SPEAKER: Becky Beach.
Duration: 23m 23s
00:00
As you know you have the power to change your life. It all depends on your beliefs. If you have limiting beliefs, your limit yourself, I am Becky Beach, I am here to help you overcome your limiting beliefs. So, you can design your dream life. This is the Becky Beach show.
00:18
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Becky Beach show. I am Becky Beach. And in today’s podcast, I want to talk about courses, particularly online courses, you can make online courses and sell them and get like lots of money. Like I recently did an online course called “Transformational Printables” I talked about it in my last podcast, and I made $15,000 in sales in the first launch period, it took like a week to make that much. You could do it too, you just got to think of a topic that resonate with your audience, like what kind of skills can you share, that could help somebody succeed in their business, or even in their life or you can even do like a course for moms or a course for parents, like maybe like a sleep training course for kids. There is all kinds of stuff you could do. Like all kinds of topics, you could make for your course.
01:07
The way I make courses is I use Google Docs and make an outline of my course in Google Docs. And the reason why I use Google Docs is because I like to share my course outline with other people and get their input. And I can do that easily with Google Docs, all I will do is I will share the document, and somebody could see the outline and give me suggestions on how I could make it better and then from there, I like to start making the course slides, I use www.canva.com, that’s www.canva.com, it is a free graphics program.
01:42
You can make slides like PowerPoint slides, but with Canva it is free, because PowerPoint costs $99 a Year. So instead of having to pay $99 a year, you can make your slides using Canva for free, there is all these slide templates in Canva you can start using to go to make it from scratch, like I actually start it with a slide template and then when I look to my outline, and I started building out my slides from the outline, it is really easy. And once I got the outline finished, I use Camtasia to record myself and also you could also use Ecamm Live to record yourself talking in the videos, it is like really simple to do. And it is like really easy then you could use them.
02:23
I used to actually use Camtasia to edit my video so all I will do is, I will go through the slides all in one go. Like I’ll just spend time going through the slides once I make them in www.canva.com and then I’ll go into Camtasia and split the videos it’s really easy to split the videos out and then make them into individual videos so each video was actually a slide from the slide deck so then I go into Thrive cart Learn and Thrive Cart recently came out with a course program called “Thrive Cart Learn” and you just pay a onetime fee, you never have to pay again because you know like Teachable and Thinkific and other course platforms you have to pay every single month but in Thrive Cart you only got to pay one time, it’s a onetime fee and then you could just make unlimited courses and there’s actually a Thrive cart learn you can get like the pro version is like $200 Extra so I actually pay $200 Extra so now I can make courses you don’t have to pay every single month because I only paid a onetime fee with Thrive Cart.
03:24
So, it was really simple or if you do not want to use Thrive Cart because the onetime fee is pretty pricey. I think it’s like $600 last time I checked but if you don’t have $600 for a onetime fee you rather just pay monthly or you can even pay yearly because on Teachable there’s like it starts to like their $300 a year or you can, it’s less money but you’ve got to pay every single year you got paid $300 so it could be a more expensive for you but I just like to use Thrive Cart I got paid one time and then I upload my videos using Thrive Cart Learn you can add text to your videos like if you talked about something in your video and there’s like a link that corresponds to what you’re talking about in your video you can add it below the video and Thrive Cart Learn or your other course platform.
04:09
There’s also, there’s one called “Kajabi” I think it is one of the most expensive ones and Kajabi, I think it’s like $1,000-$2,000 a year I haven’t looked in a while but that’s also another alternative if you want like a membership site because Kajabi you could build a membership site and it’s pretty cool too but with Thrive cart you can also make kind of a pseudo membership site where you can make a course bundle and sell course bundles and charge monthly using Thrive Cart that way. You could sell your course bundles monthly so it is like a membership so every single month you have to pay to get access to your courses on Thrive Cart so that is like another thing you can do. I know teachable also has like a membership type we can do like coaching stuff within Teachable. I actually have a program that I was in where they did coaching and so I have a Teachable is pretty cool.
05:00
There are several different things you can do. You just got to think about what kind of skill do you have that could help somebody else and you can make a course around it. It is like really amazing the way you could produce all these different course ideas. So, get like a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen, and jot down all the ideas you can think of, of where you could make a course, like what kind of course idea did you produce, I am sure you could come up with a lot. Like is there any skills that you use in your 9 to 5 job if you have one, like, in my 9 to 5 job, I was a UX designer.
05:30
So, in my course, transformational printables actually talked about how I used UX design when I was making my printables. So that could be something you could do. Like, if you have like a particular job with a skill, you can make a course around it. And I was talking to like this lady that does my hair. And I was telling her she could make like a course on hair, like how to do hair and do haircuts, there is so many things you can do. If you do not have an audience, you can upload your course to Udemy and Skillshare. That is another place you could upload your course because that way, if you do not have an audience, you could upload your course to those marketplaces like a marketplace for courses.
06:08
So again, that’s www.udemy.com and www.skillshare.com, you can upload your course there, they pay you each time somebody views your course, I am not really sure, that might be a place where you can start making money with your courses. And I know somebody that was making, $30,000 a month selling her courses on Udemy, or it was Skillshare she was selling her course on Skillshare. And she was paid like $30,000 a month. And it was just various, like crafting videos, she was a Cricut crafter. So, she was selling her crafting videos on Skillshare and earning like $30,000 a month, just selling her videos on there. And people were watching her, every time someone watches, and she gets money. So, it is a really awesome way to earn extra money on the side. And it does not take that long to make course either.
06:54
Before I mentioned, sleep training, like sleep training is a very hot topic for parents, because a lot of parents are having trouble sleep training their children and there is all these women that are making like sleep training courses. And also, even there is even a blog all about sleep training too. And I actually made a blog post myself on www.mombeach.com about sleep training toddlers, and it was really popular posts, like I could not even make a course on how to sleep train toddlers. And what I would do, if you are just now starting to make a course and you do not have an audience, what I would do is make a freebie opt ins you make a free mini course maybe like one video, that is like a preliminary course lesson maybe it is the first lesson of your course or even like a summary of your course in a video and then you make that the freebies. It is like a freebie webinar.
06:54
Like, I said, you can just use www.canva.com to make your slides. you do not even need a slide deck, maybe you have a specific skill where you can just share your screen, you can record a video with somebody, looking over your shoulder, it is kind of same thing, you can just record yourself doing the task, like maybe you are good at graphic design, you can make a graphic design course, where it is all about how to make design and like logos and brochures and stuff like that. You can make a course about graphic design, or maybe you have a website experienced you can make a course on how to code websites or design websites, there is like so many different things you could do to make courses on.
08:23
Then you can have people sign up for the freebie, you can actually make Pinterest pins to link to the freebie and then from there, once they sign up using a freebie opt in form, you can actually make forms, using ConvertKit or MailerLite, that you can make email forms. There’s also MailChimp, like with MailChimp, it is free up to 2000 subscribers and with MailerLite, it is free up to 1000 subscribers in ConvertKit, they have a free plan, but it is very limited but like I use ConvertKit myself, so you can make a freebie opt in form. So, you can embed your video in your blog, and then that way you would have like a place where they can go after you could put actually the link to your blog or even just link to the video in your email. So, when someone signs up to the free opt in form, they sends an email so when someone signs up to the free opt in form, they send an email in that email is your course video. It is like your freebie video.
08:24
Then you go she actually have a link to buy the course in the same email or another thing you can do is after they sign up for the form, it is redirected to a sales page, you can make sales pages using Elementor and it is a free plugin for WordPress Or you can use lead pages it is not free, but it is a paid sales page program. And it is like drag and drop kind of like elements are kind of the same thing but there is like more analytics with lead pages it tells you like the conversion rate, if people are clicking or not and also if people are being converted, which means you they are signing up or purchasing. So, I like to use lead pages because it gives you conversions but with Elementor it does not really give you any conversions at all, there is a way to check on your pages in Hotjar and it is like a program. It is a paid program, and it tells you where people are clicking. So, if you do not want to use lead page, you can use like Hotjar with Elementor to see where people are clicking.
10:21
Then on the sales page, you can actually talk about your course, that is what I did, I made a sales page on lead pages. And I talked about my course it was like pretty long page, and it talks all about my course and it gave testimonials because you want to put like testimonials on your sales page. And a testimonial is somebody that has taken your course and that gave a review, it is like reviews, you can even do like video reviews, or someone could watch your video review, or you can even have people take your course and they can give you a review, like a paragraph review of your course and you could put on your sales page. And that way when someone views your sales page, they can see the review, they are more likely to purchase and usually put your reviews sprinkled throughout the sales page.
11:07
So, you have like a block content that introduces your product, you also talks about the problem that your course is going to solve because your course is solving a particular problem that someone has, because they are not going to buy your course that there is no problem. So, you got to make sure your course solves a problem in great detail and there is also many courses like some many courses you can just charge like $17 Like I have seen courses be sold at $17 for any course. And I am seeing upwards of people selling courses for like $2,000 or even $3,000 Like I actually took like a $3,000 course program it was a program that lasted like three months, it was $3,000 and it was pretty intensive, and it is like a coaching program. So, you can even do like coaching, too.
11:55
So, if you want to do like a membership you can have like several courses that you make like mini courses that’s actually what Cindy Bidar doing, remember Cindy Bidar? she was in a previous podcast episode, you should go to www.mombeach.com/podcast to see Cindy Bidar’s episode, where anybody are makes these courses like little, tiny courses every single month, she makes a new course. And she calls it a Tiny Course Empire when she makes several different tiny courses and then she has a membership, and she sells them. She sells like a membership of $47 a month you can access to all her courses. And she probably has like 50 courses by now that she is making them every single month. And they are a little tiny courses, they are really easy to make you just like film the videos and use the slides in www.canva.com and she uses like Google Slides for her.
12:42
There’s also Google Slides, that is a free program just like www.canva.com but www.canva.com, I like to use because there is actually pictures on Canva you can just drag and drop the pictures into the slides to make the slides more visual. So otherwise, you got to download a bunch of stock photos and upload them to your slides. Other, if you use like PowerPoint, or like Google Slides, I like to use Canva because there is built in photos and in Canva also, it is a paid version, there is also a free version, I use the free version, I want to count in a paid one because with a paid one you get more photos. So, it is really good idea to use www.anva.com to make your slide decks.
13:22
So anyway, let us get back to what we were talking before, about the forms that kind of go off on a tangent, like after you make an email form with your freebie opt in, then you could start promoting it, you can start getting subscribers you can make like a Pinterest pin. On Pinterest you make a pin that’s 1000 by 1500 (2:3 ratio) in size so it comes like a rectangle and then you put information about your freebie, and you can upload it to a board called free courses. And then people will search free courses and then they will find your board. And also, your Pinterest pin can say free course like say it is like a sleep training for toddler course.
14:04
So, you offer like a mini course, it is like a summary of your full course the paid one. So, you can offer like a freebie version of the course that way someone can opt in, you get a subscriber too from there, you can email them too, like say they did not purchase from your full course on the sales page up to the redirected from the freebie form opt in, they did not purchase the course so you can actually send them emails like every single week, or even every other day about the course and how it could help them meet their needs. This way you could do to nurture your subscribers, so you get the subscriber, and they sign up for the freebie, you can nurture them. So, then they end up purchasing your course.
14:44
What I am going to do is I am going to actually be in a bundle, you can actually join bundles too, like I am actually going to be in this bundle. I like to call build your business bundle and it is a really good bundle and it is really popular, and I was finally accepted. And in the bundle, I am going to give like a freebie version of my course, I am going to make like a video that is like a summary of my course and then I am going to offer the paid version of my course as the upsell. So once they opt into the freebie course and they are presented with a sales page and it has my full course in there, they can choose to purchase it. So, it is like that way I will get sales and subscribers from this bundle, and it is a great way to make money and also get subscribers when enter bundles. And the way to find bundles, you can go into Facebook groups in your niche, like say you are a blogger there is lots of blogging, Facebook groups, and a lot of times people will promote their bundle in the group and then you could actually sign up to the bundle.
15:41
Another way to get into bundles is like say you are emailed a bundle, that somebody already had going on and you weren’t able to be invited to the bundle, you can actually email them back and say, “Hey, are you going to have this bundle? Again, I would like to be notified when you start asking for submissions for the bundle”. So that way you can actually get into the bundle next time. And that way you can promote your course, in your freebie first, and then your upsell course in the bundle. That is another way to get subscribers and an audience like say you do not have any subscribers at all, you have no audience, but you made this really awesome course. You can also run ads to the course. If you do not want to do anything else, you can just run ads and you can run Facebook ads or make Pinterest promoted pins to the course.
16:27
I know that you could also run Google ads, but I have never ran Google ads I have only ran Facebook ads, and Pinterest ads or you can even if you do not have an audience at all, you do not want to pay for any course hosting like Thinkific or Thrive Cart Learn or Teachable, or Kajabi if you do not want to pay for anything, you can just upload your courses to Skillshare, and it has a built in marketplace. So there’s like so many different ways you can make money selling online courses, you don’t even have to make video courses you can make just text based courses, where it’s just text, like I’ve seen some courses, they’re just text based, you can also make just a PDF, like a PDF course and you don’t have to have any videos at all, if you’re afraid to being on video, because for a long time, I was actually afraid to be on video, I was thinking that I was just too fat to be on video, I was afraid people would judge me. So, I did not want to be on video for a long time, but I overcame my fear like I had a limiting belief because I did not want to be on video.
17:25
So, if that is you, if you have a limiting belief that you do not want to be on video, maybe like do some practice videos of yourself. Like if you have your own page on Facebook, if you have a page on Facebook, you can actually make videos for your page and then like nobody can see it, but you and that way get a feel to be on videos are getting more comfortable. And then you can like share your video with a friend, like invite them to your page. So, watch your video. That way you are not having a video with several different people watching it is just like one friend, then the friend could give you like pointers on how to improve your video presence. That is like something you could do if you are super scared about being on video because I know that could be a hurdle, if you are scared to be on video and that is why you do not want to make like a video course. That is completely understandable.
18:09
Just try to get out of your fear and get out of yourself and actually make things happen because if you do not put yourself out there, then you are not going to be successful. And if you give up, that is when you are really going to be unsuccessful. So you have to make sure you put yourself out there, you continue putting out content that promotes yourself, like videos, you can make a video course on YouTube and have them unlisted, then you use a blog post and put all the videos on list on your blog posts, then make the blog post password protected, then you can have a shop like Shopify or another shop, you can actually sell the course using the password so that way, when they buy the course you give them the password to the blog post has the unlisted YouTube videos. That way it does not cost any money at all, except for hosting on your blog. That is like another thing you could do to make an online course.
19:00
There is just so many different ways because online courses make all kinds of money, they have a very high perceived value, like I am selling courses makes more money than selling a printable because I made $15,000 In a week, can you believe that that is from selling my course. And that is the launch period. I think I can continue selling that course and what I would do is I would go to different people and audiences and actually email them and ask them if they want to be an affiliate for my course. And they can promote it to their individual audiences. And fact, I actually made a guest post recently, I believe in a budget. It is by Kristin Larsen, and she has like this Finance Blog and I actually submitted a guest post, and it promoted my course on, www.printablesecomacademy.com in that course I talked about how to make a Shopify store to sell printables and she is actually going to promote that to her audience in the blog post already and there is an affiliate link to that course. So that way, I will get more sales because after the launch period of that course it was kind of stagnant because I was not promoting it.
20:02
So, I am going to go reach out to different affiliates and ask them to promote it for me. That way, I will get more sales. So that’s what you should do, you shouldn’t rely on a course pre-launch, you should actually continue launching the course to different audiences and if you don’t know anybody in your niche, you should go on Pinterest and look for people in your niche, like, say your niches finance or parenting, just whatever, you can see who is in your niche, you can actually follow them and then you can actually follow their followers to get more followers that way on Pinterest, you can do the same thing with Instagram and Twitter, actually and that way you can actually build your followers up, you could see what kind of topics are talking about.
20:45
if you have no idea what to make a course of, you can see what topics are they’re talking about, you can actually make a course about the topics, you can even have a say you have a blog posts, it’s really popular, you can actually make a course about the blog post, you can actually use the same content of your blog posts, you can make slides then you can make a video of the blog post, like several different videos in each like paragraph you’re talking about different things, you’re going to do different video, that way you can repurpose your content because I just love repurposing content to make the content once, you can repurpose it to several different mediums like say this podcast, actually going to get this transcribed. So, I am going to get like a blog post out of it and I am also going to put it on YouTube.
20:53
So, I actually get a YouTube video of this podcast and post it to a podcast. So, I get three forms of content and I can also make little snippets of the video for Instagram, and I actually post on Tik Tok as well, so I get several different content just from this one time talking, it has only been like 22 minutes. I have been talking for 22 minutes, and I can use this content to repurpose into several different other mediums and I can even make a course about making a course that is also something I could do.
21:57
So there’s just so much you can do with online courses, it’s such a profitable digital product to make and anybody can come up with a course, like I’m sure you have something in your brain that’s waiting to come out that you want to share with other people because don’t let your ideas die with yourself because if you don’t share your ideas there’s going to die with you and nobody will ever find out, what your ideas are? what kind of skills you had? how are you going to help anybody? because don’t you want to help people? And at the same time making money that is also good you can help people and make money, but I am sure there is something inside you that is waiting to get out that you really want to share with somebody else.
22:33
So, I really recommend making an online course you can make it for Skillshare you can make it for like Thrive Cart Learner, Teachable or putting on like Thinkific or even use Udemy, I have links to all these course platforms in the show notes.
22:47
So, visit mom beach.com/podcast for the show notes.
22:51
Okay, well, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Have a great day. Goodbye.
22:56
Thank you so much for listening to the Becky Beach show. Please go to www.mombeach.com/podcast to learn more about my podcast and for show notes. If you want a 2024 free printable gold planner, please go to www.mombeach.com/subscribe.
23:14
I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Have a great day. Goodbye.
