Hey and welcome to the new episode. This one is for the bloggers in my audience who are looking for something more, for the next stage of their business journey, for more excitement in their work, for a challenge even, for a way to help more people with their content, and – of course – for more profit.
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Transcript
Today I want to talk to you about my favorite way to scale your blogging business and take things further, assuming you’ve reached a certain point as a blogger and are ready for something more.
That means you have your site set up, are publishing content consistently, have online presence, know your niche and ideal reader, have an email list, and all the basics are in place. You’re earning a bit from your blog or even have a full-time income, and have time and desire for more.
What I’m going to recommend is what I did. It’s a chance for you to enter a new industry, scale your business, add a new passive income stream, and grow as a person thanks to the challenges that come with this move. I’m talking about becoming a course creator.
Adding a digital product such as an online course and selling it to your audience. Helping people actually achieve a specific result thanks to it, and changing their lives while getting paid for it.
Now, here are some things that might come to mind when you hear this, and why they shouldn’t be an obstacle.
1. You think you don’t know the first thing about online courses and don’t have the expertise.
Well, chances are it was the same when you started your blog, but you figured it out, or took a training or followed some free guides and did the work. Eventually you got better at it and now blogging feels easy and you can even teach others how to do it.
The same goes for any business model and I’m an example of that. I also didn’t know anything about courses but now have many programs and trainings, thousands of students have enrolled in them and I’ve helped them create actual tangible results.
As for expertise, your program will be about what you’re already teaching through your blog. So you have the experience, the knowledge – even if you only teach beginners, the confidence, the step by step process probably, and have attracted people interested in that.
Why not give them another way to work with you, a way to actually get your specific process for achieving the result and receive it in an organized way, such as lectures and exercises inside a course?
If you want help with every single step of the process of creating and launching your course, I got you. Doors to my signature program Bold Business School just opened again and you can get in till March 31st. It opens only a few times a year so make sure you check it out. Here’s the link.
I walk you through the process of outlining your program and validating the idea, picking your course name and creating the offer and sales page. I help you with your pre-launch content so you can warm up your audience and then with planning your launch from start to finish, preparing for it mentally, and actually following through.
Then I help you create your course content, make sure it fits every learning style out there, keep your students engaged while going through the program and get amazing feedback from them that you can turn into testimonials for your next launch.
Bold Business School also teaches you advanced email marketing and sales techniques, and a lot about creating your content marketing strategy, targeting the ideal student, and forming the mindset of a successful course creator, which is quite different from the way bloggers think and operate.
So, there’s all that inside the program, and some awesome bonus material to enhance your learning experience and get you results faster, such as a training on money mindset, a masterclass on defining your niche if you haven’t already, and email swipe copy so you don’t create sales emails from scratch.
You also get sales page templates and a directory of workflows – these are the exact step by step processes you can follow to get things done in your course business. Things such as setting up email automations to welcome course students and ask for feedback, creating a coupon code for your course, creating feedback forms, tagging students inside your email marketing provider so you can email only them later or exclude them from an email, and so on.
It’s pretty tactical stuff that can save you a lot of time.
Head to this link to see all the details and decide if it’s for you. Doors close on March 31st.
2. You think you’ll need to start from scratch.
So, we just covered why not knowing anything about online courses shouldn’t stop you from getting into the digital product business, and why you actually do have the expertise to create a great program.
Another common reason why bloggers don’t scale with courses is that they think this is a completely different business model and they will need to start from scratch.
But let me explain something. The main difference is that you’ll create a product and sell it. So you need new skills and a new mindset for that. But what you’re already doing is the foundation, and you will just add to the skills and knowledge you already have about your industry.
You have the platform – that’s your blog. You have the niche and the ideal reader. You have the content strategy because you got good at creating content and do it consistently, which grows your brand, helps new people find you and builds trust.
You also have an email list and subscribers that you email every week. you’ve formed a relationship with them and have a proven process for growing that list. Most probably by having a great freebie or a few and relying on your content ranking in search engines to bring new visitors to your site so that some of them can sign up to your list.
Great. The foundation is there. To scale and become a course creator, you need the course idea, a launch process, and to create the product. But that can happen after you’ve enrolled your first students and got paid for your program, which also lets you validate the idea.
Monetizing before creating the content is the launch process I teach inside Bold Business School and it takes a lot of the pressure of course creation away.
Once you do this, you continue business as usual. You still show up consistently for your audience with a new weekly blog post, you still send the weekly newsletter, update old content so it can rank better, and anything else you’ve been doing so far as a blogger that’s been giving you results.
But you also have a program. You can close its doors after the first launch and only open it again after some time, with another promo campaign. Or you can turn it into an evergreen product and let students enroll whenever they feel like. Then you can promote it all the time naturally, by mentioning it in your content and emails.
So, now you see that going from a blogger to a course creator isn’t such a massive change and the risk isn’t that big, especially if you validate your course idea first by pre-selling it.
3. There are already many courses on that topic.
Another thing that might be an obstacle on the way to creating and selling your first course is the fact that there are already plenty of courses out there, especially on the topic you’ve chosen.
But there are also other blogs in the exact same niche, right? That didn’t stop you from creating and growing your website, from dedicating so much time to it and pouring your heart into it. From creating so many articles on anything related to that topic, solving problems your audience has and sharing your experience and thoughts.
The topic itself is the same, the problems we have around it too. That’s universal. But you infuse your unique energy into your content. Many readers preferred you over other bloggers and want to learn from you. They like your writing style, resonate with your story or just found you by accident and liked what they saw.
Well, the same goes for courses.
Your program will be unique not because of its topic or the problem it solves. But because of the secret ingredient – you. No one else can create the content you can create. No one else has your experience. No one can teach the way you do.
If you feel like it’s part of your mission to be in this niche, to teach online and to create a program, then go for it. It’s not that hard.
4. Your audience isn’t big enough.
Another thing you might be considering an obstacle to creating a course is that your audience isn’t big enough.
Let me give you another perspective on this.
If you had the same feeling before starting your blog and acted on it, you wouldn’t be where you are today. You started with 0 followers on socials, 0 readers on your blog and 0 email subscribers. That’s what all creators online have in common.
You start with nothing and grow from there. You already know how this feels. You’ve been there. You were on the verge of giving up a million times when it felt like no one was reading your blog. And yet, here you are. Making money from it and still having a lot more to learn about the industry.
Same with courses. Big chance that no one would buy during the first launch. What do you do? Do you let it define you? Do you make it mean your program is not good enough or your topic isn’t in demand?
No. People haven’t even had the chance to see what’s inside yet.
Maybe your audience is too used to the free content you’ve been offering so far and isn’t ready to pay for a product. Maybe your sales page doesn’t really describe the benefits of taking the course. There are so many reasons why your offer isn’t selling and it might take a couple of failed launches to figure that out.
But is that going to stop you? You’ll keep running your blogging business but will now have a fantastic product to offer to anyone who wants to work with you more closely.
Let’s imagine where the decision to become a course creator can take you.
After all, you aren’t defined by where you come from or limited by where you currently are. You are free to define yourself by where you’re going. You are what your goals are. You are your vision.
Back when you started the blog, if you focused on the reality, it would be quite discouraging. You didn’t have any readers, content or expertise. Probably didn’t know how to many money online at all, had no confidence as a writer, no idea how to set up a website and where to promote the content once you publish it.
But step by step, mistake after mistake, lesson after lesson, you figured it out.
Look at the future when thinking about your course.
Years from now it can be your main income stream. It can replace any other profit, and it can be passive income.
You can have a lot of fun launching it a couple times a year, and thinking of different ways to promote it.
You can:
- run a giveaway
- play around with bonuses
- have payment plans
- try out different emails for the campaign
- limit the number of students you accept
- have a different theme for every launch and talk about it on your blog and in emails while promoting the course naturally.
Or you can skip all that and create an automated sales funnel instead that does all that for you.
Once you feel more comfortable launching and plan things well, you can travel while doing it and still make your biggest profit in a short amount of time. Even a few days if that’s how long you decide to keep the doors open before closing them.
Being a course creator can be challenging and scary and a journey filled with disappointment and failed launches. But it’s also exciting, it’s a next step many business owners aren’t willing to take, it’s outside of your comfort zone and it makes you grow in multiple ways.
I highly recommend it.
After all, what do you have to lose? You’re creating a lot of content already and know your stuff. Package that into a program and sell it to your audience. You can create it once and it will live forever. It’s an offer that you can always sell.
What do you think? I’d love to welcome you inside Bold Business School if you wanna let me guide you on that journey and create an actual digital product business. Here’s the page with all the details again where you can see what you’ll learn inside and decide if it’s for you. Doors close at the end of the month.