This has been a big week, just not so big for this project. I still have three client projects that take up a huge chunk of my time, however I'm making an effort to make sure that I am giving myself the time I need to give this a chance of success.
More People
Unfortunately the adage, build it and they will come, isn't real. So along with building the content of the course I have been building content for my site and email list to make sure that I have people that are interested in the course when it launches.
Right now I have 10 people that are interested in the course, site unseen. These are people that have attended my webinars on similar topics in the past. I plan to give them the course for free, with the price of giving honest reviews. These will be added back to the site to add some social proof to the endeavor.
More Strategy
I'm planning to focus ONLY on the USA. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is there is more money there. My previous courses and webinars were focused on the Canadian audience, but that isn't a huge deal. The majority of the content is the same, but the market is SO much bigger.
If I get traction with the US focused one, it isn't a lot of effort to build one for Canada and then other countries.
Start Smaller
Something I learned this week, well maybe not learned, but read again, was that starting small is the way to go. So while I am still building out my course, I have a product out there that is small, low cost and best of all, I think there is a market for. So, I'm starting with a $20 E-Book that is continuously updating, and has an amazing amount of content. I'm going to dedicate at least an hour a week JUST to update this book with more and better material.
My goal is to create an e-book that is worth at least $200, but charge $20. From there I'm hoping that people will buy the $200 course that has at least $2000 worth of material, and then from there I am hoping the same people will join the $100 a month membership site where I give them a couple of webinars a month that allow them to get all those sweet sweet PDHs
What did I get done?
I have set up the shop on the site and started editing the e-book. I have also purchased a course from Ramit Sethi that I'm hoping will build some sort of framework around this endeavor.
The course is very detailed and wants me to work out a lot of the small stuff before starting anything. I really like this idea, and in fact am going to build an entirely separate entity just for this. I'm still working on my course and e-book as part of my main business and the ZTL project will be completely separate.
I'm interested to see how well this course works out. I'm a bit impatient and I already know there is an audience for the products that I'm producing, and if I don't sell a single one, I will be far a head just for having the new knowledge for my "day job".
The Course
Nothing is done yet. I have the preliminary course outline created and have started outlining the lessons and modules. It is complete as it needs to be right now. Next is to start building the content.
The course outline is structured more like a syllabus for a university course, this is because it is good enough to be at least part of a university course on its own.
What is the course structure
The course will be structured into modules with three or more lessons. Each module will have a quiz.
The lessons will be video presentations, the majority will be talking head with a power point presentation, with some being screen captures of me actually doing something and explaining as I go.
The Marketing
The main point of marketing is going to be my email list and professional network. Until I get some sales and reviews I'm not comfortable going the direct ad route.
Instead I am going to go the free webinar route. The majority of my webinars are paid, but for these I am building a hybrid webinar that will answer questions at the end and in the chat box while the recording goes. This will allow me to spend 15min-30min answering questions vs over an hour presenting and then answering questions.
These webinars will be promoted through my newsletter, and I will focus on getting people on my newsletter and upsell the webinar in the welcome sequence. These webinars will be a couple times a week, as long as I get a signup.
They will start in January.
The actual course launch is scheduled for January right now, but I'm planning to push this out for the time being.
Webinar Topics
The webinar topics will not be always the same, there is a whole series of topics that I can talk about that relate to the course. In fact, one idea is to have the webinar BE the first lesson of a module and then use these to promote the course. Maybe not the EXACT same, but the same content presented in a different manner.
The goal
The goal is to build a product or series of products that allows me to scale. The financial goal is to build a business that has a monthly revenue stream of $5k with less than 20hrs worked on average by the end of March 2020.
The Why
If this is your first time here, thanks for stopping by. I wrote my first post on this topic in November 2019. They all have a "special" tag, so you can find them all here: #noloafing. If you want to see where this all started, its with this post, Money and the Gig-Economy.
How I'm Doing
Hours worked: 4hrs ( Started tracking a new project in my tracking system)
Revenue: $0
Expenses: $0
I still haven't had to spend anything.
Be sure to follow along and leave a comment below!
Cheers,
NL