have to pay to get into the member’s section, because that’s where the quiz is.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And as you’re talking about that—my company helps build courses for different CE providers and whatnot. And so, to the listener, if you’re thinking of continuing education or a similar model, think if this same model that Michael does could apply to your industry. I think that’s fascinating, Michael, that you—now, did you stumble across that model, where you’re pretty much giving everything away for free, and if they want to take the quiz to get the credits, then they can pay you? Or did you model that after somebody else?

Michael: No, I—this was kind of my own innovation from scratch. I really haven’t seen if anywhere at all. Everyone else I’ve seen gets the—I call it the “traditional model,” which, frankly, I was doing as well. You give away a little content, you put the best, premium stuff behind the wall, and then you try to upsell people into the premium content. And that basically was a version of the model I was running for a period of time, and still run to a slight extent. There’s a little bit of premium content that’s still behind the member’s wall, because I had the awkward reality of transition from people who used to buy me for premium content morphing into a “I’ll give you the premium content for free, but I want you to pay for the CE credit.”

And so, I didn’t want to entirely throw off an existing subscriber base all at once and be like “Hey! I’m just completely changing everything!” and let the dust settle where it may. So I’ve been doing it as sort of a gradual transition. But realistic—I’ve probably already gotten to a point where three years ago, 90% of the content I produce was inside the paywall, and now probably 75/80% of it is outside. So it’s mostly transitioned. I’m gonna continue transitioning it over the next twelve to eighteen months. I expect that probably sometime around 2017, that transition will be complete. And I’m just monitoring my business metrics as I go. How many people are buying? How many people are renewing? Are they actually using the CE credits as I’m expecting? Are they happy?

I survey my readers every six months just to make sure they’re still happy with the service. And so, I’m trying to be sensitive to it just to make sure I don’t take what was actually a business model that was working fine—premium content getting paid, it just irked me personally because of my weird philosophy that all the information should be out there—and make sure I’m not trashing my business model in the process.

But what I’m really finding as it goes is I’m not trashing my business model, I’m growing my business. I guess, strictly speaking, if I look at the numbers, the percentage of people who pay—and this is actually, I think, an interesting insight to it. So the percentage of my readers who pay for premium content was higher than the percentage of my readers who will only buy CEs. So I actually had a subset of people that are just education junkies, because I write kind of deep, advanced stuff, and they didn’t care about the CE. Because if you’re really an education junkie, you don’t lack for CE credit in our industry. There’s plenty of laces to get it. You go to a bunch of conferences, you get it all over the place. They just wanted the content.

So by turning a lot of the content free, they’re happy, but they’re not paying me anymore. Because they don’t need to because I give them the content for free. And then the number of people that are actually in a pain point that say “Geez, I need more CE credits because my license or designation is renewing in two months. Oh crap, I gotta go out and get some of this stuff” is a smaller percentage. But the fact that I’ve been able to put most of the content outside means I now have such a monstrous content marketing machine that feeds the CE engine that the reality is, before, I had a high percentage conversion rate on a fairly slow growing business. Now I have a lower percentage conversion rate on an exponentially growing business, because the content drives its own readership. So I’m ending out with a much, much bigger business in the long run.

And I can see it already from where it was just two of three years ago, even as I technically convert into a model that will have a lower conversion rate over time. And I’m fine with that because it has such a much larger reach.

Jeff: You know, that’s interesting. I’m thinking of one of our clients who is a medical training company. So they teach nurses and things like that. So I’m trying to put your business model into theirs and wonder, does opening it up like you do create more customer service issues? I’m trying to think if we had a mass of nurses go through these courses for free—and these courses are video based learning and obviously they have the quizzes and different things. But is there that component where now you have more people going through it so there’s more customer service needs? Or is it pretty much, “Hey if they read the article and they want to take the quiz, they can do that.”

Michael: It’s really predominantly the second version. It’s you read the article, you want to take the quiz, you gotta pay to log in and get there. Now, we have things come up on the quizzes, “I took my quiz but it doesn’t seem to be getting recorded.” “How soon are you gonna report this?” “I lost my login.” All kinds of things—we still get those service issues, but those are only through people who have paid. Because everybody else that just wants to consume the content, this growing traffic—the sites doing almost a hundred thousand unique visitors now in just our little industry niche—they’re all just coming to what basically is a standard blog format. I don’t have service issues on that end. It’s “Here’s content. I hope you’ll click the social sharing button and let your friends know.” So I really have no substantive service issues for the content outside the wall.

Now, I’ll admit, I don’t do a ton of video content and some stuff that’s maybe a little bit more complex and could have  a little  more in potential customer service issues that crop up—“The video won’t load. It’s not compatible with my browser,” things like that—but, frankly, even thinking out loud, that’s probably a line I would make to say content that’s complex enough that has to be customer serviced would probably tend to be the stuff I put behind the wall because of that. But it’s kind of amazing how much potential there is to just turn huge swaths of content out there for free and just get paid on the conversion of the CE credit. And of course, the more stringent the industry’s—whatever industry you’re in—the more stringent your industry’s demands are for CE credits, the more native demands they create for it.

As I even look at it from my industry’s perspective, there was a proposal a couple years ago to raise the CE requirements for the number of hours the have to get every year. Ultimately decided not to do it, they pushed it down the road, but whenever that comes up again—and it will as some point down the road—that’s like an instant bump in the total size of my prospective market that I can work in. if everybody’s CE requirements go from fifteen to twenty hours, the demand for my product just got raised by one-third across seventy tohsuand CFP certificants by like our equivalent of regulatory fiat, which is a regulator just said or a quasi-regulator just said “All y’all have do go do more hours. Now figure it out amongst yourselves” and I’m gonna sit here as a CE sponsor saying “I think I’m up to the challenge, let’s go. Here’s my years of content library.”

And frankly, just the whole phenomenon of what happens when you just start turning out high volumes of useful, relevant content. Like the strange thing that happened for me and my business is, as much as it’s grown the CE member’s section over the last several years, that’s actually the smallest component of growth I’ve gotten out of this. One the side, it quadrupled my speaking revenue in four years, which is now even way more than even what I sell in my member’s section. A huge increase in demand for me to go out and speak at conferences and do the content live. Because now do many people read my stuff and they’re used to reading the long things. It’s just like “Now I want to see the guy do it live! Let’s get him up at our conference!”

Which—I could’ve just made a speaking business with the content marketing strategy on its own, and that’s sort of what ended up happening, except, ironically, while I was making this CE business, I had a speaking business on the side. Now the speaking business grew up and got huge because now the content marketing for the CE also became content marketing for the speaking. And it actually became such powerful content marketing, I’ve now launched two to three other niche B2B businesses in our industry because this free content machine I created to power the CE engine has become such a content marketing machine, I’m like adding businesses in as quickly as I can to do other things for my readership, because I’ve got this huge niche audience that has a demand for things.

So I’ve got a recruiting business and we’ve got a outsourced investment management business—like a whole bunch of things that are very relevant in our little industry B2B space that I can grow very quickly, because I’ve got this niche audience of a hundred thousand unique visitors coming to my site every month, originally to build this CE engine, that’s powering all of these other businesses as well.

Jeff: Man, that’s so good. And I’m glad you brought that up, because I was going to ask you for your business model has positioned you as an industry leader. It sounds like you had a great platform to begin with, but it’s really propelled you. So I’m glad you brought that up that this online membership site, yeah it’s doing well—there are things that are doing even better because of it.

Michael: Yeah, it’s been an interesting transformation. Like, I really—I came into this, I came into doing a lot of this, frankly, just looking at the kinds of business models that are out there in other industries. I’m not a fan of reinventing the wheel if you don’t have to. You can only start with something else you’ve seen that’s useful. So I started out by doing some speaking. That was kind of how I got this started. So I got paid a bit for speaking. Then I looked around at the business models for speakers, and the business models for speakers were actually pretty clear for a lot of the best speakers. The saying is you make the majority of your money at the back of the room, not the front of the room. Which basically means, yeah, you can get paid something to be up there on the podium, but the real money is when you sell your books, your courses, your CDs, all the stuff you sell at the back of the room after the session ends.

So that was part of why I’d actually launched my original Kitces Report newsletter. It’s like “Okay, if you liked my stuff on the podium and you want more nerdy educational content because that’s for you, here’s my premium content service. It’s a hundred and fifty bucks a year. We’ll send you a whole bunch of advanced newsletter. It’s unlike anything you’ll read anywhere else”—which is really true in our industry. Like I am the hardcore educator in our industry. And so that’s how I started. I’m gonna be able to have a speaking business, I did that for a little while. “Okay, I need something to sell at the back of the room, so I’ll have a premium content service.” So I put that out. And then I was like “Okay, if you want to build your visibility, you should probably blog a little and do your content marketing.” So I did a little content marketing to premium upsell the content, the newsletter service.

And so that model was working fine. That’s kind of the traditional speaker and course content sort of model. And I kind of saw this virtuous circle—the more speaking I do, the more newsletter subscribers I get. The more newsletter subscribers I get, they’ll help me get more speaking engagements because they’ll want me to come out to more of their conferences.

And what I found happened in practice—maybe this is because I’m not a very good salesperson—the newsletter was much better at getting these speaking gigs than speaking gigs were actually getting me newsletter subscribers. In part because I’m kind of wired as an educator, so I hated doing the part at the end we’re you’re supposed to pitch from the podium to get them to go to the back of the room. I was just like “Hey, thanks for coming! Hope you enjoyed the session. Peace out everyone!” Drop mic, walk off stage. No upsell, no pitch, no call to action. So I wasn’t exactly converting a lot of premium newsletter subscribers. It was doing okay, but I was clearly underselling it for anybody who would have come in and looked at my business.

So I was running sort of this traditional model and saying “This just doesn’t feel right to me because I hate putting the content behind the wall. I wish I could put more of the content out there, but I have to get paid. How can I do this?” and that was kind of my eureka moment, lightbulb illuminates above head, and I said “Wait, we all have to do CE requirements.” I got to because I’m a CFP practitioner as well. “That I can put behind the wall. If I did that, I can make everything else free on the outside and I’m still gonna be fine, because they’ve got to pay for that because they’ve got to get it because it’s required of them.” And kind of realizing that and kind of morphing that model is, I guess, what ultimately let me build this monstrous content marketing machine that now became so big that it’s morphed the entire model.

So I started out, I was a speaker. Then I was a speaker that had a newsletter service. Then I was a speaker that had a newsletter service and a blog. Then I was kind of a blogger that did speaking and newsletter. Then I was a blogger that did speaking and CE, and blog and blogger became more of the center of it and content I pushed out to the blog for free because I charged for the CE on the backend. The bigger all of it got. So literally, if I draw the circles of what’s the center of my business—so early on, I was an advisor, then I was an advisor that spoke on the side, then I did newsletter on the side, then I was a newsletter writer who did blogging on the side. And now I’m kind of a blogger that does EVERYTHING else on the side, because the reality is still when you make a big enough content business that just gives valuable stuff away and you can build a readership and following off of that, that can get so big that it just powers everything else. And that’s what’s happening.

And even as my site is nominally a B2B site like I write about, there’s some pretty nerdy tax law and retirement research and investment theory and stuff like that. It’s gotten so big now that I even drive clients back to our original advisory firm because Google is Google and people look for answers to their problems and they search online and I’m not a very well ranked authoritative site in this space. And so I get consumers that come through who basically say “Saw you article. Don’t entirely know how to apply all of it because it’s really complex, but you clearly know your stuff so I want to work with you. Clearly you’re someone who can help me.” I’m like “Yes! Our firm would love to help you, let me introduce you to our wealth managers!”

And it’s even spun off business on the side in other pieces that I hadn’t even planned or expected or have been aiming for, because that’s just the dynamic that happens when you start building strong successful content platforms. But the—it was an interesting unlock for me when I went from that challenge I think a lot of us have in the premium content core space, which is “I’ve got to give away enough stuff to build audience to have people coming in so that I can upsell them into my premium, but I don’t want to give away so much that they’ll feel like they’re getting all the stuff that they want that they don’t need to upsell the premium.” So we all have that challenging balancing act of “How much to give away because I want to give away but not too much…”

And the amazing, freeing thing when I kind of had the revelation of adjusting to this business model because of the dynamics of CE requirements, where everybody requires these quizzes, tests to affirm that you read the material. It’s so freeing because I don’t have to have this mental debate anymore about how much stuff is gonna be inside verses outside. The answer is pretty much put it all outside! The more you do, the more you win. And the only reason I’ve been slightly slow about just doing it from day one was just because I had an existing business with existing subscribers who had some expectations, and so I want to transition them a little more gently over the span of a year or two, which is what I’m in the midst of right now.

Jeff: You know, I love how you’ve created these different businesses or services, and they all feed each other, and they all serve your clientele. It’s such a great model. I’ve been feverishly taking notes and thinking about how to apply this to our clients and other possible things. Because it’s just such a great, great model. And I can tell—you’ve said it several times. You’re not a salesman. You want information to be free. Obviously, you need to be compensated for your time, for your knowledge and all that good stuff, but I just love that you have this business model.

Now, what are some ways somebody in the financial industry can help their clients or customers by creating online courses? Do you see any gaps where somebody in this industry could create an online course or a different membership site that isn’t already out there or would improve upon something that’s already out there?

Michael: Uhm—yeah. I think there are a lot of options. The one I think most people have to watch out for, and frankly avoid, which is a problem because it’s what most of them do in practice—we do not need yet another generic personal finance course like Master Your Money in Seventeen Days with My Series of 17 Videos kinds of things. It’s been done too many times. If you’re not already running that business model, you don’t already have a huge audience, it’s gonna be virtually impossible for you to pick it up and build it now because there’s too many players in the space already and they’ve already got the audience and they’ve already dominated the kinds of generic search terms that you’re gonna hunt for.

The opportunity is going niche, is going focused. Is saying “Okay, what kind of more narrow audience can I find where, A, I can build a content machine that really is relevant to them, resonates with them, and brings those people in—I don’t have to get everybody, I just have to get a target audience with a means to pay”—b, that lets you make much more targeted and relevant content. In the financial advisor space in particular, I think there’s actually a huge amount of opportunity because a lot of the best practices I know in the financial advisors space have kind of done this, have focuses in on a niche. And so, this basically just becomes your content marketing machine.

If you’re gonna specialize with doctors, you can start making a content machine for everything about how to run your medical practice, how to maximize its value, how to hire an office manager, how you should compensate them, do to run your building process better—all these different things that relate to the finances of a medical practice that are incredibly relevant from the financial advisory perspective, that are incredibly relevant for the medical perspective that not necessarily a lot of people are doing. Now you can build your course and your course becomes How to Make Your Medical Practice More Successful in 3 Months. “We’ll give you a series of fifteen courses to go through, one a week, with come steps to take in order to build this out.”

And maybe it’s out there and I’ve never seen it, but I’ve never seen a course like that. I’ve seen a zillion 17 Generic Steps to Financial Success, but not one that’s focused in on particular niches, particular industries.

And, frankly, for some of them—I don’t know if this applies for doctors but for some, they can get continuing education credit not only for their technical competency, but for basically practice management as well. Accountants, this is known, they can get some of their continued education credits for practice management/business management education. So now you can actually drill down to the point of saying “I’m going to create content that helps accounts be more financial successful. I’m gonna give them CE credit for it. I’m gonna make the content free, I’m gonna charge for the CE. They’re gonna read and shred the content because it’s helpful. They’re gonna pay me for he CE, so I make some money. And in the meantime, if my content’s really that good, they’re gonna share it with each other and at some point five years from now, I get to be the country’s leading management expert on how to run an accounting business successfully.”

Jeff: Well, Michael, I could ask you question upon question. I love your business model, I love chatting with you, I love that you are an educator who loves to serve your community, but I know your time is valuable and you’ve gotta run here. So, lastly, where can people learn more about you and your services?

Michael: So you can learn more about me—the name is Michael Kitces, the site is kitces.com. So that’s K-I-T-C-E-S-dot-com. And that is everything me and all of these various businesses that I have and build and keep adding.

Jeff: Well, that’s great. Michael, thanks so much for being on the Online Course Coach podcast.

Michael: My pleasure! Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: I had a great time talking with Michael, and I can’t wait to meet him at FinCon. It was truly a pleasure to talk with him. I had so many other questions—maybe we’ll be him back on the show, because he’s just doing such an innovative thing with his business model. And I know a lot of people say “Oh, you’ve got to give a lot of it away and then charge for some,” and sure that’s what he’s doing, but he is doing it—to me, at least, he’s doing it a lot more aggressively. He’s pretty much giving any content away, and then he’s saying “Hey, since you need these continuing education credits, you might as well get that through me.” So he’s building good will, he’s building trust, authority, and expertise. And then when they need those CE credits, he has those available.

So some of our clients do continuing ed credits and different things in different industries. And so that’s one things we’re considering. How much can we give away and how much do we sell? Now, some of our courses for the client are video based, they’re pretty intensive and they do have a lot of customer service aspects and whatnot. So just be careful, whenever giving away, make sure you can financial support the customer service needed and the other aspects, if it is a robust course.

But like Michael said, he’s more text based and then the quizzes. So it’s simpler than many, but there’s still some customer service that he has to deal with just like he said.

I mentioned it earlier in the show, but don’t forget to grab that free bonus audio where Michael talks about some of the technologies that he uses to develop his website and his membership site, as well as some of the productivity tools he uses in his business.

Those are free of charge. Just go to the website onlinecoursecoach.com/michaelk as in the letter K, as in Kitces, his last name—and you can download that bonus audio for free.

So how are you going to take this podcast episode, this interview and use it to build your online courses, your membership sites—what other training content you’re creating? I would love to hear! Shoot me an email, jeff (at) onlinecoursecoach (dot) com, let me know what you’re working on, what you’re struggling with, and how I can help.

And then, lastly, I would be honored if you would share this podcast on your social media accounts—Twitter, Facebook, whatever. If you’re listening to this on your iPhone, on your Android phone, etcetera, go ahead, in the podcast app, whatever you’re using, go ahead and hit that share button. Share it out, let other people know that you find this of value. That would be just the biggest compliment that you could offer to me, is by sharing that out to your audience. Because as we bring different guests on and as the community is growing, I want to serve more people. I want to bring more awesome interviews like this onto the podcast.  And so, having you share this out definitely helps build this podcast so then I can help you more as well with different interviews and different content.

Well, if you’re going to the FinCon conference, or if you’re already there when you’re listening to this, try to look me up. We can use that app to communicate, or Twitter, or we’ll just have to meet up somewhere and have a chat. See what you’re working on, see what we can help each other out with. That would be fantastic. If you’re not going to FinCon, that’s fantastic. I’ll try to give a wrap up of my thoughts from FinCon in one of these future episodes.

So keep coming back to the Online Course Coach podcast where it’s my goal to help a few to teach many to impact millions.

REFERENCE : BUJANGSLOT

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Listen to the Episode Below (00:47:25) Download iTunes Stitcher SoundCloud Subscribe! Rate & Review I’ve known Kris Simmons for several years. What started out as listening to his podcast, turned into buying his e-books on how to create a proposal for my video production client. I eventually became a part of his membership site in 2013… Read More →

The post Improve your videos & membership sites with Kris Simmons appeared first on .

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses”. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

REFERENCE : MAKAU4D 

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

The post Improve your videos & membership sites with Kris Simmons appeared first on Online Course Coach.

What does a former Apple and Dell employee think about education, eLearning, startups and innovation? In today’s podcast Kevin Gerrior shares his insights and experiences. I’ve known Kevin for several years and he’s one of the best at creating innovative strategies to teach using technology. He’s on the front edge of mobile learning, online learning, gamification, and other innovations that improve the learning process. While he’s an educator at heart, it’s his love for technology, innovation and entrepreneurship that drives him. Kevin Gerrior specializes in empowering people to innovate, get things done, and make work fun via technology

Shownotes:

• Kevin is a former Apple and Dell employee
• He has extensive background in the education and startup sectors
• He uses technology to help teach and train
• Kevin is a family man with good integrity

Find Kevin Here: @kevingerrior

Transcript

The post Former Apple employee’s thoughts on startups, elearning, innovation & education appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Curtis McHale shares his insights and experiences on membership sites and value based pricing. Most developers don’t find a niche they love and can best serve, but Curtis has done just that.

Podcast Notes:

The post Building membership sites and value based pricing with Curtis McHale appeared first on Online Course Coach.

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Dan Miller over the years. I was first introduced to Dan through his popular podcast, I was able to attend several of his live events (think mini conference) with other entrepreneurs. It’s there that you see how genuine Dan is. Since then, I’ve become good friends with Dan and his family. In this podcast Dan shares how he views online education and the opportunities that come with it. I love Dan’s explanation of how to generate $150,000 per year by creating streams of revenue.

Download The Bonus Audio: “Dan Miller’s Top Strategies for Marketing Your Online Courses”

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Dan Miller’s Bio

Podcast Questions

• Many people don’t consider creating an online course because they think their knowledge or experiences in their business can only be utilized in working in their business. Why don’t most people think about transferring their knowledge to multiple areas, like creating courses, selling products or other creative outlets?
• As an author, speaker and coach, most people in that category don’t have much success…what has set you apart?
• Can you walk through your strategy for creating $150,000 a year?
• What is your strategy for creating online courses or products?
• Do you wait until hundreds of people to ask for a product or do you create one earlier?
• How does an online course leverage your own time (teach once and keep earning)?
• What are some ways you’ve used online courses and digital training products to leverage your time and grow your business?
• What are your thoughts on sites like Udemy?
• Are you working on any online courses now?
• What are some tips for someone who wants to create an online course?
• You’ve written New York Times best selling books, you’re a sought after speaker and coach, but what is your best marketing strategy in your own business?
• What are some keys to your your overall success?

My notes and takeaways

• Dan Miller uses his writing as the focus of his business, but doesn’t attach financial goals to writing
• He puts on live events where he teaches others, as well as creates digital materials to teach
• He builds systems, rather than trading time for dollars. The more products he can create to better serve his audience, the more money he makes
• Dan doesn’t create one product for one sale, but looks for opportunities to create a product once and sell it thousands of times
• He recommends having one core message that is the same but the application can change by creating courses, podcasts, and other materials
• Dan shares his success tips for creating online courses, that actually get watched.
• If you’re struggling to market your course, Dan has several fantastic tips on how to get traction and build your audience, who in turn will look at buying your course
• Find his books here,

Download The Bonus Audio: “Dan Miller’s Top Strategies for Marketing Your Online Courses”

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Transcript of the podcast interview with Dan Miller:

Jeff: Welcome back to another episode. And I feel like I say this every time, but I’m really excited for this episode. And this time, I’ve gotten my friend and mentor, Dan Miller, on the show, and I, like thousands of other people, are drawn to him for many reasons. But the one that I initially was drawn to him for was his creative problem solving. And even though he is a coach, a speaker, a writer—and we talk about hat in the podcast—he is really somebody that, to me, is the essence of a creative thinker. We talk about how a lot of coaches, a lot of speakers, and writers, they don’t make much money, so how does Dan get so successful? Over the years, he’s built his audience in the hundreds of thousands of people, but he’s just as genuine hanging out with him in how in Franklin, Tennessee, as he is on his podcast and on his other materials.

And so I wanted to get him on the show to talk about really how he has found success. So even though he has hundreds of thousands of listeners on his podcast and readers of his book and blog and materials and his online courses, he gives a lot of good and practical insights, no matter where you are with building your audience. So yeah, he has a huge audience, and that’s great, and so maybe you’re thinking “Ah, it’s easy for him.” Well, he gives some really practical tips, even if you have a small audience or are just starting out.

Now I mention this later in the episode, but I got a chance to ask Dan kind of a really cool personal question about marketing. He is what I consider one of the kings of marketing. He’s very creative in his marketing strategies, so he gives some marketing tips and strategies to market your courses, your products, and even your services. And some of them were pretty creative, so definitely check that out. I made that a freebie for you guys, so if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller, you can learn more about that and download that free bonus audio.

So go to onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller to download that for free.

But before we get into that part of the show, I want to give a shout out to Paul U. And I’m not giving his last name there just for his own privacy, but he sent me an email and asked a great question, and on top of  that, he left an awesome review of the podcast. Now, he’s all the way from Australia—which, you know, doesn’t really matter these days what country you’re from—but, Paul, thanks so much for listening, for leaving that question and that review. And, man, the next time I got to Australia, we’ll definitely have to hang out. It’s definitely on my bucket list. I’ve been to five continents; unfortunately, I haven’t been to Australia yet. My wife has, so maybe we’ll make it a point to go there sometime very soon.

But he sent me a few questions that I thought would be helpful to answer on the show. And it sounds like his focus is mainly on finding a job in the eLearning industry. And so I think that’s great, because the eLearning industry is booming. Not only in small companies, medium sized companies, large companies—but also with individuals creating their online courses. So I think now is a great opportunity to surf the market with your skills. So to Paul, to you as a listener, if you’re thinking about getting into this industry, whether it’s just for yourself, just creating your own course to sell to your audience, or to get a fulltime job working for a company, now is a great time.

So one of the questions Paul asked was “Can you give me advice on how I can transition into the eLearning industry?” And so I sent him an email with some of my thoughts, but I wanted to expand on them in this podcast. If you’re looking at getting a job in the eLearning industry, there’s a couple things I would recommend. First of all, since we’re on the show with Dan Miller, definitely read his book 48 Days to the Work You Love, and part of that book is looking internally, finding out who you are, who you were created to be, how you’re wired, and that will really help you find out how you can best serve your future employer. And he also lays out how to target companies that you would love to work for, and send out the resume and do the traditional process, but in a different way, and in a way that, to me, is more effective. So definitely pick up the book 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller. It’s a New York Times bestselling book. It’s on one of my bookshelves here. I’ve actually got a couple copies—I think a couple of them are signed even… I’m kind of a nerd like that.

But that’s one of the things. Go through his book and find potential companies that have a fit and pursue them. Don’t look for different ads of different companies looking for people, find the ideal company that you want to work for and go after them.

Another thing is comment on the blogs of the eLearning companies that you want to work for. Get on their radar. This may take a while to target different companies, so start now. And this is a great way for people to get to know you. If you, every once in a while, pop into their blog and write a comment, it’s going to get noticed. Same thing with social media. Retweet their articles. Comment on their Facebook wall if they have one, and just get involved. Not in a creepy way, not every single post, but just subtly let them know that, hey, you’re interested in the type of company they are and the type of content that they’re creating.

Another thing is ask to guest post articles for them. You know, a lot of times, companies, they struggle for creating content. They know that content is good for SEO, for engagement, and things like that, but they don’t have the time, the personnel, the resources. So if you drop a line to a couple companies and suggest or ask that you could create some different articles for them, you might get some really good responses. I’m sure some of them won’t give you the time of day, and that’s fine, but think of a couple different really good articles. Maybe suggest two or three different articles and see which ones they want you to write.

Now you might be tempted to send out the same article to all the different companies…. Well, you might have to create a different title for each, different content, because you definitely don’t want to create the same article and copy and paste that to multiple companies. That’s gonna get you probably in some hot water and definitely not good for SEO.

Some other things you could do are create short video tutorials on your YouTube channel and build an audience up around you. And this will showcase your expertise when potential employers are looking at what you’ve accomplished. And so that’s a way to showcase, “Hey, this is what I’ve done. I’ve created all these videos. I’m not just passionate about doing this for pay, but I also like to do this in my spare time.” Also showcase work at your past jobs. What have you created? Who have you taught? What have you build? Show some different things that you’ve done to, again, position yourself as that industry expert in your specific area.

Find something that might be either challenging for a lot of people or something that you’re very experienced in that will set you apart from others. If you come in and say “I do everything from article writing to video creation to X, Y, and Z,” maybe in a small business, that would be advantageous, but in a larger company, you may want to have a specific area of expertise that you’re known for.

And then the last thing, and this list by no means is the exhaustive list, post articles on other eLearning websites. Websites like elearningindustry.com, and there are many others, that you can post your articles there, and then you can say “Hey, I’ve been a guest blogger/a featured blogger/a writer”—whatever the term may be—“for these industry websites.”

So those are just a few ways that I would position myself to serve the eLearning industry if I was looking to get a traditional job in that Industry. Now, you may not want to dive into the eLearning industry, find a company get a fulltime job, etcetera—you may want to build your own brand, build your own business, so maybe you can target ten or fifteen different companies and serve them. Maybe they’re small businesses. Maybe they have fifty employees, maybe they even have a HR department and they need training material, they need content, they need an LMS—a Learning Management System—and you can provide that for them. So it might be as simple as just creating—or finding ten or fifteen companies that you can serve.

And then lastly, another way is maybe you can build an audience and serve them just like Dan has in this podcast that you’ll be listening to.

So, again, those are just a couple ideas that will definitely get you off to a good start. Keep me updates, Paul, let me know how this advice comes through and what you’ve done with it. And to the audience, if you have a question, shoot me an email at jeff (at) onlinecoursecoach (dot) com, or through the contact form on the show notes page, will get to me as well.

Now I do want to read Paul’s review because, well, hey, it encourages me. Makes me feel good. So I’m gonna go ahead and read that. And again, Paul, thank you so much for the review. It’s actually in the Australian iTunes store, of course, because that’s where he’s writing this from. So that’s pretty cool to have different ratings and reviews in different countries. I appreciate that, Paul. He said: “This is a great topic for a podcast. I love Jeff’s enthusiasm and interesting guests on the show. Jeff helps to uncover the ins and outs of delivering great online courses, he certainly comes from a place of passion, authority, and authenticity. Check it out.” Man, Paul, that is awesome. I really appreciate that.

And to anybody else, I really love getting these ratings and reviews. It really helps get more people to see the show. You can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/reviews to leave a review in the iTunes store, and don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, or the other podcast apps, that’d be great.

So let’s get into the interview portion of the show. And a little bit of background on Dan, if you don’t know him, you are in for a treat. He is widely respected in several different areas. One is finding or creating work that you love, but he’s also built such a large audience that he has a lot of training material, online courses and content, that really helps. And he’ll talk about some of the products and some of the courses that he’s created, which is really cool.

I’m trying to remember how many years ago… Probably seven or eight years ago, I first was introduced to Dan through a podcast. I’m a big podcast listener, hence why I’m recording my podcast here now, and I came across his podcast where he just had a local radio station in Nashville, and I think he had a three hour show where he would answer question. And they took, I think it was an hour, maybe forty-eight minutes, of that show and put it on iTunes. And I stumbled across it and I just—oh man, I loved those episodes. Ever since, I’ve probably listened to every single episode. And he comes out with one every single week, so multiply that by the seven or eight years that I’ve been listening, and that’s how many shows it is. I hate to do math on the air, so I’m not gonna do that live. I’d run out of fingers.

So it’s really cool to hear his podcast, read his books, his blogs, etcetera, and then I had the opportunity several years ago to go down to one of his live events in Franklin, Tennessee, at the place called the Sanctuary, which is a really cool place he’s created down there, and get to know him, get to know his family, get to know the other attenders, and you see the family atmosphere that his live events are. And that’s how I got to know him personally. I’ve also had the opportunity to produce some videos for him and we’ve become friends, which has been awesome. We’re also in a mastermind group together, and it’s been really cool and a good source of inspiration, encouragement, and a way to see how a rising tide lifts all ships.

At the end of the show, I’ll give you a link to a bonus audio—but hey, I’ll just give it to you now in case somehow you don’t make it to the end of the show, which, come on, why wouldn’t you make it to the end of the show? But if you go to onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller, you can go to the show notes page where you’ll find a download to this free bonus audio. And I asked Dan a really cool question about his marketing strategies, and I think you’ll be surprised at some things he talks about that have been some of his best marketing strategies to grow his business. We’re talking about he’s a writer, he’s a course creator, and some of the things he talks about are really cool, and some of them might surprise you. So definitely check that out at onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller.

If you don’t know Dan Miller, don’t know about him, don’t know what he does, he specializes in creative thinking for increased personal and business success. He believes that meaningful work blends your natural skills and abilities as well as your unique personality traits and your dreams and passions. He specializes in helping others create meaningful work and is a master as creative solutions. He’s created several online courses, and we’ll talk about those in the show, but Dan, thanks for being on the Online Course Coach podcast!

Dan: Well, thanks, Jeff. I’ve been looking forward to it!

Jeff: Well, Dan, many people, they’re in their job, they’re doing their business but they don’t consider creating an online course because they think their knowledge or experiences in their own business really his kind of stuck working in their business. So why don’t most people think about transferring their knowledge to multiple areas like creating courses or selling products or other creative outlets?

Dan: I think sometimes we value less what we know so well. When something comes easy to us, we just assume that everybody knows that, why would that have value? Everybody oughta know that? And yet, that’s not true. We tend to look at things where we need knew learning, new knowledge, and other people are doing the same thing. So something that comes easily—because you have years of experience or expertise there—may be exactly the thing that is your Acres of Diamonds, so to speak. You can present and other people can access that.

Jeff: You just mentioned Acres of Diamonds. Great book. For the audience that hasn’t read it, give a brief synopsis of what that book is all about.

Dan: Oh, it’s a wonderful little book by Russell Conwell, written years ago, about this South African farmer who had a little farm. But he kept hearing about these people who were over on the Gold Coast finding diamonds. He thought “I’m not gonna die this poor little farmer hear on this decrepit piece of land. I better go find diamonds.” So he sold his little farm for a pittance and went to look for diamonds. A couple years past, finally in a fit of frustration, he threw himself into the ocean and drowned. Mostly a true story. Never found diamonds at all.

Back in the little farm the he sold, the gentleman who had it them found this interesting looking stone and put it in on his mantle. A couple days later, somebody came in, said “Where did you get that stone?” He said “Oh, right here in this little creek that runs through the farm.” Turns out that little creek running through the farm turned out to be one of the richest diamond mines in African history.

And the moral of the story, obviously—especially for being a true story—is that sometimes we overlook what’s right under our nose really does have value. You know, the old adage the grass is green on the other side of the fence is true for all of us. We think “Oh, if I could just get over there.” “If I just had this degree.” Or “If I just would have gone in that direction,” and we undervalue what’s right under our nose may in fact be our greatest asset.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s a great book. Definitely one of those, you know, gotta read it every now and then just to refresh your mind and get your creativity flowing. So, Dan, I know you specialize in coaching, in speaking. You’re an author. And really, you love helping others create meaningful work. And I view you as a master of creative solutions. So, because you’re an author, a speaker, and a coach, most people in your category may not have as much success as you or may not have any success. So what sets you apart from people in your industry?

Dan: Wow, that’s a great question. And a tough one to answer, because certainly, I wasn’t raised with any unique advantages. In fact, if people look at how I was raised, they would assume that what I was raised in was a disadvantage. We were very poor. Yet, as I look back, I think maybe that was an advantage. Not having radio or TV in our house, for example, drove me to books, which opened a world of opportunity to me as they do continue today. And in reading, then I became interested in writing, so that who series of what could have been a disadvantage actually was a great advantage to me. There’s nothing unique that sets me apart other than just clear focus and intentional action.

I am very intentional. When I decide I’m going to do something, I create a clear plan for that that’s gonna look like. I’ve never had a boss looking over my shoulder, so it’s always just been me. I’m my own harshest test master, but I decide what I want to accomplish and I have fun. I’ve never done work that I didn’t really enjoy, and I just have fun setting out these things that I’ve not done before. And believe me, that’s what excites me most. If there’s one thing that I’m going to sabotage quickly, it’s predictability. If something becomes predictable, even if it’s successful, I’m likely to start chipping away and sabotaging that, because I like a challenge of going into areas where I really am not very proficient YET. I love the learning process.

Jeff: That’s good. Now, I’ve heard you talk about how to create a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year through different revenue streams. Can you talk a little bit about that strategy?

Dan: Yeah, it turns out—you know, I did that kind of just impulsively, like most things. I just threw it out there. I’m big on what Eric Ries in the Lean Startup calls a minimally viable product. I don’t wait until things are perfect. I just put it out there, and I did a presentation on how to leverage your intellectual knowledge for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars this year, and it really got a lot of traction. In an interview then, with Michael Hyatt—his most viewed video he’s ever had. I had a pastor call me the other day and said he’s watched that video twelve times [inaudible 20:44]. But in that, I talk about identifying your core message. You don’t have to be an author, you don’t have to be [inaudible 20:52], you don’t have to be all those things. Just identify what is your core message that you want to share with the world? Then it’s a matter of repurposing time. How can you allow people to experience that in multiple ways?

As an example, people may ask me “Dan, I have this training that I’m doing. Should I do a workshop, seminar, ebook, traditional book, an online course”—well, you know where I’m going with that, Jeff. My answer is do them all. Allow people to choose how they want to experience your message. There’s no one right way to deliver. But the power of leverage is phenomenal. And it expands dramatically our ability to create financial income as a result of that. There’s not many coaches I know that make a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. There’s not many authors I know that make that much money. But if they know their core message and the leverage that in multiple ways, then it really opens the door to that and more.

Jeff: Yeah, and that’s so good. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m such a big fan of your materials. Your ability to see all those areas or avenues that many people don’t, or don’t think about—about using that. Talk a little about your Venn diagram and how you’ve built that out for your services and your expertise.

Dan: Yeah, I use a Venn diagram, as you referenced, which is really—mine is three circles. And if you have three circles that overlap, at some point, all three overlap so you have something in the center. For me, that is my writing. Now, interestingly, I don’t attach any financial projections to my writing. My writing really serves just as a calling card, introduce people to the other things that we do at 48 Days. That  may seem counterintuitive, and authors, it drives them nuts because they want to write a book and then sit back and wait for those big royalty checks to show up in the mailbox, which they aren’t gonna—that’s not gonna happen.

But what I do is use writing just as an introduction. So then we do have live events at the Sanctuary where people can come and learn about a specific topic in a two day event. I do speak at different conferences where I get a chance to share that. We have a pretty robust product suite, as you know, so we have a lot of the products that we’ve already alluded to—traditional books, instructional manuals, three ring binders full of information, ebooks, audio courses. Just different things like that. And then the combination of those, and then us having relationships, we doing the coaching, we have a mastermind. Those are all just ways that people can kind of experience my core message, but they’re very different ways.

Most of those are systems that are in place that do not require my personal time. So if Joanne and I go somewhere for a week, it really makes no difference in my income. It’s not built on me just trading time per dollar. That’s another really key concept in this whole thing. You know, Jeff, about how to leverage your message. You have to move from linear to residual income. But we have so many options for which we can do that today, it’s just phenomenal. And there are people who are professionals who are paid very well, but they don’t understand any method of income generation but linear.  Attorney, dentist—they get paid very well. They do their work, get paid. It’s one and done. That bothers me. I would no sleep at night if I had that kind of a business.

Jeff: Now, what advice would you have for somebody—talking about the Venn diagram, and again, for you, that’s kind of these three circles that intersect and they meet in the middle, like you said with your writing. So it encompasses your writing, your speaking, your coaching, your events and all of these other areas. When you’ve coached people on maybe crafting their business or even their own Venn diagram, is there any guidelines for spreading that too thin? I know a lot of people, they want to create a course on personal finance and maybe a course or a podcast on a totally different topic. How do you reign in all your ideas, if you’re a creative person, and put them in the Venn diagram that has the most success?

Dan: Yeah, that’s a great question. I hope I can convey this—but if you have those three circles that are together, then we can draw over them a big common umbrella. Well, I want everything to fit together so that activity in any area of that Venn diagram fuels activity into the ones that it adjoins. So it’s not like on Thursday, I’m installing a sunroof in a car and on Wednesday, I’m doing landscaping, and on Friday, I’m speaking somewhere. No we don’t want unconnected things. We want things that have a common core, like that common message.

That’s where people get off track on this. They think “Well, this allows me to do ten different things and just throw them under the same roof.” They think that they’ll somehow just all work. A lot of people are too diverse in what they’re doing. I want the same message to be here if I’m speaking, if I’m coaching, if I’m selling a product, if I’m doing a live event. It still comes back to the same core message. I think if you do it in that way, you could be a landscaper. You could have the same applications that I have but they all oughta relate to that one core message. Like our friend Jeff McManus who talks about turning weeders into leaders. Wow, that’s great. You could do exactly what I’ve talked about with that being a very different message than what I have to share, but still have the same application for those multiple areas.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s so grea.t and that’s one thing, again, a lot of people try to spread themselves too thin or try to go here and there and do all sorts of things, but they don’t have that common message, that common theme that they’re trying to convey.

So let’s turn it over a little more focus on the eLearning and online course side. So I think I know the answer for this, Dan, but what’s your strategy for creating online courses or products? Do you wait until hundreds of people ask you or less than that?

Dan: I do. I have a strategy for that, and it’s pretty simplistic. My kind of motto, for years, has been if three people ask me the same question, I create a product to address that. And it’s really bene that simple. But that philosophy has opened a whole lot of doors of opportunity for me. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dan: I wrote, and it kind of evolved, 48 Days to the Work you Love. I just wrote up a Sunday school class. It wasn’t my intention necessarily, but people kept asking for it. I keep creating materials to address their questions, and in doing do, that went on to be a New York Times bestseller and continues to do really—really rock force out there. Then I started having people ask me “How can I do what you did as an author? I’ve got a book as well, but it only sold five thousand copies. How can I knock it out of the park with what you did?” Well, when I had consistent people asking me about that, I said—and I share openly, very open about what I’ve done and what has worked. But instead of just doing that repeatedly, “Why don’t we have an event here at the Sanctuary,” this little barn on our property. “We’ll just have people come in and spend two days and I’ll tell them everything I know about how to leverage your books.” So we did that.

Same thing happened with coaching, which is something I’ve always been doing as well, helping people through these inevitable, relentless transitions. And people were saying “How can I do what you’ve done in coaching? I hear people talk about you, I hear people talk about your results. How can I do that?” So we developed another training program for coaches. Now, again, those are very tightly woven together because the core message is the same, but at one level I’m help authors, at one level I’m helping coaches. That kind of strategy has just worked for me again and again and again. We’ve rolled out a lot of products where a couple people asked me about it, we just create a product to address that need.

Jeff: You know, I really like that idea, Dan, because you’re using your audience to give you insights on what they want. You’re not just creating training material, products, or things and throwing it out there and then nobody buys it. You’re waiting for people, a lot of times, to tell you “Hey, what if you had this?” or “Could you do this?” and then you create it for them. And so it’s really just—it’s not just meeting the demand, but it’s serving your customers, serving your audience in a whole new way. I think that’s really cool.

And so, to the audience, to the listener here, what is your audience asking you to do? Do you keep having the same questions come up? “Hey, what if you created this course?” or “Could you do this for us?” I would guess your audience, even if it’s somewhat small, maybe even people you work with, your family even, maybe they’re asking the same thing, and how can you develop a course or a product to better serve them?

Now, Dan, I know that you’re big on leverage. You said before, many times, that you don’t like to do one project for one person. You want to create something once and sell it to the masses. So what are some ways you’ve used online courses and your digital training products to leverage your time and grow your business?

Dan: Well, the things that I’ve done right to the bank—W-R-I-T-E where we show writers how to leverage their writing and produce significant income from that. Did that first as a [inaudible 30:59]. It was just Tuesday evening, I had seventy minutes, I just did it. Response was so phenomenal that I immediately saw the potential for turning that into an online course. So we just took the recording of that and a PDF of my talking and turned it into a product that is sold day after day after day now about seven [inaudible 31:21]. That’s the power of just recognizing what people are asking for.

Then that opened for the door for a live event that we did here several years [ago]. We did an even where people paid a thousand dollars to come to that, straight to the bank. So there’s been a lot of things like that where I’ve seen an opportunity threw it into a product people were asking for, and we turned it into a course. My goodness, the recent books I’ve written with my son, Jared, Wisdom Meets Passion. I was asked by a local university here in Nashville to teach that as a college course, which I agreed to do one time. Teaching it ongoing is not in my business model at all. I don’t want to be locked into four days a week going somewhere and standing in a classroom with thirty people. But I did it one time just to test “Will this go well?” Engagement was phenomenal. But in doing so, then I created a field guide that accompanies the book that is now being used.

48 Days to the Work You Love, there’s way more product. We’re just in the process now of relaunching the 10^th Anniversary edition of the book, which is a brand new book, new workbook, all new online course training for that. And we’ve got organizations that are waiting in line to have that release.

Jeff: So what are some of the materials, or how are you building that? Is it video based, is it text based, is it both, are there quizzes? Kind of walk through that process. I know the audience would love to hear kind of behind the scenes on what you’re building.

Dan: We’re really in an interesting time right now, because some of what I’ve alluded to, on 48 Days to the Work You Love, that has been taught in a lot of different universities. It doesn’t line up perfectly with academic certification. I’ll just choose to teach it on the fly. But when we look at certification, there are requirements that defy everything that I stand for in terms of [inaudible 33:18-:23]. To me, education is broadening your life with learning and that will take place as you’re traveling through Switzerland more so than sitting in a classroom and just regurgitating what’s in the textbook.

Academic certification requires certain things like seventy-five hours of coursework. Doesn’t matter of the content can be conveyed easily in forty hours. You have to artificially create seventy-five hours. Their model, then, for proving your understanding of that, and that’s all we’re doing, is to regurgitate what was in there. So we have quizzes, tests, where you feed back information that was in the textbook. And what that means, Jeff, and this just absolutely destroys me, if that a student could get an A in the course 48 Days to the Work You Love and yet never get that first job, never get a promotion, never find their passion, work that they love, never start their own business. They could fail at all those parameters by which I measure success and still get an A in the course.

So I’m really outside the academic model. I’m happy to be there, frankly, because I think the academic model we have in the United States right now is the next bubble that’s gonna burst. And there are a whole lot of people that are saying that. People like Mark Cuban and Mike Rowe and some more people that are seeing what’s happening. It’s a really broken model where we’re encouraging students just to fill their head with the knowledge that you can access from an iPhone in three seconds. Why would to fill your head—what we want are to help people solve problems. Come up with solutions, unique ways—creative ways to relate to other people.

Those are the kind of things I want to convey, and so the proving confidence in my courses is not just a matter of feeding back what the materials say, it’s describe to me a project that you’ve worked on. Let me see a blog that you wrote. Tell me about the little lemonade stand that you had last year or the woodcarving business that you just started. Tell me somethings that you’ve done where you’ve put legs on an idea and created an economic model that will benefit you. And I mean, obviously you—get me on my high horse on this and you can’t talk, because it’s such a hot issue with me. I want my material to change people’s lives, not just fill their head with knowledge.

Jeff: Well, and it’s interesting because—and I haven’t talked about this on this podcast very much—I’m actually a terrible test taker. That was one of my weaknesses in school. I could know the material frontwards and backwards but when it came time for the test, it just threw me for a loop. I’m sweating bullets and I just didn’t do well on tests. And so, you know, just the fact that you’re passionate about not being so academic and more application driven, more results driven, is fantastic. And I think, like you said, that’s only going to be more and more prevalent as people want results. Doesn’t matter if you got a whatever grade. You could look through history at the people who failed college, dropped out of college, and they’re doing alright. They’re quite successful in life and in business.

Dan: There’s a lot of research to support that. Getting a 4.0 in college is not a good predictor of any kind of success by however we measure that. We have to move past this knowledge, understanding and application. And unfortunately, a lot of our academic program doesn’t require that. We just show knowledge and that’s it. Knowledge doesn’t do anything for you unless you move all the way through that.

Jeff: So what would you say for you—and I know everybody has different personality styles and preferences, but for you, what makes an online course interesting and interesting enough for you to purchase the content, purchase the course?

Dan: There’s certain unique, specific areas of application. There’s one that I just went back and reviewed this week. It’s Brendan Burchard’s course on his Partnership Summit. And he talks about how he gets sponsors for his events. So the participants, whoever they are, are really just the icing on the cake. Most people approach that totally different. They want to structure it so their big revenue comes from charging people who walk in the door. Brendan says “Hey, I don’t care about that because my money comes from sponsorship.” That’s an important area of information for me. So I have that available for me to go back and review it.

I just purchase Ray Edwards’ course on copywriting. That’s not something that’s been a real big focus for me. I just kind of do what I’m pretty comfortable with, but I know that I could do it much better. These days, sales letters are very important. I don’t want to get caught up in hype and manipulating people at all. I want it to be clear, specific so that people do say “That’s something I want to participate in.” So I just purchased a course on that. So the courses I purchase are very specific to the kind of business that I’m in. I could be pulled into other areas of just general interest. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of time to do that, so the time that I do invest, of course, are things that do relate to the business I already have.

Jeff: Talk a little bit about your Udemy course. I know you’re big into masterminds, you enjoy being in them. We’re in one together, which has been a great experience. Talk about that course. Even how you created it, and the process of being on Udemy.

Dan: One of the things that I’ve been asked many, many times is about a mastermind group. Part of that—well, a lot of that is because I’ve always been involved in mastermind groups. Greg Mason, [inaudible 39:15], Benjamin Franklin. People like CS Lewis had inklings, studied those for years, and years and then Napoleon Hill of Think and Grow Rich talked about the mastermind concept. I’ve always sought out and been a part of mastermind groups. Dave Ramsey and I started a mastermind group about eighteen years ago. And he and I mention it periodically and I’ve had a whole lot of people say “Can I get in there?” Well, no you can’t, because you can’t have an open ended mastermind. That defies the definition of a mastermind. But my encouragement always was “Why don’t you just start your own?” and then people literally would say “How do I do that?”

So I wrote a little ebook, about sixty pages long, How to Create Your Own Mastermind. Titled it initially 1+1=3, because there’s that kind of synergistic power in connecting with like minds. Well that little ebook, it sold for seventeen dollars, really went nuts. We sold thousands of that. And I thought, “You know what? That has that much unique value. I bet I could up the ante a little bit.” We pulled that back in, it’s no longer available as a seventeen dollar ebook. I spent one afternoon doing videos. We took the text, the PDF that I already had, enhanced it a little bit with a combination of eight short videos—the total of the videos is a little less than sixty minutes—eight short videos and a PDF. We created an online course that’s no available on Udemy for forty-eight dollars. And that continues to sell day after day after day.

It’s something that was an experiment for me. I had somebody encourage me to do it. We’re using their infrastructure, doesn’t require bandwidth on our servers or anything. It’s very easy to plug it in. a very great economic revenue sharing model with Udemy. So I love them and I’ll certainly be doing more for them with those kind of things.

Jeff: What are some tips for somebody that wants to create an online course? You’ve created a lot of digital training products, a lot of courses, you’ve written a lot of books and blogs and—but what are some easy steps or tips for somebody who wants to create their first online course?

Dan: Fortunately, there’s some really good tutorials, whether it’s Udemy or Linda or whatever it is out there, wherever you’re gonna put it. They all have really good tutorials on helping you to understand how to engage with people. The videos have to be engaging, they have to be energetic, upbeat. There’s some things we see out there where it’s somebody—and I was linked to an online course recently with the company that wants my content in their panel of offer. They’d like me to do a course. It was the most boring thing I’ve done.

It was—they had a single video camera and there was a professor at the front of the room he talks. For thirty-five minutes. There were no graphics, no charts, no bullet points, no fallouts—nothing. It was just a camera on him talking the whole time. You gotta be kidding me. They thing this is online training? That doesn’t engage people.

You know much better than I, in this world of video, how you have to make it interesting you don’t have to over produce. My things are pretty simple. It’s just videos that are kind of informal as I am. It may be just me walking around the property here, sitting in my chair in my office. So they aren’t over produced, necessarily, but they’re warm and engaging and real. You have to connect with people. You have to be enthusiastic. Those are the kind of things people are gonna respond to. It can’t just be raw content.

We’re in the process of just releasing another book. But we’re working with a publisher because our desire is that when somebody picks that up, there’s an aesthetic feel to it. We want the cover to be embossed. We want the pages to be wider than a normal book so it’d lay flat open, we want it to be ivory paper with brown ink on the—so it has an artistic feel. We very much have a clear sense of what we want this book to feel like. It’s not just a matter of sharing content with words on a page.

So the same thing is true with online courses. If you’re just sharing content—you know, just put a PDF out there—that’s not enough. With an online course, you oughta be engaging with humor, entertainment, things that keep people’s interest if you’re going to be successful at it.

Jeff: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I see so many courses, even online tutorials on YouTube, that are just so boring to watch. And so, you know, it’s really important for the person, for the trainer, for the person it’s teaching the material that they first of all have a plan, they’re short and succinct, and that they’re interesting. So that could be using humor, that could be using your personality, and you know what, it could be as simple as smiling when you’re on camera, behind the microphone, or creating your produce. And so I’m really glad that you brought that up. The training material doesn’t have to be boring, it shouldn’t be boring, because then the user, the student probably won’t listen, watch, or remember the content.

We as students or we as consumers, we all want engaging material. We want to be challenged, we want to think things through. We don’t want it to be boring. But yet, when we do our own courses, a lot of times, we’re boring. We don’t smile, we’re not engaging, we don’t show support materials. There’s a lot of things we can do as the instructor to help that material not be boring or to be more engaging. And so, to the listener, don’t forget that you’re not just delivering content. In a way, you’re selling yourself because you are the industry leader, you want to make sure you—of course you want to come off as credible, but you want to come across as something you enjoy. You enjoy teaching this, you enjoy this content, and you’re not afraid to have a little fun or be a little light hearted. You don’t always have to be so serious.

That’s one of the things that I do with my company. So whenever we’re consulting or working with a client, especially in the corporate world—because sometimes the corporate world can be a little stuffy or they feel that they have to be too professional. And a lot of times, I say “You know what, just relax. Have a smile on your face. Tell some fun or humorous stories, and let’s try to make this enjoyable.” It doesn’t have to be so serious because, again, the student probably won’t remember it if it is too serious.

Last question here, Dan, where do you think online courses and online training is going in the future? What are some things that you’ve seen or what excites you about online training?

Dan: It’s so accessible. It’s just an exciting time. It used to be that where you live had a lot to do with what you were going to do. Then as we went a little farther in history, it was “Do you have enough money access to go to a university where they have all those books [inaudible 46:38] that don’t have access to [inaudible 46:40]?” Today it’s different. You can be in the ghetto, in Nairobi, Kenya—and those people have cellphones, trust me. With a cellphone, you have access to all the information in the world. With that it opens—it levels the playing field. So it doesn’t matter what your socioeconomic status is. People are [inaudible 47:04-:07] in the entire universe.

With that, I think it’s pretty exciting. Because that means that you’re really unlimited. If you get clear on what it is you want to accomplish, there’s so many things out there that [inaudible 47:20-:22] as well, there’s not much excuse. Now, we’re gonna have people that are content with mediocrity. Oh my gosh, there’s people that are just locked into the sameness, that there’s a real attraction to the status quo. They don’t want to rock the boat, they don’t want to change, but they focus on things over which they have very little or no control, so they’re gonna be whining and complaining about the Supreme Court decision about this, that, and the other thing, politically and the wrong people in the Whitehouse, and their life never really accomplishes anything.

Proactive people—and Steven Covey talked about it—proactive people focus on what it is they have control over. You could take immediate control over your health, the welfare of your children, your career, what you read, what you listen to, what affects you, what your opportunities are—those are things you can take immediate control over. No matter who you are or where you are on the face of the earth, to me that’s extremely exciting. It levels the playing field. No longer just the ones who have a great advantage who get to move up, not at all. You can start with nothing today and six months from now be a player [inaudible 48:33].

Jeff: Yeah, that’s so good. And that’s one of the things that excites me as well, is just that levels the playing field, accessible to everybody, and—even that it’s time shifted. We no longer have to file into the classroom and take attendance and everybody’s in one room. No, it’s when it’s convenient for us, wherever it is across the world.

Dan: That’s right.

Jeff: Well, Dan, I appreciate it so much. I appreciate your wisdom, your insights, and your creativity on creative work that you love, but also these digital courses and digital products that you’ve created. So thanks for being on the show and giving us your insights.

Dan: Oh, my pleasure, Jeff. As you can tell, I love talking about this. Delighted at what you’re doing and that you head this area. It’s been a blast, so it’s been a pleasure being with you.

Jeff: Well, there you go. I had a blast talking with Dan. We talked before and after the show, obviously during the show, and it was great. I’ll definitely have to have him back because he has a wealth of information and what able to give a lot of good tips and insights on his own courses as well as what he looks for in other courses.

One of the main things I pulled out what, you know, he said to keep one core message the same, but have different applications that have change. So maybe you have a theme that you teach. You could create courses, of course, a podcast around the same topic, books, ebooks, blogs. I mean, there’s so many different ways—YouTube videos—so many different ways that you can teach a similar message in different terms. And that actually helps with your marketing. And so, think beyond your course, what are some ways you can get the word out about your online course? Maybe it’s being on other podcasts, maybe it’s starting your own podcast, or some of the other things we talked about in the episode.

So that was one thing that I really learned, one of the many things, but I hope you learned a lot and as much as I did.

So if you have no heard Dan’s podcast, definitely check it out. Go to his company or his website, 48days.com—the number 4-8—dot-com. You can get his podcast there. You could also search iTunes and Stitcher for Dan Miller or the 48 Days to the Work You Love podcast. It is fantastic.

And also, don’t forget that free audio, that bonus audio, where Dan talks about his marketing strategies to sell courses, materials, products, digital course, etcetera. It’s really cool. He offers some really good insights, and you can get that at onlinecoursecoach.com/danmiller. And that’s just the show notes page where I give some information there for you to download it for free.

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe and rate and review the podcast. Again, that really helps get this show and this podcast to have more visibility. And you can go to onlinecoursecoach.com/reviews. It will actually take you right to the iTunes page where you can rate and review and subscribe there. Or if you use Stitcher, definitely do the same on Stitcher. Just onlinecoursecoach.com/stitcher to go right to that account.

So thanks again for listening to the show. This was a great one. I just loved having Dan on, I respect him so much. He’s a good friend and I know he would give a lot of great content. So let me know what you’re thinking. How did this help you? Shoot me an email, a Tweet, or just go to the website onlinecoursecoach.com and send me a message on how you will use some of the tactics and strategies that Dan Miller talked about.

So until then, keep learning, keep growing, and keep teaching more people through your courses.

REFERENCE : MPO308

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It’s not easy to try to revolutionize eLearning and online training, but that’s just what Joshua Millage of Lifter LMS is trying to do. Joshua and I have a lot in common, which we talk about in the podcast. And that made this podcast conversation a lot of fun. He has a passion to help teach more effectively, which is refreshing, since many people in the online course creation industry can come across as only trying to make money. But, if we truly seek to teach effectively, then our courses will be more effective and in turn we’ll make more money. It goes back to the Zig Ziglar quote, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
[Tweet “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar”]

There are a LOT of Learning Management System (LMS) options out there, but only a few options that integrate with the WordPress platform. The Lifter LMS plugin for WordPress is one of the few that works easily to set up and create your first course and they are constantly adding more features. I learned about this LMS plugin for WordPress and paid for it, even while it was still in development…that’s how much I believe in it. And while talking with Joshua on the podcast, I know that this WordPress LMS plugin will do great things for those that are wanting to create online courses, eLearning material or training content. It has robust features, yet is easy to manage, even for someone with limited website creation experience.

The LMS platform has an engagement piece to it, where the student will get an email if he or she hasn’t logged in for a period of time. This helps keep the student coming back to the course if they’ve gotten busy, forgotten to log in for a while, or need a subtle reminder to log in to resume the course content. LifterLMS is constantly adding functionality, integrations and generally making it a better platform to use.

While Lifter LMS has a broad focus of helping anyone that wants to teach online, they do best with the education sector (ranging from colleges, universities, tech centers, community colleges and high schools), they feel that they can really help those in the corporate environment too. While this plugin will work great for an entrepreneur, who wants to sell their e-course, this plugin isn’t targeted only at this group, which I think is a good idea. From what I’ve seen, it would easily work for entrepreneurs, but it sounds like the initial marketing campaigns won’t be for this target audience.

I’ve had a chance to purchase the plugin and use it and it’s robust and can do a lot of things. If you have a need to build an online course and are looking at all the options, I would consider looking at using Lifter LMS. It’s a great WordPress plugin that will only continue to improve in the future.

Notes from the podcast:

• His parents are teachers (just like mine)
• His Dad’s favorite quote is great…listen to the episode to hear it
• He sees a problem with online courses and the teachers who create them and wants to create a better solution
• He has a good understanding of the WordPress LMS industry and has good things to say about his competitors
• Why he came up with Lifter LMS
• Why Lifter LMS is better
• He mentions what industries can LifterLMS be used in
• Joshua’s tips for making elearning course (this is a must listen)
• Where are they going with Lifter LMS in the future
• “Pull the trigger, ride the bullet”

Find Joshua Here: LifterLMS.com

The post How the Lifter LMS WordPress plugin improves online courses appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Jules Watkins (of InfoVideoHero, iPhoneVideoHero, ScreenflowVideoHero and more!) went from producing and directing MTV shows like The Biggest Loser and Pimp My Ride. And while he got to travel all over the world and meet interesting people, he didn’t like his lack of control over his own schedule and income. In this podcast episode, we talk about the struggle of his “normal job” working in the television industry and how we uses his innovative and entertaining strategies to teach people how to make online courses. I like that he strives to make his online courses unique, engaging and humorous. We’ve all seen courses that are too dry and boring to continue, but Jules’ courses are just the opposite.

Jules started by creating courses around topics that he was already knowledgeable about. He then got feedback from his audience and create additional courses, which is where InfoVideoHero came from. One of the things that separates this course from others that teach you how to create an online course is that it has a live teaching component to it. You get personal access to him and his wealth of knowledge.

Like Jules, my background is in video, but I’ve also loved working on my own online courses and the many client projects that let us use video to teach and train online. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur, company with employees or a non-profit, anyone can benefit from creating courses online. This helps you create additional streams of revenue or systematize your intellectual property for others to follow. You don’t have to just use video, but can do what Jules Watkins has done, where he creates a course that uses text, video and live teaching environment where his students can ask him live questions. To me, this is a great form of teaching, because it not only makes it easy on Jules to have the students go through content that may not change much, but also have access to him to talk about strategies that do change over the course of time. In future episodes, we’ll talk about how to best use these strategies and what tools to use.

Download The Bonus Audio: “Jules Watkins’ Tools and Resources for Creating Online Courses”

Click to Download the Bonus Audio

Jules Watkins’, the Info Video Hero, Bio

Jules Watkins is a former MTV and BBC TV Producer and Director who has directed global hit shows such as The Biggest Loser and Pimp My Ride.

After quitting TV four years ago, Jules has worked 100% online as an Infopreneur, coaching business owners, experts and Marketers how to leverage the power of Online Video Marketing and to how to monetise their knowledge by creating their own online courses using Video.

Learn how to create your own online course, taught by Jules Watkins. Click here to learn more.

The post How Jules Watkins went from MTV Producer to Online Courses appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Most people that are creating online courses these days follow a similar format. They create video, audio and text based content and sell it. However, Marc Grabanski of FrontEndMasters.com is doing something unique…and a little crazy. In this episode Marc talks about where he got started and how he’s able to create video courses from workshops that are done live with audience members in the studio as well as having people online watching the live stream. This is no easy task and Marc shares his struggles and successes in this process.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

My company has extensive video experience so I was naturally interested in how he pulls of recording the teacher as well as their computer which shows slides and real-time examples of the code they are creating. Marc’s setup is pretty impressive and while it’s been a process to get to the point he’s at, it was inspiring to hear that he didn’t give up.

The post How to create video courses from LIVE online and in-person workshops with Marc Grabanski appeared first on Online Course Coach.

Listen to the Episode Below (00:19:52) Download iTunes Stitcher SoundCloud Subscribe! Rate & Review In July, 2015, Moodle launched Moodle Cloud, which allows you to deploy a Moodle LMS for free without installation or hosting fees. This is great news for people that want to dive into eLearning but don’t have a large budget or student… Read More →

The post Moodle Announces Free Moodle Cloud Service appeared first on .
REFERENCE : PEPSISLOT

The post Moodle Announces Free Moodle Cloud Service appeared first on Online Course Coach.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

My Notes of what I learned in the interview:

• Carl is a continuous learner…and we should be too
• He loves video, audio and as an entrepreneur looks to use these to create content
• The Digital Convergence Podcast has been running for years and it’s a chance for Carl to learn from others
• Carl is a great guy, whom I am privileged to know on a personal level

Find Carl Here: CarlOlson.tv

Have a question for the podcast?

Podcast Interview with Carl Olson:

Jeff: In this episode, I talk with my friend Carl Olson, who used his skills in video production, web design, eLearning, and entrepreneurship to build a million dollar company.

[Welcome to the Online Course Coach podcast, brought to you by TrueFocusMedia.com. Whether you’re a beginner or expert, this is the podcast for the latest in online course creation tips, news, interviews, and ideas. And here’s your coach, Jeff Long.]

Jeff: Welcome back to another episode, and I’m really excited about this one, because I get to interview somebody that I know, like, and respect. And it’s somebody that’s doing business in a similar way that I do. In fact, we have a lot in common that you’ll learn here in the show. And I know there’s a lot of takeaways that you can learn. So Carl gives his background, his experience, but then he goes into how he’s been able to leverage his skills in video, web design, online training, and his entrepreneurial skills.

You know, it’s interesting, because I think the door is wide open. You know, there are so many people that have intellectual property, they’re thought leaders, they have a following, they have a platform—but they don’t have the technical expertise to get the work done. So maybe they have an idea, maybe their audience is, you know, clamoring for a product or something that can help them be more efficient or save money or learn faster or take a new approach, and Carl has come in with his extensive background in video production, web design, and he translated that into a really cool eLearning, or online training system that would help customers improve their systems and improve their businesses and it was a bargain what they were getting for the price.

You know, so many times I hear from what I call “technicians.” They’re good that their craft, maybe they’re an amazing web designer. Maybe they can make the bet videos or build the best learning portals or build courses or whatever, but they don’t know how to add long term value. And think this is important because this is something that I transitioned from a while ago. I was going these one-off projects, and I still do some of those to some extent, but there’s a time where I know that my company’s value is greater than just a single one-off video or website or eLearning portal. So it’s very cool to see Carl and I are kind of on these parallel tracks. I’ll tell you more about what I’m doing here in the future, but I want to bring you think interview with Carl, help you get to know him, and see where he’s gone, as well as where he’s going. Because I think he has a really cool story.

Now, just to let you know, I did have some technical issues with my main microphone, so I actually had to use the backup mic that I was also running. So my audio quality isn’t what it normally is, and what it normally will me, but the content was so good, I didn’t want to scrap it. So let’s get right to the interview.

[Brief music]

Jeff: So, Carl, thanks for being on the show. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about what you do and what your background is in.

Carl: It’s my pleasure, Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, so—for the listener—Carl and I have been communicating and talking and trading ideas for a while now, and I really like Carl’s mindset and where he’s going and what he’s done with online training and eLearning. So, Carl, tell me a little bit about your background in video and media.

Carl: Well, I’m a bit of a polymath. I have an interest in many things. So sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes that’s a bad, bad thing. But my first foray into video was back when I was in my early twenties—well, in fact, I think I was twenty years old. I had a brief stint as an intern camera operator at WATL 36, right here in Atlanta. And I was a solo cameraman for Larry Munson, the voice of the Georgia Bulldogs. It was a sports show, which was ironic because I absolutely hated sports. So Larry and I had an interesting relationship during that year that we worked together.

And then I also did a live show as a cameraman for—it was called the Entertainment Page, and it was hosted by, at that time, a well-known DJ by the name of Jim Morrison. And what did on that show was a cameraman, and I did all the show notes for Jim Morrison. So each time he’d have a guest on, I’d do the research if I knew in advance who it was going to be. So I met a lot of interesting people that way. I met AC/DC, I knew the B-52’s before they were famous. They were there regularly, so we were hanging out at the station regularly back in the early days of their existence. And I met a lot of different people. So I got a good exposure to television at that time, and live television, but the ‘80s came along. That was when the computers were really taking off, and I made a detour into software development.

In the ‘90s, I did a lot of multimedia development, and that’s when it really started getting interested in using software as a tool for learning and teaching in marketing. And so that’s where that genesis was, and I worked with a—one of my clients was a gentlemen who oversaw the training department for this large paper company, and he and I really hit it off and we did a lot of work together. That’s when I used Adobe Premiere, when it first came out. Adobe Premiere 1.0!

Jeff: Oh, nice!

Carl: But anyway, he had a great big classroom with expensive projection equipment—and remember, this is the mid-90s now, so this was uber expensive equipment, but it was a lot of fun to play with. And so, I really got interested in learning and training using multimedia at that time. And then, of course, as the years went on, I transitioned to a fulltime web services company. And then part of the challenge with developing websites is content. Really, the website’s the easy part. It’s the content that was difficult.

So I started doing video work back in 2007, I think it was, bought my first copy of Final Cut Pro because a customer of mine had had a video shoot, and all they got was a bunch of video but nothing to show for it. So I used the—they asked me a question. They said “Can you do something with this?” and, of course, my answer to that is “Yes.” They didn’t ask me if I had experience doing it, they just asked me if I could do it. You ask me that, I’ll say yes 99.99% of the time, because I know I can figure it out. So that’s how I got into video.

And then, of course, 2009, had the Canon 5D Mark II came onto the scene, and now everyone started wanting that bokeh look back then. So I did a lot of client work, and that’s where my life started to diverge quite a bit with doing client work, video work, at that time.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Jess: Yeah, and tell the audience—because I know your background and your experience and where video had taken you. I know there was a point in your life and in your career where maybe you were somewhat happy with video and media and making them, but what was that turning point where you realized “Okay, these one and done projects…they just aren’t cutting it”? Or it wasn’t a long term sustainability. Tell us that story and where it brought you.

Carl: Well, I’m a slow, slow learner unfortunately. So my first business I started in 1984. I’m dating myself now. So I did client work, and of course the way I did client work was—a lot of it was just word of mouth. The economy was good and the referrals were coming in fast and furious. But, of course, as the economy started to slow down, that became more difficult to do. And the thing that really aggravated me is when I would do the work, it would take so much of my time, I really felt like I couldn’t market. I couldn’t be filling my pipeline with new customers. And when I brought on new customers, I was juggling their time. You know, who’s more important? Every customer that you have, they want to feel like you’re giving them your full attention, and I found that very frustrating. Because I couldn’t give them my attention, and I felt like sometimes I was juggling too many balls.

And then when I finished projects, sometimes it’d just be an empty pipe. It’s like somebody turned the water off, and it’s not even dripping anymore. And that was frustrating. Because your cash flow, you never know what your cash flow was going to be. So I guess I had a genesis of a thinking that there’s gotta be something better than just trying to find your next client. You go through the euphoria of finding a new client, get busy with the work, but then it would wear off quickly, because then you got into the slog of doing the work, and knowing you needed to be marketing and you couldn’t do it.

Jeff: So—and it’s funny. You and I are in similar industries in several different ways, both in the video side, the marketing, the web, the eLearning and online training stuff. What—how did you get into doing online learning, and what was maybe a spark or something that was a lightbulb moment where you thought “Man, this could be something”?

Carl: Well, that started back in 2010, I started something unusual—at least for me. I decided I would start a podcast. And in 2010, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just said “Well, I need to do a podcast.” I figured it would be a great way to interview a lot of smart people, and get some ideas along the way, and I was also using it as a mechanism or tool to help build my own authority to get more clients. There was certainly a marketing aspect to it. I’m not trying to be cynical with it, or seem like I’m using people or that sort of thing, but I really wanted to do a podcast. One, to teach me and, two, if I could share it with others, that’s great, and then, three, build authority.

The fringe benefits of podcasting are tremendous, and I did not realize just how much podcasting would affect my business. I had two podcast guests in particular that affected my mindset. So the first, I did an early episode with Rodney Charters, who is a director of photography. Right now he’s a director of photography for the show Dallas, but when I interviewed him, he had just lost his job on the show 24, which had a long run. I think it was like eight or nine years. And he was lamenting how—I forget how many people that he had on his team, but they’re all out of work including himself. And I asked him, I said “Do you get residuals when the show goes into syndication?” And he just—oh man. You can almost hear the bitterness in his voice, but he said because he was a director of photography, he was below the line. In other words, he wouldn’t receive any future revenues from that show when it would go into syndication.

And then he made this offhanded remark, “I guess you just have to own the content if you’re gonna make money with it.” And that little nugget stuck in my head. Own the content.

But now the real credit, when the lightbulb went off—I guess with Rodney Charters, it was kind of like—you know how a fluorescent light, where the ballast is getting old and the lights are getting old and they’re just kind of [makes flickering noise], they’re just kind of flickering there. So that’s where I was. I was that old ballast going [flickering noise]. But now, Izzy comes on, man, and he shoots 240 volts into those lightbulbs and they just go BWAH! He was—I interviewed him and he turned the cards on me. He was asking me “What are you doing?” and I mentioned the client work that I was doing at the time. I had actually had a water damage restoration company, was doing work for them, client work, producing marketing videos. And he turned the tables on me and he said “Why don’t you offer to shoot the videos for free and then offer to share the revenue?” And I thought “Wow…!” “Well I don’t do anything free!” and I had to kind of overcome that prejudice there.

But then I thought about it, and I thought “This is a good idea.” This guy was very successful with offline training. He had a customer base, he was very enthusiastic about his presentation, the way he taught, and the students loved him. So I thought “This really is a good combination.” So that’s where I got the spark to fire the lightbulb. And that was from Izzy Hyman of IzzyVideo.com.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s great. We both know him and respect him. He’s a great guy. So what are some lessons you learned through the early stages of putting these video training courses on the website, marketing it, and offering it to potential buyers?

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Carl: Well, one of the biggest lessons, I think, is just getting started. Just get started. It’s—and I admit, I’m guilty of this… Back in 2010, when I started this, it was easy to fall into analyses paralysis. There weren’t a lot of good tools. There was a plethora of tools, but none of them did exactly what you wanted, so you’d go into this mode of “Okay, what can I use…” and you’d spend days researching stuff. And I mean, come on, you’re talking about a two hundred dollar plugin or three hundred dollar plugin. You could just go crazy trying to figure it all out. And I finally just realized one day, “You know what, let’s forget all this trying to build a platform. Let’s just see if our customers even want this thing.” And so the lesson I learned from that is you can presell a product, and that’s a great way to test it without spending a lot of time, spending a lot of money, and that’s what we did with this product. We just tested it to see how people—whether or not they would want this product.

Jeff: You know, that’s such a great point. And that’s something I recommend as well. In fact, just this week, I got a phone call, today, from somebody who had an idea and proposed that we build a website and the eLearning system and all that. And I said “Well, it sounds like you might have an idea, but let’s try to test it out.” Ask ten businesses, call some entrepreneurs, or whoever’s in your target market, because I think, you know, as entrepreneurs and idea people, which is me, and it sounds like that’s you, Carl. You know, we get excited with our own idea. We fall in love with is and we think “Oh man, I’ll make a million dollars!” and—

Carl: And most of my ideas aren’t any good anyway!

Jeff: Well, I think in our own minds they’re genius ideas. At least in my mind. And so I think that’s such a crucial takeaway for the listener. I’m guessing a lot of you are idea people, or you have one idea. Before you get ahead of yourself, try to presell it. You know, so call people. Talk to people in your network. Carl, what is one of the ways you did a presale of that product and that idea to see if it was a valid idea?

Carl: Well, the first thing we did is we took his curricula for his offline course, and just wrote out a brief outline for what some of the topics would be for an online course. And, of course, my partner, he had a good idea of some of the challenges that businesses face. One of those was systemizing, training your techs. Companies would have a high turnover in techs, which means when they would hire, they’d have to train quickly and get them to get productive as quickly as possible so they could increase their margins for their business. And that was the other thing, is a lot of the little things that could be done were big things that could be done, but maybe were not obvious to a business owner. How could they raise the margins or increase the margins for their business? So we created an outline of topics that we felt the audience would be interested in.

But this idea of having a system for—you know, everybody talks about it, and a lot of people spend a lot of money taking courses to learn that they’re supposed to have systems in their business and have SOPs—standard operating procedures—and have them all documented and have your techs access those for different procedures. But it’s easier said than done. It’s actually a very labor intensive thing sometimes, especially when it’s a very technical job where there are a lot of different variables, like water damage restoration is. So we took that approach.

Well, the biggest pain point seemed to be systems and training technicians so that they could quickly be profitable. So I suggested “Well, why don’t we do a webinar? Let’s do a webinar.” I said, “You got a great, big email list.” I think he had like five thousand customers in his email list. I said “Why don’t we send out an email campaign? Say ‘Hey, we’re gonna do a free webinar,’ use ‘Go to webinar,’ and let’s just do a keynote presentation. Just show people what we have in mind. I know we don’t have any videos made, we don’t have any manuals made, but here—what if you could do this?”

I think it was about two hundred people—I can’t remember the numbers now, I have to go back to my notes. I think it was around two hundred signed up, I think, when we did the webinar there might have been a hundred and twenty-five people online. So that was good. That showed us a lot of people opted into this. I guess about half of them didn’t show up, but half did, and those are highly qualified leads. Well, out of those hundred and twenty-five or so—you know, I may be off on some of these numbers. I could be plus or minus, I gotta go back and look at my notes to see. I wrote these things down as they were happening.

But anyway, out of the hundred and twenty-five—we’ll just go with that number right now—we had twenty—I DO know that number because this was remarkable. We had twenty attendees sign up for the product, sight unseen, no product existed—and we explained that. Because you don’t want to get into FDC fraud and all that stuff. So we just, you know, we let everybody know that this doesn’t exist, but this is what’s coming. “It’s in development right now.” Twenty people signed up, and each laid out one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five dollars. So almost forty thousand dollars proof that people wanted this product. And if we didn’t make another dime, we knew that even if we put forty thousand dollars into it, we weren’t gonna lose anything, except our time. But I didn’t feel like, with that type of interest, that we were gonna lose.

So that’s what how MVP’d our products—minimum viable product. Of course, we didn’t even have a product, but…

Jeff: It was so minimal, you didn’t even have one!

Carl: It was the back of a napkin, or in this case, a keynote presentation.

Jeff: Now, did you give any discounts to those people? Or was the price you gave what you were gonna sell it for anyway down the road?

Carl: Well, we didn’t discount it too much. We did discount it. We sat down and thought “Okay, how much is this product worth to the business?” and the number we came up with was two thousand one hundred and ninety-five dollars. So we only discounted it a couple hundred bucks. Maybe we should have done more, I don’t know. But you don’t know. And the fear that I have would be underpricing something. And that’s our tendency. We tend to want to price things too cheaply rather than right price it. But the metrics we had were, you know, the offline classes—depending on how many days they were, they could run from anywhere from eight hundred dollars to fourteen hundred dollars or so, per person. And you take that, plus the airfare, the hotel, the meals, all the travel expenses, by the time they take a class here, they’ve flown all over the country to Georgia—they’ve spent well over two thousand dollars per person for the conference. Or the class, I should say.

So we felt that twenty-one ninety-five was a good price for the product. It wouldn’t cannibalize the offline classes, but it would give them value. It would actually augment the value of the offline classes.

Jeff: Hm. And why do you say that? Or how did it augment the value of the offline classes?

Carl: Because they came—they would go home—if they bought this product, they would have a system. We literally gave them a template that was several hundred pages of SOPs. Which is was in Word format, so they could download this SOP manual, or systems manual, and update it, edit it. It was white labeled so they could put their own logos and all that. But they could adapt it to their company. And that right there was one of the big reasons why people bought the product, was just to have access to this systems manual.

Jeff: That’s great. What were some of the things you learned as far as length of the videos for the video content specifically? Did you try to have a target length? You know, a seven minute or a ten or twenty—what was your thoughts behind that, and what did you eventually land on?

Carl: Well, it depended on the top. You had to do whatever was appropriate to the topic. But seven to ten minutes was my target, and we didn’t always hit that. But most of them fell in the seven to ten minute range. Most people, they—seven to ten minutes even in video world is a long time for people. So—but some episodes, it was just difficult. I’m sure if we went back and redid them, or reedited them, we could make them shorter. But we had several that were even in the ten to twenty minute range because of the complexity of the show.

I mean, have you ever seen the show This Old House? I mean, that’s the way a lot of these episodes were. They were very much like This Old House. In fact, we had a place called the Flood House where we filmed it. That was our set. So we had an entire house that we could flood and we could apply the different techniques. And it took—there was a lot of set up time to do that. So some of the episodes were very complicated to film.

Jeff: I bet. As far as the website platform, give a little peak about behind the scenes. What are some of the tools you use, some of the systems or the CMS—or how did you end of building the thing?

Carl: Well, I built it on WordPress. WordPress was by far the easiest—well, I shouldn’t say easiest. It’s hard to categorize WordPress. Sometimes I think it’s the best think in the world, and other times, I just pull my hair out wondering why I have to do some much fiddly stuff. But it—keep in mind, about the time we were doing—let’s see, by 2011, I think, is when we really started to build a platform. And there wasn’t much available. I mean, there were some high-end platforms that were geared toward corporations, so that they can have their internal marketing—not internal marketing—internal training, that sort of thing. Those things were very expensive. It was difficult to set up a sales funnel so they could purchase a product, and then they’d be issued a login and password and all that for them. What I needed was more of a linda.com type model than what was commercially available.

So those things were very expensive. So I—what I did was I took WordPress, and looked at the different options there. and one of the things I did—going back to Izzy Video, what he did was he used aMember, which is a piece of software that manages the membership access to their website, and then he built it in WordPress. I figured, “Well, okay, if he did that, then that would probably work for me.” Now, I did not use the same tools that he did. I ended up using something different. But he used a tool—he got a much earlier start, so he used what was available at that time and would work.

So I had WordPress as the platform, or the CMS. I took a commercially available them, and I modified it. I customized it myself to match what we wanted in the website, and then I used a membership software product called Digital Access Pass. And that turned out to be a very good tool. It’s not the prettiest tool, but it’s very capable. It’s a very capable tool. And it gave us a lot of what we needed in a membership system. So that’s what I used. The price was—I think I paid for the concierge service. The owners of the company were very nice. They spent several hours with me. They actually installed the software, they helped me figure the software, and they provided excellent tech support. And so that’s what we used to membership side of things. So it handled the payment processing—well, it integrated with authorize.net, which was the payment platform that we used. So it integrated with that very nicely. It was very good about handling automatically sending out emails with their user ID and password, and it was rock solid as far as protecting the content within the website itself.

Jeff: That’s good.

Carl: Now there’s another piece to that, though, that we did have a bit of a learning curve with. Video hosting in 2011 was a surprisingly immature thing. It doesn’t sound like it was that long ago, but it was difficult. I mean, this is—so now you have your smartphones starting to take off. When did the iPad come out? What that 2012? 2011? It was just—it was right at… So mobile devices was becoming big, and the very first time I released Reets TV, I was hosting the video on our Amazon S3 account. And I had a video player—I can’t even remember what we used. But as soon as we launched, I started getting a ton of tech support issues. “The videos won’t play!” “They’re taking forever to download!” “They’re stuttering!” So this was a rookie mistake that I made.

So, “Okay, so how do I get around this…?” So I started looking around and they said “Oh, you got to have adaptive bitrate, blahblahblah,” and it was just like all Greek to me. So I was like “Wait a minute, you mean I’ve got to write code to detect what kind of advice I’m on and then adapt the stream…which mean that I would have to have multiple codecs…” I’m just going—my heart is just sinking. Because this is meaning that what should be a simple task has turn complicated. I stumbled upon a company—I looked at a number of video content delivery networks. So these are companies that would take the video, do multiple end codes, have a player that would detect what kind of device it was on, and then deliver the experience that’s appropriate to the device and appropriate to the internet speed connection that they had.

So in 2011, Bits on the Run was the least expensive thing I could find. And it worked reasonably well. So that’s what we used the video on. That was our single largest expense, though, because Reets TV just exploded. I mean, we go—people just started buying it and the bandwidth of the videos just skyrocketed. So we were spending upwards of two to three thousand dollars in one year for video hosting cost.

Well, there was a young upstart company called Wistia that came on the scene. And there was another one called iPlayer HD, which was pretty good, and I even tested them. But Wistia was—they won my heart. Because they were very aggressive with their tech support. They gave us a great deal. They helped us get the right account, gave us a great break on pricing, and I moved everything from Bits of the Run to Wistia, and that’s where it is today. On Wistia.

Jeff: That’s great. Yeah, no, and I—I challenge everybody, when they’re thinking about the tools to use to create their online training or eLearning platform, and it can be overwhelming. So my encouragement is to not get overwhelmed, try to pick some tools that make sense and just move forward with them, knowing the technology’s gonna change in a couple years, and hopefully it will get easier and better as time moves on.

Carl: Well, I think part of the problem that we have, we get stuck in this paralysis analysis because we’re afraid we’re gonna make the wrong decision. The point of my story is you’re not locked it. I mean, sure, it was not convenient to go from Bits on the Run to Wistia, but we were making money. Since the business was becoming profitable, it really wasn’t that difficult of a thing. And that’s the thing. You’re not locked in. and who knows, tomorrow, there may be a complete, self-contained platform that will do the job! I don’t know! I don’t know what’s available. The important thing is the content and selling the content.

Jeff: So what did you like the most? You know, you handle the video side, the web side, even the IT side, and even some pieces of the marketing. Did you have a favorite part of it? Or was it just, as an entrepreneur, you liked that you were using your skilled and talents to make a decent amount of money?

Carl: I liked MacGyvering it, that’s for sure. Like I said at the beginning, I have many interests, and so it kept me interested. Because I don’t want to just shoot video, I don’t want to just edit video, I don’t want to just do coding and web development. But if I do a little bit of each of those things, I’m happy. I enjoy those things. And of course the things I enjoyed even more was getting to know the people that was using the product, how they were using it, learning the process of teaching—the art of teaching. Just really digging into the people side of things was a fascinating piece of this.

Jeff: That’s great. You couldn’t have said that any better. It’s virtually exactly how I would have said for my own life and business. Is, you know, we do video, we do web, we do eLearning. And I love all of that. I love that my team can bring that to fruition and help companies and individuals, but I like the people aspect. I like taking a concept from just an idea to completion, and it’s a blast. It’s a blast to see where things go.

Carl: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I agree.

Jeff: So what would you say to people that doubt the effectiveness of online learning? They think “It has to be in person. That’s the only effective way to do training.” What have you found? Is it possible to do online learning effectively?

Carl: If they doubt it, I’d say “Are you nuts?!” [Both laugh] I think there’s a balance though. I think there’s benefits to both. I don’t think one completely replaces the other. However, education’s expensive. Traditional education is hugely expensive. It’s a big business. Colleges are big business.  But it’s amazing to me that you can learn so much yourself, if you’re so inclined, and online learning is a great way to do that. Especially when video is involved, you can see with your eyes the techniques, you can ear with your ears the explanation—I think online learning makes expensive education affordable for a lot more people. And a lot more accessible. It becomes global. It’s kind of a leveling effect. Education is available to anyone, easily.

Offline learning does have the benefit of you can do Q&A. Like I was recently at a live event, and I just had a blast because I could ask questions, I could—I was a participant in some of the exercises. So that had benefit too. But online learning really is the primary way I learn my crafts, from software development, video production, learning how to build membership sites—all of those things. Most of it I did learn through online learning. So I think it’s a very valuable and viable and perfectly acceptable way to learn.

Jeff: That’s great. So it sounds like you did some online learning on how to do online learning, is that correct?

Carl: That is correct. [Laugh]

Jeff: Well, hopefully no one’s brain exploded, but that’s good. What are some people or businesses that you have seen out there that are using online learning, online training in a creative way? You mentioned Izzy and Izzy Video. Have you seen others where “Wow! I wouldn’t have thought this industry or this type of segment of the market would have this!”

Carl: Yeah. One closely on the hells of Izzy is Don McAllister of Screencast Online. Back in 2007, I was a Windows guy for many, many years. I was a Window developer, and it was an extraordinarily painful process. And finally, one day, I just switched to Mac, that was in 2007. I just went and bought an iMac, and I didn’t look back, but of course when you do that, you have to learn stuff. And so I did a search and I found Screencast Online, so I subscribed to Screencast Online. And you never seen Don on camera. It’s all screencast. And so I started looking at—I got interested in how he did it. It was all done with a piece of software called Screenflow—well actually, I don’t think he was using Screenflow in the beginning. It might have been, I think, Snapz Pro X or something. But anyway, he was doing screen capture of a Mac, and I was just amazed at how much I learned from watching his screencast.

So that’s one. And he’s still going strong to this day. And, of course, I was a very, very early adopter of linda.com. I still subscribe to that, so they’ve made a lot of money off of me. So it’s good. Out of curiosity, I’ve looked at some courses on Udemy. That’s an interesting eLearning platform. It’s not interesting to me as an author, though. I think their rates are onerous. I think it’s 50/50 and I’m not willing to part that much with my product.

Jeff: Well, it’s less than that if they sell the course. I think it’s 80/20 so something—I know they’ve changed in the last couple of years. So if you sell your own, you get a bigger chuck, but if they sell it, you get a tiny sliver. I had added some courses to their site early on. They were brand new out of the gate, and I had some courses that I had created and uploaded there. And it’s fun. Just the other day, I got a check. You know, not a huge one, because I don’t put a lot of thought or effort into that. Maybe I should. But it’s just fun to experiment with new platforms, new systems, and see what else is out there.

So where do you see this online education thing going? Do you feel like we’ve hit a plateau? Do you feel like we’re just beginning? Or where’s it gonna go in the future?

Carl: I think we’re at just the beginning. I think it’s—I’m trying to think of the name of the author—that came up with this phrase. He called it the “learning economy.” Jeff Cobb, I believe? I can’t remember. But anyway, the learning economy. And I think that’s what—I think the future is really bright for it. I saw ourselves with Reets TV just grow each year. And that’s just one small, very niched down market. Think about all the other things that are out there. People need certifications, people are learning new skills, and they’re retooling. I think college has become exorbitantly expensive for people, and I think they’re coming around to the idea that “You know what, if I learn a trade, if I learn a specific task”—what do you call it? Just in time learning. “If I do that, I can expand my ability to earn income of some sort,” whether it’s through a business or being a better employee or something like that. So I just think this thing is gonna continue to explode. If I was a college, I’d be really worried about it.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses“. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

Jeff: That’s interesting. Yeah.

Carl: I really would. Because, going back to Rodney Charters, that was one of the thing he said in the podcast. He says “I’m gonna say something that’s really controversial! Somebody that wants to go into filmmaking, they should take the fifty thousand dollars they give to the New York School of Filmmaking and just make a movie. Forget college. It won’t do you any good!” [laughs]

Jeff: Wow!

Carl: I don’t know if everybody would agree with that. I’m not saying college is useless, but I do think that the way we learn, online learning is more in tune. It’s more flex—it’s easier to experiment and come up with ways that are more effective for people.

Jeff: Well, I think it’s faster to iterate. You can make a change to an online course in almost no time, whereas, at least with traditional education, you probably have to wait a semester at minimum and some professors don’t change for a long time. And so they might be teaching techniques or philosophies that are sometimes decades old, whereas the online world is just movie so fast that it’s a benefit to everybody, because it is moving so fast and it can be updated even faster.

Carl: Well that’s one of the things that frustrated me with my children’s education. My daughter went to school to learn software development—which we never went into. She never went into that, I wonder why. But she had come home with her homework, and they would be teaching her language that hadn’t been used in five years. And that frustrated me as a father to see her struggling through this stuff because it wasn’t relevant. Academia does not have the agility for today’s economy. They just don’t have it. It’s sad.

And, as a developer, I’m completely self-taught. I never went to school—well, I shouldn’t say that. When I was at the Florida Institute of Technology, I took one quarter of Fortran Programming, and that’s what opened up my eyes to a lot of things. So, see, there is some benefit to college.

Jeff: There you go. To the listener, don’t feel like you have to know all the answers. Carl has talked about he was learning as we went for a lot of this. So don’t be scared if you have an idea or even a market or people asking you to provide online training. Don’t get weighed down in the details. And then also, don’t be afraid if you don’t have the credentials, the certification, the college backing behind you, just get started. There are things in my life where I don’t have a college degree in certain pieces that I offered my clients. And you know what, I don’t think I’ve had any clients say “Jeff, can I see your degree?” They just say “What have you done lately?” and so that portfolio is more important than that degree, that certification. So I think—yeah, we could talk for hours just on that topic alone, but that’s for another time.

But, Carl, I want to thank you so much for being on the show. I mean, we’ve—we have talked at length about all these ideas and could talk a whole lot longer. I love what you’ve done, I love where you’re going, and the fact that you aren’t afraid to get started. You take ideas, you go with them, even though you don’t know the exact ending of where it’s taking you. And maybe part of that is some mirror images of me and my business and my career back when I started. I didn’t know all the directions I would go, but here we are today, having a blast, learning from each other, and hopefully teaching and educating and helping the listener.

So, Carl, where can people find out more about you and what you’re doing here in the future?

Carl: Well, the best place to go is on the web, of course. My website is carlolson—that’s spelled O-L-S-O-N—dot-tv. So that’s my website there. You can catch up with me on Twitter, @thecarlolson—I know that sounds very pretentious, but that’s the only name that was available with my name in it. So that’s what I took.

Jeff: That’s great. Now I know you’re a lover and a student of this online training. You’ve done a lot of great things, these last few years especially, but where are you going personally? Are you building any courses or thinking about building any online courses yourself?

Carl: Yes. I recently left Reets TV after having a really, really good run there. Turned that business into a million dollar business, which I’m really proud of, and now that I’ve left that, I’m looking towards doing something different. Doing something that I can have some fun with. So, yes, I am working on a course right now. I have a deep love of podcast, so I’m getting back into podcast. And I feel like I have my own take on how to podcast and what it’s all about, and so I’m going to be sharing that in an upcoming course that should be available soon.

Jeff: Well, that’s great! Well, hey, Carl, thanks again for sharing, and thanks again for being on the show.

Carl: It’s been my pleasure, Jeff. I really appreciate you having me on.

[Brief music]

Jeff: So there you go, there’s the interview with Carl Olson. I knew he would bring a lot of value, and I know that his story is very encouraging and motivating. And so if you have an idea, whatever it is, do what Carl did. Test it out. Try to presell it as much as possible, and then build it with the existing tools that you have. If you don’t know the tools, let me know. Maybe I can help brainstorm some ideas for you to help you take that idea from something that’s just in your head to something that might be a success.

This episode is brought to you by “Easy Video for Courses”. Did you know that online courses that include video are 83% more effective in helping students remember the information better?

But most people struggle with complicated equipment or software, the cost of buying equipment, or they don’t feel confident in front of the camera. That’s why I created Easy Video for Courses. I’ve taken all the confusion out of the process so you can make effective course videos in half the time, even if you don’t like being on camera.

Go to EasyVideoForCourses.com to learn more and get the course.

REFERENCE : NANASLOT

The post How to use video and joint ventures to create online courses with Carl Olson – Podcast appeared first on Online Course Coach.

What happens when the market you want to serve and teach seems like a group that “can’t afford” you? In this podcast episode Cory Huff of The Abundant Artist shares his journey. Since he narrowed down his target market, he was able to craft training courses that helped artists, rather than focus on a wider market, and this has led to his success.

Cory worked at an Internet marketing company and that helped give him the knowledge and experience of how to properly market online. He stumbled into working with artists as he blogged and answered questions that they submitted when they signed up for his email list.

Download The Bonus Audio: “Cory Huff’s Advice On How To Take Your Course To The Next Level”

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